Can we still recommend the Pimax Crystal Light in early 2025, with strong competition coming from the company itself with their new Crystal Super and other companies launching higher resolution microOLED headsets? That’s what we will discuss in this 2025 review of the Pimax Crystal. Overall, I can directly tell you that the Crystal Light still owns the under $1000 high-end PCVR niche and still offers an incredible bang for its buck so it is easy to recommend to everyone who is looking for a bit more than the main stream Quests can offer for PCVR enthusiasts. But let’s delve in deeper.
Features & Overview
The Pimax Crystal Light is the successor to the Original Pimax Crystal. It’s a wired PCVR headset that offers a display resolution of 2880 × 2880p per eye, aspheric glass lenses, comes with inside out tracking and its own Oculus Touch-like controllers. Unlike its predecessor it does away with the standalone mode that required a battery and was not actually well supported. If you prefer Lighthouse tracking you can purchase a LIghthouse faceplate that will make this a Lighthouse tacked headset.
Visuals
Let’s get to the visuals. Also in 2025 the Crystal visuals still shine. The 35 ppd optics still look better than the Quests and Picos of this world if you are simply looking for a headset that could give you the uncompressed visual clarity of a Displayport HMD. Are there better looking headsets out there now? Sure, you will even get a sharper picture with the MeganeX Superlight 8K and the Crystal Super, but both headsets cost more than $1000 more than the Crystal and honestly, the returns truly start to diminish here.
Let’s get into detail.
Displays
You are looking at two 2880 × 2880p QLED panels from BOE. And those panels are still fantastic. They can be fired up to 120hz and offer a bright picture and really good colors. Does this look better than a Quest 3? There is absolutely no question about it. You got higher resolution and better colors. And on top of that, you get local dimming which helps to make dark areas really look dark. The amount of dimming zones is quite limited though so there is quite a bit of blooming depending on how bright you set the backlights up to be.
The displays also have very little Mura, so that is actually an advantage over the Crystal Super displays that I saw at CES. These panels are great and will make you delve into super sharp virtual worlds.
Lenses
The best displays mean nothing if you don’t have the right lenses to channel their photons to the users’ eyes. And also in this regard the Crystal Light sill does a very good job. The aspheric glass lenses manage to show a crystal clear image that is not plagued by god-rays or glare. The edge-to-edge clarity is good, but not top of the line anymore. We do have slight quality degradations the furthr we get to the periphery and in those areas we also see chromatic abberations. But in now way are those a show stopper and I have seen worse chromatic aberrations in headset lenses.
The aspheric lenses still come with lots of geometric distortions if you have not found the distortion sweetspot. That sweetspot is easy to find though and once you are in it, you are good. Pimax has dialed in their distortion profile for the Crystal Light so well and I am glad that distortions are not a problem that the Crystal Light has to deal with in 2025.
FOV
The FOV of the Pimax Crystal Light is nothing to write home about. It is around 102H/102V in my measurements. So it is perfectly alright, but without a doubt if you are looking for a wide FOV headset, you need to look elsewhere. The Pimax Crystal Super with its around 120° might be a good option or the Somnium VR1 that is even supposed to have more than 130° might fit the bill here.
But I am glad that Pimax is offering a standard FOV headset under $1000 that simply has such a sharp image.
Binocular Overlap
The binocular overlap is acceptable. It is not fantastic though and if you are coming from a Pico 4 or a Quest 3s, you will see that it is not quite as good as what those headsets have to offer. But again, it is acceptable and probably a tad better than the binocular overlap of the Quest 3. So if you were fine with that headset, you will be okay here too.
Comfort
Let’s talk about comfort. And this is where the Crystal Light now starts to show its age with competitors like Bigscreen Beyond and Meganex Superlight 8K simply offering much smaller form factors and much lighter headsets.
Compared to those new microOLED headsets the Crystal looks and feels like a behemoth from medieval times. But that’s alright because the visuals make up for it.
And despite the headset not looking very comfortable, it is actually not as bad as many have made it sound. It does weigh around a kilo but the weight is evenly distributed and the headset is very balanced out. The cushions also do a good job and overall you can spend hours and hours in the headset.
You can vastly increase the out of the box comfort though by using mods. I swear by the Studioform mods that I have introduced in one of my videos here. The wider over the head strap and better face cushions provided by this company are truly wonderful, not expensive and come highly recommended.
But yeah, there is a kilogram of weight on your head and inertia does kick in when you do fast movements. You do not have that with the smaller microOLED headsets so in terms of comfort those are indeed better.
Audio
The Crystal Light comes with their standard SMAS audio solution that offers an acceptable sound that is comparable to standalone headsets like the Pico. If you are not an audiophile, you will be alright with this kind of solution.
Gladly though if you want better audio that is as good as the floating headphones of the Valve Index and Reverb G2, you could upgrade to the DMAS headphones. I would love for those to be included in the box from the start but yeah, you cannot expect that for the incredible under $1000 price of the Crystal Light.
Microphones
Unfortunately, the microphones are a downgrade from what we had on the Original Crystal. They do not sound as good and I would not want to use them when doing a livestream with the headset. They are not awful though and you will be able to communicate with your virtual teammates. But well, to get to this price point Pimax did have to go for a few compromises and microphone quality is one of them.
Controllers & Tracking
The packed in controllers do a great job. Pimax has also solved inside-out tracking by now and tracking is just as good as with the competition. I can still remember the very first days of the Original Crystal. Tracking was aweful at that time. But since then the company has upgraded those controllers month after month and they are good now.
They come with the standard Oculus Touch button layout and even offer one more menu or Pimax button. They are charged via USB-C and a charge is good for a couple of days. That is not as good as the Meta controllers but still fine. I personally prefer controllers with batteries though because then you can just exchange them when they are empty but it is what it is.
Headset tracking is fine as well, I never had any issues with tracking at all.
Software & Game Compatibility
A lot has changed since the old days of “PiTool” software and bricked headsets because of failed firmware updates. Pimax Play, the software needed to run the Crystal and all other headsets is now a modern piece of software that simply works and does not get in the way. You insteall it and even absolute beginners should have their Crystal Lights running in no time.
The Pimax Crystal Light is a SteamVR headset so you will be able to play all SteamVR games without any problem. The software now also has their own OpenXR runtime built in, so no need to install some additional software to run OpenXR games like Microsoft Flight Simulator. They even introduce new features like an uspcaling mode that will allow weaker GPUs to run this with good results as well. And: AMD GPUs are supported as well! So it all works out of the box. Well done, Pimax!
Pimax Prime
Unfortunately, Pimax now also forces buyers of the Pimax Crystal into their new Pimax Prime subsciption service, which is actually more of a payment plan. Don’t ask me why they call it a subscription though. Pimax still has lots of work to do when it comes to professional communication.
Anways, you pay $599 up front, get the headset and you can test it for 2 weeks. If you want to keep it you join “Pimax Prime” which will give you nothing but the ability to actual use the headset you ordered in the first place. You will then have to pay $11.99 for the next 24 months. Failure to do so will result in the company bricking your headset remotely. You can also choose the pay the 24 months of “Pimax Prime” up-front.
As you probably know, I am not a fan of Pimax Prime because it introduces many problems like unwanted remote bricking of headsets, a decreased resell value of Pimax hardware on the second hand market and quite honestly really no perceivable advantages over a standard payment plan. But like always with Pimax….it is what it is.
Conclusion
The Pimax Crystal Light is still the benchmark for high-end PCVR gaming under $1000. The bang for your buck is incredible, there is so much value here. You get top of the line visuals here that could very well be the Reverb G2 upgrade you had been waiting for all those years. And, opposed to the more expensive microOLED headsets from Bigscreen or Shiftall, you do not need to invest in Lighthouse Base stations or controllers, because the headset comes with solid inside-out tracking and controllers from the get-go. All for an under $1000 asking price.
Quite honestly, it’s surprising that there is still no competition for the Pimax Crystal Light in that inside-out tracked PCVR enthusiast niche. The Crystal Light reigns supreme here and is only challenged by its more expensive Crystal Super successor that will be $1000 more expensive for a slightly better form factor, a brighter picture and more FOV. But is it really worth it the additional $1000? I honestly think for many of you, the Pimax Crystal Light strikes a wonderful balance between affordability and performance and still is a top MRTV recommendation for PCVR enthusasts in 2025. It does starts to show its age as far as form factor and weight is concerned, but you simply cannot have it all.
