Pimax’s latest VR headset is here: the Pimax Dream Air. The headset breaks with the striking design of its previous versions in what can be considered a major shift in approaching the VR market. It removes all the on-board computing hardware, massively reduces the headset’s size and weight, while maintaining its focus on an uncompromising premium VR experience. And in this review, we’ll find out if the Pimax team succeeded in doing so.
If you’ve read any of my previous Pimax VR headset reviews, you might remember that one of my biggest points of feedback was the unit’s size and weight. Both the Crystal and Crystal Light were relatively big units with a prominent faceplate, which sometimes felt a little bit like strapping a fridge to your forehead. The Pimax Dream Air has a radically different look, and in many ways looks similar to other headsets, such as Big Screen VR, or Apple’s Vision Pro.
And since the design is such a radical shift from its Pimax predecessors, let’s start our review there. The Dream Air features a glossy looking faceplate with rounded edges, subtly integrating the surrounding tracking cameras (in my case the unit has inside-out tracking). A soft, leather-covered foam faceplate on the inside and a fabric gasket replace the previous iterations’ foam faceplate/gasket. Sticking out of the side of the unit are two small stalks, featuring the headsets, and at both ends a USB-C cable that combines into one that can be connected to your computer (via the display adapter). All that’s left for the rest are two velcro straps that you connect behind your head. All the “bloat” from the previous version that has been removed, such as DisplayPort cables, batteries, and a big top strap, result in a much more compact and visually appealing VR headset, and personally I quite like this direction. It also dramatically decreases the unit’s weight to 170 grams (down from the 815 grams Crystal Light) for the headset itself.
However, when putting on the headset and using it, I noticed that the face gasket wasn’t nearly as comfortable as other VR headsets. You want the VR unit to fit somewhat snugly on your head, but tightening the velcro straps too much made the gasket press too much on my forehead, causing serious discomfort while wearing it. I had to loosen the velcro quite a bit to prevent this from happening, to the point where I felt it was not tightened as securely as it should be.
Furthermore, and this is maybe a much bigger downside, is that the face gasket doesn’t really seem to fit my face: at the bottom of the headset, below my eyes and around my nose, the unit doesn’t fit on my face at all, causing a serious amount of light to “bleed” in from the outside. While using the headset I was mostly able to ignore this, but it’s a serious design flaw that should not occur in a VR headset with this price tag. So while I am still excited about the new design, I also feel like it might need a little bit more improvement to prevent the gasket from feeling too tight or painful while ensuring that it closes to your face correctly.
In order to use and configure the headset, Pimax still relies on Pimax Play. Pimax Play is feature complete, and generally not awful to use, but the interface is fairly technical and not very user friendly. It doesn’t explain all the settings properly and more often than not leaves you guessing as to what the impact might be of the settings that can be changed, unless you’re more familiar with VR headset configuration. While Pimax Play is not as intuitive and easy to use as it could be, you’ll get familiar enough with it to change the settings you want to change, and then hopefully not have to touch it again. New in Pimax Play are several upscaling options, which can have a moderate impact on visuals and performance depending on how you set them up. Pimax also still uses its own VR runtime, although you can switch to SteamVR. For this review, I’ve exclusively used Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 with Pimax OpenXR.
Where this unit really impresses me is in the feature set. So let’s go through some of these premium features quickly because I want to mention them, while not spending too much time here.
The Pimax Dream Air features inside-out tracking like I’ve previously mentioned, which allows you to use the unit without base stations. It works fairly accurately, and I haven’t really had any occasions in which the tracking failed.
The headset also features eye tracking, which was notably absent from, for example, the Pimax Crystal Light. Its inclusion means you can use Dynamic Foveated Rendering, which is an incredibly handy feature. It renders the part of the screen that you’re looking at in full resolution, while the part that you’re not looking at is lowered at a lower resolution. This is very helpful to improve the performance of VR, which is always welcome, but more on that later.
Last but not least, the Dream Air is equipped with Automatic IPD, measuring the distance between your pupils and mechanically adjusting the lenses for that. This ensures that the lenses are always optimised for your eyes, preventing blurry pictures and issues with focusing your eyes.
But most importantly, of course, is the display technology. The Pimax Dream Air impresses with high-resolution Sony Micro-OLED displays together with pancake lenses. Each display has a resolution of 3840×3552 pixels per eye at up to 90 Hz. Combined with the pancake lenses, you get a horizontal view of approximately 110º. The Micro-OLED displays also provide true blacks and high contrast, resulting in a crisp and detailed image with vibrant colours.
It takes some time to find the sweet spot between headset, VR and simulator settings, but once you do, the Pimax Dream Air is a dream to use (pun intended). It has beautiful visuals, and the high resolution makes it so you forget, if only for a moment, that you’re wearing a VR headset. Cloud surfing in the simulator is a joy as wisps of white go past your wingtips while you take in the scenery around you. The wide field of view makes it so that you rarely feel boxed in, genuinely making you feel immersed in the experience. Colours are vibrant and alive, while night-time flying provides an entirely different atmosphere as the world around you fades into darkness and you rely on your instruments and distant lights to find your way.
So what does all of this mean for performance? Well, if you’ve read my previous reviews, you might remember that performance can be a bit of an issue, and has been in my case with Pimax’s previous headsets. This is not inherently a Pimax issue, you just require incredibly powerful hardware to render the displays inside a VR headset, and the higher the resolution, the more powerful hardware you need. And yes, the Dream Air features two very high resolution displays, so initially, you might expect a similar result in the performance.
However, the inclusion of Dynamic Foveated Rendering, as well as several of the options in Pimax Play, such as resolution settings and upscaling, can massively increase performance while making little compromise to the viewing quality. In my case, that meant that I was able to enjoy a relatively smooth experience at a decent enough FPS (40-50) that didn’t compromise my visuals too much.
