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The Pimax Crystal Light VR headset on a table
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Pimax Crystal Light review

A good entry into the world of ultra-high resolution VR lenses, with some pretty big caveats

Reviews
By published
(Image: © Future)

Our Verdict

The Pimax Crystal Light packs some of the very highest-resolution lenses around and does it at a decent price point. But it's heavy, clunky, and cumbersome. For the right type of sim racer, however, this could just be perfect.

For

  • Great visuals
  • Foveated rendering supports that high resolution
  • Good price point…

Against

  • Large and bulky
  • Mediocre passthrough and tracking
  • …despite still being costly

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I really didn't like the Pimax Crystal Light the first time I put it on. This headset is clunky and bigger than many of the best VR headsets for gaming right now, and even things like plugging it into its own power outlet and connecting it to the DisplayPort of my PC felt restrictive and a bit more old-school than many would expect now. Of course, these can be necessary parts of getting a screen this lovely, and this is where the tradeoff on high-end VR lies. You just have to hope that the experience is good enough to handle that extra baggage, both to your space and your wallet.

Getting it out of the box, the Pimax Crystal Light has a fairly sci-fi aesthetic, with the main screen housed in a casing that is not only quite wide but made up of a mass of edges.

Pimax Crystal Light specs

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The Pimax Crystal Light VR headset on a table
(Image credit: Future)

However, the headset is much better in slower games like A Fisherman's Tale, Red Matter, and Vacation Simulator. The clarity of the lenses adds a lot to play and a wide FOV of 115 degrees is excellent for immersive games. This brings me to perhaps the single best reason to pick up a Pimax: racing sim and cockpit games.

This feels like a headset intended for the likes of F1 22, Dirt Rally 2.0, and even space exploration games like No Man's Sky and that makes a lot of sense when you get situated in your gaming chair.

The extra FOV helps realise the size and space of the cockpit and driving games, a genre that has always managed to look rather pretty and feel especially crisp. I could see that long-term discomfort making endurance races much more difficult but it's fine while seated for a few races.

The swap from base station to inside-out tracking is smart, as it makes the set-up process a little easier, but the tracking itself is mostly just fine. Passthrough is grainy and in black and white and I did lose connection to my controls sometimes, though not nearly enough to pose any real problems with gameplay.

The controllers are mostly fine, taking after the look of the Meta Quest 2 controllers with their iconic ring design, but feeling a bit lighter and less sturdy. They feel heavily of plastic but are mostly comfortable in the palms.

The Pimax Crystal Light VR headset on a table

(Image credit: Future)
Buy if…

✅ You're a sim racer: The clarity of this headset is immense and, thanks to its size, weight, and need to be tethered, you won't notice its downsides as much behind the wheel in a cockpit.

✅ The budget headsets just aren't clear enough for you: You notice how great this headset looks pretty quickly. If you want the best, this is a good way to get it, being one of the highest-resolution lenses in the market.

Don't buy if…

❌ You're an active VR gamer: The Pimax Crystal Light is big and clunky, and due to that, never feels secure when I'm bobbing and moving around. In light exercise, it's fine, but if you're jumping and ducking, it's not quite as comfortable.

❌ You don't have a good rig: VR can be a bit of a challenge to run on a normal rig but the increased clarity of this headset means you need something even beefier.

The Pimax Crystal Light feels somewhat niche to me, though not nearly as much as the Pimax Crystal. Cutting away some of the things that made the Pimax Crystal so expensive like its standalone mode, yet keeping a high resolution, up to 120 Hz refresh rate, and Mini-LED Display, this outshines the main competitors in specific areas but lacks the punch in overall feel and intuitiveness.

In short bursts, with the cable wrapped around my arm or on top of the chair I'm sitting on, I really see the vision here. The clear visuals, high FOV and good refresh rate make for an immersive experience in VR experiences that are mostly stationary. However, I've always used VR as a way to blow off steam or think about things after a long day and the setup process, comfort, weight, and general finickiness of the entire headset feel like it defeats that purpose.

With the Pimax Crystal Light, I feel like I've played the most promising VR headset of a few years ago but, outside of a few specific use cases, there are a handful of headsets I'd reach to over this one, even if it means a picture downgrade.

On the plus side, I need less raw computing power for it too. If you aren't quite as bothered as me by a cumbersome headset or only really play cockpit-bound games, this headset is well worth a look but, as a more general device, this Pimax device is Crystal clear but not very Light.

The Verdict
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Pimax Crystal Light

The Pimax Crystal Light packs some of the very highest-resolution lenses around and does it at a decent price point. But it's heavy, clunky, and cumbersome. For the right type of sim racer, however, this could just be perfect.