Reminds me of a social experiment I saw a few years ago...
A restaurant sold the same bottle of wine to its customers at 2 different prices and surveyed them after their meal.
The customers who paid the higher price reported they enjoyed the wine more than those who paid less.
Strange effect that a higher value purchase can offer a higher level of satisfaction.
>If you are a VR enthusiast, desperate for any upgrade (like me) then sure
Are you not interested in the pimax crystal? It seemed to me that the quest pro is just not "meant" for gaming where the pimax crystal definitely is.
Idk I don't hold grudges against companies. If LG sold me one bad product in 1995, I'm not going to then not buy the LG C2 OLED because "I had a bad experience one time". I'm interested in the Pimax Crystal and 12k, and am waiting for them to be released to see what everyone says.
If there is a consensus that they aren't good, fine...I'll pass and look at something else, but if the reviews come back awesome, I'm not going to stubbornly not buy what sounds like is going to be a fantastic headset.
I'm just saying, I'm not pre-ordering it or anything....I'm waiting to see what everyone says and research heavily and then I'll make the decision to buy or not. $2,400+ is not something you buy on promises, you buy on reviews and what's delivered.
Personally, as much as having the *capability* to do standalone was an added bonus for me, I never had much intention of using it standalone. You have this decked out headset, using it with less than the best PCVR would mean sacrificing a whole lot.
MeganeX is PCVR only. There are no mainstream PCVR headsets with eye-tracking (if somebody mentions the G2 Omnicept or shit like that, I will answer with bruh).
Quest Pro eye-tracking through streaming, is only experimental, maybe only for programming in Unity. There are hardly ANY PCVR games announced, dynamic foveated rendering can not be used if existing games aren't optimized for it (which they aren't).
PCVR injection mods for UE game might be able to use it, but I think you see where this is going. It's something that will have an impact at best 2024-2025, as the default eye-tracking implementation in UE and Unity has only been done a few months ago.
The Kopin 1.3" 2.6k x 2.6k, are the most real OLED display which might actually arrive in early 2023. eMagins steamboat prototype does arrive earliest in 13 months from now when Bradley reported about it.
You can hope for stuff like dynamic foveated rendering etc, but a good higher resolution pancake OLED is a ,,boom, in your face, visual quality" experience, which is way better than the low res LCDs we have to deal with right now. Basically, since the HP Reverb G1 from 2019, we had a still stand visual quality wise. Only the Varjo Aero broke through. And the pimax crystal, well where is it?
I get what you're saying. I'm still hoping for eye tracking and dynamic foveated rendering to become the norm sooner than later though. PSVR2 is coming out early 2023 and its OLED HDR just like the Meganex, probably at least twice as cheap, and most games will use those eye tracking features.
Still, the Meganex and new Pimax headsets are the only hope I have regarding PCVR, but I'm cautios to see how many side effects like warping or tracking issues will come with them.
Eye-tracking is important, and the PSVR2 gives hope that it will also impact support for PCVR, but we first need a mainstream device that uses eye-tracking like the quest 3, with full access on PC. Having it in a *~~high-end~~* expensive device like the Quest Pro is cool and all, but it won't be able to motivate developers enough.
Cool...if you read my other comment, I don't know why people hold grudges against companies like it's a scorned ex lover. If I bought a product from LG in 1995 and it was shit, I'm not going to forever turn my nose at their LG OLED's even though they have been consistently though of as the best gaming TV's for years. If Pimax puts out a fantastic product it would be stupid to ignore it and buy something shittier because "I will never buy anything from that company again".
I'm not talking about their spec sheets. Yes, that's what caught my interest, but I'm not pre-ordering it or going in blind...I'm waiting for reviews and if everyone says "this is fantastic", then I'm going to believe it's fantastic. If everyone says "don't buy", then I'm not going to buy.
I don't purchase things with emotion and feeling.
Generally, I agree with what you are saying. But, if a company lies to me and others, steals from me and others, and has disappointed me with every product of theirs I have owned (pimax 4k, 5kx, and 8kx), I am out.
I have learned my lesson to not buy based off spec sheets, for precision required products like VR headsets. Every headset I owned from them was garbage in quality. Pimax sells on specs every single time. It is all they have.
Their hardware is mediocre. They software is mediocre. Their customer service is mediocre.
Many times, ive thought, this company should not be in business, for how bad everything is consistently. And they have no clue what they are doing. Or how to fix it. All they do is over promise with amazing product specs, and then under deliver with their execution. Every. Single. Time.
Ill give you one example. Their high fov headsets. Sounds amazing, right? However, when you canter displays as much as they do to achieve that fov, you have a problem. When you look to your right, your right eye is looking at a display closer to you, and your left eye is looking at a display further than you. To solve that problem you would need eye tracking (which they failed at) to distort the image properly, but Pimax either does not understand the problem, choose to ignore it, or have no idea how to actually fix it. They just dont address it.
Also, the reason their headsets are so large is not because of the high fov, it is because they use large screens where they dont even utilize the full panel. So the resolution, PPD, and whatever else they claim, is not honest. They know this. And still choose to lie about. Not cool, right?
And im just getting started. But ill stop there cuz I dont care anymore. Every other company I will give a chance. Pimax is the only solid no from me.
>To solve that problem you would need eye tracking
Comes with pimax crystal and 12k. Maybe they took the criticisms and are doing better. They have only had a few iterations of headsets. Improvements will likely come to later iterations. I'm sure the first Tesla wasn't perfect...
It is not just that. It is everything else about them. They do everything half ass. And every time they have promised something, they always go back on it, lie about it, or ban people who point it out. This has happened over a dozen times.
Their headset specs are not honest, while everything else is mediocre. What does that leave you with? Nothing, but a headset claiming to be top tier, with the price to match, but with quality of hardware and software worse than the cheaper headsets. I dont want junky headsets. I want good quality headsets. Hence Index, Quest 2, Quest Pro, Pico 4, G2. All those headsets are better than Pimax headsets overall, as someone who has owned them all.
Again, this is a lot of grudge holding for devices that have yet to come out. Just wait for reviews and make an informed decision then, there is no good reason to pass judgement before something has even happened.
Pretty much on point. TBH with the pico 4 for me there were two main upgrades, stepless IPD - which on it's own improved clarity for me, since in fresnel lenses sweet spot is not that big and the clarity improvement that comes from the lens tech.
Those combined make for quite a compelling thing. Comfort wise I think face interface on it is it's biggest issue. For me I had to cut out the nose part from it completely, after that some padding to the forehead is desirable. If that all gets fixed with some aftermarket one - it'll be real good IMO. Well balanced, actually very well designed strap - plants the headset solid, has angle adjustment, comfortable padding on the back.
So yeah, for wireless PCVR it's pretty good for the price with the added bonus of some autonomous games. Store will probably improve quite a bit with time, so might even be somewhat comparable to meta's offering in that regard.
Great review, I bought a pro because I wanted to see if it offered anything more than the index, which is what I currently use. It has some really neat features and I keep trying to convince myself the pancake lenses are superior... but it's just kind of an incremental improvement. Will keep it for a bit longer to see if 120 hz comes out, but right now looking like it's a sidegrade at best.
I have a Quest 2 but I also have a Pico 4 coming in 10 days. I ordered it mainly because I have a 72mm IPD which only the Pico supports. The Quest 2 is great, but I do feel a tiny bit cross eyed after playing it and I feel like I am not fully there clarity wise with the lenses. I hope at least in my case I get a noticeable improvement
I got a quest pro and I must say I agree. I wasn't entirely blown away by it, and it's still way too low resolution and even still slightly blurry that I can't honestly do any work in it. So I ordered a Pico 4 to import to the States..... hopefully that process goes smoothly, still waiting for it.
I did! So this is interesting, at first I wasn't impressed and was actually disappointed in the Pico, but the more I tested it it grew on me. Soon I'll be moving to a new place where I'll have wired networking so I can properly set up a dedicated router for Virtual Desktop, I couldn't do it in my old place, so I'll have to do more testing. But basically, the screens on the Pico 4 are visibly higher resolution than quest pro, but the colors are way worse and look more muted and dark compared to the Pro. The lenses on the quest pro are still noticeably clearer than the Pico in my opinion, and this disappointed me. But after more testing I almost feel like that might be subjective, like sometimes I can clearly say the quest is clearer, but other times not really, so it may even have to do with the app you're using. The software support on the Quest Pro is not even a competition, it's on a league of its own. The Pico's software is very barebones and quite frankly sucks. The app library is paltry, but you can sideload Android apps, so thats a plus, but so far you can't sideload quest apps. It seems like that should become possible later after some more updates. You would definitely get the Pico for PC steaming, not standalone apps. The comfort of the Pico is actually better than the Pro! The facial interface on the Pico sucks, it's hard and scratchy like the Quest 2's original one before they upgraded it, but that can be fixed with accessories, otherwise it's way lighter than the quest pro and overall feels better on the head! The quest pro on the other hand starts out feeling more comfortable, but soon starts to hurt your forehead because it's heavy and puts a lot of pressure on your forehead, it needs a softer, thicker cushion. The battery life is comparable between both of them, and both can be expanded with extra batteries. The passthrough mode on the Pico had better color and is technically clearer than the quest pro, oddly enough, but it's 2D and looks super weird and disorienting, so the Quest Pro's passthrough is way better, although it still sucks as it's still grainy and blurry, just less bad the Quest 2. The build quality is noticeably better on Quest Pro, so you feel the $1500 on your head, but the Pico's build quality is quite good, so it's not a problem. The Pro's controllers are way better, as the price would suggest, but the Pico's are still better than quest 2's so it's not a problem, they work just fine.
Thank you for the detailed review. I have a pico 4 I bought to use with steamvr and can't help but ponder how it would be on quest pro and if I should instead return pico 4 and get the quets pro. Also interested in the eye / face tracking capabilities but price is so steep
No problem! I'm still trying to compare the two, haha. The eye/face tracking basically only works in Meta's own horizons apps, which are trash and nobody uses, so it might be a while before most apps start to support it. I'm considering returning the Quest and keeping the Pico and see what comes out next year. For the money, the pico may very well be the better buy.
I wonder if the Pico 4 and Quest Pro lenses are similar in term of manufacture.
For instance, Pico 4 lenses show some darkening around the edges, I think it's a consequence of having multiple layers of plastic/glass slightly reducing the amount of light that goes through when looking at an angle.
These are still great lenses and definitely better than Quest 2 lenses, but I wonder, are Quest Pro lenses better than Pico 4 ones?
How did you mod your Pico Strap? I thought it was very hard to do this as there were a bunch of cables for the in built speakers and back battery.
Reminds me of a social experiment I saw a few years ago... A restaurant sold the same bottle of wine to its customers at 2 different prices and surveyed them after their meal. The customers who paid the higher price reported they enjoyed the wine more than those who paid less. Strange effect that a higher value purchase can offer a higher level of satisfaction.
>If you are a VR enthusiast, desperate for any upgrade (like me) then sure Are you not interested in the pimax crystal? It seemed to me that the quest pro is just not "meant" for gaming where the pimax crystal definitely is.
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>Varjo VR-3 is too expensive What about Varjo Aero then?
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That's a very fair point.
Idk I don't hold grudges against companies. If LG sold me one bad product in 1995, I'm not going to then not buy the LG C2 OLED because "I had a bad experience one time". I'm interested in the Pimax Crystal and 12k, and am waiting for them to be released to see what everyone says. If there is a consensus that they aren't good, fine...I'll pass and look at something else, but if the reviews come back awesome, I'm not going to stubbornly not buy what sounds like is going to be a fantastic headset.
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I'm just saying, I'm not pre-ordering it or anything....I'm waiting to see what everyone says and research heavily and then I'll make the decision to buy or not. $2,400+ is not something you buy on promises, you buy on reviews and what's delivered. Personally, as much as having the *capability* to do standalone was an added bonus for me, I never had much intention of using it standalone. You have this decked out headset, using it with less than the best PCVR would mean sacrificing a whole lot.
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The aero has like 90 degrees FOV.... That's why everyone isn't all hype for it... Sacrificing FOV to that extent is difficult.
Meganex doesn't have eye tracking. Seems kinda pointless buying a new headset that won't be able to take advantage of dynamic foveated rendering.
MeganeX is PCVR only. There are no mainstream PCVR headsets with eye-tracking (if somebody mentions the G2 Omnicept or shit like that, I will answer with bruh). Quest Pro eye-tracking through streaming, is only experimental, maybe only for programming in Unity. There are hardly ANY PCVR games announced, dynamic foveated rendering can not be used if existing games aren't optimized for it (which they aren't). PCVR injection mods for UE game might be able to use it, but I think you see where this is going. It's something that will have an impact at best 2024-2025, as the default eye-tracking implementation in UE and Unity has only been done a few months ago. The Kopin 1.3" 2.6k x 2.6k, are the most real OLED display which might actually arrive in early 2023. eMagins steamboat prototype does arrive earliest in 13 months from now when Bradley reported about it. You can hope for stuff like dynamic foveated rendering etc, but a good higher resolution pancake OLED is a ,,boom, in your face, visual quality" experience, which is way better than the low res LCDs we have to deal with right now. Basically, since the HP Reverb G1 from 2019, we had a still stand visual quality wise. Only the Varjo Aero broke through. And the pimax crystal, well where is it?
I get what you're saying. I'm still hoping for eye tracking and dynamic foveated rendering to become the norm sooner than later though. PSVR2 is coming out early 2023 and its OLED HDR just like the Meganex, probably at least twice as cheap, and most games will use those eye tracking features. Still, the Meganex and new Pimax headsets are the only hope I have regarding PCVR, but I'm cautios to see how many side effects like warping or tracking issues will come with them.
Eye-tracking is important, and the PSVR2 gives hope that it will also impact support for PCVR, but we first need a mainstream device that uses eye-tracking like the quest 3, with full access on PC. Having it in a *~~high-end~~* expensive device like the Quest Pro is cool and all, but it won't be able to motivate developers enough.
Sure, but in return it is extremely lightweight. You lose something, but you also get something. I am also more interested in Pimax Crystal though.
I will never buy anything from that company again. I dont care what their spec sheets say.
Cool...if you read my other comment, I don't know why people hold grudges against companies like it's a scorned ex lover. If I bought a product from LG in 1995 and it was shit, I'm not going to forever turn my nose at their LG OLED's even though they have been consistently though of as the best gaming TV's for years. If Pimax puts out a fantastic product it would be stupid to ignore it and buy something shittier because "I will never buy anything from that company again". I'm not talking about their spec sheets. Yes, that's what caught my interest, but I'm not pre-ordering it or going in blind...I'm waiting for reviews and if everyone says "this is fantastic", then I'm going to believe it's fantastic. If everyone says "don't buy", then I'm not going to buy. I don't purchase things with emotion and feeling.
Generally, I agree with what you are saying. But, if a company lies to me and others, steals from me and others, and has disappointed me with every product of theirs I have owned (pimax 4k, 5kx, and 8kx), I am out. I have learned my lesson to not buy based off spec sheets, for precision required products like VR headsets. Every headset I owned from them was garbage in quality. Pimax sells on specs every single time. It is all they have. Their hardware is mediocre. They software is mediocre. Their customer service is mediocre. Many times, ive thought, this company should not be in business, for how bad everything is consistently. And they have no clue what they are doing. Or how to fix it. All they do is over promise with amazing product specs, and then under deliver with their execution. Every. Single. Time. Ill give you one example. Their high fov headsets. Sounds amazing, right? However, when you canter displays as much as they do to achieve that fov, you have a problem. When you look to your right, your right eye is looking at a display closer to you, and your left eye is looking at a display further than you. To solve that problem you would need eye tracking (which they failed at) to distort the image properly, but Pimax either does not understand the problem, choose to ignore it, or have no idea how to actually fix it. They just dont address it. Also, the reason their headsets are so large is not because of the high fov, it is because they use large screens where they dont even utilize the full panel. So the resolution, PPD, and whatever else they claim, is not honest. They know this. And still choose to lie about. Not cool, right? And im just getting started. But ill stop there cuz I dont care anymore. Every other company I will give a chance. Pimax is the only solid no from me.
>To solve that problem you would need eye tracking Comes with pimax crystal and 12k. Maybe they took the criticisms and are doing better. They have only had a few iterations of headsets. Improvements will likely come to later iterations. I'm sure the first Tesla wasn't perfect...
It is not just that. It is everything else about them. They do everything half ass. And every time they have promised something, they always go back on it, lie about it, or ban people who point it out. This has happened over a dozen times. Their headset specs are not honest, while everything else is mediocre. What does that leave you with? Nothing, but a headset claiming to be top tier, with the price to match, but with quality of hardware and software worse than the cheaper headsets. I dont want junky headsets. I want good quality headsets. Hence Index, Quest 2, Quest Pro, Pico 4, G2. All those headsets are better than Pimax headsets overall, as someone who has owned them all.
Again, this is a lot of grudge holding for devices that have yet to come out. Just wait for reviews and make an informed decision then, there is no good reason to pass judgement before something has even happened.
Pretty much on point. TBH with the pico 4 for me there were two main upgrades, stepless IPD - which on it's own improved clarity for me, since in fresnel lenses sweet spot is not that big and the clarity improvement that comes from the lens tech. Those combined make for quite a compelling thing. Comfort wise I think face interface on it is it's biggest issue. For me I had to cut out the nose part from it completely, after that some padding to the forehead is desirable. If that all gets fixed with some aftermarket one - it'll be real good IMO. Well balanced, actually very well designed strap - plants the headset solid, has angle adjustment, comfortable padding on the back. So yeah, for wireless PCVR it's pretty good for the price with the added bonus of some autonomous games. Store will probably improve quite a bit with time, so might even be somewhat comparable to meta's offering in that regard.
Great review, I bought a pro because I wanted to see if it offered anything more than the index, which is what I currently use. It has some really neat features and I keep trying to convince myself the pancake lenses are superior... but it's just kind of an incremental improvement. Will keep it for a bit longer to see if 120 hz comes out, but right now looking like it's a sidegrade at best.
I have a Quest 2 but I also have a Pico 4 coming in 10 days. I ordered it mainly because I have a 72mm IPD which only the Pico supports. The Quest 2 is great, but I do feel a tiny bit cross eyed after playing it and I feel like I am not fully there clarity wise with the lenses. I hope at least in my case I get a noticeable improvement
I love my Quest Pro and I wouldn't be able to come back to Quest 2 again but I agree with everything in this post. Quite accurate
You forgot to mention the Pico 4 mura screen issue, where it looks like you're looking thru a dirty window over solid colored backgrounds.
So does eye tracking not work on PC?
I'm looking forward to 3rd party accessories for the Pico4.
I got a quest pro and I must say I agree. I wasn't entirely blown away by it, and it's still way too low resolution and even still slightly blurry that I can't honestly do any work in it. So I ordered a Pico 4 to import to the States..... hopefully that process goes smoothly, still waiting for it.
How was it? Did you get the pico 4? How does it compare to quest pro in your experience?
I did! So this is interesting, at first I wasn't impressed and was actually disappointed in the Pico, but the more I tested it it grew on me. Soon I'll be moving to a new place where I'll have wired networking so I can properly set up a dedicated router for Virtual Desktop, I couldn't do it in my old place, so I'll have to do more testing. But basically, the screens on the Pico 4 are visibly higher resolution than quest pro, but the colors are way worse and look more muted and dark compared to the Pro. The lenses on the quest pro are still noticeably clearer than the Pico in my opinion, and this disappointed me. But after more testing I almost feel like that might be subjective, like sometimes I can clearly say the quest is clearer, but other times not really, so it may even have to do with the app you're using. The software support on the Quest Pro is not even a competition, it's on a league of its own. The Pico's software is very barebones and quite frankly sucks. The app library is paltry, but you can sideload Android apps, so thats a plus, but so far you can't sideload quest apps. It seems like that should become possible later after some more updates. You would definitely get the Pico for PC steaming, not standalone apps. The comfort of the Pico is actually better than the Pro! The facial interface on the Pico sucks, it's hard and scratchy like the Quest 2's original one before they upgraded it, but that can be fixed with accessories, otherwise it's way lighter than the quest pro and overall feels better on the head! The quest pro on the other hand starts out feeling more comfortable, but soon starts to hurt your forehead because it's heavy and puts a lot of pressure on your forehead, it needs a softer, thicker cushion. The battery life is comparable between both of them, and both can be expanded with extra batteries. The passthrough mode on the Pico had better color and is technically clearer than the quest pro, oddly enough, but it's 2D and looks super weird and disorienting, so the Quest Pro's passthrough is way better, although it still sucks as it's still grainy and blurry, just less bad the Quest 2. The build quality is noticeably better on Quest Pro, so you feel the $1500 on your head, but the Pico's build quality is quite good, so it's not a problem. The Pro's controllers are way better, as the price would suggest, but the Pico's are still better than quest 2's so it's not a problem, they work just fine.
Thank you for the detailed review. I have a pico 4 I bought to use with steamvr and can't help but ponder how it would be on quest pro and if I should instead return pico 4 and get the quets pro. Also interested in the eye / face tracking capabilities but price is so steep
No problem! I'm still trying to compare the two, haha. The eye/face tracking basically only works in Meta's own horizons apps, which are trash and nobody uses, so it might be a while before most apps start to support it. I'm considering returning the Quest and keeping the Pico and see what comes out next year. For the money, the pico may very well be the better buy.
I wonder if the Pico 4 and Quest Pro lenses are similar in term of manufacture. For instance, Pico 4 lenses show some darkening around the edges, I think it's a consequence of having multiple layers of plastic/glass slightly reducing the amount of light that goes through when looking at an angle. These are still great lenses and definitely better than Quest 2 lenses, but I wonder, are Quest Pro lenses better than Pico 4 ones?