Subreddit dedicated to pimax, their VR headsets, and related topics. UPDATED: PLEASE CHECK TRACKING, AUDIO AND CONCLUSION I should probably start off by saying that yes, this post has been made several times. But it always seems that people lean to one side, or neglect a lot of key points and just jump straight to recommending one or the other. After going through a month of logistics hell, 3 8KXs and about $4400 burned, I’m confident that I have experienced enough of both sides to write a comprehensive comparison between these two headsets. I have owned an OG Vive, VP1 (Unmodded), Valve index, VP2 and now 8KX for context. Backstory:Historically I have not been very interested in Pimax’s offerings. Their flagship headset was expensive, and there was many criticisms against the company back then. I decided to drop by and watch the 12K event and was floored by what they unveiled and grew strong anticipations to purchase one on release. I decided to revisit their lineup and after reading some mixed comparisons between the VP2 (which was the headset I was using) against the 8KX, with some users saying one is better than the other. It made me curious as to what this “massive FOV” was all about. Their headset prices had dropped substantially, they introduced the trade-in program, reviews seemed to lean in the positive direction, and it just so happened that my VP2 decided to give me a software loop of room setup BS(which I managed to fix later on) and as such, I decided to pick one up. Purchasing experience:My first mistake started off buying from Pimax’s website directly. Their website looks bloated and terrible. Pop-ups galore, sale timers with fake limited stock to give the artificial feeling of high demand. The website was disorganised with walls of unnecessary text on the product page riddled with broken translation and their line-up was a mess with the whole “DMAS” and “KDMAS” naming scheme with the “DMAS” being a new revised version. It was, however the cheapest place to buy the headset and with a listed shipping time of 3-5 days, I was willing to ignore all of that. Unfortunate that their logistics so happened to be a mess and a month in as of writing this, I still never received my original order having to buy two 8KXs from Amazon instead which shipped out either the same day or next day. First impressions:The first headset that arrived came from Amazon. It unfortunately arrived DOA with the right panel being completely dead no matter what I did. I promptly returned it and bought another which did function as expected and is what I will be using for the review and comparison. The headset was large, but surprisingly lightweight. The headband was familiar and essentially a clone of HTC’s Vive Pro headsets so dialing it in was quick and easy. The weight felt balanced, and the face pad was unexpectedly nice. It has a “felt” fabric texture instead of HTC’s abrasive foam. I reinstalled SteamVR, and followed the PiTool instructions and got everything up and running relatively painlessly. The headset lights up, and I get to experience it for the first time. FOV:Looking through the lenses, I immediately went “WOW” from the FOV. It encompassed most of my vision, certainly more than the VP2 both vertically and horizontally. I experienced slight distortion on the edges but too little to really bother me. I’ve played games on my triple monitors that have way worse distortions. It truly did feel very immersive. I’m glad on this front Pimax is living up to its name, providing users with a much larger FOV in VR compared to most other consumer headsets. The stereo overlap was definitely larger than my VP2 and things felt more realistic and “in-person”. Lens clarity:The sweetspot is huge compared to my VP2. Being able to shift the headset around with minimal impact to clarity was such a nice thing to have. With the VP2, the slightest nudge would turn everything into a blurry, smeary mess. God rays were less noticeable, although it seemed like I was getting more bloom but it could’ve just been my room lights reflecting internally. Edge-to-edge clarity was pretty on point with 90% of my view remaining sharp until the edges where it starts warping and text turns grainy. Strangely enough, despite having a lower PPD compared to the VP2, I noticed quite a lot less SDE. The gaps between the pixels seemed a lot more pronounced on the VP2 while I could barely notice any on the 8KX. Overall I think the lenses are an upgrade and a step up from the VP2. Comfort:Here’s one that I definitely wasn’t expecting. As mentioned before, I personally think that the 8KX was surprisingly comfortable and well balanced. I didn’t feel any pressure points on my face or my head, and it wasn’t horribly heavy that my neck would get tired. The off-ear headphones also meant that my ears felt a lot more breathable. The headset also doesn’t get as hot as the VP2 where within mere minutes the VP2 turns into a toaster and the housing becomes almost too hot to touch. Audio:The DMAS headphones weren’t as terrible as I read them to be. This is likely due to the updated audio processor that they installed in the 8KX DMAS. Highs and mids were clear and pretty well balanced but the bass was awful. Distortion on the lower frequencies with a very limited frequency response. The overall sound lacked body and definitely does not sound on the same level as Index speakers even though I’m not a fan of them either. Somehow Pimax also managed to make their off-ear headphones sounds incredibly narrow yet open at the same time. The imaging was not very well separated and the soundstage would often sound limited yet stretched outwards at the same time. I think I’d still pick these over the VP2’s on-ear audio headphones as those have all the same flaws but also lack clarity at the same time and sounded like they were coming out of a radio. UPDATE: My new 8KX DMAS came with their KDMAS earcups interestingly enough. I was going to buy KDMAS earphones just for their earcups as I wanted to experience the DMAS with them on. When testing with the earcups on, my ears were immediately blasted from how loud the volume became. I was originally using 80-100% regularly without the earcups. Even as I pre-cautiously set the volume to 50% it was still way too loud. I dropped it down to 20% to be within reasonable hearing volume. Unfortunately the earcups did not improve the sound quality and actually made it substantially worse. The bass became overbearing and took over everything. I still think however that these are a very nice addition as I found that the 8KXs microphone would pick up sound from the earphones. Pimax should either add a built-in EQ to their software or add presets for whether the earcups are on or off. Both would be ideal. Displays:Despite boasting an impressive 4K per eye resolution, the panels are pretty sub-par compared to the current best LCDs found in the VP2. Out of the box colours were mediocre but wasn’t awfully washed out. I tried a combination of different colour settings recommended by other users of this subreddit but it just ended up crushing all the shadows and details out of everything else or would lean too much to one colour ie red. A slight boost in contrast helped though. The colours weren’t the major issue though. It was the chromatic aberration. I honestly wasn’t expecting this to be a problem. But when viewing straight lined objects like overlays and HUDs, it looked absolutely terrible. My FPSVR centre marker had an additional line in the circle and white borders around my overlays had a rainbow-like appearance. After discovering how much software correction Pimax had to do to account for the lenses, I’m honestly impressed that it wasn’t much worse. Build Quality:Remember how I said that the headset was surprisingly light? Yea, well there’s a reason to that. The 8KX honestly felt toy-like when in the hand. The front housing is extremely thin, and the rubber coating felt cheap. The headset was hollow and light from the front LEDs would even leak through the blue rubberised housing from how thin it is. The headband felt like it was made from the same plastic you find in bottlecaps and was flimsy with sharp edges that I could scrape my skin on. Not impressive for a ~$1200 headset. The VP2 is substantially built better and something I’d trust in the hands of hundreds of users in an arcade scenario. IPD adjustment:This was honestly the biggest headache during the entire setup process. It’s absolutely crucial to properly adjust both the hardware lens position and the software IPD to avoid serious eye strain. All I had to do with the VP2 was use the included measuring card, stare in front of a mirror, get my reading and use the knob to hit the same number. It was perfect from then on and I could use it for 8 hours straight. With the 8KX, the IPD number on the OSD means nothing. It’s not even remotely close to your real IPD. On average as also mentioned byMRTV’s very useful tutorial, the IPD slider is set to about 1-2mm less than your real IPD. This is purely based off gut feel and you have no idea whether you really have the right amount until you’ve used the headset for several hours and checking whether your eyes feel off. The software IPD adjustment requires you to line up an IRL object like a controller with the VR view. I used trackers for this case since I have multiple of them and they positioned more reliably. After spending an hour or so tweaking it constantly I was able to reach a point where my eyes felt reasonably comfortable after an hour session with the 8KX. Tracking:Now this is where everything really fell apart for me. I was starting to like the headset after dealing with all its caveats. But the tracking jitter on the 8KX is absolutely atrocious. It made the headset genuinely unusable for me. From the beginning where I entered SteamVR Home, standing perfectly still I see the text on the wall shaking constantly. Turning around made it worse and it would throw me around occasionally. To give some context on how bad it is, I ran a jitter test with the headset completely still on a flat, non-reflective surface and compared it against an Index. The Pimax was a whopping10 times worsethan the Index. Running the test I could physically see the headset shaking through the feed on my monitor when it was sitting still. More users who have the same problem have spoken outhere. I also found that my Index controllers would drift in tracking quite often when paired to the Pimax headset but it disappears when connected to watchman dongles. I have 4 2.0 base stations in hopes of improving the situation but it only made it worse. I later read up that this is apparently a very common issue with the 8KX and 2.0 base stations and the easiest real solution is to go back to 1.0s which I definitely am not going to. It is unfortunate that this is the case because I really wanted to replace my VP2 with this headset. I have one final headset coming from China and that would be my last hope of fixing this issue. If it jitters as well, I will be returning both 8KXs and return back to the VP2. I will update my review accordingly if either Pimax sends me a fix or the next headset doesn’t exhibit this problem. UPDATE: I have received my third 8KX from China. The testing results were still poor and about what I was originally getting but the tracking wasSIGNIFICANTLY BETTER.I no longer have extreme jitter where it made the headset unusable and it is now functioning normally. There is still small amounts of jitter but nowhere near enough to cause the same level of motion sickness that I was originally having. It currently is definitely within tolerable range. I will leave up the original comment however as it is important for customers to know that this can be an issue for some units. I really wanted to like the 8KX. It had a lot going for it. But until Pimax fixes the tracking issue, hopefully on the new 12K, I really can’t recommend this headset to anyone outside of sim users. Because as it stands, no matter many things it does better than the VP2, it’s still unusable for me personally. It has an impressive FOV, crisp lenses, high-res displays and decent comfort that surely target the smallest niche of the VR enthusiasts. As of receiving my third and likely final unit, I can safely say that the 8KX is a great headset once all the issues are ironed out. It was a rough journey and definitely not plug and play but when dialed in, it truly is a one of a kind headset. The massive encompassing FOV is next level and SDE is a thing of the past. With the new 12K on the horizon, I am excited to see what Pimax has next in store. The customer experience definitely needs some work and QC needs to be more stringent but if you’re not as unfortunate as me, and you’re someone that is willing to spend hours tweaking to gain the best experience out of VR possible, the 8KX has my recommendation. I will be using it to replace my VP2 moving forward, despite all of the quirks and downsides that it has. Hopefully Pimax manages to resolve the remaining software issues in the future. Edit: Some miscellaneous stuff I forgot to add while writing this There are some QoL features that I found to be missing when moving to the Pimax headset. These were relatively small but enough that I figured I’d point out that would be important to some users. Lack of proximity sensor: Strange omission, would’ve been a nice to have for social VR use but not crucial No passthrough cameras:I rarely use this feature but it comes in very handy in a pinch. I would assume the hand tracker module can restore this functionality though. Controller battery readout:I’m sure there’s a solution out there but as of now, none of my overlays are able to read my controllers or trackers battery anymore with PiTool taking over most of the pairing process. Bluetooth controller:Kind of the most annoying one. The headset doesn’t allow you to natively sleep wake base stations through SteamVR anymore and when quitting SteamVR and closing PiTool, I found my controllers and trackers would be left connected and turned on instead of being immediately powered off when SteamVR is closed. TL;DR: S – FOV A+ – Image quality B- – User friendly C- – Usability Overall recommended but only for a specific kind of user.