CRYSTAL THROUGH-THE-LENS COMPARISON: Local Dimming On vs Off - Which Light Version To Buy?

The Pimax Crystal Light is upon us! Now unfortunately you have to make one big decision: go for the version without local dimming for $699 or shell out at least $799 for the headset with local dimming. In this video I am giving you a through-the-lens comparison between local dimming turned ON and OFF in the Pimax Crystal.
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Disclaimer: All through-the-lens videos are made with the orginal Pimax Crystal. We do not know how the new Crystal Lite without Local Dimming panel actually looks like!
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[@mixedrealityTV]

Order Pimax Crystal Now: pimax.com/pages/crystal-light?ref=mrtv (Affiliate) Which version are you going to get?

[@juanfran3924]

A lot of the stars in those scenes just disappear with local dimming on. The picture at 4:30 pretty much loses all the stars. I have a monitor with 1196 dimming zones and it's not this aggressive. I think they do this to avoid the blooming effect issues that comes with local dimming. Oled is better for this, although you can get black smear, motion blur, burn ins, less brightness and other effects with oled.

[@Sofian375]

Looks more like global dimming to me...

[@ingloriousvr6538]

Local dimming with 2 zones

[@mixedrealityTV]

In the nie complex scenes yes. But if you have put black areas and highlights within that, you can tell it works.

[@ingloriousvr6538]

Need Oled panels

[@quantumsoftware1424]

Once he got his hand on pimax light pro micro oled. He will say, wow, no brainer, go for it LOL.

[@legendp2011]

OLED can suffer both mura and persistence issues (both issues seen on the psvr2). meanwhile on micro oled panels lose 60% more light than lcd because they need a polarizing filter. OLED is amazing in thoery, but when even the vision pro suffers issues (bad persistance, low brightness, high cost) I can see why many still choose lcd

[@HypHipHop]

I heard that they wanna remove the screw which allows you to change the lens. While i totally understand the removal of track eye,battery ..and all that stuff, i disagree with the removal of screw. Maybe you can mention something about this on you next video about Crystal Light .Great review !

[@kristaps2010]

200$ is the difference local dimming or not. The difference is not that massive and also noticeable loss of detail appear with extreme LD. If you put these $200 towards a better GPU the difference in gaming would be way more noticeable than local dimming option. I'm lucky I can earn money so I chose local dimming version. I hope in P.Crystal Light there will be option to reduce LD from extreme to balanced. Another point towards Local Dimming is watching movies in VR, I would recommend it then.

[@pondracek]

If you don't want controllers (I don't; roomscale is wireless or die) it's only a $100 difference. Wish there was a $100 cheaper option without dimming or controllers.

[@CrispyCrusader117]

this is very nice comparison and seeing space looks great, does he different modes of Local Dimming have anything like movement effects at say extreme vs balanced or off? Or is it just purely screen brightness in scenes and no performance based issues at all. Thank you for this video as it helps a lot

[@SargonDragon]

Local dimming has no substantial performance effects.

[@technikchegger7228]

A great video and good work.

[@lukaszb3651]

Great comparison. How would you compare the level of blacks on your Pimax Cristal with LD Off and Meta 3? Which one offer better blacks in your opinion?

[@robertpetrie2536]

Great video! The VR community appreciates you and all of your comparisons! I wonder if you could compare the AVP vs the pimax crystal's local dimming?

[@mixedrealityTV]

The AVP is OLED and therefore much better with real blacks!

[@PixelShade]

Awesome video mate! I'm still holding on to my G2, but from what I can tell I will just wait for an attractive headset with micro OLED displays... What I like about the G2 was the image quality, price and the incredible built-in audio system. Sure, the controllers are pretty basic but I still appreciate their support for AA batteries. I know I lot of people would consider it an inconvenience, but personally I love it.. I use rechargeable batteries and they last for so long, battery life isn't even a problem. I can easily replace them once they get depleted, and when battery cells go bad, I can easily replace them (which isn't normally the case for highly integrated Li-ion devices). HP Reverb just felt like a nice, complete, AND future proof headset (Which was one of my primary purchasing goals). Until Microsoft decided to ditch WMR!👿Currently I dualboot into Windows 10 just for VR (and use Linux for everything else). Hopefully Valve and the open source community will help resurrecting WMR headsets with compatibility through OpenXR and SteamVR. One can only hope.

[@icekuba]

Can you compare vision Pimax Crystal( local dimming off) vs Pico 4? I am wondering is Pimex has better contrast like VA (QLED) vs IPS paneles in TV

[@FalconLX911]

I hope you are getting the local dimming version and can provide the same on off videos when you receive your review unit

[@EndersVRcade]

Great footage! I think the Half Life Alyx example with the computer room raised a good point. It is going to be harder to see in dark environments but that you can choose what level of local dimming you want- and in real time from the Pimax software without having to restart anything.

[@SargonDragon]

My experience with it was put it on highlights mode and leave it. Worked well in all conditions, bright or dark. Whereas extreme mode I think is mostly for showing off how dark it can get. I didn't find it actually usable in most scenes, dark or light.

[@word2RG]

Thanks! 👍

[@FalconLX911]

I preordered the local dimming but I am waiting on your review

[@curtisspain8631]

What I would like to know is, how is aircraft spotting in combat situations like great battles?

[@dathyr1]

Well still deciding on which one I would possibly get. Want to see more video reviews with an actual Crystal Lite and with the lenses that they come with those units. It is nice that they have a Balanced setting for the Local Dimming feature. Seems full Local dimming even with full night scenes drop out allot of the detail. Is there any fine adjustments we can do with Local Dimming, or is it only just those 3 settings - None, Balanced, Full? So, it is still a wait and see final released Crystal lite products. I never buy anything on Day One because I buy devices to use, not to review and set on the shelf. Anyway, thanks for the video and take care.

[@mixedrealityTV]

You can also set the local dimming more granular with a setting file!

[@icekuba]

Thanks 👏

[@lolokikou5521]

what about the blooming (light bleeding) on crystal light ? i heard rumors blooming can be very bad on crystal headset local dimming.

[@REZZA2020]

True Blacks were a key strength of the HTC VIVE PRO's AMOLED panels. Great to see first efforts at Local Dimming. Hope Varjo consider this in next model of the AERO!

[@johnmann7o2]

What brightness was the non Local dimming? Can you compare 25%, 50%, 100%?

[@Cofaciano]

MRTV, how about the bloom effect that others that have the crystal mention when using local dimming? The extreme option has the worse bloom of all. Others say it can be fixed by altering the file profile.json, in the pimax runtime configuration. Have you tried that? Are you using that configuration on your videos? Thanks

[@mixedrealityTV]

I am not using that configuration in this video. Everything that you see here is vanilla.

[@SargonDragon]

It blooms badly if set to extreme. But I found just one level down it wasn't a problem anymore. No manually changing a file needed. I think people were changing this file manually before there were proper configuration options for it, and a bunch of them are just continuing to modify the file instead.

[@matinprsd]

Honestly it looks not so "Local" and more like "Global Dimming" in cases of dark scenes

[@tomtomkowski7653]

VR headsets that usually don't display static images should use OLEDs. OLEDs have downsides like general brightness and local dimming would be superior but screens need a couple of thousands of them and not a couple of hundred to work well.

[@FunLion]

Ok, now I'm definitely waiting for reviews. The local dimming looks bugged, doesn't it? All I'm seeing is a darker image with destroyed highlights, at least in dark scenes.

[@mixedrealityTV]

I also think that in Extreme setting the local dimming is just EXTREME and kills details as mentioned in the video. But there is also balanced mode.

[@SargonDragon]

I found the extreme mode pretty useless in actual use. I think it's there to show off how dark it can get in select scenes. Highlights or balanced modes actually work in a practical sense for both light and dark scenes. I actually wish this video had focused on extreme mode less and instead focused on one of the actually usable modes.

[@Eskoxo]

bro the amount of pimax videos you make mind as well rebrand to MRPImax at this point lol

[@mixedrealityTV]

I'd make just as many videos about other brands headsets when they excite me! And that's an exciting one that people want to know more about!

[@CHROME-COLOSSUS]

Epic intro. Wtf

[@angrybeaver6667]

I'm torn because I want the base $699 version to save money but if the controllers aren't very good I will need to get the lighthouse faceplate for $200 which makes it end up being $899 with no local dimming and 2 useless controllers laying around. But if I go for the $899 with lighthouse faceplate I can not sell my index controllers and base stations.

[@SargonDragon]

Index controllers are still better than inside-out tracked controllers. Especially on Pimax. If you're playing action games and especially FPS games, go with the Index controllers. Much of the Pimax customer base are flight simmers who barely need controllers at all, so inside-out tracked controllers are highly favored by them mostly because they're cheap and easy.

[@poolhallshark]

👍👍👍👍👍

[@batterynerd8779]

Better than nothing for sure. Still OLED is winner in VR headsets.

[@MrBreakthompson]

Local dimming just darkens the image. Not worth it, it seems.

[@weirdgiven]

I decided to cancel the pre-order after I watched this video. The local dimming looks terrible.

[@mixedrealityTV]

Actually it is not terrible. You can set it to different levels and make it your own. But glad I could help you make a more educated decision.