Bigscreen Beyond 2 Review

The Bigscreen Beyond 2 is the smallest, lightest proper PC VR headset you can buy, and after a good while with it on my own rig I keep coming back to the same thought: for a cockpit, this is a lovely thing that most sim racers still shouldn’t buy first. It’s 107 grams of micro-OLED that all but vanishes on your face, with blacks that make night racing look properly black. The catch is everything around it – you need two SteamVR base stations it doesn’t come with, and for the money a Pimax gives most of us more of what a cockpit needs. I’ll walk you through where it wins and where it doesn’t.

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I’ve raced and flown in a lot of headsets – my Valve Index, the Quests, and the full run of Pimax Crystals – so I came to the Beyond 2 with a fair benchmark for what a cockpit headset needs. The pitch here is unusual: rather than chase the highest pixel count, Bigscreen went the other way and built the most wearable headset on the market. It’s a custom-fit, micro-OLED, base-station-tracked headset that weighs a third of what a Pimax does. For a hobby where you sit in the thing for two hours at a stretch, that’s a more interesting idea than another half-million pixels.

The specifications

Specification	Bigscreen Beyond 2
Panel	2x 1-inch micro-OLED, RGB stripe
Resolution per eye	2560 x 2560 (about 32 PPD peak)
Refresh rate	75 Hz native, 90 Hz upscaled
Contrast	500,000:1 (true OLED blacks)
Field of view	116° diagonal, about 108° horizontal
Lenses	Custom pancake, per-eye adjustable IPD
Weight	107 g (headset only)
Tracking	SteamVR, needs 2x base stations (not included)
Audio	None built in (mic only); Audio Strap is extra
Eye tracking	Beyond 2: no. Beyond 2e: yes (enables foveated rendering)
Connection	Wired: DisplayPort 1.4 + USB, 5 m fibre cable
Price	$899 (Beyond 2) / $1,099 (Beyond 2e)

Two numbers in the specs are super important for sim racers: The first is the weight – 107 grams is not a spec-sheet flex, it changes how the thing feels over a stint (more on that below). The second is more subtle: the tracking line. There’s no inside-out tracking here, so you need two SteamVR base stations mounted on the wall, and Bigscreen doesn’t sell you those. Budget for them before you fall in love with the rest. PS: “Pimax” Base Stations are the standard Steam Base station that work universally with Bigscreen Beyond.

One more thing to look out for: the refresh line. You get the full native 2560×2560 image at 75 Hz. Push it to 90 Hz and the picture is upscaled from a smaller source rather than rendered native. For most sim work I’d leave it at 75 Hz for the sharper cockpit; 90 Hz trades a touch of that sharpness for smoother motion if you prefer it. This I think is where the micro-oled paneled Super from Pimax and the Dream Air range beats Bigscreen.

What it’s like to live with

Pick it up and the weight is the first thing that gets you, or rather the lack of it. I think this is teh end of the heavy VR headset!. Next to an original Pimax (not a Dream Air) it looks like a toy, and after a two-hour endurance stint the difference is not subtle – no forehead brick, no neck ache, none of that grateful sigh when you finally take it off. There’s a knock-on benefit for driving, too: with so little mass out front, fast head movements have less momentum behind them, so checking a mirror or snapping your eyes to an apex feels lighter and quicker. The flight-sim lot say the same thing about looking over their shoulder in a dogfight, and it maps straight onto wheel-to-wheel racing.

The custom fit is the clever bit and the fiddly bit at the same time. You scan your face with an iPhone and Bigscreen makes a cushion moulded to you, which seals beautifully but, on the original silicone version, got a little sticky and sweaty over a long session. The newer Universal-Fit Cushion with the Halo Mount fixes that, and it’s the one I’d order now. The other new trick is the per-eye IPD adjustment – you screw each lens into place with a little hex tool, which sounds daft until you’ve done it and realised your eyes are properly dialled in. It also means you can share the headset without wrestling a slider.

What hardware you really need to run it

This is the section that catches people out, so I’ll be plain about it. The headset is $899 (or $1,099 for the eye-tracked Beyond 2e), but that’s not the number you’ll spend. To get flying or driving you also want the Audio Strap at $129, because there are no speakers built in and otherwise you’re wearing headphones on top of it. You want the custom or universal cushion (around $120 to $180). And you need two SteamVR base stations, which run somewhere around $300 to $400 for a pair and which Bigscreen doesn’t sell. Add it up and a realistic seated-cockpit setup lands around $1,450 for the base model, closer to $1,700 for the 2e. If you already own Valve Index base stations, that last cost is sunk and the maths looks a lot friendlier. If you don;t I think the Dream Air slam is the better choice.

On the PC side, it’s more relaxed than you might fear. The panel is a sensible 2560×2560 per eye rather than the 4K-per-eye arms race, so it doesn’t need a monster card – a DisplayPort 1.4 output with DSC and something in the 4070-and-up bracket is a good pairing. Just nothing like as GPU hungry as Pimax. If you buy the eye-tracked 2e, its foveated rendering does a lot of heavy lifting: MSFS 2024 runs at around 70 fps with eye tracking on, against 45 to 50 on the non-tracked Beyond 2 at the same settings. For a demanding sim on a non-flagship GPU, that eye tracking is the single biggest reason to spend the extra $200.

How it feels in the cockpit

The blacks are the headline, and they earn it. Micro-OLED gives you that black that is properly black, not the grey glow you get from an LCD panel, and for night racing or a dusk-into-dark flight it’s lovely – the cockpit lighting pops and the sky sits inky behind it. The clarity holds up too: it’s clean edge to edge with no warping to speak of, so gauges and apex markers stay readable without you leaning in to find them.

The trade sits right on top of that strength, though, and it’s glare. Against those same dark scenes the Beyond 2 throws more glare than the best of its rivals, little rings and rays off bright lights in a black frame. Getting your eyes closer to the lens with the universal cushion knocks most of it back, but if you do most of your racing at night and glare-free optics are the thing you care about above all else, this isn’t your headset. Brightness is only fair, as well – there’s an overdrive mode that helps, but it spins the fan up and adds a little motion blur, so I left it off.

Where it quietly gets ahead of a Pimax is the software. Because it’s a native SteamVR headset, it can lean on SteamVR’s motion smoothing, which a Pimax can’t, and that makes for a smoother ride when your frames dip. Pair the featherweight comfort with those blacks and that smoothing and you have a headset that’s a real pleasure to sit in for a long session. It’s the living-with-it that wins you over, not the spec sheet.

As an aside – Pimax and Steam VR struggle – Pimax’s fork of OpenXR is just as easy to set up and it’s more performant.

The things to know before you buy

Every headset has its “pros and cos” list and this one’s is just as imperfect as it it perfect. The base-station requirement is the big one – no inside-out tracking means external lighthouses to mount, power and position, which in 2026 feels like a step backwards next to a headset you just put on (I had these with my valve index!). The glare, I’ve covered. The 75 Hz-versus-90 Hz thing means you can’t have maximum sharpness and maximum refresh at once. There’s no audio without the extra strap. And on the 2e, the eye tracking is still labelled beta and it’s fussy about fit – wear it a couple of millimetres off where you calibrated it and the foveated rendering ends up sharpening the wrong part of your view, so you re-seat and re-calibrate more than you’d like. None of these is a dealbreaker on its own. Together they’re the reason this is a considered purchase, not an easy one.

Bigscreen Beyond 2 or a Pimax?

This is the comparison that matters for most people reading this, because a Pimax Crystal is what you’d otherwise spend the money on. I own both sides of this, and the answer is that on the numbers that make a cockpit work, the Pimax leans ahead more often than not.

Start with field of view. The Beyond 2’s roughly 108 degrees is good for how small it is, but a Crystal Light or Crystal Super is a far wider FOV on the world, and in flight especially that extra peripheral vision is something you notice. Then clarity at distance: the Pimax has the edge on reading far-off detail and spotting traffic, which matters for both a braking marker down the road and a dot of a bandit against terrain. The Pimax Crystal does have better optics… but this is not far off, and as a Crystal, Super, 57ppd Super Upgrade and Dream Air Owner… I think the Pimax has “the upper hand in clarity, especially in the distance in most situations, but the Beyond is plenty sharp enough. On raw resolution, the Pimax wins on paper too, with the Crystal Super pushing far more pixels, though you pay for those in the graphics card you need to drive them.

The one that tips it for a lot of people is tracking. The Crystal Light and Crystal Super are inside-out – you put them on and you’re tracking, no base stations, no wall mounts, no extra $300. For a seated cockpit that convenience, and that saved cost, is a real advantage for the Pimax before you’ve even switched a sim on. If instrument clarity in the distance is your priority, my full pick is the Pimax Crystal Super; for most people the Pimax Crystal Light is the sensible one, and I’ve set out the whole VR field in the best VR headsets for flight simulation guide.

Where the Beyond hands it back is the living-with-it. It’s a third of the weight of a Pimax and far more comfortable over a long session – one owner running both called the Crystal Super “a piece of hardware from the 80s compared to” the Beyond, which is unkind but not entirely wrong. Its OLED blacks beat the Crystal Light’s LCD for night work, it’s easier to drive on a mid-tier card, and the SteamVR smoothing gives it a stability edge. So the two headsets want different buyers, and I’ll spell that out next.

Who should buy the Beyond 2?

Buy it if comfort and weight matter to you more than outright field of view or pixel count, if you do a lot of night racing or night flying and want those OLED blacks, and if you’re on a sensible GPU where the 2e’s eye tracking earns its keep. It’s a particularly easy call if you already own SteamVR base stations, because the big hidden cost disappears. Look elsewhere if you want inside-out simplicity, if maximum FOV or resolution is your top priority, or if you race mostly at night and can’t live with the glare. For a lot of sim racers, honestly, a Pimax Crystal Light does more of what a cockpit needs for similar money – but if what you want is the lightest, comfiest headset with the best blacks, nothing else gets close.

Pros

• The lightest proper PC VR headset made – 107 g all but vanishes over a long stint, with less head-movement momentum
• Micro-OLED true blacks and 500,000:1 contrast make night racing and night flying look properly dark
• Very clean, low-distortion optics with per-eye IPD adjustment – gauges and markers stay readable edge to edge
• Sensible 2.5K-per-eye resolution is easy to drive, and the 2e’s eye-tracked foveated rendering is a big frame-rate boost

Cons

• Needs two SteamVR base stations (not included, around $300 to $400) – real cost and wall-mounting faff, no inside-out option
• More glare than the best rivals, most visible in the dark scenes the OLED is best at
• No built-in audio on the base model, and 75 Hz native versus 90 Hz upscaled means a sharpness-or-refresh choice

Pricing and where to buy

Bigscreen sells the Beyond 2 direct only, through store.bigscreenvr.com – it isn’t sold through resellers or the usual marketplaces, so the official store is the one place to buy it. The headset is $899, or $1,099 for the eye-tracked 2e, and remember to add the Audio Strap, a cushion and base stations to get to a real usable price of roughly $1,450 to $1,700. Prices have drifted down a little since launch, which is a nice change. If you decide the Pimax route suits your cockpit better, the Crystal headsets carry a reader discount – use code SIMRACINGCOCKPIT for 3% off at Pimax.

So, the verdict I opened with, now you’ve seen the working: the Beyond 2 is a beautifully made, featherlight headset with the best blacks in the business, and it’s a joy to wear for hours. For a cockpit specifically, most of you will get more of what you need from a Pimax Crystal for the money – but if weight and comfort are what have been putting you off VR, this is the headset that finally solves them. Get your eye in, and I’ll see you out on track. Enjoy!

Topic: VR Headsets