• Pimax, a China-based startup known for its PC-based VR headset, announces two new wired PC VR headsets: Crystal Light and Crystal Super.
  • Compared with the original Crystal, there are some differences among Crystal, Crystal Light and Crystal Super, including that two new wired headsets don’t support the adapter the original Crystal uses.
  • According to Pimax’s previous “black history”, buyers could buy cautiously.

Pimax has unveiled two new wired PC VR headsets: Crystal Light and Crystal Super, with two models each, different from the original Crystal.

Crystal vs Crystal Light vs Crystal Super

The original Crystal is a hybrid headset that can be employed as a native wired PC VR headset or a standalone headset with a limited selection of supported standalone apps.

There is a new $300 wireless adapter for the original Crystal, which uses a 60GHz signal to support higher bandwidth thus less compression. However, the new Crystal Light and Crystal Super won’t support this adapter.

Differing from the Crystal, Crystal Light and Crystal Super do away with the onboard chipset and battery in favour of a lighter wired-only PC-only design. In addition, Light has a lower entry price while Super has a higher resolution.

Crystal Light employs 2880×2880 resolution QD-LCD, the same as the original Crystal but gives up eye tracking. Differently, Light, which is sold at $700, is in the absence of Mini-LED local dimming that can be gotten on the $900 model.

Crystal Super has 4k displays, which will be QD-LCD on the $1800 model and micro-OLED on the $2000 model. It maintains eye tracking, allowing for eye-tracked foveated rendering.

Regarding the lens adjustment, Crystal Light is manual while Crystal and Crystal Super are automatic.

Every Pimax Crystal model has 6DoF Touch-like tracked controllers and supports markerless inside-out positional tracking. Four greyscale fisheye cameras situated in comparable locations to Meta Quest 2 are used to provide this tracking.

Also read: Should dead children be given an AI ‘afterlife’?

Also read: Facebook adds ‘reverse passthrough’ 3D eyes to VR headsets

The future of new Crystals

While Crystal Super promises to introduce 4K Micro-OLED to PC VR for the first time, Crystal Light is expected to make 3K resolution PC VR much more affordable than it was previously.

Pimax asserts In May, Crystal Light will begin shipping, and in late 2024, Crystal Super will ship.

However, there is precedent for Pimax not keeping its promises. For example, Crystal’s eye tracking didn’t work until four months after launch and the “Reality 12K QLED” headset that the company announced in 2021 is still not in production. Interested customers should have deep consideration.