Pimax Crystal Light Review: Is Less Indeed More?

The Pimax Crystal Light aims to deliver a high-end VR experience on a smaller budget than its bigger brother - but does it succeed? Here is our Pimax Crystal Light review!

VR and sim racing - there is simply no better way to feel like you are actually in the driver's seat, and earlier this year we introduced you to the Pimax Crystal and compared the VR experience to triple screens. With the newer Crystal Light, Pimax is aiming to make a high-end VR experience more affordable, while still offering the same high resolution and most of the relevant specs compared to the high-end kit we tested then for around $1,500.

With the Crystal Light, Pimax has now managed to cut this price by almost half, which should make it attractive to a much wider range of buyers. Does it succeed and what is it lacking? Let's find out!

VR headsets are constantly evolving, but the GPUs have not caught up with them yet. The Nvidia RTX 5000 series is just around the corner for 2025, so VR can finally expect another performance boost - but finding ways to get smooth performance out of a headset without a game, or in our case a racing sim, that looks terrible, remains extremely important.


Image: Pimax

Features​

Luckily, the Pimax Crystal Light comes with some features that help with this already on board. Considering the sub-€1000 price tag, there is quite a lot of bang for your buck in the Pimax Crystal Light. It features the same resolution and many of the same features its bigger brother, the Crystal, also comes with, but at a much cheaper price. No base station or other accessories are needed, either.

Compared to the original Crystal, the Crystal Light does not feature eye tracking, automatic interpupillary distance adjustment, dynamic foveated rendering, standalone capabilities or swappable lenses. In all other regards, they are virtually identical, however.

The Crystal Light comes with glass aspheric lenses that create a larger sweetspot, meaning that the image is sharper in a bigger area before becoming less sharp towards the edges. What also helps with sharpness and clarity is the 2880x2880 resolution per eye and a pixel density of 35 PPD. The displays are QLED and feature local dimming, passthrough capabilities, an FOV of 130 degrees, and variable refresh rates of 60, 72, 90 and 120 Hz.

High Resolution, High Clarity​

This results in a remarkably sharp image, something we immediately noticed when firing up the headset and putting it on for the first time without being in a game yet. Even the home screen is impressively sharp with no clarity issues in the distance to speak of – the high native resolution of the displays shines through in this regard.

And this continues in sims as well. We tried the headset in Automobilista 2 and iRacing and were impressed with the clarity in both – distance markers or ad boards in the distance were readable from much further away than on other headsets, in our experience.

Of course, there is a serious amount of fiddling with settings necessary, as is always the case with VR setups. The Crystal Light has a feature on board to help with FPS gains: Fixed Foveated Rendering.

What this means is that the image is rendered at a lower resolution outside of a set FOV, so mostly in your peripheral vision with blurry edges, while the original Crystal featured Dynamic Foveated Rendering, which then uses eye tracking to follow your vision to render that area in higher quality, which leads to better results than the fixed variant.

Upscaling To The Rescue​

However, in our experience, this feature still was not quite enough to get to the 90 fps target without significantly reducing graphics settings, even with a RTX 4080 Super on of our nice Simrig PC setups. This is where the upscaling function comes in to save the day. Those who are familiar with OpenXR Toolkit will know the benefits – the image is rendered at a lower resolution and then upscaled to use less hardware resources. With it, we were able to essentially double our FPS in some instances without significantly sacrificing visual quality.

The Pimax Crystal Light is a high-end VR headset despite skipping a few features compared to the normal Crystal, and that shows in its visuals. The clarity and sharpness are quite impressive due to the high native resolution – so look no further if you really want that visual fidelity from a VR headset. There is no question that this is a very good piece of hardware.

All of this applies to the headset being connected to your GPU via DisplayPort – simply because there is no other way. The Pimax Crystal Light deliberately does not feature standalone capabilities nor a wireless mode, saving components and therefore weight. The headset weighs in at 850 grams, 250 grams less than the flagship model, according to Pimax.

Big Device With A Balance Issue​

That does not mean that the Crystal Light is a compact piece of hardware, though. In fact, the headset is quite big – so how does that work for ergonomics, a very important element for sim racing in particular? This, of course, is different depending on the shape of your head and face, but the Crystal Light is quite front-heavy either way, as it does not have the battery pack the original Crystal has at the back of the head strap. This can be somewhat mitigated by adjusting the top strap of the headset, but it could use a more comfortable face mask to increase long-term comfort. Also, if you have a racing seat with head protection “ears” on either side mounted to your rig, you might end up hitting those with the headset when trying to look around in the car, for instance.

What is also a bit limiting is the head strap design. On the sides of your head, the rigid strap goes outward a bit, leaving a few centimeters between the plastic strap and your head. This is where the DTS headphones are mounted, which do a good job in the sound department, but are essentially mini speakers. If you do not want anyone else who might be in the room to hear the in-game sound, you need another set of headphones – and the popular over-ear headsets do not really fit with this design. Earbuds would be another alternative to circuimvent this problem, but we still feel like this could have been solved a bit better.

Hard-mounted Display Port Cable​

Additionally, we were also surprised to find that the 5-meter cable that the Crystal Light uses is hard-mounted to the headset. Without the standalone capabilities, there is no need to remove it – but we immediately had to think about what happens when the cable breaks for whatever reason. You could not just swap out the cable in that case, but would have to send in the entire device to get it repaired – not ideal.

All of this being said, the drawbacks are relatively minor, and there should be ways around them. Pimax even has upgrades in its own store, such as different versions of a Facial Foam For Comfort Kit, or a different top-of-the-head strap specifically designed to increase comfort while wearing the headset for longer periods.

If you want a great VR image and clarity for sim racing, the Pimax Crystal Light is absolutely one of the best options out there if you do not want to break the bank. It is not as straight-forward as simply buying one, though.

Pimax Prime Subscription Model​

Alongside the new flagship Crystal Super, which looks like it is replacing the original Crystal, Pimax also announced the introduction of Pimax Prime. This subscription program is now a necessity when buying a Crystal Light or pre-ordering a Crystal Super. In additon to a one-time payment, a monthly membership fee of $11.99, so about €11.50, needs to be paid either over 24 months, or all at once for a 10% discount.

In the Crystal Light’s case, this means a one-time payment of €579/$599 plus €110 in taxes, plus the 24-month Prime membership fee. Depending on your payment method, this brings the total up to €965. Once the 2-year membership is up, you fully own the headset and can keep using the software without a new subscription.

Pimax Prime comes with a list of benefits, such as early access to new software features, priority tech support, flexible returns and invitations to members-only events. It still seems quite complicated compared to the usual “pay once” model, though – although doing that is still an option, so in theory, users should not have a different experience compared to the previous payment model.

Verdict​

All things considered, we quite liked our time with the Pimax Crystal Light. You might have to fiddle with it a bit to get it 100% comfortable. But fiddling with the settings is to VR what the winner’s milk is to the Indy 500 – both are unimaginable without the other.

For us, the Pimax Crystal Light is a 4 out of 5 – if the weight was a little more balanced and more common headphones would fit over it, it would easily score even higher.

We hope our Pimax Crystal Light review has helped you! As always, it should serve as a base for you to make an informed decision should you consider purchasing one.

What are your impressions of the Pimax Crystal Light? Let us know in the comments below and join the discussion in our hardware forum!