Will alcohol wipes / spray damage the lenses on the Pimax or any other part of it?

I imagine these days VR headsets are going to be seeing more disinfecting than usual. Has there been any testing on this by the Pimax team?

No, you shouldn’t use any spray with any VR headset. Stick to gently wiping it with a microfiber cloth.

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I recommend cleaning lenses.

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You should never use alcohol (or acetone) on a plastic lens. I think most of them are polycarbonate, which fogs (permanently) when alcohol is used to clean them. You should also be cautious with glass lenses (read the manual). You might accidentally remove any surface treatments (anti-glare, etc.).

Alright, thanks for the replies. I wonder what business owners will do once these kind of places open up again. Or germ-phobes who might consider sharing with friends.

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Good question. I’m sure that some will ruin their lenses by accident.

The technique I use is to breath on a lens, so that it’s fogged, and gently wipe it with a lint-free microfiber cloth. Obviously, you don’t want to do that on a shared headset.

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The only hint or recommendation I saw about lens cleaning from any headset manufacturer was from Oculus and it was - never use a liquid cleaner, only dry microfiber and a gentle touch. I guess it works if you have just some dust on it, but good luck with wiping a greasy smudge.

Plus the material of the lenses is usually so easy to scratch (sometimes it looks like they are intentionally made like this) that it is sufficient to get some hard particle dust and even with the “soft touch” you get pretty nice microscratches everywhere.

The truth is there is no way to safely clean the lenses, but no one will say it aloud.

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I agree to you, that you should never use technical alcohol on plastic lenses. I used several times spectacle cleaning cloths, which were allowed to use for any prescription glasses. Even if these lenses are coated as an anti-reflective lense. I think it can contain isopropanol, which is also an alcohol, but the ingrediants are not printed outside.

Over all, it worked with my 5k XR and no lense became fog, even after month.

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What if you use a blower on the lenses first to blow dust away and then wipe with a microfiber cloth?

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It depends on the type of plastic and the type of coating. I’m glad you had no problems.

In this case, the air should be dry, without moisture.

Honestly I wouldn’t worry that much, though Risa has a point. I’ve been using microfiber cloth for 3 years now and not one of my HMDs has a noticeable scratch, at least during use. I’m sure there are microscratches all over if I were to use magnification and inspect, but it doesn’t make a difference in practical use.

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Dusting and micro-fibre cloth is fine, but it will not remove greasy smear from eye-lashes, fingerprints etc.

I was getting eye-lashes smears on 5k+ in past before I moved to thicker face-mask. For what it is worth I was (and still am, but now I only need it sporadically) using Zeiss Lens Wipes and I see no adverse effect on the lenses. They are primarily meant for glasses which are mostly plastic nowadays as well. Extract from the description:

“All glass and plastic spectacles (particularly effective for high quality, coated precision lenses)”

In general try to clean as rarely as possible.

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Without recommending anything and on your own risk, I’ve been using alcohol-free spectacle/lens wipes without seeing any bad effects.

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