micro-OLED AMA with our beta testers

[PimaxQuorra]

Let’s invite our fellow beta testers to answer your questions about the Micro-OLED optical engine.

Please note that their headsets are pre-production units, so some performance parameters may differ slightly from the final public release.

Once again, we’d like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to our beta testers:
@dsjf @Barz_beast @Akuma540 @blanes @Bluewhitequarters @Simfan @Reinhard @koohbs @TallyMouse @Maverickbloke

Happy Holidays to you, your families, and friends.
Wishing you all the very best in 2026.

[Octofox]

Wonderful idea, thanks for everyone’s time, and Happy Holidays all . I’m considering to upgrade and replace my 8KX to solve some issues I have.

1. IPD - the 8KX doesn’t go quite low enough for me, so there is always an issue of slight blur. Have you had any issues with low IPD, and what is the measured lowest setting possible?

2. Lenses - the 8KX sweet spot is quite small despite the large lenses - with the IPD issue above this causes problems. I understand the pancake lenses have a very large sweet spot, have you found this to be true in practice? My experience with pancake lenses on the Quest Pro and 3 was very positive. How do you find them compared the aspheric lenses, or other headsets in general?

3. Lenses pt 2 - when looking around in the headset just with your eyes (as opposed to moving your head), how is the clarity, and do you see any distortion introduced (or profile specific)? Does text maintain clarity? Again, this is a significant issue for me in the 8KX. I watched the Omniwhatever review, and he took a big issue with the micro-OLED on this, but he might be particularly sensitive to it. Very interested to know your thoughts here.

4. Another issue he mentioned is the ‘browning’ on looking around, especially in peripheral view - how noticeable was this for you and how intrusive did you find it?

5. For those who like wider FOV, did you find the lower FOV to be noticeable? Are there significant horizontal black bands? Apart from eye comfort, FOV is my main concern. I have no doubt that resolution, clarity, and colour straight ahead are exceptional here.

   6. Did you find the brightness level to be a concern compared the QLED 50 PPD?

   7. If my main concerns are eye comfort and FOV (high res is a given!), would you still recommend this headset over the QLED 50 PPD?

Once again, thanks for your time it’s greatly appreciated

[Reinhard]

Hi Octofox

You will find my answers to your questions below. From 2015 until now, I have bought many HMDs, and I currently have more than 25 in my office.

1.) I have the 58 mm version and it works fine for me on all Pimax devices, including the 8KX.

2.) The sweet spot is fine with the uOLED, as it is for me with the 8KX. It is similar with all HMDs because I spend a lot of time with each one to achieve the best possible comfort, and I have to modify each one to get the best out of it — none of them work out of the box for me.

3.) This is a very subjective question; I will do my best.
In terms of clarity, the 8KX is nowhere near the Crystal, not even the Light or OG; the Super is much sharper. So, the 8KX loses sharpness very quickly when looking left or right, but there is so much more to see because the 160° field of view is much greater. You will not achieve anything near this value. So yes, the text is sharper and easier to read with all the modules, but of course the FoV is smaller.
You will have to experiment with different profiles to minimise distortion, but this is something you will be able to handle.

4.) Yes, it’s there and noticeable, but not a deal-breaker.

5.) I’ve been using the 8KX more in the last couple of VR sessions, and now it’s a problem again. The thing is, when I use the 8KX, my brain thinks, ‘Wow, that FoV is great, but the clarity is low’. As soon as I use the Super, my brain thinks, ‘Wow, that sharpness! But why is the FoV so tiny?’

6.) Yes, this is a real issue for me because I don’t understand why it’s so low. It’s not a form factor like the BSB2 or Meganex, so it should have much better cooling. It would be great to see more brightness. This is the main reason I don’t use the uOLED for racing: it feels like the middle of the afternoon when it’s 12 o’clock and sunny at the Nürburgring.

7.) For me, the 57 ppd is king because it is the only module that can be used with 100% native resolution most of the time, and the sharpness and brightness are excellent. I demonstrated different modules at AWE 2025 in Brussels, and most people were impressed by this module.

My main message is that you have to try it for yourself. Even if 1000 users tell you that the 50ppd or UOLED is best, it could or could not be the case for you.

[Octofox]

Thanks for your thoughts and replies @Reinhard, and also for your recent 8KX video! Was very timely as I had started to use it again, but as here, thinking about an upgrade to better suit my needs.

I believe from the information available and my personal experience, that the 8KX IPD only goes to 60mm due to the lens setup, and unlike most other Pimax headsets. I never had any trouble with the 5k+, but this has always been a problem. It was initially unusable for me, but using the 5k+ gasket and sufficient padding it became usable, if not completely comfortable. I have also modded my Pimax headsets with straps, padding, counter-weights etc to get acceptable comfort, but personally I just cannot get the 8KX to the ideal level, no matter what. I am also lucky through work to have had the opportunity to try various headsets and designs to pinpoint the problem better.

I think ultimately, eye comfort has to win out for me over FOV. To be able to use the headset for longer periods, text clarity without blur, or to not have a feeling of eye strain due to slight movement of the headset etc is paramount for my next high end headset. I still hold out hope that in future there is a headset that truly does it all. That day is yet to come though!

For the brightness, that is a shame. For my use, primarily in space games these days, I hope that it will be less of an issue.

Couldn’t agree more that VR preferences are highly individual, so yes, ultimately I will have to try it for myself to make a final judgement. I’m very appreciative of Pimax’s 14 day trial period. Thanks again!

[TurboHenk]

I received the micro-OLED Super for a couple of days and I have 3 serious issues with them. I wonder if the beta testers also had these issues:

1. There is a VERY short flickering/artifact/glitch (white flashes on both sides of the visuals) for a ~half second every few(~2) minutes when eye tracking is enabled. With eye tracking disabled it happens every ~15-20mins. Did any of the beta testers experience this bug/issue? What can I try to solve it? I have only one 4K monitor connected besides the Super, I disabled gsync/lowered the hz, this both didn’t make a difference. Running an 5090 here with the latest driver and Pimax Play 1.43.4. The HMD is connected straight to the USB port on the motherboard, on a powered Anker hub the issue was the same.
2. The tracking jitters while moving my head around and there’s a small latency going on that makes it feel a bit floaty. I have 90fps/hz locked. Is this normal for the current stage of SLAM tracking? Or is this solvable? I had lighthouse tracking with the original Crystal and this had ZERO stutters/jitters and was always butter smooth while looking around.
3. The comfort is pretty bad, the current face insert presses on the cheekbones quite badly once I had the headset tightened properly to get close enough to the lenses. The plastic of the face insert is imo too big on the bottom of it, a redesign for would be great (so with LESS plastic on the bottom of the face insert/sides of the nose). Is this face insert in development? This would make an massive difference in comfort for me for sure with the Super. I also experienced this issue with the 50PPD, it’s an design flaw that I experience from the start. 2 friends also tried the Super here (we are all 3 European), we all experienced the exact same issue. The original Crystal was way more comfortable for this reason. It kind of surprised me that this issue isn’t solved/improved over time, because the plastic on the bottom of the face insert could be lessened easily with a new design/3d model print.

Any input on these 3 issues is welcome! I hope that these can be solved. Besides the glare (it’s way more than I expected, the YouTubers said minimal, well, it’s quite severe) and the orange tinting; the visuals are amazing and the performance is quite good. No more overblown colors/mura as I had with the 50PPD and the brightness is better than expected.

[Barz_beast]

I think ultimately, eye comfort has to win out for me over FOV. To be able to use the headset for longer periods, text clarity without blur, or to not have a feeling of eye strain due to slight movement of the headset etc is paramount for my next high end headset.

This is the case for me. When I first started testing the mOLED I was using the 50ppd for a few months. The first thing that you notice when you put it on is the instant clarity and focus. I have a 63 ipd and can run the mOLED from 58 - 70 with no major loss of clarity. The area around the nose could be tight at 58/60 ipd (if your nose is on the larger side) but it doesnt matter because you can use a higher ipd without issues. I am not thinking about FOV loss when I switch to the mOLED. Instead I think about how much lighter it feels and how much better its performing.

For the brightness, that is a shame. For my use, primarily in space games these days, I hope that it will be less of an issue.

This is absolutely the panel for space games. Racing at night and flying sim at night is crazy beautiful. The panel is great in brighter games but does not feel nearly as bright as the qled. While the qled does make sunlight “feel” more real, the mOLED still does a great job with everything else and to me is the better choice all around.

[Barz_beast]

I cannot comment on your first issue as I am unable to replicate your exact issue. (may seem unrelated but try increasing the headset standby time to 20mins I had a weird flicker when it was lower and random intervals.)

The tracking jitters while moving my head around and there’s a small latency going on that makes it feel a bit floaty. I have 90fps/hz locked. Is this normal for the current stage of SLAM tracking? Or is this solvable? I had lighthouse tracking with the original Crystal and this had ZERO stutters/jitters and was always butter smooth while looking around.

What CPU are you running? Any reflective or moving objects in the view of the tracking area? (fans, mirrors, screens showing your movement in vr)

The comfort is pretty bad

Since I had the Super 50ppd already I had gotten the full kit from Studioform and it’s a game changer. I can be in for 5 hours and not even notice.

Besides the glare (it’s way more than I expected

The lens on the mOLED hold oil and will smear that oil even when you use a microfiber to rub it. Glare increases after cleaning with a microfiber unless you ensure all of the oil has been removed. If not its glare city because of the smears. But if you can clean it all off and you see nothing but a crystal clear lens, then the glare will only show on the desktop screen and maybe loading screens. I get it on the lens almost every time I put it on but its in the top part so it doesn’t affect my vision. I clean it almost every other day anyway.

Side note: I run the mOLED at 80% and as long as you dont switch to the Qled on 100 you really get used to it and its normal. Its basically the same brightness as the Quest 3 levels.

[TurboHenk]

Thanks for your comments. Sounds unrelated indeed but I will still try to set it to 20 mins to see if it makes a difference. If it makes a difference I will report it back here, if it doesn’t make a difference then I won’t report it(to keep the amount of posts from me here to a minimum).

Regarding CPU: i7 14700k. No reflective or moving surfaces around, I tried 2 locations(+windows fully covered, in front of monitor and with no monitor in front of me etc.) and both behave exactly the same. I plan to switch to lighthouse tracking so IF it’s SLAM related then it’s a non issue for me personally, but if the issue lays elsewhere, then it’s a huge issue. Trying to find out if it’s SLAM or not. Without the faceplate it’s quite difficult to say.. ? Maybe someone from Pimax could report on this since they are the only one’s that (hopefully) have an Super lighthouse faceplate prototype. I just want to know if it’s much smoother or not.

I will get the Studioform kit if I decide to keep it(still in doubt, because the first issue, the artifact must be solved and I need stable/smooth/fast tracking), great suggestion. From what I see they don’t have a new/smaller plastic insert part, I really hope that Pimax would create one. Since it’s interchangeable, it surprises me that there’s only 1 variant available.

Yes I noticed that, yes the oil/dirt makes the glare worse but even with it 100% cleaned/removed the glare is really bad in my opinion. The original Crystal had 99% less glare(as good as none) and this is worse than what I saw on the Quest 3 recently. I saw glare instantly when I put the headset on in the Pimax space, the orange bowl of Pimax home gave me instantly a lot of glare. I see it in almost every scenario with dark/bright environments, only at daytime racing it’s not an real issue. Most YouTubers talked about it that it was a non issue, yes it’s not as bad as the mura (deal breaker level) but it’s close to it in my opinion. And yes the extremely difficult way to get the lenses properly cleaned doesn’t help, since the lenses get dirty pretty fast. VR is always an compromise and it will probably stay like that.

Thx for the side note, maybe, but for me 100% is already quite low in terms of brightness, BUT it’s better than what I expected from the mOLED. The YouTubers talked about that the brightness is the biggest downside of the mOLED, I don’t agree with that, the glare+orange tint is.

[Zerax]

As an 8KX owner, I am currently ‘driver locked’ to version 566.36 to avoid the persistent ntdll.dll system crashes and BSODs that occur on newer NVIDIA drivers. Since the Crystal Super documentation now specifies a minimum requirement of v576.80+, has the beta team confirmed that this ‘driver wall’ is completely resolved for the RTX 4090 Founders Edition?

Additionally, given the 4090 FE’s sensitivity to Display Stream Compression (DSC), are you experiencing any ‘lightning flash’ artifacts, black-screen flickering, or white-square corruption when running the Micro-OLED engine at native resolution at 90Hz? Essentially: Can a 4090 FE owner run the mOLED headset at full spec without the instability that plagued the 8KX?

[djpelio]

Loving the micro OLED module so far. The only thing I don’t like is the distortion profile. It feels like the world is too zoomed in, like I’m looking through binoculars, and everything warps and stretches when I move my head side to side. This is the opposite of the distortion profile on the 50PPD, where the world is too zoomed out. I would like to be able to choose different distortion profiles and choose my own zoom level.

[blanes]

My experience so far with reference to some of the questions above. Comfort & fit are very subjective, my IPD is about 66 and the uOled Super is noticeably lighter fitting my head almost perfectly with a high comfort level. I have the Studioform Comfort Straps but am just using the Pimax topstrap now, with uOled Super and that is a great combo for me.

Coming from a string of HMD’s back to Oculus Dk2 and including 8KX & OG Crystal, I have now extensively used & tested both the Super 50 & 57 ppd. I am a sim racer mostly but just recently started in MSFS2024 which is really amazing in the uOled and will be spending alot of time with that as well as simracing.

I really liked the Super 57ppd much more than the 50 for its better performance and sharp clarity although the sweet spot is smaller. I prefer the qualities of high clarity & definition over FOV and the uOled pre-production beta unit at 110 HFOV is almost perfect for me. I do expect to appreciate the extra 116 degrees Hfov of the release version. There is No eye tracking in the uOled beta unit as the sensors are missing. The SLAM tracking in all the Super units I have tested has worked extremely well and although my experience is largely seated, I have played without any tracking issue at all in, Beat Sabre, HL Alyx, Kayak VR & Whitewater VR along with a few others. The only issues I have occur 100% in low light conditions when I forget to turn on the LED lights I have that face my headset.

I have not seen any Mura at all, no distortion and no strange flashing or other oddities plus I find the glare a bare minimum compared to my Quest3 and is in no way a deal breaker for me. The brightness is fine for my eyes and I run that at 80 in PiPlay while increasing the Color/Contrast and reducing Color/Brightness a notch or two - and racing or flying at daytime or night just looks so good imho. I realise other users may have greater or lower tolerance to the visual characteristics mentioned but I do think once your eyes get adjusted to the high quality/fidelity of the uOled image, your brain filters out some of the ‘noise’ and you begin to appreciate more fully the quality of these Sony screens. This kind of brain adjustment has also been true for me with other vr headsets, once the right comfort level is achieved.

Overall I am really loving the Super uOled as although it is not quite as sharp or bright as the LCD 57ppd, it more than makes up for that in the huge sweetspot and overall great color and uniformly denser image. I am not bothered at all by the very faint orange brown tint at extreme edges as I feel it is rarely noticed and only in certain scenes or static images. It was hugely improved by an early firmware update from the Day One version we received. As stated by others, it is best if you have opportunity to try the other LCD Super versions as you may prefer a bigger HFOV and the higher brightness of 50, 57 or Ultrawide. If I didn’t have uOled then 57ppd is easily my 2nd choice. Cheers

[Octofox]

Thanks for your thoughts @Barz_beast, that’s good to know!

[Simfan]

I can compare the pre prod micro oled only to the OG. Indeed, at first confort was not good for my head shape. The studio form strap help, the weight distribution is much better. One think I always do now is unscratch the headset strap, unlock the rear knob as much as possible, then, I put the headset, lower the rear part as much as possible, lock the rear knob till the contact is good on my face, then, put the scratch of the strap back. Also, I have noticed that the face foam placement must be good too, at first I put it too “low” on the headset, now it’s much better and even if the pressure on the bonecheeks is a little too “much” for me, I can play a couple hours without problem. The problem now is to remove the headset, image is so good that’s it’s hard to stop playing.

Firs order was for the 50ppd, then I cancel for the UW as I was in the “max fov for the best immersion”, but the mura visible by users make me cancel the order for micro oled and I now see that the fist immersion element for me is the image quality. The headset is not that light but the difference of weight with the OG is obvious, an other good point. Don’t want to go for an ultra light headset, for me it’s part of the immersion in flight simulation, it’s “my helmet” LOL

[Simfan]

A video about problems of confort with Super (and also with light), the micro oled is probably not exactly the same but some elements are interestings

DCS Pimax Crystal Super

[Octofox]

Hello again, I have another question. Is there any variance between the micro-LED and other optical engines when it comes to wearing glasses, if anyone can comment on that? Eg are the pancake lenses affected to any lesser or greater extent by the distance? I understand getting as close as possible is ideal, although I wore glasses in the Quest Pro and 3 without issue.

I would prefer to avoid buying prescription inserts, because I don’t consider them be a one off purchase, just like a pair of glasses. Your eyesight changes over time (and in my 40s, I feel this will only become more frequent), and there’s a reason for an annual sight test and the need to change lenses to match your vision. Inserts are no different as far as I know, and I don’t want to be changing those as well. This is also a reason why I’m not so interested in the small form factor headsets, as they don’t accommodate glasses.

Eye health is extremely important ofc, no point causing yourself injury in pursuit of a VR experience. With a retired eye surgeon for a father, I am somewhat biased about this hehe!

[Simfan]

Only my point of view but with glasses you need a thicker foam and I personnaly don’t like this combo. The distance to the pancake lenses increase, the fov is much smaller, the edge “tint” increase. Personnaly, I really don’t like glasses with micro oled Super, I don’t have other engine so, I can’t compare.

[Octofox]

Understood, thanks for confirming. This is something I’ll definitely have to factor in for its suitability for me.

I happen to have a compact, thin-framed pair of glasses that have worked well for me in most standard size VR headsets, will have to see how I fare with those.

[Simfan]

My glasses are probably wider than yours so you can give a try. No relation but just bought Half Life Alyx and the game is simply amazing in the micro oled headset…

[Octofox]

Ah great, it might be an old fashioned linear single player game, but it’s a AAA VR experience. It was great in the 8KX, I can imagine it being mind-blowing in the MOLED!