So it finally arrived last Monday and I have had a couple of hours with it now so here’s my review. I’m a long term 5K+ user and I’m fully aware of the various tweaks in SteamVR. IPD is 67.5 for reference.
Unboxing
Box was fine did it’s job for transportation, nothing special. Nothing in the box except the HMD and a letter from an engineer stating to make sure you set it up correctly but no instructions on how to do this. No lense cleaning cloth, small thing but a bit disappointing that it wasn’t included at this price point. Face foam was attached to the unit (11mm), no additonal face foam included. Again disappointing at this price point. It was also noted there was no protective film on the lenses as there has been with every other HMD i’ve owned, again very disappointing at this price point.
Setup
Pretty straight forward. Swapped out the 5k plugged in the X and it was picked up by Pitool straight away. No need for a firmware update which was nice. Reset IPD offset and vertical offset then checked RQ etc.
Fitment
Straight forward, released the velcro top strap put headset on and lowered the rear of the strap to just below the bump at the back of my head and twisted the tightening knob to secure it in place. Then reattached the velcro top strap so as to hold the unit height correctly. I noticed significant light bleed from the sides and that the comfot kit wasn’t very comfortable so tried adjusting the top strap and rear strap height a bit but still not very comfortable at all. The comfort kit seems to have been designed for someone with a wider head than mine. The light bleed could be fixed with a face foam with thicker sides or some modding with additional pieces of foam placed to close the gap. Again disappointing that this wasn’t considered and a DIY mod is required for a device at this price point.
Visual tuning and clarity
Having run my 5k+ with no eye strain, distortion or focus issues for many months at an IPD setting of 67.5, I naturally dialled in the X to the same value, launched iRacing and put the headset on. Straight away I noticed my right eye was out of focus so I tried moving the unit around to correct with no luck. I could see the focus improve in my right eye when i shifted the unit to the right but get worse in the left. I then slowly moved the IPD setting wheel to decrease the IPD hoping to find the balance between both eyes again with no luck. The left eye improved when the unit was sat on my face without being shifted but the right eye was still out of focus at the minimum IPD setting. Again if i shifted the unit physically i could get the right eye in focus but this pushed the left eye out of focus. I then tried adjusting the IPD offset but quickly realised that this wouldn’t help as no mater what setting, the physical lense was still off. I then positioned the headset so as to get a compromise between each eye and have both slightly out of focus. When moving the unit around I found that when 1 eye was in focus the clarity was great, which was extremely frustrating as it could look so good if both lenses were aligned. When i eventually settled on a position with both eyes slightly out of focus it also became clear that there was a very noticable blur around the very small sweet spot and outer edge distortions which meant that as i turned my head to look at a wing mirror i could see the shape of it changing as my head rotated. I had noticed this before with the 5k+ when using a thicker face foam so knew it was because of the increased eye to lense distance provided by the new comfort kit. With that in mind i swapped out the comfort kit with the 5k gasket and foam which i knew gave the correct distances and that i had no alignment issues with the lenses on the 5k and hoped this would resolve all of the issues on the X given it has the same lenses and physical shape as the 5k. I was wrong, even with the lenses closer they were still misaligned in fact even more so. The distortion had gone which was great but the blur was still there but not so prominent. The good eye sweet spot was bigger and again if i closed the out of focus eye the clarity was amazing but equally frustrating that i couldn’t get both eyes in focus. I again shifted the unit to get a compromise betwen the left and right hoping that i’d maybe get used to it and my brin would work it out, again no joy it just led to a headache and more frustration. Just to cover all the bases I added some padding to the orignal comfort kit it came with to see if it would resolve the alignment issue, but again no joy. It slightly improved the alignment but caused the distortion , blur and sweet spot to become worse still, it also added a dark line to the outer edge in each eye.
During the usage period it also became clear there was significant Mura. It felt like i was looking through a helmet visor which had a transparent visor tear off that wasn’t cleaned properly. Again very disappointing at any price point.
So at this point after trying everything i could find on the forums and things which had worked historically on the 5k+, i can only conclude that there is a calibration problem with the lenses. Maybe the geared mechanism that moves the lenses is off on 1 side compared to the other, who knows. It’s not the comfort kit because if it was the 5k gasket would fix the problem. I’ve had my IPD checked at the opticians and my IPD is even left to right from centre so it’s not my head / eyeballs.
Given the extra development that was carried out acording to @PimaxUSA and the increased QA steps that are in place, it begs the question, how was this not picked up?. Also how was this issue not identified at the various roadshows or CES where countless people tried the headset?.
I guess something changed with the final builds that have been shipped?
Audio
During the short period of testing I tried the SMAS audio purely because the design doesn’t allow me to use my headphones. In short as widely stated, it is frankly awful. Keep in mind this is a flagship unit for Pimax with a price tag to match the audio falls short in every department. Quality, clarity and range are comparable to a low end phone speaker being played in a tin can. What makes them even worse is that not only do they sound bad but the design stops me wearing my exisitng headphones which leaves me with the option of buying some earbuds or doing the HTC DAS MOD to get decent audio. I can only think this move was an intentional one to drive sales of the DMAS. But given that the SMAS was condsidered acceptable I’m not willing to chance it that Pimax’s take on “deluxe” audio would be anything other than adequate and not worth the asking price. Purely for the heck of it i tried the BOOM application which others have stated was a game changer, but no, loudness isn’t the issue, I’ve been producing and engineering music for 20 + years and I know that it doesn’t matter what EQ or effects you apply to a sound source, if the speakers are crap nothing can fix that except new speakers.
Summary
In summary the Pimax 8KX experience has been poor to say the least. Forgetting about the long drawn out wait and inability to deliver as promised in the order that purchases were made. The product I received is in no way a £1200 flagship VR headset. There was apparently more deveplopment time put into this product after CES and it was stated by @PimaxUSA that there were big improvements being made when compared to the unit the @mixedrealityTV previewed, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. With that in mind I’d like to apologies to @mixedrealityTV as I doubted the sincerity of his preview due to the NDA issues. I was wrong to do so and it does appear it was a genuine unbiased review.
One small positive that has come out of my exprience with the X is that support are far more responsive now. I’ve had pretty decent response times even if the responses haven’t been great. For example offering a protective sleeve and a store voucher instead of RMA’ing my unit is laughable!
Anyway my rating of the 8KX,
2/10 in it’s current state.
Should the issues above be resolved I would rate it a solid 7/10
