Pimax Crystal Super - Mura and Tiger Stripes

[TimSell75]

Received my Crystal Super today. Had it pre-ordered on day one. 

Unfortunately came with noticeable Mura and also visible Tiger Stripes. Display Quality noticeable worse that the OG Crystal.

FOV is much better though. 

Anybody else has received his Super yet? How are your displays? Because the last reviews mentioned, that the Displays of the production Versions were noticeable better then the ones shown Pre-Production.

[Maddaawg]

Are you going to RMA it? Maybe YouTube influencers are getting hand picked units.

I ordered mine last night. If it has these issues, the 14 day trial will end day 1.

[Stellatny45]

1 hour ago, Maddaawg said:

Maybe YouTube influencers are getting hand picked units.

Maybe the YouTube influencers are being incentivized to help Pimax sell more units. Certain "influencers" talk like salespeople. Why would they care to report that the free units they receive have defects? Remember that these are not "off the shelf" products. We are now being sold products that will be manufactured many months in the future. There is no way to get a review in the present that will reliably reflect performance of units that will only be produced many months later.

Edited May 1 by Stellatny45

[Maddaawg]

15 minutes ago, Stellatny45 said:

Maybe the YouTube influencers are being incentivized to help Pimax sell more units. Certain "influencers" talk like salespeople. Why would they care to report that the free units they receive have defects? Remember that these are not "off the shelf" products. We are now being sold products that will be manufactured many months in the future. There is no way to get a review in the present that will reliably reflect performance of units that will only be produced many months later.

It's really hard to know if they are ignoring the defects or getting hand picked defect free units. I have seen some YT reviews talk about mura, but they also said it wasn't that bad. MRTV said it was very bad on the demo unit and then walked it back when he received his production unit.

I don't really trust anybody doing a review that received the unit for free. I'll trust users like @TimSell75 when he says it has mura. i have at least a couple months before mine is shipped to get an idea from real end users what it's like. Then I have 14 days to trial it myself.

[Gun Jam]

10 hours ago, TimSell75 said:

Display Quality noticeable worse that the OG Crystal.

This is a bit unfortunate to hear. I was hoping that It would be a solid step forward.

What are your intentions at this time with the unit?

are you overall better off with the og crystal or is the super better overall?

If you ignore the mura and tiger stripes is the image actually clear? Is it clear over a wide FOV? Is the top of the image clearer vs the center?

[TimSell75]

I played around with it the whole day yesterday. 

The biggest problem is not even the Mura and stripes, but that the headset is way too bright, or better to say everything that is white in game is overblooming everything around it. In DCS or IL2 for example it is unusable in the current state, when you look at the horizon, everything you see is just white. Lowering the headset brightness or Gamma in Game does not help, you just see a darkened version of white but not more details. At least this seems to be adressed already in their current issues notes and should become better with a firmware update. I am just wondering why none of the testers has brought this up if it is a general software issue?

I contacted Pimax service already to see what I can do. According to their policy claims, the trial period should be frozen as soon as the user brings up an issue. For now, at least in flightsims, my device is not usable sadly

Edited May 1 by TimSell75

[Gun Jam]

This is an interesting observation. Dcs seems like a core market for this headset Im also curious how this was never noted before. You have an AMD GPU yes??

[TimSell75]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Gun Jam:

This is an interesting observation. Dcs seems like a core market for this headset Im also curious how this was never noted before. You have an AMD GPU yes??

No, RTX 4090.

I have seen at least three other Super owners that reported the same issue in YouTube comments. So I am not the only one affected.

Edited May 1 by TimSell75

[Tusk.V]

I love everything about my Super but the mura is noticeable. I've heard of one user getting a replacement headset already.

[Stellatny45]

23 minutes ago, Tusk.V said:

I love everything about my Super but the mura is noticeable. I've heard of one user getting a replacement headset already.

From my experience with the PSVR2 mura can be very distracting. The PSVR2's saving grace is that mura is nicely mitigated by turning its' brightness slider down to zero. Seems there is no such capability for the Super.

[TimSell75]

vor 56 Minuten schrieb Tusk.V:

I love everything about my Super but the mura is noticeable. I've heard of one user getting a replacement headset already.

Honestly if it was just the Mura, I would keep it. But these moving stripes and the overblooming ist simply not ignorable. The overblooming even makes DCS just unplayable as you can’t see any details in distance anymore.

Edited May 1 by TimSell75

[kerlcat]

My Super also has noticeable mura but no noticeable tiger stripe or  overblooming in any games I ‘ve tried so far…incl DCS. Mura is not deal breaker for me yet. I will try again and play DCS for more time before reporting back.

[TimSell75]

vor einer Stunde schrieb kerlcat:

My Super also has noticeable mura but no noticeable tiger stripe or  overblooming in any games I ‘ve tried so far…incl DCS. Mura is not deal breaker for me yet. I will try again and play DCS for more time before reporting back.

May I ask, did you have a crystal OG or light installed on this PC previously? Because this might be in relation to bad colors and blooming when you install a super afterwards.

[kerlcat]

4 hours ago, TimSell75 said:

May I ask, did you have a crystal OG or light installed on this PC previously? Because this might be in relation to bad colors and blooming when you install a super afterwards.

This is my 1st Pimax product I ever used. Previously Quest 3 and other VR headsets you could see from my signature. I just reset contrast from 50 to 0 and to see how’s the change in game. It was set for compensation to visual lost by slower data stream.

[Calvin.Pimax]

On 5/1/2025 at 12:17 AM, TimSell75 said:

I played around with it the whole day yesterday. 

The biggest problem is not even the Mura and stripes, but that the headset is way too bright, or better to say everything that is white in game is overblooming everything around it. In DCS or IL2 for example it is unusable in the current state, when you look at the horizon, everything you see is just white. Lowering the headset brightness or Gamma in Game does not help, you just see a darkened version of white but not more details. At least this seems to be adressed already in their current issues notes and should become better with a firmware update. I am just wondering why none of the testers has brought this up if it is a general software issue?

I contacted Pimax service already to see what I can do. According to their policy claims, the trial period should be frozen as soon as the user brings up an issue. For now, at least in flightsims, my device is not usable sadly

Have you tried to lower the brightness with -1 and the contrast with -3?

[TimSell75]

vor 7 Stunden schrieb Calvin.Pimax:

Have you tried to lower the brightness with -1 and the contrast with -3?

Yes I did, every possible combination. But the image just became darker or brighter as a whole. The fact that the horizon „eats up“ almost the entire image does not change, it just changes from bright white to a greyish version of white.

[Calvin.Pimax]

On 5/3/2025 at 2:25 AM, TimSell75 said:

Yes I did, every possible combination. But the image just became darker or brighter as a whole. The fact that the horizon „eats up“ almost the entire image does not change, it just changes from bright white to a greyish version of white.

Noted. We are working on the colour profile. 

[TimSell75]

Just got a new version of Pimax Play from Pimax customer support. It gave the option to erase all hidden previous files and setting of Pimax Play before installation. 

It made DCS playable but the whites are still way too bright. Almost hurting the eyes. And the colors overall look too bright and kind of washed out. In comparison, the OG crystal still has the far superior image in DCS.

[Qcumber]

1 hour ago, TimSell75 said:

Just got a new version of Pimax Play from Pimax customer support. It gave the option to erase all hidden previous files and setting of Pimax Play before installation. 

It made DCS playable but the whites are still way too bright. Almost hurting the eyes. And the colors overall look too bright and kind of washed out. In comparison, the OG crystal still has the far superior image in DCS.

Sorry for your issues and I hope they get better, but it does not give me a lot of confidence in the Crystal Super. 

[TimSell75]

vor 26 Minuten schrieb Qcumber:

Sorry for your issues and I hope they get better, but it does not give me a lot of confidence in the Crystal Super. 

It seems to be specially related to DCS. IL2 in my opinion is ok regarding colors and brightness if you switch of HDR in the settings.

[TimSell75]

So I have been in contact with Pimax support the last days.

First I must say, that the response times were really good. Pimax improved a lot in this regard!

About the Mura: the answer was that a certain amount of Mura will always be present with the Super and that my unit was tested and up to their current acceptance levels. So I can keep it, send it back, or have it replaced. But with the given answer it does not sound as if a replacement unit would be an improvement or could even be worse. Still have 5 days to make up my mind…

Overblooming: one cause can be remaining hidden files of a previous Pimax Play installation from a OG Crystal, even if you do a reinstall. A new Pimax play version that I got from support offers a cleaning option before installation. That made it a bit better, but in DCS it is still eye hurting bright and washed out colors. I hope they will further work on the color profiles, especially tuning down the whites in DCS.

In Il2 I have accaptable colors now, but still would consider der OG Crystal to be a good notch better regarding contrast, colors and whites.

[PawlaczGMD]

On 5/7/2025 at 4:40 PM, TimSell75 said:

Just got a new version of Pimax Play from Pimax customer support. It gave the option to erase all hidden previous files and setting of Pimax Play before installation. 

It made DCS playable but the whites are still way too bright. Almost hurting the eyes. And the colors overall look too bright and kind of washed out. In comparison, the OG crystal still has the far superior image in DCS.

Sad to hear, I was thinking of upgrading my OG Crystal for better image//display quality. Also, have you tried reducing local dimming? 

[TimSell75]

Gerade eben schrieb PawlaczGMD:

Sad to hear, I was thinking of upgrading my OG Crystal for better image//display quality. Also, have you tried reducing local dimming? 

That is not possible in the Super unfortunately, it is a hard coded in the hardware. It can only be changed by Pimax with Firmware Updates.