Credit: Isekai_Dreamer
Review: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pimax/comments/1pi1432/new_50_ppd_xtal_super_owner_here_maybe_i_got/
coming from a pimax 8kx user here. i’m happy to say i no longer care about the 12kx, the pimax crystal super is what i wanted in a 12kx.
people call it a ‘tinkerer’s headset’. yet it just works. plug it in, run pimax play, calibrate, done. play a standalone game, or a steam game, just click and play. no different than a quest 3. Hats off to the pimax team, wow. I honestly expected to struggle at least a tiny bit.
-the optics, oh my god it’s amazing. it’s everything i hoped for. hell, the entire screen within the binocular overlap range is a sweet spot. i swear it’s 3-4 times bigger than what was on the 8kx. no matter how sloppily i arranged the headset, i was always in a large sweet spot. everything in that sweet spot is crystal clear.
-FOV is slightly narrower than the 8kx, but it’s still damn good and much better than the quest 3 at least.
-black levels are pretty sweet, i can’t complain. in the 4 hours of test/playing, i noticed no mura. i only noticed chromatic abberation when i’m looking really hard for it on the edge of the screen.
-while I understand when people complain about the weight, I don’t understand their complaint about comfort. It’s super comfortable, but you will know that you have a headset on. I have the comfort kit on the way, bought it at the same time i did the crystal super. But now i’m not sure if i’m even going to need it. it’s honestly comfortable enough for me to be in it for at least 4 hours.
-As for the audio, I can only describe it as MAGIC. It’s the most surprising part of the headset. on top of being a vr enthusiast, my other hobby is being an audiophile. i own expensive 10k$ headsets and several 5k$ iems (ok a poor audiophile, i know some headphones can go up to 100k).
after installing the DMAS, and noticing that it will hover about a 1/2 to 3/4 inches away from the ear I thought it was poor design and was gonna suck. I was wrong, it had the clarity and airyness of an open ended headphone, but also the bass of a closed ended non-bass-focused headphone. It will not shake your head but i was honestly stunned that those tiny speakers can put out so much bass. the sound itself was also powerful and loud, no distortion either at that loudness. it’s honestly crazy. if i cranked my 10k headphones that loud, there would definitely be a ton of distortion. it’s gotta be the design or something, it felt like they somehow made the DMAS focus all the noise into your ear like a laser instead of dissipating it like a lightbulb. I was always on the lookout for open ended headphones that had powerful bass. I’ve spent probably thousands of hours at listening booths and sampling headphones and i have never found one, until today. I honestly think they are onto something with the design of the DMAS, it can truly flip the audiophile world upside down if someone actually designed a $1,000+ floating headphone for quality and music instead of gaming.