Pimax Crystal Light Review: Setup and Sim Racing Tested

Featured Image: Our new Pimax Crystal Light in review

The Pimax Crystal Light is the headset I keep going back to for iRacing. Class-leading clarity for the money, light enough for long stints, and it just works once it’s set up. If you race more than you pixel-peep, it’s the one I’d buy – and this review covers the lot, from unboxing and first setup right through to hours in the simulator.

Rather than dive straight in and install it on the simulator, I decided to start by taking a look at a few important changes between the brand new Pimax Crystal Light headset, and its predecessor the Crystal (also detailed on the Pimax website, here). (Perhaps I should say “parent” or “sibling”, as these two products compliment each other).

I’m also going to unbox and write up my experience of installing the device too. I’ve set it up on my gaming (and work) machine to do a proper runthrough of the device’s capabilities and installation procedure, just to get used to it for general gaming before we go sim racing.

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Overall I’m pretty excited, as the Light does feel lighter (it’s not just a clever name) and the cabling / additional extras are much less burdensome. I’m OK with the battery feature being removed, for example, – as I always use the Crystal plugged into my gaming PC.

Quick Navigation: Pricing | Crystal vs Crystal Light | Setup & installation | Sim racing performance | Light vs Super vs Dream Air | Pros & cons | Visual performance

Crystal Light Pricing

Price-wise the Crystal Light now starts at around $599 with a bundle – it launched higher, and Pimax run sales often enough that the live price below is the one to trust. Mine came with controllers.

Compared to the original Pimax Crystal‘s $1,599 RRP – and the newer Crystal Super at the same $1,599 – this is a major discount. The Light has dispensed with some of the bigger features, like auto IPD and batteries, which is why it’s so much cheaper and lighter.

Pimax discount code: use SIMRACINGCOCKPIT for 3% off, or SIMRACINGCOCKPIT25 for $25 off, at checkout on pimax.com – the 3% pulls ahead on the pricier configs. For the whole range, see our Pimax buyer’s guide.

My view before getting started is that I don’t expect it to be better but in its reduced “Light” form, but is it more convenient as a VR headset than its “full fat” sibling? It ceratinly seems to have addressed a few minor inconveniences. Weight, being a signicant factor.

Before we get started I’ll also note that the Light came quickly (with me within 3 days of order) which, distributed from China, is impressive.

Initial Unboxing

The Pimax Crystal Light comes in a simple, well packed black box. While the headset is at the centre of the purchase, my version also came with controllers and a separate power supply.

The power cable connects to a breakout section on the main Pimax cable, which feels like a sensible reduction to the power / battery setup of the Pimax Crystal.

The PSU comes with every local variation of mains connector, so you shouldn’t have any trouble localising your PSU.

On first impression, the Light really is significantly lighter, too. It feels like almost half the weight of the Pimax Crystal with a battery installed (ed: it’s actually a third!).

Pimax Crystal vs Crystal Light: What’s the Difference?

For those of you wondering what the key technical differences between the Crystal Light and its predecessor, the Crystal are, I’ve created a quick technical summary below:

• Weighs significantly less: 951g vs the Crystal’s 1268g
• Auto IPD: Removed
• Eye tracking: None
• Foveated Rendering: Fixed foveated rendering instead of dynamic (see: What is foveated rendering?)
• Lenses: Non-interchangeable
• Audio in: One less microphone
• Storage: No internal storage
• Standalone: Not available
• PSU: Simplified power supply (via DP cable only – I think this is a plus!)

I’m not getting the feeling that I’ll miss all of those features; of all the items in the list, auto IPD is probably my favourite feature of the standard Crystal. With that said, it’s OK as a “set and forget” feature, your interpupillary distance isn’t something that changes much. I hope!

And let’s not forget what we get for around half the price of the orginal. A technically impressive VR headset:

Technical Specifications

• Resolution: 2880 x 2880 per eye
• Panel: QLED (Mini-LED optional)
• Refresh rates: 60, 72, 90, 120 Hz
• IPD range: 58-72mm (manual adjust only)
• Eye-tracking: None
• Foveated Rendering: Fixed
• Tracking: Inside-out (Lighthouse optional)
• Lenses: Glass aspheric, 35 PPD
• Audio: Integrated, 3.5 mm jack, 2x microphone
• Chipset: PCVR Engine Dual-processor
• VR modes: PCVR
• Connectivity: Pimax 4.5m DP cable + PSU

Pimax Crystal Light: Setup

According to the manual, the minimum GPU / CPU combination to adequately power the Crystal Light is NVIDIA® GeForce RTX 2070 or above and the CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-12500 / AMD Ryzen™ 7 3700X.

The two machines I have are a 11th gen i9 with an RTX 3080 (my old sim racing PC) and a 13th gen i9 with a 4090 (on the racing simulator). Either, according to the specs, will be ample but based on my previous experience with Crystal’s performance optimisation, I’m pretty confident the 4090 will have a far easier time running the Crystal Light.

The first step, then, is to install Pimax Play. The latest version is v1.25.01 and it can be downloaded from their website here.

On first open and detection, Pimax Play seems not to fully detect or connect to the device, citing a DisplayPort connection failiure:

This experience feels all too familiar and hasn’t changed since the Pimax Crystal, so I followed the instructions to restart my PC after updating the graphics driver. Hopefully Pimax techs will find a way to resolve this small bump in the road, but it’s not a big deal.

A restart did indeed solve my problem, and PimaX Play detected the headset. Upon detection, the activation process starts. Activation is a simple two step process of installing the latest firmware and registering your device.

When the initial installation is complete, this is how Pimax Play should look:

To power the controllers, press the little Pi logo button on the bottom right of the controller:

Just a small thing to point out – I think it’s wise to put the controllers on charge while you’re unboxing and setting everything up, just in case one or more are flat when they arrive.

Getting Started

Once you have a working headset installed, I recommend (if you don’t already) installing SteamVR – Pimax Play will give you access to your VR compatible games via Steam VR. To find it, search for “SteamVR” and install. That’s all you need to do.

By the way; I checked and SteamVR does not detect the headset unless Pimax Play is running. If Steam is running with SteamVR installed, clicking “Start SteamVR” will open Steam and take you to Steam’s Home in your headset.

Room Settings

Room settings is straightforward. From the position you’ll be using your headset, click “Room Settings” and put the Crystal Light on. Thankfully the headset uses video passthrough in this mode, so it’s easy to find a controller.

The app asks you to draw a line on a grid it overlays on the floor. You hold the trigger and draw.

From this I gather the headset calculates the horizontal height above the floor, as once I’d completed this step, the headset view horizon was set correctly.

Manually Adjust IPD

As we now know, the auto IPD (InterPupillory Distance) feature has been left out of the Crystal Light in order to save weight. This is absolutely fine – you just need to find the manual adjust, and have a friend nearby to help you measure your IPD.

The IPD adjust on a Pimax Crystal Light is located in the top left of the casing. Up increases the distance, down decreases the distance.

Initial Device Settings

While I plan to cover device settings in a more in-depth post, for now, here are the device settings I used:

For getting started, I think you only need to match your “Room LIghting Frequency” which is the mains AC frequency for the country you live in. For the UK, that’s 50Hz and the USA, 60Hz.

“Horizontal Calibration” needs to be clicked to set the device’s understanding of “horizontal”. I performed this calibration wearing my headset in the position I’d be using it in.

First Impressions: Visual Performance

So I suppose the important point to note here is the underlying resolution at 2880×2880 per eye is the same as the “full fat” Crystal, and performance-wise the refresh rates are the same. On an RTX 3080, I found that 72Hz refresh had the edge, quality-wise over 90Hz. It reduced artefacts and a slight stutter caused when I was looking around vigorously in various directions. Smooth head movement and more typical inputs didn’t pose much of a problem.

Rapid head movements are not a reflection of how this headset will be used in the simulator.

On a more powerful GPU and CPU setup, I suspect I’ll return to my original iRacing optimised settings for the Crystal without noticing any difference. iRacing’s FPS meter is also useful when optimising the VR headset settings; if I recall, 100 to 120 FPS is to be expected on maximum settings.

For fun, I let Titans of Space Plus fly me around the solar system to refine the visual settings. I struggled a little with the default settings for darkness and stumbled across this thread on Reddit. I’ll be referring to these settings in my next article, but as a quick summary, you can modify the ‘profile.json’ (located at C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Pimax\runtime) file to adjust the local dimming black level.

There’s also a useful recommendation to reduce the backlight settings, to darken the blacks further. I can’t think of a single VR headset that left the factory with the optimal backlight settings – I almost always find them all to be too bright by default.

My first impressions have gone well. It’s always a lot of work to get to know a new VR headset, and the process can take days if not weeks to fine-tune the settings and come to terms with the technology.

The weight of the Crystal Light is a huge improvement for me, and any “loss” in functionality isn’t necessarily a loss at all. I wasn’t using the free roam capabilities of the Crystal headset, for example, making the batteries a cumbersome addition to the setup.

If I hadn’t used my Pimax Crystal for a long time, the batteries would need a long charge before I could use it again. This took the spontaneity out of using VR, which was a shame. The Light solves this problem perfectly!

The manual IPD adjustment simplifies the user experience, as the novelty of auto IPD wanting to make adjustments quite regularly could be distracting. There’s perhaps a minor difference in backlight and black contrast as I mentioned before, but as the Reddit thread I shared earlier notes, this is a matter of finding the right settings.

1. Faceplate
2. Tracking Camera
3. Speaker
4. Facial Foam
5. DP Cable
6. Headstrap
7. Top Headstrap

Comfort-wise, I would have preferred a slightly thicker “Facial Foam” insert; as I can’t help but feel I’m a little too close to the lenses. I think I’ve still got some work to do on improving the overall fit.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Crystal Light performs close to the Crystal in visual fidelity and the clarity of the display is excellent.

Installed and set up, it was time to find the optimal sim racing setup – which is where the Crystal Light really earns its place.

Sim Racing Performance

What I love about VR in sim racing is the sense of immersion only VR delivers. I raced at the Silverstone Festival in my Lotus Elan 26R, practised the circuit in VR beforehand, and it felt eerie to be back there in the headset afterwards. That is the Crystal Light’s real job on my rig – and it does it well.

iRacing on my 13th-gen i9 with an RTX 4090 had no trouble at the headset’s maximum 120Hz refresh. With maximum detail it tracks head movement in the racing environment cleanly; the slow, steady head movements you actually make in the flow of a lap are smooth and nicely rendered. Rapid head-snapping can be a touch jerky, but that’s an unlikely use case on track. I run without grandstands and crowds – always an iRacing performance hog – and there’s more on iRacing graphics optimisation here.

Fixed foveated rendering. Unlike the original Crystal’s dynamic foveated rendering, the Light uses a fixed version – it keeps the centre of the image sharp and quietly drops detail at the edges to hand the GPU back some headroom. As a driver you’re looking dead ahead; when you enter a corner you turn your head, so as far as the display is concerned you’re still looking dead ahead. Because the Light has no eye tracking, that sharp zone stays dead centre – which, staring straight at the apex, is exactly where you want it.

Refresh rate. Being able to choose 72, 90 or 120 Hz in Pimax Play lets you match the headset to your GPU. For iRacing I’ve found 120 Hz smoothest, especially through big head movements into a hairpin. I turn brightness down from the default 100% to about 80% (a further 10% at night). The lower refresh options are there for less demanding titles or weaker GPUs.

Field of view. Pimax quotes the Crystal Light at around 105° horizontally (it shifts a little with how close the lenses sit to your face). Your own eyes take in closer to 200°, so you’re still looking through a window – but 105° is more than enough to keep the apex and your mirrors in view, which is all that really matters on track.

Other sims. In Microsoft Flight Simulator the clarity makes reading small instrument text easy – a frequent challenge on lesser headsets. ACC is the most demanding of the bunch: I started at epic settings and 120 Hz, found it choppy even on the 4090, and dropping the refresh rate and view distance from epic to mid sorted it. ACC graphics tuning is a subject of its own; it took more work than iRacing, but I got to a genuinely good experience in the end.

Crystal Light vs Crystal Super vs Dream Air

The Light now sits in the middle of Pimax’s range. The Crystal Super sits above it for the sharpest possible image (more resolution and pixels-per-degree, but a heavier price and a much bigger ask of your GPU), and the featherweight Dream Air covers the comfort-first end. Here’s how they line up – our Pimax buyer’s guide and the VR guides for sim racing and flight sim go wider:

	Crystal Light	Crystal Super	Dream Air
Resolution / eye	2880 x 2880	3840 x 3840	Compact pancake optics
Clarity	Excellent	Best-in-class	Very good
Weight	Light (~815g headset)	Heavier	Ultralight
Eye tracking / auto-IPD	No	Yes	No
GPU ask	RTX 4070 Ti+ comfortable	RTX 4090+ recommended	Moderate
Best for	Value clarity for racing	Maximum sharpness	Comfort / long stints
From	~$599	~$1,599	~$1,999

The verdict at a glance

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Topic: VR Headsets for Sim Racing