Pimax Crystal Pro: Everything We Know So Far

Featured image: the Pimax Crystal Pro (image: Pimax)

Pimax has just announced the Crystal Pro, a wireless PC VR headset in the Crystal family, at Frontier, its launch event on 6 October 2026. It’s priced at $1,399 (USD), you can reserve one today for $1, and shipping starts in 2027. I race a Dream Air on an RTX 4090 and I haven’t seen a Crystal Pro, so today we’re taking a closer look at everything Pimax has said so far, what’s confirmed and what isn’t, and what it means for a sim rig. On paper, it’s the Crystal Light’s picture (the same published resolution, pixels per degree and field of view) made wireless, with eye tracking added. Nobody outside Pimax has reviewed one yet.

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On price, the Crystal Pro sits between the Crystal Light and the QLED Crystal Super, and you’ll find both of them in the table below – prices move, so check what it says at the checkout before you buy.

Pimax discount codes: use SIMRACINGCOCKPIT for 2% off, or SIMRACINGCOCKPIT25 for $25 off, at pimax.com.

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What is the Crystal Pro? | Price and release date | Panels and lenses | Wireless and 120Hz | Tracking and battery | What PC does it need? | vs Crystal Light and Dream Air | What we don’t know | Should you reserve one?

What is the Pimax Crystal Pro?

The Crystal Pro is a wireless PC VR headset that streams over Wi-Fi as standard, with a Wi-Fi 6E adapter in the box. For a better wireless picture you can add the optional third-generation 60G AirLink kit, which enables what Pimax calls Native Foveated Streaming. If you’d rather plug in, there’s an optional DisplayPort 1.4a cable.

The Crystal Pro also has a standalone mode, which means it runs without a PC at all. A Snapdragon XR2 Gen1 chip in the headset handles Android apps and OpenXR mobile titles. Tracking is SLAM 2.0, with a swappable faceplate if you want Lighthouse instead, and power comes from an external battery pack.

Pimax lists the Crystal Pro beside the Crystal Light and the Crystal Super and hasn’t said it replaces either of them. Don’t confuse it with the “Crystal Light Pro” from 2024, which was a Crystal Light sold with Pimax’s Pro Experience Kit (DMAS headphones and a Lighthouse faceplate). Pimax also showed new Ringless controllers and a Spation mini-PC at Frontier, with prices to follow.

Price, the $1 reservation and when it ships

Pimax has priced the Crystal Pro at $1,399 for the headset, or $1,899 with the third-gen 60G AirLink kit, and the kit on its own is $599 (all USD, from Pimax, 6 October 2026). Pimax’s EU store lists €1,299 and €1,779, and its UK store data shows £1,099 and £1,499 (read the same day).

You can’t actually buy the Crystal Pro yet. What’s on sale is a $1 reservation, which gets you $20 off the headset at launch or $50 off the bundle, and Pimax’s listing says it’s non-refundable. Hands-on demos start in Q4 2026 and shipping starts in 2027, with no month given.

Pimax discount codes: use SIMRACINGCOCKPIT for 2% off, or SIMRACINGCOCKPIT25 for $25 off, at pimax.com. Pimax hasn’t said whether the codes apply to the $1 Crystal Pro reservation or stack with its launch discount (as of 6 October 2026).

In the box you get two ringed SLAM controllers, the external battery and the Wi-Fi dongle. The DisplayPort cable isn’t included, so you’ll need to buy one if you want to run the Crystal Pro wired.

Panels, lenses and local dimming

The Crystal Pro’s panels are QLED (a quantum-dot LCD), at 2880 x 2880 per eye, which is about 17 million pixels in total. PPD (pixels per degree) is the number that tells you how sharp the image will look, and the Crystal Pro’s is 35 across a 110-degree horizontal FOV (field of view). Refresh runs at 72, 90 or 120Hz.

There’s a Mini-LED backlight behind each panel, with local dimming across 576 zones per eye. Each zone dims on its own, so the dark parts of the image go darker while the bright parts stay bright. Pimax quotes 200 nits of brightness.

The lenses are glass aspherics carried over from the Crystal, Crystal Light and Crystal Super, paired with what Pimax describes as a new QLED panel built for this headset. Pimax says pancake lenses lose at least 85% of the light, where its glass aspherics lose under 1%. The eye-tracking cameras sit inside the lens housing, eye relief adjusts if you wear glasses, and prescription inserts are on the way.

For a sim racer, the resolution, PPD and FOV are the Crystal Light’s published numbers, so you know roughly what clarity to expect, although Pimax says the panel itself is new.

How the wireless works, and where you get 120Hz

There are three ways to get a picture into the Crystal Pro.

The first is the Wi-Fi in the box. In Pimax’s own words, the Crystal Pro “streams over Wi-Fi like any other wireless headset”, which means the image is compressed. It’s Steam Link 2.0 compatible, and Wi-Fi is also the fallback if the 60G link drops.

The second is the optional 60G AirLink kit. Two Room Antennas go up in the room and talk to the headset over 2×2 MIMO (two antennas each way), for up to 6 Gbps. The eye tracking works out where you’re looking, and that part of the view, which Pimax calls the focus area, comes straight from the GPU with no video encoding. That’s the equivalent of 2880 x 2880 per eye, at up to 90Hz. Pimax says the rest of the view is “streamed more efficiently”, and that’s what it means by Native Foveated Streaming.

Pimax quotes under 2ms of added latency, and talks about a five-by-five-metre playspace “with the right setup”. A 60GHz signal doesn’t pass through walls, and Pimax said at the event that earlier generations of its 60G AirLink had “occlusion and coverage issues”. The two antennas are its answer, each one covering for the other if it gets blocked.

The third is a DisplayPort 1.4a cable, which Pimax’s FAQ says runs the panels “at their full 120 Hz”.

Nobody has tested the Room Antennas in a cockpit yet, so we don’t know how they cope with a rig’s uprights, a wheel and a set of screens sat in the way.

Tracking, faceplates and the battery pack

The Crystal Pro tracks with SLAM (inside-out tracking), so its own cameras watch the room and you don’t need anything mounted on the walls. SLAM 2.0 uses four cameras, a motion sensor and infrared illumination, which Pimax says means tracking no longer depends on how well lit your room is. Hand tracking is supported too.

The Crystal Pro’s faceplate also swaps, and Pimax has shown two alternatives so far. Lighthouse tracking uses base stations placed around the room, and with a Lighthouse faceplate fitted, the Crystal Pro tracks off them while still working wirelessly over AirLink. Pimax calls the Crystal Pro “the only wireless headset on the market with Lighthouse support”. An MR (mixed reality) faceplate adds full-colour passthrough with LiDAR depth sensing. Neither faceplate has a price yet.

There’s no battery in the headset. An included 16,000mAh pack goes in your pocket or jacket, and when you plug in the DisplayPort cable, Pimax says it takes over the power. The battery isn’t something I need; I stay connected and static in my racing seat.

The rest of the build is a rigid backstrap, a magnetic facemask, active cooling, three remappable buttons and off-ear speakers, with DMAS 2.0 earphones as an option.

What PC does it need?

For PC VR, Pimax lists an RTX 2070 or above as the Crystal Pro’s minimum and recommends an RTX 3080 or RTX 4070 or above. CPU, RAM, storage and OS are all listed as “TBD” for now. None of it applies in standalone mode.

The eye tracking also drives DFR (dynamic foveated rendering). In a game that supports it, DFR renders full detail only where you’re looking and less everywhere else, which takes some of the load off the graphics card. For reference, Pimax lists the Crystal Light at a minimum of RTX 2080, with RTX 3070 and higher recommended.

Crystal Pro vs Crystal Light, Crystal Super and Dream Air

Spec	Crystal Pro	Crystal Light	Crystal Super (57 PPD)	Dream Air
Panel	QLED, Mini-LED local dimming (576 zones per eye)	QLED + Mini-LED, local dimming optional	QLED + Mini-LED local dimming	Sony micro-OLED
Resolution per eye	2880 x 2880	2880 x 2880	3840 x 3840	3840 x 3552
PPD	35	35	57	–
Horizontal FOV	110°	110°	106°	110°
Refresh	72 / 90 / 120Hz (120Hz wired)	up to 120Hz	72 / 90Hz	–
Eye tracking	Yes (DFR + foveated streaming)	No	Yes (DFR)	Yes (DFR-ready)
Tracking	SLAM 2.0; Lighthouse faceplate	Inside-out; Lighthouse faceplate	Inside-out; Lighthouse faceplate	SLAM or Lighthouse versions
Connection	Wi-Fi (in the box), 60G AirLink (optional), DisplayPort 1.4a (optional)	DisplayPort	DisplayPort	DisplayPort
Headset weight	Not announced	815g	–	Under 170g
Status (6 Oct 2026)	$1 reservation; ships 2027	On sale	On sale	On sale

Specs from Pimax’s product and store pages, read 6 October 2026. A dash means Pimax doesn’t list it on that page.

I ran a Crystal Light before I moved to the Dream Air, and it’s the obvious one to hold the Crystal Pro up against. It was $899 on 6 October, and its published picture numbers are the same as the Crystal Pro’s, although its local dimming is listed as optional. It’s wired over DisplayPort, the headset weighs 815g, and there’s no eye tracking; Pimax lists fixed foveated rendering instead. It already has inside-out tracking from four cameras. So the extra $500 for the Crystal Pro buys the wireless, eye tracking with DFR, the standalone mode, local dimming as standard and the battery pack.

The Crystal Super with the QLED 57 PPD engine was $1,599 on 6 October. At 3840 x 3840, 57 PPD and 106 degrees it’s sharper on paper, but it’s wired and tops out at 90Hz, where the Crystal Pro reaches 120Hz on the cable.

The Dream Air is $1,999 for the Lighthouse headset on its own, or $2,299 for the SLAM version with controllers (Pimax store, 6 October). It uses Sony micro-OLED panels at 3840 x 3552 per eye with a 110-degree FOV, and the headset weighs under 170g. It’s the headset I race on, and I’ve reviewed it.

The number I’d want from Pimax is the Crystal Pro’s weight, for a long stint in a cockpit. Pimax hasn’t published it yet, although it did concede at the event that the Steam Frame is lighter.

The wireless is the draw if you play room-scale or mix your sim racing with other PC VR games, but in a fixed cockpit you can still plug in the DisplayPort cable and get the full 120Hz.

What we still don’t know

As of 6 October 2026, there are still a few things Pimax hasn’t told us:

• the Crystal Pro’s weight
• battery life
• the IPD range
• the refresh rate and resolution over plain Wi-Fi
• the ship month
• the CPU and RAM requirements
• prices for the Lighthouse and MR faceplates
• whether the third-gen AirLink works with the Crystal Light or Crystal Super

On that last one, Pimax’s FAQ says the Wi-Fi dongle works with the original Crystal but not with the Crystal Light or Crystal Super, which doesn’t settle the AirLink question either way.

Should you reserve one?

For a dollar, the reservation holds $20 off the headset at launch, or $50 off the bundle. It’s non-refundable, though, and the Crystal Pro won’t ship until some point in 2027.

Reserve if you want to keep the option open, but I’d wait for the first hands-on reports, the weight and the battery life before paying $1,399. If you want a Crystal-class picture in your cockpit now and a cable doesn’t bother you, you can buy a Crystal Light. For everyone else, whether the Crystal Pro suits a sim rig comes down to how those Room Antennas get on around a cockpit.

Good luck, and enjoy the wait!

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