Pimax Crystal Supper review

General discussion
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After nearly two weeks with my Super and a lot of tests and tries, this is my little review of it.

The latest headsets I’ve used were Q3, the Crystal OG and Play for Dream MR, so my comparative will be with these.

I received my Super the 21 of April after one week with the customs, and I was very exited to try it… but unfortunately, my very first impressions were a big underwhelming.

The first problem I had, was that I couldn’t fix the headset into the sweet spot position, because right after tight the backstrap, it always tilt a couple of degrees and that makes the image very blurry.

When I found that’s the issue of the blurriness, I installed the optional top strap, and with it I could fix the headset to the correct position and the image quality improves a lot… but even with that, I saw the colors a little washed and “only” saw 114°/98° (H/V) of FoV.

For the washed colors, I found the solution in the Pimax Discord, and after change the Contrast and Brightness values, they improve a lot (but not at the uOLED levels). And also after try with different 3rd party foams, now I could see 124°/110° (H/V) of FoV, a great improve.

So, after using it with the best conditions fore some days, this are my opinions about the differents aspects of the headset.

Image Quality:
- Sharpness: This is the sharpest image I got with any headset, in the MSFS 2024 all the little letter of the cabin are perfeclty defined. But the jump coming from the Crystal OG or the Play For Dream, is not as high as I think it would be. EDIT: After apply the Nvidia Sharpness at 70%, the jump in sharpness is higher.
- Black levels: The new local dimming 2.0 is much much better than the previous version in the Crystal OG, in some conditions you could see a little bloom, but no so much. Still not at uOLED levels, but very very good for an LCD.
- Colors: After the tweak they are good, better than the Crystal but not as good as in the PFD.
- Brightness: Simply the brightest headset I ever used, the jump from the Q3 or Crystal OG is very noticeable, and of course from the PFD (since it’s a uOLED + Pancake headset).
- Contrast: Very good thanks to the local dimming, but not as good as with a uOLED display.
- Lens: A very good improvement from the ones in the Crystal OG. In my case I only have CA at the far edges and I have edge 2 edge clarity similar to the Q3, but with a much high FoV and sharpness.
- FoV: After the modifications, now I could see 124°/110° (H/V), so unless you came from a 8KX/5K or VR1, this will be the highest FoV you could have in a headset.
- Issues: Like all the Supers, my unit has a little mura, but it’s only noticeable if I have an image all with the same color, and I have to look for it. The other issue I found, is that the image have a little blur when I move the head fast, but in my case is not a showstopper.

Tracking: The tracking is very good, in normal use I didn’t find any problem, but sometimes when I put off the headset for some time, it lost the position and I have to recalibrate it.
Comfort: With the extra top strap and with other foam, the headset is more comfortable to wear than the Crystal OG or the Q3 without mods, but I still rather the balanced weight of the Pico 4 or PFD for longer sessions.
Weight: Is noticeable lighter than the Crystal OG, but heavier than the Q3 or the PFD, so I don’t recommend it for games with a lot of movement in long sessions.
Software: Unless the know bugs of the AutoIPD not being 100% accurate and the washed colors by default, the SW was very very good. All plug and play and you could even set the DFR and QuadViews with a simple click, so very happy with it.

To sum up, after all the tests and configurations, now I’m happy with the Super.
After my first impressions I really thought about return it, but now with the correct FoV and Sharpness, I think I’ll enjoy the sims with it very very much.

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2

Thanks for the review! What are the settings you use for the washed colours? Thanks.

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I set the contrast to -3 and brightness to -1.

That improves the colors a lot (for me).

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4

Its absolutely ridiculous that you have to use a 3rd party foam to get the promised FOV on a 1700 € (!!!) device. I seriously hope the Pimax staff read those reviews and take the necessary steps.

5

The VR is a very personal experience.

Only with the Crystal OG I’ve had a headset in which I could saw the full FoV with the original Foam/Gasket, with every other I had to change one or both to saw it.

I’ve see a lot of reviews and in the most of them, the reviewers could see the full FoV with the original foam, so it’s head shape dependant more than foam dependant :sweat_smile:

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6

It depends on the shape of someone’s face. I have never gotten the advertisted FOV out of the box with any headset, I have always had to change the facial interface. Even headsets with eye relief I still had to.

It would be nice to have a thinner facial interface also included in the box though but other headset manufacturers also don’t do it, so I don’t think it’s expected tbh.

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Thanks for the review, buddy!

The team is looking into the colour profile.

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Face shape & profile varies among people. Unless you match somewhat with the design reference head. You will often need some customizations to achieve similar result. Main thing is that it is rendering the FoV and that it is possible to get those results with either a similar faceshspe/profile or with some adjustments/mods.

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@neelrocker long ago showed a tool for adjusting the color of monitors to achieve a more accurate result using calibration.

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thanks for the detailed review!
is there really a big visual difference between PFD and super?

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I’ve update to the new Pimax Play 1.39.2, and to get a the colors I like in this version I only have to change the contrast and brightness to -1.

Also, after apply the Nvidia Sharpening to 70% using this tutorial:

The jump in sharpness from the Crystal OG and Play for Dream is much more noticeable.

I think it’s because with the Crystal OG I’ve used the OpenXR toolkit but with the Super not, and also the PFD have the ALVR sharpening, so now the comparation is more even.

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I only notice it in the very fine details in the sims (like the little letters of the plane cabin) and if you look into the horizon far away.

In “normal” VR games the differences are less noticeable, because they aren’t programmed to be shown in shuch high res headests, so the textures don’t have enough definition to notice much difference. Also I hope that with the Virtual Desktop, the image quality and sharpness in the PFD will be improved.

But I keep the Super for this jump in sharpness in sims and for the FoV, because I got like 30º more with it than with the PFD.

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