I’ve had the Rift DK1, DK2, CV1, OG Vive and finally Vive Pro. I was in a pretty happy place with Vive Pro and wireless, so Pimax was more of an exploration.
First got the 5K+ to see if I could learn to be happy with LCD black-levels with brightness/contrast tweaking, and learned that I could not. Sadly, AFAIK ALL currently announced new HMDs are LCD 
I’ll snap up the next high-resolution OLED that shows up, but meanwhile, there’s this XR thing…
FOV: You already know this is pretty great. I use normal mode and can deal with any distortion. Requires parallel projection sometimes, but no way around that. I hated the perspective distortion when playing on triple-wide monitors in the before-time, so I’m happy to see Pimax tackling this issue in software. Same goes for 5K+.
I find myself placing the HMD higher up on my face for the least distortion, which reduces the vertical FOV compared to the Vive Pro. But even the small horizontal FOV is noticeably better than the Vive Pro.
Comfort: Couldn’t get it to sit right on my face without the 3D printed addon and Vive DAS (and Vive aftermarket face cushion). That’s not just a comfort issue - you also have very few physical options to manage distortion and sweetspot otherwise. I’d say this is a must-have.
Light weight is a plus, especially compared to Vive Pro + wireless antenna + battery pack all on my head. I often use the (modded) XR long enough for my controllers batteries to die, so that should tell you something about comfort. All this goes for 5K+ too.
Light-bleed around the nose area is an issue. I play with the lights off or use a cut-up Vive face mask to block it.
Blacks/Colors: Kicks 5K+ butt. I prefer it to the Vive Pro actually. IMO the Vive looks a bit over-saturated with contrast too high, whereas a lot of things can be adjusted on the XR. Black smear & mura feels like a side-grade to the Vive Pro, which is good enough for me. I play a lot of dark moody games, so this is a big factor. Looking forward to being able to adjust black levels with the new PiTool, but even without that I’m fine with things the way they are.
Lenses: I didn’t do the Gear VR lens mod on my Vive Pro, but did do it on the OG Vive. The XR lenses are similar in clarity to the modded lenses, maybe a tiny bit worse, but with much larger FOV. I’ll take that.
Screendoor: Yes, IMO worse than Vive Pro and made worse with higher resolution required in general (harder to oversample and minimize aliasing). But noticeably better than OG Vive. Coupled with the clearer lenses, I consider this a side-grade or slight upgrade to Vive Pro overall. 5K+ is very clearly better than both in this regard. Pity it’s an LCD.
Stereo Overlap: Spent a lot of time fussing over this and was worried about other people complaining about it before I got the XR . After some testing, I feel that over the same FOV as the Vive Pro, the stereo overlap is similar.
But the real secret is to play with the IPD dial and IPD offset in software. To put this in perspective: I OBSESSED over 3D Vision setups. I have 3 separate triple-wide 3D vision surround setups and 2 projector setups. If there isn’t a Helix-mod for a non-VR game, I’m probably not going to play it. As any 3D Vision fan will tell you: playing with depth AND convergence is key.
The IPD dial/software offset isn’t exactly the same, but it sort of gives you that kind of control over depth and world-scale. This is impossible on any other HMD as far as I know, and this fact alone is worth the price of admission for me. I didn’t even know about it when I bought the XR. I’d really like to understand better how the software IPD and IPD dial differ geometrically. Right now this is based on my visual experience.
Other stuff:
- Had a black-level mismatch between eyes. Pitool support experience felt a bit unprofessional but was effective. I’ve had much worse.
- I run a pretty big 5m x 5m setup with 4 Steam VR 2.0 lighthouses. My Vive Pro was wireless. The default cord length of the XR/5K+ can’t keep up, but with a few additions, it can (https://community.openmr.ai/t/cable-extension/11603/59).
- Pairing with lighthouses is slow. Sometimes you have to walk around the room with the headset to get it to see all the lighthouses. Sometimes you set it on the floor and make coffee.
It eventually sees them though, even if only 2 lighthouses show up in PiTool, all 4 of mine are seen in Steam VR. After that, it’ll stay seen for the gaming session. Just got to do that ritual and please the VR gods first. - Pairing with Index controller or even Vive wands is iffy. Again, once you figure out the right ritual it’s possible to get right and have it work reliably during a gaming session.
But heaven help you if you take a break and something goes into sleep mode: be prepared to restart your game, Steam VR, PiTool and/or the service. Sometimes the controllers pair up again fine, but have issues (invisible controllers/positioned infinitely far away, jumpy tracking of buttons, etc.). - I found the highest backlight brightness to be unusable due to reflections. I’m fine with the middle setting - it’s a bit less bright than the Vive Pro but I consider that a plus.
- The Pimax service is always running, even when not using VR. Wish they figured out a way to not do that. You can stop it manually of course.
Feel free to ask any other questions.