8k+ impressions.
Yaya yaya – I have bunch of VR headsets – we all do ! I don’t know how much that matters in an objective review – it’s like saying having been married a lot of times must make you a great lover ! Maybe the opposite is true and we all make poor choices 
In my case; I’d never heard of iracing (before reading this forum and googling it), I’ve played the odd flight sim – but I couldn’t reliably tell you what was aileron and what was air brake. So you can probably say I’m not really into sims !
I backed Pimax a couple of times on KS but I always cancelled before the funding ended – by the looks of the forum some KS backers paid about as much as me (or more) and are still waiting. Sorry for you I guess. r/(a sub that you can’t name here rhyming with bittylipmarters) is your friend – but the TL;DR – don’t buy 3d printers or VR on KS !
For me Pimax have pretty much delivered on their promises. Dispatch of headset and silicon cover was within 48 hours + ALYX code. Delivery took 3 weeks exactly door-to-door but this was entirely down to Fedex and Pimax were good enough to check for me what was going on when I asked them – so no complaints there.
Packaging is fine. Pimax it’s kind of a cute gesture to send face masks so I’m not going to moan about it but you’d be better not buying them in bulk so our governments here in Europe can….
Headset itself is fine. Build quality I would say is good. Nothing moves. Nothing squeaks. Coating is well attached etc.
Strap is – of course – a piece of crap. But that was expected.
I had to find my old V1 base stations – 1 of which somehow seems to have survived falling 20 ft from my lounge ceiling some years ago. Oddly – the other one is making a funny noise but they are working fine.
I had a VR less PC that I built recently so I was installing on a virgin machine (not even Steam VR installed) – it’s also a beast of a thing so it’s the perfect home I think for this headset.
Pimax software install fine. It took me about 2 seconds to work out that stopping the Pimax service would probably solve the ‘steam needs to update the f out of all your old hardware’ service failing each time – but Pimax should really fix that if they are going to use Valve hw.
And I start SteamVR. And play a bit of ALYX (of course) and spend some time on my roof in GE – the usual VR trifecta with a new headset – and….
It’s ok. No SDE – some texture that you can see which is the subpixels but it’s the best I’ve ever had.
I think the colours are nice. But folks are programmed to their OOB TV settings to like images to be more saturated I guess. For me it’s ok.
The FOV. Of course better than anything else. But at what price….
For me – the FOV benefit its completely stripped by the distortion. I don’t hate it – I’m not loosing my sh!t about it – and I can see if I was keeping my head still most of the time like you simmers – it wouldn’t be an issue – but yuck. It’s really immersion breaking.
You absolutely know you are not in the real world in a way that I think your brain can more easily compensate for when it’s a matter of reduced FOV but more real-world in that reduced FOV.
But man is that distorted image pretty !
So the big question – will it replace my Index. No. That’s the simple answer.
Do I regret parting with the money. Na – not really – I wanted some additional base stations in my study and it didn’t seem like it would be any slower via Pimax than with Valve (that could still prove to be wrong!)
The Index will stay in the lounge and it’ll be the one that gets the most used. The Pimax will stay in my study. Long term – even if the DAS made it more comfortable Pimax would need to get wireless working first before I swapped them over !
It’s definitely not crap though – even if the treatment of some of the KS backers clearly has been.
As always - YMMV.
/david/
- being good in diplomatic approaching doesn’t hurt either 