Pimax Crystal Light review: a new standard for affordable PC VR

2024 has been a big year for VR, with new headsets from Apple, Meta, HTC Vive, and Pimax. The latest from Pimax is the Crystal Light, an inexpensive version of the impressive Pimax Crystal I reviewed last year.

The original Crystal is our top pick for a PC VR headset, and it’s one of the best VR headsets available. However, the Crystal Light is much more affordable, potentially saving you hundreds of dollars.

Pimax had to cut some features to lower costs, so you need to know what’s different and whether the budget model is good enough to be a great SteamVR or sim racing headset despite the inevitable trade-offs.

Specs

Pimax Crystal vs. Crystal Light

The Pimax Crystal Light (left) looks almost identical to the original Pimax Crystal (right). Alan Truly / Digital Trends

The Pimax Crystal Light’s most eye-catching feature is its $899 price tag, which is $800 less than the original Crystal. Pimax strategically cut some features to reduce costs while retaining the same high-density displays and aspheric glass lenses for optimal clarity.

Many PC VR headsets like the HTC Vive Focus Vision use Fresnel lenses that suffer from visual artifacts known as “god rays.” While the pancake lenses used in most standalone headsets are lighter, Pimax matches that clarity without sacrificing display brightness.

Overall, Pimax found the right balance of features and cost, with only a few trade-offs. The Crystal Light doesn’t have a standalone mode, so a gaming PC with a discrete GPU is necessary to play games or run apps. Pimax has a relatively small library of games for the Crystal, so that’s not a big loss.

The Pimax Crystal Light’s lenses are made of glass and can be spaced with a thumbwheel. Alan Truly / Digital Trends

While the original Crystal had automatic IPD adjustment, it’s easy to adjust eye spacing by scrolling a thumbwheel on the left side of the Crystal Light.

The Pimax Crystal Light also lacks eye-tracking hardware, so my VRChat avatar doesn’t look where I do or blink at the same time.

More impactful is the Crystal Light’s fixed foveated rendering, which keeps the center of the display sharpest instead of following my gaze. This feature reduces the burden on the GPU by dropping peripheral resolution.

A cropped screenshot shows how Pimax Crystal Light’s fixed foveated rendering puts pixelization out of view. Digital Trends

Still, Pimax chose settings that will work well for most people. I only noticed a loss in quality when I searched for it. Pixelation begins near the edges of the lenses where my eyes rarely venture during gaming. I turn my head more than I flick my eyes to the side.

These changes help the Crystal Light live up to its name with significantly reduced weight. Without the need for the rear battery, eye-tracking hardware, and auto-IPD motors, the budget model cuts over a half-pound from the heft of the original.

Despite the 1-pound, 15-ounce weight, the Crystal Light is quite comfortable. Pimax includes the same thick foam facial interface and well-designed head strap on all Crystal headsets with multiple adjustment points to optimize fit.

Pimax Crystal Light for PC VR

Half-Life Alyx looks great in the Pimax Crystal Light, and the controllers held tracking well. Photo by Tracey Truly / Digital Trends

The Pimax Crystal Light is a great choice for PC VR gamers who want to upgrade their aging Valve Index, HTC Vive Pro, or HP Reverb G2. There’s no wireless option, but Wi-Fi often comes with trade-offs.

I can play any game in SteamVR, and my Oculus Rift games also appear in Pimax Play. I had to open the Meta Link app for authentication before running Asgard’s Wrath. It looks incredible on the Pimax Crystal Light.

For Meta Quest owners eager for better SteamVR quality without the hassle of optimizing Wi-Fi and quality settings, the Crystal Light’s DisplayPort connection offers visually lossless gaming without compression artifacts or dropped frames caused by network congestion.

At $899, it’s the most affordable way to experience crisper graphics. The hardware resolution is 2880-by-2880 pixels with up to two times oversampling if your GPU can handle it. Dynamic range is also excellent thanks to the QLED display with mini-LED local dimming.

Pimax provides plenty of options to customize the Crystal Light’s settings. Foveation is adjustable and can be switched off entirely if you have a fast GPU that doesn’t need the performance boost.

Pimax Play has plenty of options to fine-tune my Crystal Light experience. Digital Trends

I can also adjust render quality, fine-tune for a particular resolution, and select 72Hz to 120Hz refresh rates or an experimental upscaled 90Hz. Those both help for less-powerful gaming systems.

The picture quality is outstanding. I get deep blacks, plenty of brightness, a wide color gamut, and sharp details. The biggest limitation is my PC. I’d have to spend thousands more for an ultra-premium Apple Vision Pro or a Varjo XR4 and expensive GPU to get a higher-resolution system.

The Pimax Crystal Light and controllers rest atop its box. Alan Truly / Digital Trends

The Pimax Crystal Light has inside-out tracking without base stations, and Pimax includes two rechargeable controllers with strong haptics.

For my tests, I used a desktop PC with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super and an Intel Core i7-14700F. That’s a nice midrange gaming computer that works well with the Pimax Crystal Light.

PC requirements

The minimum requirements Pimax lists for the Crystal Light aren’t very demanding, but an Nvidia GPU is necessary if it’s a GPU that’s several years old.

Apparently, you can get by with an RTX 2070 or better paired with at least a 12th Gen Intel Core i5 or an AMD Ryzen 2000. However, Pimax notes an older gaming system is only sufficient for less demanding games like Beat Saber. You’ll need to lower quality settings and could suffer reduced frame rates when playing the best PC VR games.

Strong graphics cards as fast or faster than Nvidia’s RTX 3080, RTX 4070, and AMD’s RX 6800 XT can handle flight simulators and challenging games at medium quality if you have a recent processor.

For the best quality, Pimax suggests using a high-performance PC with one of the best GPUs on the market, such as an Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti, AMD RX 7900XT, or a better GPU backed by a powerful CPU. The graphics card is most important in this case.

More Pimax options

Pimax Crystal Super QLED and micro-OLED VR headsets aren’t available yet. Pimax

If you like the look of the Crystal Light but demand the sharpest possible graphics, Pimax announced a high-end PC VR headset with a display that might beat the ultra-sharp micro-OLEDs of the Apple Vision Pro.

The Pimax Crystal Super boasts 3840 by 3840 pixels per eye with an option for micro-OLED displays for vibrant colors and deep blacks. With 50 pixels per degree and a 130-degree horizontal field of view, the display should be quite impressive.

Pimax says the Crystal Super will ship in 2024, but I don’t feel confident about that. Like some other Apple Vision Pro alternatives, delays are common. If you want a better VR headset, the Pimax Crystal or Crystal Light are good solutions that are available now.

Is the Pimax Crystal Light right for you?

Pimax Crystal Light can run games and apps from my SteamVR library. Photo by Tracey Truly / Digital Trends

The Pimax Crystal Light is an impressive headset for SteamVR gaming if you have a nice gaming PC. The crisp 2880-by-2880 native graphics resolution can be fine-tuned via the Pimax Play app to ensure a usable frame rate with a variety of GPUs.

It might not be the best choice for VRChat since there’s no eye-tracking, and most body trackers require base stations and a $200 Pimax Lighthouse Faceplate upgrade.

If you play racing simulations that require frequent glances to the side, the Pimax Crystal might be a better solution since it uses dynamic foveated rendering that keeps your view sharp no matter when you look. The Crystal Light’s fixed foveation lowers resolution at the edges of the edges.

Pimax headsets are made for PC VR so mixed-reality gaming isn’t a viable option. The passthrough camera quality looks similar to the Quest 2’s low-resolution grayscale sensors. I tried using the desktop mode for productivity, but that wasn’t a good solution. However, it’s handy for quickly adjusting settings on my PC without taking off the headset.

For most PC VR gamers, the Pimax Crystal Light will be a big upgrade. It matches the more expensive Pimax Crystal in many ways and easily outperforms older solutions.

I recommend Crystal Light for PC VR gamers and sim racers with high-performance PCs that demand more quality than a standalone mixed-reality headset like the Meta Quest 3 can deliver. It’s one of the best PC VR headsets you can buy.