October 6, 2026

The Pimax Crystal Pro is not a Steam Frame killer

That's honestly what a lot of people are starting to say online about the Crystal Pro, which Pimax just announced. After going through the price, the specs, and all the other little details that have been announced with it and doing some of my own napkin math around battery life, my answer is: they obviously did not. But some people might think so just from a single spec. Who knows! You might weigh things differently than I do! Let's talk about where it does edge out the Frame, and why it won't be a Frame killer.

I should also note that I have a Pimax Dream Air provided for my testing from Pimax and I'm an affiliate for them, however, they get no say for the content of this article, and these opinions are strictly my own.

Road to VR's headline says Pimax aims to take on the Steam Frame,[^1] and its article opens by saying just that:

Much like Steam Frame, Crystal Pro's major focus is on wireless PC VR streaming.

— Road to VR

That is the comparison they are making, and everyone is making it, so let's talk about it.

So what did Pimax actually announce? What are all the details, in case you were unaware?

The Crystal Pro is a $1,399 "standalone" headset shipping sometime next year. Right now, all you can do is reserve one with a non-refundable $1.[^2] EZ profit for them. It has a 2880 by 2880 QLED panel per eye with mini-LED local dimming zones, 576 of them per eye. They claim 110 degrees of field of view, with eye tracking and inside-out tracking, optional Lighthouse support, and an optional mixed reality faceplate. It runs off an external 16,000 mAh battery pack instead of a battery in the headset itself, and it ships with ringed controllers and a Wi-Fi 6E adapter.[^3]

Alongside it, Pimax announced a new set of ringless controllers and a 60 GHz wireless kit to further improve the Crystal Pro's PC VR streaming ability. And of course, they also announced a Steam Machine-style mini PC called the Spation, which has no price and no release date yet,[^4] probably because they're scared of the RAM market.

Even before you really dig into the specifications of this headset, the price is telling you this is not competing with the Steam Frame.

The Steam Frame comes in at $1,060 for 256 GB, or $1,299 for the 1 TB size,[^5] and it's shipping right now, albeit through their reservation queue,[^6] which still hasn't sent me my order email. Valve, please, please send me an order email. I'm begging you.

The Crystal Pro starts at $1,399, and to get the wireless experience that will actually match what the Frame does out of the box, you'll need the 60 GHz kit at an additional $599. That puts you at $1,899 before you even consider the new ringless controllers, which they haven't announced a price for yet, either.[^7] Now you might say, "But they include an adapter in the box, just like the Steam Frame." But it isn't just like the Steam Frame, because, from what I can tell in the announcement, the headset itself only has a single wireless antenna,[^8] and the Steam Frame comes with two wireless antennas. You have to buy the additional pack to get an additional antenna on the new Crystal Pro. I haven't seen any more details from Pimax on that, so if I missed something, I'm fine with being wrong.

But one of the sides of this discussion that is actually kind of surprising is that Pimax chose a chipset that will do the absolute bare minimum. I can't even consider it standalone myself.

The Crystal Pro is running the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1, which, if you remember, is the chip that came in the Quest 2.[^9] By my count, that's three generations old at this point, and I am not the first person to call it that. The newest generation is the chip that Meta is bringing in their upcoming VR glasses.[^10] The last generation, the Gen 2, came in the Quest 3,[^11] and two before that sits the Quest 2. That's ancient technology in the VR world. It's pretty old, guys. And you thought complaining about the Steam Frame and how old its chip is was worth doing.

The Steam Frame is on a last-generation phone chip,[^12] and a lot of people think that is weak. But compared to the Quest 3, it's actually a little bit more performant, up to 50% more. I think it's adequate for a standalone headset, albeit running only light titles. It is a choice that Valve made on purpose, and I've talked about that ad nauseam at this point.

The Pimax version is even weaker than that. It's on par with the Quest 2. I think Pimax saw how loud the reaction to the Frame's power was, and a lot of them started asking for a streaming-only headset with absolutely no standalone. Personally, my read is that Pimax saw that and did the absolute bare minimum to get a streaming-first headset out, skipping the benefits you get from a more powerful chipset like the Steam Frame has, like being able to run indie titles or do emulation on the headset itself.

Pimax and Road to VR both say it runs Android apps and mobile VR titles natively,[^13] but in my opinion, it is not built to be that way. If it were meant to be standalone, the hardware would obviously be much more powerful. Valve went with good. Pimax went with bare minimum. And we really do not have a truly great standalone headset, because, as I've said before, I don't think standalone is the future of VR, not without massive leaps forward in thermal management for bigger compute.

In their own presentation, Pimax called the Steam Frame "a true standalone device,"[^14] which is pretty funny, because it isn't one. Standalone is a side effect of how Valve built the Frame, not the point of it, and I've gone into that more in depth in a previous video and in my article on it.

Wireless streaming is the whole pitch

Recently I had the opportunity to try out a Steam Frame owned by my cousin. I used foveated streaming through the dedicated dongle, as well as, I think, my brother's home network. The foveated streaming looked really clean and beautiful, and I did not see any compression artifacts anywhere I was actually looking. I did notice them on the edge of my vision, but when motion started happening, they just went away into the background because where I was focusing was crystal clear.

I didn't really notice any latency or dropouts either, other than some strange things that Beat Saber itself was doing. I only tested that one game, so I can't really say whether it was the streaming itself or Beat Saber's interaction with it.

There was a little bit of what my brother liked to call "whip" to the sabers. The controllers tracked perfectly while moving, but once I stopped, there was a slight rubber banding, as if my wrist was made of stiff rubber for a moment. My brother called it "whippy," and I think that's a fairly accurate way to say it. It was a little negative as a first impression, but only in Beat Saber, and since the Frame runs Beat Saber standalone, it's a non-issue to me. So clearly, I think that a streaming-first headset is the right call, but I do appreciate that it has some standalone ability, even if I also think a dedicated standalone headset is a bad idea. As for Pimax and how they are implementing it, I have some issues as well.

The base Crystal Pro streams through Steam Link, which is Valve software, and the included Wi-Fi 6E adapter is basically the same thing that the Steam Frame ships with,[^15] except that Pimax has not confirmed if it's running 6 GHz or 5 GHz. If it's 5 GHz, it's dead on arrival. The Frame also has two radios built into the headset,[^16] so to match that with the Pimax, you need to get the $599 60 GHz kit. That kit is a two-antenna 60 GHz link that Pimax says does up to 6 gigabits per second with under two milliseconds of added latency. It also needs room antennas because 60 GHz will not go through walls.[^17]

I'll believe the numbers when I actually see some tests on them. Even if they are true, it is an outrageously expensive device for what it's actually doing, which is ultimately a fancy dedicated Wi-Fi adapter that the Steam Frame already came with, and that the cheaper Pimax one might come with as well. It seems like a cheap trick to try to one-up Valve with raw numbers, but the experience will end up being ultimately the same as the default Steam Frame.

The base Crystal Pro is going to be a worse experience than the Steam Frame, and the upgraded kit gets you to match it or make it even slightly better, at a price point that's a whole Quest 3. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Honestly, the controllers can end up being the best part, or at least an upgrade if you're in the Pimax ecosystem, if Pimax's software allows them to be.

The Crystal Pro comes with ringed controllers, and the ringed Pimax controllers that I have used had terrible tracking. I would put it at around the Quest 2's quality, or even a little worse. Honestly, it's adequate if you've never used anything else, but compared to modern tracking with the Steam Frame, the Quest 3, or even the Apple Vision Pro with its hand tracking, it's just not good enough. It's not cut out for it, so I'm not excited about that.

However, the ringless controllers are what I would be excited for, and I'm hoping they're on par with the Quest 3 or the Steam Frame. We've been hearing about them for a long time now. Pimax announced them at the end of 2024 and teased them again in 2025,[^14] and it's just the natural next step for VR controllers. Ringed controllers are basically limited to the PlayStation VR 2 now, and everyone else has moved on because you don't need rings when the tracking is good enough.

But that's the catch, because it comes down entirely to Pimax's software. In my experience, their software is LACKING and needs a ton of third-party modding and utilities to be good enough. And since Pimax puts constraints on it, or locks it down in such a way as to need their software too, it makes top-of-the-line tracking basically impossible.

Linux is part of the same story. Pimax has said Linux is on their roadmap,[^18] and in the announcement they said Pimax Play is coming to Linux as a dedicated client,[^14] which I'm glad to hear, but they gave no date, and I still think Linux support is going to be slow in coming. Until it arrives, they are not an open ecosystem, and that is not a great sign for the quality of their ringless controller tracking.

One thing I do love about the ringless controllers is that Pimax matched Valve's standard gamepad layout, with the D-pad on the left and A, B, X, and Y on the right.[^14] Awesome. Love it. Pimax said it revised the design after the Steam Frame controllers arrived to make sure they work with the SteamOS ecosystem, and that is a big deal, because it's one more company telling us Valve's controllers were the right choice. That layout works for flat games and VR without any extra mapping, and now a competitor is copying it, which is about the best validation a design can get.

However, on paper it does beat the Steam Frame, in some areas, but I don't think it'll hold up in practice.

The resolution is slightly higher.[^19] The mini-LED local dimming could be pretty good, and I'm really curious to try it. The option for Lighthouse tracking is pretty cool as well, but Pimax is trying to do too many things at once with this headset, supporting too many different software and hardware directions, and VR generations! and I think that does make it unlikely for the quality in those areas to match the Steam Frame, because the Steam Frame is opinionated in its design. It is aiming to be an all-rounder headset, yes, but it makes clear choices on design. This is trying to be an all-rounder as well as an all-generational headset, and that is going to end up holding it back. The Steam Frame, and I should really emphasize this point, does a lot of things really well because it takes an opinionated way to do it. Pimax is trying to include multi-generation support by involving Lighthouse tracking options and standalone options, different controller options. They're having to split their effort across so many different generational boundaries that it's very clear that not any single one is potentially going to be the best.

Then there's all the things that comes with buying a Pimax

The battery is a good example of this. A 16,000 mAh external pack is going to be a comfort issue and a cable issue. If it's close to an off-the-shelf pack that you can swap, that'll be great, but it's going to get unplugged by accident fairly often, and if Pimax attaches it with some kind of locking mechanism, that's going to bother people too.

The capacity itself is more reasonable than it sounds. Valve only rates the Steam Frame in watt-hours, 21.6 of them,[^20] which works out to about 5,800 milliamp hours at a standard 3.7 volts, so call it 6,000. At that same voltage, 16,000 milliamp hours is about 59 watt-hours, roughly 2.75 times the Frame's battery. Both of these are really streaming headsets, so that's the comparison that matters, and one reviewer tested the Frame streaming PC VR wirelessly at both ends of the settings. With brightness and refresh rate maxed out at 125% and 144 Hz, it lasted 1 hour 24 minutes, which is about 15 watts for the whole headset. Dropped to 88% brightness and 72 Hz, it lasted 1 hour 55 minutes, about 11 watts.[^21] That's a 4 watt swing from settings alone, and my guess is some of it is the chip and radio working less at 72 Hz rather than the panels by themselves.

If the Crystal Pro pulled the same 15 watts as the Frame at max settings, that pack would give you about 3 hours in the perfect world if you assume the same power draw, which you shouldn't, and after you take off 15 to 25 percent for the pack boosting its voltage to USB output, assuming it has to. But I clearly don't think the draw will be the same, because the displays are bigger. Each Crystal Pro panel is 2880 by 2880 against the Frame's 2160 by 2160,[^19] which is 8.3 million pixels per eye versus 4.7, about 1.8 times as many. Both are LCDs with a backlight doing most of the work, so power doesn't scale one-to-one with pixel count, and a couple of things should help Pimax: glass aspheric lenses waste less light than pancake lenses, and the Crystal Pro tops out at 120 Hz where the Frame goes to 144. Take the Frame's 15 watts at max, subtract my guess of 3 to 5 watts for the chip and 4 to 5 for the radios, cameras, eye tracking, and audio, and that leaves 5 or 6 watts for the panels, which at least fits with that 4 watt swing from the settings test. Call it roughly double for the Crystal Pro and you get 7 to 12 watts, up to 15 as the ceiling if Pimax is pushing the backlight hard. Pimax lists QLED, which is a quantum-dot LCD, and it confirmed a mini-LED backlight with 576 local dimming zones per eye.

Add in a chip that's mostly handling tracking and the link, plus the wireless gear, and I get the whole headset at around 13 to 21 watts when streaming at comparable settings. On roughly 47 usable watt-hours, that's about two and a quarter to three and a half hours, so somewhere between one and a half and two and a half times what the Frame manages at max settings. I wouldn't bet money on any of it, since I'm stacking my own estimates on top of each other, Pimax hasn't published anything, and I don't know what the optional 60 GHz radio pulls compared to the standard Wi-Fi radio or if they stack. The inputs are all public if you want to run your own numbers and tell me where I'm wrong.

So in normal use, the Frame lasts anywhere from an hour and a half to two and a half hours, and I assume the Crystal Pro will last barely two and a half to three and a half hours, despite a much larger battery, since its consumption is 30 to 50 percent higher. So a bit longer, but it consumes way more power to get there. Now, all this to say the drawback. The battery pack is probably getting close to 450g in weight, so, not only do you have a headset on your face, you're basically carrying a second one in your pocket.

And I find this is what it's like owning a Pimax. They seem to try to approach each problem backwards from how Valve does it. They look for the look, performance, and longevity they want, and just kinda slap things together to reach it, instead of delicately approaching each problem with precision.

Now, I know I'm coming across as hyper critical of a headset that hasn't even released yet, and I want to be fair about that. Everything I've said here is based purely on speculation and napkin math, working from what Pimax announced, and I haven't seen more details than that. If I missed something, I'm fine with being wrong. I'm also not the person you'd expect to be hard on this, given my relationship with Pimax as I mentioned earlier. If I can, I'll review it when it ships, and I'll happily tell you where I was wrong. But, I honestly am not a fan of the Crystal Pro as announced.

And that mainly comes down to another massive caveat you should know: the Pimax software is Windows only. The Pimax Dream Air is a decent headset, but it is fully wired with no Linux support, not even through Proton,[^22] which meant I had to install Windows just to review it.

Pimax shoots for the top of the line quality they can get, to a degree, but with so many tradeoffs, it's only worth it if it checks your specific boxes. Linux is now a mandatory box for me. That means Pimax headsets just don't work for me right now.

I'm also not surprised that Pimax is cheating off Valve's homework just a little bit with their mini PC announcement for the same day. Valve did something truly special with the Steam Machine, Frame and Controller, and I love seeing people copy it, especially if they support SteamOS and Linux. Pimax says the Frame reflects a conviction they've been working on in plain sight for more than five years,[^14] but I think this whole headset is 100% a reaction to the Frame, in spite of what they've said. As for Linux, Pimax says it's coming, but I think it's going to be slow in coming.

And honestly, I don't think this ships when they say it will

I really don't think we're going to see this for at least a year. Pimax has a history of missing their shipping windows, with one headset taking a few years longer than announced.[^23] With the way the market is right now, they might have announced their prices too early. If things don't cool off by the time they want to launch, they're either going to cut something from the headset to hit next year, or, and I think this is more likely, they're going to push it back a la Valve.

So no, this is not the Steam Frame killer

This is going to be for fans of Pimax headsets, not necessarily fans of VR. The one thing that could change my mind is Linux support, with the headset being truly open just like the Steam Frame. Pimax says that's coming, but I think it will be a while. The displays could be top of the line and it wouldn't matter if the system is closed to me. Without that, this can't even be considered a Steam Frame competitor, let alone a Frame killer.

What Valve has really done is prove that every headset from here on out has to have eye tracking, and Meta's new VR glasses deserve some recognition for that, too.[^24] I'm incredibly excited that it's becoming standard because eye tracking's cheap to produce, since the expensive part is the software, and most of that is a one-time upfront investment plus maintenance. Also, Valve's implementation of foveated streaming, that innovation is incredibly fantastic, and I think it is a game changer for the industry. I absolutely love other manufacturers picking it up so quickly.

Sources

[^1]: Road to VR (Scott Hayden), October 6, 2026, Pimax Aims to Take on Steam Frame with New 'Crystal Pro' Headset, Priced at $1,400. The article that frames the Crystal Pro as Pimax's answer to the Steam Frame. That framing is the comparison everyone is making, so it's the one I'm testing here. [^2]: Road to VR, October 6, 2026, same article. $1,399 for the headset, shipping "sometime next year," with reservations open for a non-refundable $1 fee. [^3]: Road to VR, October 6, 2026, same article. Full Crystal Pro spec list: 2,880 x 2,880 QLED panels per eye with mini-LED local dimming, 110° horizontal field of view, eye tracking, inside-out tracking with optional Lighthouse support and an optional mixed reality faceplate, a 16,000mAh external battery pack, two ringed controllers, and a Wi-Fi 6E adapter. Pimax's presentation confirms the mini-LED backlight with 576 local dimming zones per eye. I'm going off the announcement, not a hands-on. [^4]: Road to VR, October 6, 2026, same article; Pimax Spation product page. The Ringless VR Controllers, the 60G AirLink kit, and the Spation mini-PC (Ryzen 7 9800X3D class, RX 9070 XT or RTX 5070 Ti) were announced alongside the headset. The Spation has no price or date, and my guess is the RAM market is why. [^5]: vr.org (Steam Frame tracker), last updated September 23, 2026, Steam Frame. Steam Frame launched September 14, 2026 at $1,059 for the 256GB kit and $1,299 for the 1TB kit, both with controllers and a Wi-Fi 6E adapter included. I rounded the 256GB price in the text. [^6]: Digital Citizen, September 2026, Steam Frame Purchase Emails Began September 18. Valve sells the Frame through a reservation queue, with purchase emails going out as units become available. I'm still waiting on mine. [^7]: Road to VR, October 6, 2026, same article; Techtroduce (Abyan Khan), October 7, 2026, Pimax Crystal Pro Brings 60GHz Wireless PC VR for $1,399. The third-gen 60G AirLink kit is $599, the headset plus kit bundle is $1,899, and pricing and release timing for the Ringless controllers have not been finalized. [^8]: Pimax Crystal Pro product page, accessed October 6, 2026, pimax.com/product/crystal-pro. Pimax says the headset "ships with a dedicated Wi-Fi adapter," and publishes no antenna count for the headset itself. If I missed a detail, I'm fine with being wrong. [^9]: Road to VR, October 6, 2026, same article; Mixed News, Qualcomm XR2. The Crystal Pro uses a Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1, listed as the same chip as the Quest 2. Qualcomm introduced it in December 2019, and the Quest 2 launched with it in October 2020. By my count that's ancient for a headset announced in 2026. [^10]: SiliconANGLE, June 16, 2026, Snapdragon Reality Elite; Hypebeast (Joyce Li), September 23, 2026, Meta Connect 2026. Qualcomm's Snapdragon Reality Elite is its new premium XR chip, and Meta's upcoming VR glasses use it. That's the newest generation in my count. [^11]: Laptop Mag, 2023, Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chip. The Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 powers the Meta Quest 3, the middle of the three generations I'm counting. [^12]: UploadVR (David Heaney), November 12, 2025, Steam Frame announcement. Steam Frame uses a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, a mobile chip that launched in 2023, so demanding titles stream from a PC. I think that's adequate and a choice Valve made on purpose. [^13]: Road to VR, October 6, 2026, same article. The article says the Crystal Pro "runs both OpenXR mobile VR titles and Android applications natively." In my opinion the hardware isn't built for it. [^14]: Pimax, October 6, 2026, Crystal Pro, Ringless Controllers & Spation | Frontier 2026. Pimax's own launch presentation. They say Pimax Play is coming to Linux as a dedicated client, with no date given, and I think it's going to be slow in coming. The Ringless controllers were announced at the end of 2024 and teased in 2025, and the design was revised after the Steam Frame controllers arrived, with a D-pad on the left and four buttons on the right to match Valve's gamepad layout. They also call the Frame "a true standalone device" and say the Frame reflects a conviction they've been working on for more than five years. [^15]: Pimax Crystal Pro product page, accessed October 6, 2026, pimax.com/product/crystal-pro; vr.org, last updated September 23, 2026, Steam Frame specs. Pimax lists "Compatible with Steam Link 2.0," and the Steam Frame ships with a 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E USB adapter. Pimax hasn't confirmed which band its adapter uses, and if it's 5GHz, it's dead on arrival. [^16]: vr.org, last updated September 23, 2026, Steam Frame specs. The Frame's headset has Wi-Fi 7 (2x2) with dual radios, one for the stream and one for the network. [^17]: Pimax Crystal Pro product page, accessed October 6, 2026, pimax.com/product/crystal-pro; Pimax press release (PRNewswire), October 6, 2026, Pimax Unveils Crystal Pro. Pimax's claim is up to 6Gbps with under 2ms of added latency from a two-room-antenna 60GHz link that "doesn't pass through walls." I'll believe the numbers when I see independent tests. [^18]: Pimax Play Roadmap, September 19, 2025, pimax.com/blogs/blogs/pimax-play-roadmap; Pimax Official (QuorraPimax), January 8, 2026, r/Pimax. The roadmap lists "Linux Support" with no date, and Pimax staff have said it's on the 2026 roadmap with no guaranteed timeline. Linux support still hasn't shipped, and I think it's going to be slow in coming. [^19]: Road to VR, October 6, 2026, same article; VR Expert, crawled October 6, 2026, Steam Frame specs. Crystal Pro panels are 2,880 x 2,880 per eye at 72 / 90 / 120Hz, and the Steam Frame's are 2,160 x 2,160 at 72 to 144Hz. [^20]: PC Guide, crawled October 6, 2026, Steam Frame release date, specs, and price. The Steam Frame has a built-in 21.6Wh Li-ion battery, which I converted to milliamp hours at 3.7V. [^21]: NoobFeed (Nahe Yan), September 23, 2026, Steam Frame PCVR Streaming Test Reveals Battery Life at 72hz. Wireless PC VR streaming on the Frame lasted 1 hour 24 minutes at max settings (125% brightness, 144Hz) and 1 hour 55 minutes at 88% brightness and 72Hz. The 15W and 11W figures are my own math from those runtimes and Valve's 21.6Wh rating, not measured wattage. [^22]: Pimax Downloads, August 6, 2026, pimax.com/support/downloads; Linux VR Adventures Wiki, crawled August 23, 2026, hardware table. Pimax Play v2.0.3 is Windows 10 / 11 only, and the wiki marks the Dream Air as "Borked" on Linux. That's why I had to install Windows to review it. [^23]: Road to VR, April 15, 2024, Pimax Crystal 12K Reality delay. The Pimax Reality "12K" QLED was announced in October 2021 with a Q4 2022 target and still wasn't shipping in April 2024. [^24]: vr.org, September 2026, Meta VR Glasses. Meta's VR glasses include eye tracking built in.