So I’ve owned an OG Crystal from the start (complete with heavy battery pack) and decided to “upgrade” to a Crystal Super OLED. I saw that they offered a $399 credit to OG owners so I took advantage of that. I was really excited for the MicroOLED, because I had a Samsung Odyssey before and it was awesome. But once I got the Crystal Super, it really let me down big time. SO MANY ISSUES! I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll list them in random order
No shutdown function like my OG had. The headset literally runs all the time, even in standby. That can’t be good for longevity. Support’s answer was to just unplug it lol. Really, you couldn’t do a software shut off? I can’t imagine the constant abrupt disconnect/reconnecting would be good for longevity either
Resolution did not look all that different from the OG, despite being basically 4k per eye. In fact my OG looked SHARPER! Especially edge to edge sharpness. It seems like the resolution was the “same” around the center of the OLED, but looking with just the eyes to the edge looked softer than my OG. Yes I did have eye tracing and foveated rendering dialed in.
FOV felt smaller than my OG. Against despite being bigger on paper. I think both the resolution and FOV have more to do with the lens type (pancake vs aspheric), and if that is the case this is a clear example of paper specs not living up to reality.
Colors were absolutely spectacular on the OLED. Black levels insane. The black levels and contrast were so good that older unity titles with pure blacks had some kind of color banding in which black shadows showed rusty orange bands. Again, not a fault of the headset, MicroOLED doing its job but it did affect some older titles I like to play.
No optical engines to buy separately to alleviate the above, I was willing to purchase a 50PPD qled module. And it’s not just out of stock, Pimax is apparently refusing to sell them outright.
CONSTANT disconnects. This was extremely frustrating. I couldn’t tell if the disconnects were coming from the USB port side, the display port side, or from the cables on the headset side. It just seemed random. I did notice that the optical engine compartment LOVED slipping out of place if I held the headset wrong. And it didn’t like to snap back in either.
Even with a studioform face foam and top comfort strap that I bought, I felt like I had to severely overtighten the headset just to get close to the lens and get good fov.
The last part is the best. After a few days, the headset started overheating severely. I mean really hot to the touch. The it stopped working. The error was “sensors cannot track headset” and host of USB connection errors. Didn’t matter which USB port I used (and I have a lot of 3.2 ports in the rear of my motherboard).
That was basically enough for me. Didn’t want an exchange it, I opened a ticket for a 14 day return window refund. The constant disconnects was aggravating enough, but this is clearly a badly designed unit and something is wrong with Pimax QA because I did my research and there are ALOT of issues with the Super and even the Dream Air. My Crystal OG has been rock solid for years (after all the appropriate aftermarket straps, foams, and a 3rd party USB hub to replace the brick). Was expecting the Super to be just as solid with the only thing to do is get a comfort strap and foam. Little did I know.
Spent a couple of hours yesterday using my Super 50ppd as I’ve just fitted the lighthouse faceplate and wanted to check it out. The move to lighthouse tracking really brings it inline with my Crystal Light and Crystal original (which has been retired).
I’m really impressed by the noticeably bigger field of view with very comfortable overlap; increases brightness (I had to turn it down!), vivid colours and black level control super impressive night racing at watching the tail lights weaving through the night
The only downside are the cooling fans seem to run quite loud when it’s warm and they are working hard. There is also some feint line mura against single colour background but in a detailed game with texture skybox like Aircar I don’t see mura.
If I play project Cars 2 and have the sea/sky to the right on California Highway stage you can see it against the sky if scanning head up and down or left and right. It’s not enough to spoil it and turning the brightness down mitigated it to a certain amount.
Currently I’m doing some ergonomics mods to the rear harness and strap using the same concept as the mod on my Light.
Sorry to hear of your troubles it sounds like the optical engine isn’t locking properly perhaps causing disconnect?
This really isn’t an issue and I’m not sure why you’d think it would be. Apparently the headset is designed to just run idly in the background, and it stays warm enough to keep the lenses from fogging up. Personally, I just put mine in a smart plug and turn it off via WiFi, but there’s no reason that connecting/disconnecting it should be bad for longevity.
It only draws a small amount of power when you completely quit Pimax Play. I’ve had my micro-OLED/Dream Air plugged in for months without unplugging the USB or power cable, and so far, I haven’t encountered any issues.
It also helps prevent the lenses from fogging up when you start using the headset again.
I’m not sure what your system specs are or how you have the resolution configured, but there is definitely a difference in resolution between these two models.
The disconnections may be related to the video streaming signal. If you have the headset with you, you could try switching the refresh rate to 72Hz and see if the connection issue still persists.
I still prefer the idea of having a simple power on/off function instead of forcing this on the customer. When the unit is plugged in fights the audio stack to be the primary audio driver, and since the Crystal Super disconnected so much, it was always setting itself as the primary audio device when reconnecting. I want to be in control of when the unit powers on/off, not Pimax.
And about the visual difference, there is a difference in resolution but this exists on paper only compared to the OG Crystal. This has been verified by other OG users in my research and also by VR FlightSimGuy. It has to do with the lense type. Aspheric lenses are much sharper than pancake lenses and have better edge to edge clarity. So despite the OLED panels being higher resolution, it seems less sharp than the ashperic lenses of the OG Crystal especially the more away from the center you look. Maybe we can have OLED aspheric lenses one day but this is a real verifiable drawback of pancake lenses.
I tried 72hz once and my eyes didn’t like it. Also the disconnects in my case seem to be related to how I held the unit, meaning something wasn’t sitting right. I did research into this as well, I’m not the only one that have this issue. It’s a drawback of the modular design, it is so easy to “dislodge” the optical engine by holding the unit a different angles and even a slight imperceptible dislodge will cause an immediate disconnect.
I must be a glutton for punishment though, because I just ordered a Dream Air. Going back to the OG Crystal was ruined because of the OLED colors and contrast. I just hope the Dream Air won’t have any of the hardware unit issues I had with the Crystal Super OLED. It will be a good secondary headset to have to use with MSFS2024 primarily while keeping the OG as primary for certain other games.
I know exactly what you mean when you say the OLED views have spoiled you for your previous headset!
As a new Dream Air owner Myself I wouldn’t be without it. Once I had looked through those lenses I just couldn’t go back. Downsides? Yep!!
The supplied facial interface is useless so you will need a SF kit or print a zeeflyboys interface. That said the visuals were so good i kept flying the DA even though my forehead pain was unbearable!
The back strap is not brilliant, it works but it is annoying so I will be sorting an Apple knitted strap for mine. Other issues I have had are not with the headset but with software but I do love the screens.
Oh by the way the DA uses less resources than the Crystal super OLED. It’s due to the better distortion profiles in the DA apparently anyway a lot less pixels are rendered in the DA which means better performance.
