Pimax Dream Air VR Headset Review

Watch our Pimax Dream Air VR Headset video review

Below is our complete video review of the Pimax Dream Air VR Headset, where I discuss everything in this written review, and bring you gameplay of this VR headset.

The Pimax Crystal Light and Super are absolute beasts of a VR headset, with the one downside of being rather sizeable. Pimax is aware of this, and have realised that gamers and sim racers don’t always fancy having a weighty headset strapped to their face for hours on end.

Introducing the Pimax Dream Air. This new VR headset is Pimax’s attempt at downsizing. The Dream, Air takes a lot of the technology inside the Crystal Super, and reduces the weight by a huge amount. That makes a huge difference to just how comfortable you are while strapped into your racing sim.

But at what cost does this massive weight saving come, and is the Pimax Dream Air really the best VR headset for sim racing, instead of the Crystal Super. I have previously reviewed the Crystal Super, and now have the Dream Air to compare. So let’s jump into my review and see which reigns supreme.

What is the Pimax Dream Air at a glance

The Pimax Dream Air comes in a few variations, and its important to distinguish between these pretty early on, as there are some drastic differences. The base version is the Lighthouse variant, and is the headset I’m reviewing here.

There is also a SLAM version which includes in-built tracking, meaning you don’t have to rely on SteamVR basestations, like I do with the Lighthouse version. This sounds great but does come with a £200 price increase. Finally, there is the Dream Air SE, which is a much cheaper version which comes with lower resolution, lower FOV, and an all round slight step down in performance.

But back to this Dream Air, Lighthouse edition. This headset boasts pretty impressive specs. You have a resolution of 3840×3552, with the same Sony Micro-OLED used in the Crystal Super.

The lenses are also straight out of the Crystal Super, using Concave pancake lenses. But you do get a slightly narrower field of view than the Crystal Super, with a horizontal FOV of 110°. Quite a step down from the QLED Crystal Super which has an FOV of 127°.

As mentioned, for tracking with the Lighthouse version, I do need to rely on SteamVR base stations or other ways of tracking. And this is the one definitive downside compared to the SLAM edition which has baked in tracking cameras.

Also, it’s worth noting that out of the box, you do not get any controllers with the Lighthouse version. This wasn’t an issue for me as I’m just sim racing with the Dream Air, but if you do plan on any other type of gaming, that’s another expense.

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Price of the Pimax Dream Air

While I’m talking about the Lighthouse and SLAM variants, now is a good time to look at the price of the Dream Air. Priced at just over £1,500 or close to $2,000, this is a premium VR headset, there is no getting away from that.

If you’re looking for a more direct competitor to more casual headsets to rival the Quest 3, there is the considerably cheaper Dream Air SE. Which over halves the price.

With the main edition, you have both the Lighthouse and SLAM versions to choose from. The main difference is the SLAM version does not require any external tracking as it has built in cameras. And it also comes with controllers. So, really, the SLAM version is winning this battle right away, despite it costing around £200 more than the Lighthouse version.

Region	Price	Buy
US	$1999	Buy Dream Air US
UK	€1783	Buy Dream Air UK
EU	£1542	Buy Dream Air EU

In terms of competition, the closest VR headset in terms of spec is probably Pimax’s own Crystal Super. That uses a lot of the technology found in this Dream Air, and costs considerably less at just over £1,200 or $1,600.

Outside of Pimax, you do have the Bigscreen Beyond 2 which has a remarkably similar formfactor to this Dream Air. And it costs a lot less, starting from just £1099. There is also the Meganex Superlight 8K at £1599 or $1899. Both of these competitors also use micro OLED displays, and both fully embrace the minimal, lightweight form factor.

There is also of course the more casual headsets such as the Meta Quest 3 or Vive Pro 2. Both of those are over half the price of this Dream Air, but don’t offer the same performance or visual clarity so aren’t truly a competitor in this extreme high-end VR headset market.

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Unboxing and what’s included box

So for your rather large investment, what do you get in the box from this rather small headset? Well, there is of course the headset itself. This comes pre-connected to its rather long data and power connections which all feed into a small junction box.

You also get some lens holders for if you opted for prescription lenses, and a micro-fibre cleaning cloth. And that is about it. No controllers, no additional accessories.

Inside the Pimax Dream Air box, you’ll find;

• The Pimax Dream Air VR Headset
• Pre-installed head strap
• Pre-connected display port, USB and power cable
• Power supply attachments
• Micro-fibre cleaning cloth
• Lens adapter

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The design of the Pimax Crystal Super

When first taking the Dream Air out of its box, you realise just how lightweight it is. I’m used to the Crystal Super, which is a chunky boy. This Dream Air weighs well under half the weight of the Crystal Super, and also looks incredibly compact.

Design

There are some nice material choices used throuighout the build as well, with inspiration clearly taken from the Apply Vision Pro. The overall design looks remarkably similar, with the black optical engine at the front, white mess used throughout the face support, and even similar bulges across both side beams.

The front of the headset carries the recognisable Pimax lightstrip. Much like the Crystal headsets, this lights up when powered on and can be fully customised, not that you’ll ever see this during use.

I do have to say that there is rather a lot of plastic for such a premium headset. The entire build, other than the soft materials utilises plastic. A little lightweight metal flourishes here and there wouldn’t go unmissed. This is a slight shame, but does help keep the weight down.

Around the back is a much less elegant velcro strap. This is the first part of the headset that I was slightly underwhelmed with. There are two straps that merge. One wraps around the back of your head, the other sits at a 40 degree angle over your crown.

Ergonomics and comfort

These two straps are velcroed onto the rear of your head, and require a little fiddling to get into that just right sweet spot. Thankfully, the optical engine is no where near as heavy as the Crystal Super, so there is far less pressure felt across your face or the rear of your head while wearing the Dream Air.

However, I would have preferred a slightly wider rear head strap if I was to choose a single upgrade. A wider strap would have just eased a little bit of the pressure at the back of my head that I often felt after an hour behind the wheel.

The ergonomics at the front all felt pretty good though, and a huge improvement over the Crystal Super. There is a nice squigy cushion separating the optical engine and your face. This is a little firm, but does a good job of keeping the Dream Air pinned in place.

One of my big issues with the Crystal super was that when moving my head to look around my cockpit or the track, I could physically feel the whole headset shifting with my momentum. No amount of tightening the head strap ever truly solved this issue. That is thankfully gone with the Dream Air. The smaller form factor and lighter weight allows this to be a complete non issue.

After a longer race session, you do just start to get a slight bit of pressure around the face cushion. And a bit more pressure at the back of your head. With a wider truly 3D headset, this would most likely solve this issue.

There is currently a DMAS strap for the Dream Air available. I’ve not tried it, but the harder design and still relatively small contact patch makes me hesitant it’d solve any comfort issue. I may be wrong, but I’d like to see a much wider, soft strap, such as the kind used on the Apple Vision Pro, and topstrap support.

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Software and the set up process

Now, setting up the Pimax Dream Air is about as simple as it can be. This really is a case of enmsuring everything is connected, having the right software downloaded, and everything should power on and work. In reality, I’m happy to say this was the case, making it much smoother than other VR headsets I’ve tried.

First I powered on my base station, which as mentioned is an extra that you need to already own or purchase. The headset connects in a few ways. You have the display port which goes striaght into your GPU, the USB connection straight into your PC, and then the power. All of these link into a junction box, so you don’t have three cables running out of your headset.

I already had Pimax Play installed, which is the software required to set up and use any Pimax headset. But if this is your first Pimax device, you should install this before powering on any devices.

With everything connected and on, Pimax Play recognised both the base station and my headset. And then I could jump into the settings of which there are a few to play with.

Primarily, you’ll want to ensure you have a few key settings enabled, such as OpenXR, eye tracking, and your frequency all set up. You can tinker with some other settings to really nail your setup, and this was all incredibly easy to do using Pimax Play. It is worth noting that Pimax have a new piece of software called EVO, which I didn’t use during my time.

With the Lighthouse version of the Dream Air, there is no pass-through mode. This can be an issue when setting up your race with a mouse, or interacting with your sim rig in any way. However, with this headset being much lighter, it is so much easier to slip on and off when reaching for your phone or drink, or to make any adjustments.

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Sim racing gameplay and performance review

Now, I want to look at the performance and gameplay, focused entirely on sim racing. As mentioned, I did use the Pimax sword controllers a little bit, but really didn’t have much use for them while sim racing. So that is where I’m going to focus this part of the review.

The Visuals

First up, we have the most important element, the visuals. Inside the optical unit are two Micro-OLED displays, both outputting a resolution of 3840×3552. And on first glance, the step up in visual quality from the QLED that I reviewed in the Crystal Super and this is impressive.

With displays confined to a dark area, and no light bleed, the OLED screens can really shine. The colours are vibrant, with excellent contrast between shadows and light areas, and truly black blacks. This really elevates all racing sims, with games such as F1 26 and Le Mans Ultimate in particular looking stunning.

And night racing. Oh my, night racing has never felt so immersive. While wearing this headset, the glow from the LED rev lights, the contrast between the dark track and bright headlights, wow. Driving around Le Mans, at night in a GT3 is without a doubt one of the most immersive sim racing experiences I’ve had.

Beyond just the saturation, the clarity of the two displays is incredible. You can really see your brake marker boards, the apex kerb and cars in the distance. When you do choose to look down at your in-game steering wheel to check a setting, finally I can see the steering wheel display in perfect clarity.

This wasn’t the case with the Crystal Super, or any VR headset I’ve used in the past. Normally, checking my brake bias on my wheel required a lean forward and real focus. With the Dream Air, I could glance down and spot the value without distortion.

The lenses

Part of what makes these visuals stunning are the concave pancake lenses. These lenses offer fantastic clarity all around the viewing area. With previous headsets, I’ve noticed a lack of detail in areas away from that perfect sweetspot.

With these lenses, the sweetspot is still there certainly, but its very large. And when you look beyond it, things do not suddenly look smudged and blurry like some headsets I’ve used. Compared to the aspheric lenses in the Crystal Super that I tested, this is a big improvement.

Its also worth noting that there isn’t toom much glare. There is a small bit between extremely light and dark areas such as LEDs on your steering wheel, or taillights ahead of you. But it once again isn’t as prominent here.

FOV

Now, the field of view is one area that we need to talk about, as this Dream Air has the narrowest FOV of most Pimax headsets. The Crystal Super I tested previously has a horizontal field of view of 127°, while this Dream Air comes in at 110°.

While this does represent a decent reduction of around 13%, it isn’t the be all and end all. While sim racing, this 110° FOV gives a lot of room to look around, and it is more the vertical FOV that is a bigger issue. The vertical field of view comes up much shorter and I measured it at 89°.

To be honest, while sim racing you can get away with this more than in other games. The shallower vertical field of view almost just feels like wearing a racing helmet. I haven’t tested this headset with other VR titles, but I’m sure it could be more of an issue in other first person games.

This is the real limitation with this tiny headset. If field of view is one of the key buying decisions, I’d recommend looking at the Crystal Super. The OLED version of that has an increased horizontal FOV of 116°.

GPU demands

Now, I can’t talk about VR sim racing without touching on performance. And when your PC is rendering two 4K images, things are bound to take a hit here. As mentioned earlier, I’m testing this headset with an RTX 4090, and for me, I’m able to hit 60FPS consistently without lowering too many in-game settings.

In iRacing, most settings are at or close to max, while some more graphically impressive titles such as F1 26 and Le Mans Ultiamte, I’ve had to be a little more selective over which settings I set to high, and which get cut. Lowering some less important settings such as off track details helped me a lot to dial my performance in to just over that 60FPS range.

Also, dynamic foveated rendering does come in clutch here. Enabling it, which is as simple as turning the feature on in Pimax Play, really helps push that FPS up.

Audio performance

Like pretty much all VR headsets, the Dream Air does have integrated audio, and… Its fine. There isn’t anything special to write home about, with a distinct lack of range and bass. But it isn’t as bad as some headsets I’ve tried.

It’s primarily that bass and rumble you get when firing up your engine in the pits, or revving hard down the Kemmel Straight in a V10-era F1 car. Those sounds that should give you goosebumps, simply won’t with this integrated system.

However, I’ve used the Dream Air for around a month now, and not once has the audio jumped out at me as an issue. If the audio is an issue for you, there is the DMAS upgrade available for around £100. And that features the pretty good Pimax over ear DMAS system.

What is it like to race with on track?

So how does everything come together on track? Sim racing with this Dream Air really is special. In the past I’ve struggled to truly get on with VR headsets for various reasons. Primarily it’s often the lack of visual clarity that veers me away from VR.

That is the one area where this Dream Air has nailed things. Viewing minor details such as mounted dashboards, and track side brake markers is not an issue. And the contrast between colours really is something special. Its very rare that I get blown away with in-game visuals these days. But slipping this headset on, and experiencing the immersion for the first time is pretty breath taking.

I have to shout out the dynamic foveated rendering, as it works incredibly well. The performance boost this offers cannot be understated, and will really help some GPUs cope with the high demands that VR gaming asks.

While on track, my biggest issue with the Crystal Super is gone. With that oversized headset, any movement would dislodge the headset due to the weight. With this Dream Air, I feel confident that I can quickly glance left and right to see other cars around me, and the headset will not move an inch.

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Final thoughts

So how does this headset fare in a world of budget and mid-range options at the three figure mark, and other high-performance headsets available for cheaper? Well, Pimax really are entering the world of producing something special.

The Crystal headsets were impressive, sure. But combing the same tech from those headsets into this device, which is one of the lightest I’ve ever felt. That’s impressive. Truly, after using a headset this size, I would really struggle to migrate back to a larger device.

The Dream Air fixes the main problem area found in the Crystal series. And that is the size and weight. Those Crystal headsets were among the largest and heaviest around. Now, you have the true flexibility to move your head around rather than the weight forcing you to be pretty stationary.

The picture quality and visual clarity are truly impressive, thanks to the two 4K displays. I’ve never experienced colour saturation so good with any VR headset to date.

Of course, there are downsides, and they do come primarily in the form of the restricted field of view. While I don’t believe this affects sim racing in particular, inherently because drivers are used to wearing helmets. I can see it being much more of an issue in other scenarios.

Also, the comfort surprisingly niggles a little bit. I expected a headset this light to be as comfortable as they come. However, the thin rear straps quite simply aren’t as good as they should be at this price. It would be my first upgrade certainly, opting for a wider, more supportive strap.

However, this VR headset is special, if you can stomach the cost. It really combines so many important features asked of a VR headset, all while cutting an impressively slim silhouette. The OLED display is without a doubt a gamechanger, and is something I would want any sim racer to experience.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Pros & Cons of the Pimax Dream Air VR Headset

Pros

• Two 4K OLED panels are impressive.
• Clarity across the whole lens is great.
• Stunning contrast from the OLED displays.
• Weight significantly less than other headsets.
• Easy to set up with all sim racing titles.

Cons

• This is an expensive VR headset.
• The comfort from the thin strap is less than ideal.
• High GPU demands.
• Narrower FOV compared to many competitors.

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