The meta could be turn your back on VR to prioritize smart glassesbut if Pimax is any indication, headsets are about to be more breathtaking than they’ve ever been.
HAS CES 2026I had the chance to try Pimax’s dream tunean incredibly lightweight wired PC VR headset that weighs just 170 grams (7 grams less than my iPhone17). In addition to this impressive weight (or lack thereof), the Dream Air still manages to integrate a screen with 8K resolution. This all seems almost too good to be true, doesn’t it? I thought the same thing, until I put the headset on.
Pimax’s Dream Air really is as good as it gets in the PC VR world. During a demonstration, I strapped the headset to my face and started riding a Blade Runner-esque ship in Low-Fia cyberpunk RPG designed for VR. Did I immediately feel nauseous? Yes of course. Did I still want to continue playing? And yes. I’m not kidding when I say that the clarity and smoothness of this headset’s display was arguably the most impressive I’ve seen in VR to date.
Indeed, the Dream Air’s micro OLED display is no joke, offering a resolution of 3,840 × 3,552 pixels per eye. This is a striking comparison with the Quest 3 and its 2,064 x 2,208 pixel-per-eye LCD screen, although that comparison, in Meta’s defense, is a bit unfair.
The Dream Air is PC VR, which means it relies entirely on a connected PC to do all the computing – in my case, a high-end gaming laptop with an Nvidia 50 series GPU. This offloading of the computing experience and reliance on cables gives the Dream Air many advantages. For one, the Dream Air doesn’t use a battery, which significantly reduces weight. There is also no need to install a computer inside the helmet, which again significantly reduces weight.
It’s not just the computer and battery drain that makes the Dream Air so light; it is the choice of the objective. Unlike other headsets with pancake lenses, which are flat, the Dream Air uses concave lenses (similar to VisionPro). This allows the screen inside the headset to move closer to the user’s eyes and reduces the thickness and weight of the headset. What’s even more impressive on this front is that the Dream Air manages to offer an even higher field of view than the Vision Pro with this concave lens design, offering 110 degrees compared to 100 degrees for the Vision Pro.
The result of these choices is a much less weighty experience than other mic OLED headsets like the Apple Vision Pro, which is an absolute unit weighing around 600g to 650g. I was only able to use the Dream Air for a few minutes, but I could see myself using the headset for a lot of time, much longer, which is more than I could say for the Vision Pro or even Meta’s Quest 3, which weighs less than the Vision Pro at 515g.
Although the Dream Air seemed like a very real future in my demo, it’s worth noting that the headset has experienced significant delays since its announcement last December and recently began shipping. ship in small batches. It’s disappointing, of course, but I imagine making a headset this light and with a screen this nice is quite complex and expensive, so I can’t say I’m surprised.
As you might have already guessed, nothing in the Dream Air will be cheap. The Dream Air starts at $2,000 (still cheaper than the Vision Pro), although there is a Dream Air SE that can be pre-ordered now for $900 and is expected to ship in February. The SE version has a lower resolution screen and a smaller field of view, hence this price reduction.
Delay or not, the Dream Air has definitely given me back my love for virtual reality, and while I’ve never been a big fan of wired headsets, there’s definitely a lot to be excited about in space.
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