u/Silly_Rub_6304

I got the Pimax Crystal Super a little less than a year ago and recently got the Lighthouse Faceplate so I could use outside-in tracking. It's such a sharp and clear headset, but it's just huge and heavy. Then, it broke due to a design defect.

Pimax replaced it under warranty, but while they were shipping it, I decided to take the plunge on the BSB2e since I'd been eyeballing it for a while.

I play a mix of games, including MSFS, some casual racing, and FPS/arcade/exercise-type games. Previous HMDs owned include: Vive, Oculus Quest, Quest 2, Apple Vision Pro (24 hours of ownership before returning) and the Valve Index (only tested briefly since I bought a whole kit used just for the controllers and trackers).

Knowing that I was getting into a headset with less resolution and more glare than the Pimax, I took the plunge anyway on the BSB2e. Super glad that I did, too.

First impressions overall: wow, this is so comfortable. The wearing experience puts ZERO strain on my neck and face. Literally every other HMD I've ever worn has caused me neck soreness after about 45 minutes. All those people that talk about playing for 5+ hours straight in VR? I knew I'd never tolerate that. And now I know I probably could.

The custom face cushion is honestly incredible. I can feel a little sweat, but the fan works well and I never end up wet around the face after I take it off. Best of all, I don't have a giant ring around my face afterward. The light seal is 100% perfect. As a side note, as someone who has done some tinkering with face scanning and 3D printing in soft materials, what they're doing is nothing short of incredible with their manufacturing process. I don't know what material or process they're using, but it's cutting edge and does the job perfectly.

As for the viewing experience, it is great. The tracking is super responsive and I feel like it's better than anything else I've used only because the inertia and mass are so low and there is no lag from it switching directions when you move your head around. There's definitely some glare, but I honestly only notice it in the menus. Having pure blacks with OLED is very, very nice. The Crystal Super is the QLED version, so I've never gotten to experience an OLED HMD before this. I like it.

Downsides? The brightness and color fidelity are not the best, honestly. There's a bit of persistence when I look left or right at high speeds during flight sim. Color is a bit muddy compared to others. Lastly, the eye tracking feels like an afterthought. It didn't work with any degree of accuracy after the first training, but I'll have to try again. Being that I have a 5090 and don't really use VR Chat, I do not need foveated rendering like I did for the higher resolution of the Crystal Super.

Software experience: Top-notch. As a native Steam VR headset, there is very little to muck around with outside of Steam. Contrast that against Pimax and their absolute flaming dumpster fire software suite where it always seems to be competing against Steam VR. I've never had such a seamless PCVR experience as I have with the BSB2e.

Lastly, I printed some Apple Vision Pro Solo Knit Band adapters out of ASA this morning and rolled over to the Apple Store earlier and picked up said band. It was a breeze to install and is legendary levels of comfort with the BSB2e. Only 219g for the whole kit: https://ibb.co/kgFtmt4p, https://ibb.co/6RqhLqXm

Overall VR experience is a solid 9/10 whereas I'd rate the Pimax a 7.5 at best despite it being better on paper in a lot of ways. There's a good chance I'll sell the Pimax, but am not sure yet since I may want it for super-high-fidelity things.

I will buy the next iteration of the BSB if it improves in 2 of the 3 areas: glare, color rendition and brightness, or wireless connectivity.

Every claim below comes from public records: government audits, court filings, congressional letters, investigative journalism, and Flock's own statements. The findings are grouped by evidentiary strength. Part I is statements later contradicted by primary records or retracted by the company itself. Part II is capability claims contradicted by technical evidence (Flock disputes these). Parts III and IV cover unsupported marketing claims and conduct findings. Part V summarizes Flock's side.

Part I: Statements contradicted by primary records or retracted

1. "Our system does not create a heat map of a vehicle's movements" (Oshkosh, WI, April 2026)

At an April 2026 Oshkosh City Council meeting, Flock's chief information security officer told councilmembers that the system did not create a pattern or heat map of an individual's movement through vehicle tracking. The council approved a Flock contract that night, learned the next morning that the statement was false, and rescinded its approval the following day, the shortest interval between approval and cancellation of any Flock contract on record. Flock subsequently admitted that its system does produce a heat map showing where a vehicle has been photographed over a period of up to a month, characterized the falsehood as a small misconception and a minor nuance, and criticized the city for revoking the contract.

Sources: ACLU, WBAY-TV, The Northwestern

2. "Flock has no federal contracts"

After Loveland, Colorado's police chief raised concerns about federal agents accessing the town's plate data, Flock told the chief that federal agencies no longer had access, and CEO Garrett Langley told the press that federal data sharing was a non-issue because Flock held no federal contracts. The company was later forced to admit pilot contracts with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations that gave those agencies direct access to plate data; Langley conceded that some public statements "inadvertently provided inaccurate information." Senator Ron Wyden's investigation found that additional federal agencies, including the Secret Service and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, also had access, and his October 2025 letter states plainly that Flock deceived its law enforcement customers about DHS access. Flock's own website now publishes a timeline of concluded federal pilots with the FBI, National Park Service, NCIS, HSI, and CBP.

Sources: ACLU, 9News, NPR, NBC Chicago, Wyden letter (PDF), Flock's pilot timeline

3. The "Does Flock Share Data With ICE? No." blog

In May 2025, 404 Media's review of search logs showed that local police had run more than 4,000 lookups on behalf of federal authorities for immigration purposes, giving ICE side-door access to a system it had no contract for. Flock responded with a blog post titled "Does Flock Share Data With ICE? No. Flock Does Not Work With ICE," asserting that ICE lacked direct access to Flock cameras, systems, or data. The ACLU's assessment is that Flock knew ICE had indirect access through the company's state and local customers, and that the blog addressed direct access when the concern had always been any access, creating a false sense of security. University of Washington researchers later documented front-door, back-door, and side-door federal access to Flock data in Washington state, including Border Patrol access to data from agencies that never authorized sharing with CBP. The CEO ultimately acknowledged the system was used for immigration enforcement.

Sources: 404 Media, Flock blog, ACLU, UW Center for Human Rights

4. "Customers own and control 100 percent of their data"

An August 2025 audit by the Illinois Secretary of State found that Flock lacked proper data-sharing safeguards and had allowed CBP to access Illinois license plate data in violation of state law; per the Secretary's office, Flock claimed its own leadership had been unaware of the CBP pilot program. Evanston and Oak Park terminated their contracts in response, with Evanston calling the findings deeply troubling. Mountain View, California separately announced that federal agencies accessed its Flock databases in 2024 because Flock enabled a nationwide search setting without the city's consent or knowledge. In Illinois, a Palos Heights detective shared his Flock login with a DEA agent, who used it to run unauthorized immigration-related searches against Oak Park's data.

Sources: Illinois Secretary of State, Capitol News Illinois, ABC7 Chicago, Wednesday Journal, M-A Chronicle (Mountain View)

5. "She was never under criminal investigation... searched for as a missing person" (Johnson County, TX)

In May 2025, 404 Media reported that the Johnson County Sheriff's Office searched more than 83,000 Flock cameras nationwide with the logged reason "had an abortion, search for female." Flock stated the woman was never under criminal investigation and was a missing person, called the reporting unequivocally false and clickbait, and accused journalists and advocates of intentionally misrepresenting the facts. Court records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation later showed that deputies had opened a death investigation into the nonviable fetus, collected evidence of the abortion including text messages and the medication packaging, and consulted the district attorney about charging the woman on the same day the Flock search ran. The abortion had occurred two weeks before deputies were called, undermining the claim of an emergency welfare check, and the responding investigator's affidavit documents no blood at the scene.

Sources: 404 Media (May 2025), EFF, 404 Media (Oct 2025), The Record

6. "Our Proactive Search Term Tool blocks impermissible searches in real time"

After the Texas case, Flock announced compliance tooling it said would automatically exclude protected state data whenever search terms indicated an impermissible purpose under state law, significantly reducing the risk of abuse. The ACLU of Massachusetts found that officers routinely enter vague reasons such as "investigation" or "susp" that pass through the filter. In September 2025 a single Oregon police department ran 111 searches with the reason "investigation" and 20 with the reason "hehehe," all of which the system processed. Senator Wyden, who had announced a filtering agreement with Flock in July 2025, concluded after further oversight that the filters are easy to circumvent, provide no meaningful privacy protection, and that the agreement amounted to nothing.

Sources: ACLU, ACLU of Massachusetts, Register-Guard, Wyden press release

7. "Every search requires a stated reason and is preserved for oversight"

Flock's public position is that mandatory search reasons and permanent audit trails provide accountability. The company confirmed to Wyden's office that it does not require case-specific reasons, that any text can be entered in the reason field, and that it does not proactively audit how customers use the system; a Flock spokesperson likewise confirmed the company conducts no proactive or random audits. EFF found that within a six-month dataset of 11.4 million nationwide Flock searches, more than 14 percent listed only the word "investigation" as the reason. A review of Spokane County Sheriff's Office logs found more than 289,000 searches with no case number attached, none compliant with the agency's own policy, all processed by the system anyway. Wyden's conclusion was that "abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable."

Sources: Wyden letter (PDF), ACLU on audit logs, Oregon Capital Chronicle, RANGE Media

8. "Flock partnered with the ACLU"

In early 2026, Flock's Senior Director of Public Affairs posted on LinkedIn that Flock had partnered with the ACLU of New Mexico to craft and pass state ALPR legislation. At a 2021 Urbana, Illinois city council meeting, the company told members that Flock had worked with groups like the ACLU to design an ALPR system reflecting their concerns. The ACLU states that neither the national organization nor any affiliate has ever partnered with Flock or helped design any ALPR system.

Sources: ACLU

Part II: Capability claims contradicted by evidence (Flock disputes these)

9. "Flock cameras do not collect personally identifiable information; the system reads vehicles, not people"

Internal presentation slides, Slack messages, and meeting audio obtained by 404 Media in 2025 showed Flock building Nova, a product designed to let police jump from a license plate read to a person and that person's associates using people-lookup services, data brokers, and breached datasets, with roughly 20 toggleable data sources. The ACLU argues Nova makes explicit that the long-running no-PII claim was inaccurate, since plates resolve to registered owners through DMV records. Separately, researchers found that Flock's Condor pan-tilt-zoom cameras automatically zoom in on people's faces and store images of anyone who walks past, and that at least 60 production Condor units were exposed to the open internet with live footage viewable and no authentication required.

Sources: 404 Media, Tech Times, SimeonOnSecurity

10. "Flock Nova will not supply dark web data"

After the Nova reporting, Flock published a rebuttal titled "Correcting the Record," insisting the product does not ingest, process, or supply dark web or breach data. An independent analysis of the Nova codebase found a built-out Dark Data interface with dedicated search tabs for Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, crypto wallets, IP addresses, and Telegram and Discord handles, invoked automatically during standard phone searches when a permission flag is present. IPVM reported that it independently confirmed the use of leaked data through a separate source. In late May 2025, Flock announced it would stop using dark web and leaked data, linking to the reporting it had disputed.

Sources: 404 Media, Nexanet code analysis, IPVM

11. "These vulnerabilities require physical access and affect only devices not connected to the cloud"

When researchers Benn Jordan and Jon Gaines disclosed dozens of vulnerabilities in Flock hardware in late 2025, including single-button root access over Wi-Fi, Flock responded that exploitation required physical access and intimate knowledge, comparing affected units to phones stolen before activation. Researchers then reproduced the flaws on cloud-connected production cameras across multiple models. The affected devices run Android Things 8, an operating system unsupported since January 2021. Congressional oversight added that Flock does not require multi-factor authentication for law enforcement accounts, that at least 35 sets of stolen Flock credentials circulated on hacking forums, and that federal agents used other users' passwords without detection; Senator Wyden and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi asked the FTC to investigate in November 2025.

Sources: SimeonOnSecurity, Rep. Krishnamoorthi press release, Biometric Update, Tech Times

Part III: Marketing and efficacy claims found unsupported

12. "Communities operating on Flock reduce crime by up to 70 percent"

The figure traces to San Marino, California, where a five-month drop in residential burglaries followed camera installation in 2020. Forbes found that burglaries were 5 percent higher three years after installation than in the year before it, that serious Part 1 crime was essentially flat, and that the town's own police chief acknowledged the 70 percent claim was inaccurate while it remained on Flock's website. An independent researcher who studies license plate reader efficacy described Flock's use of selective time windows as "Exhibit A of lying with statistics."

Sources: Forbes

13. "Dayton's Twin Towers neighborhood experienced lower crime rates by 43 percent"

Flock's marketing attributed a 43 percent crime decline to its cameras using a comparison window spanning 2018 to 2020. The cameras were installed in March 2020, so at most they overlap with the 28 percent single-year decline from 2019 to 2020; the larger figure captures a period before any Flock hardware existed in the neighborhood.

Sources: Forbes

14. "Flock is instrumental in solving 10 percent of reported crime in the United States"

The statistic comes from a study written by Flock employees with two academics attached for oversight. One of them, criminologist Johnny Nhan of Texas Christian University, later told 404 Media he personally would have done things much differently and that the police data underlying the work was too varied and incomplete for meaningful analysis; he redirected his future research as a result. No outside organization has verified the figure, which Flock has repeated in shifting forms, including claims of solving roughly 2,200 crimes per day.

Sources: 404 Media, Forbes

15. Advertised read accuracy

In a 2021 evaluation, the independent testing firm IPVM measured an error rate of roughly 10 percent in Flock's Falcon camera. Flock disputed the findings and halted sales to IPVM rather than commissioning an independent retest. Misreads have contributed to documented wrongful stops and arrests in multiple jurisdictions.

Sources: Tech Times

Part IV: Conduct findings relevant to credibility

16. Unpermitted installations in at least five states

A 2024 Forbes investigation based on public records and interviews with former employees found that Flock repeatedly installed cameras on public rights-of-way without required permits in at least five states; unpermitted installation on state infrastructure is a crime in Florida, Illinois, and South Carolina. South Carolina's transportation department found more than 200 unpermitted Flock cameras and imposed a statewide moratorium on new installations. A North Carolina court enjoined new installs after the state alleged Flock operated without a required license, and Florida's DOT demanded removal of an unpermitted camera that stayed up for months. A Flock representative told an Illinois DOT official that 30 police chiefs would be sent to the official's office if permit applications were not fast-tracked.

Sources: Forbes

Part V: Flock's side, for fairness

Flock disputes several of the characterizations above. The company maintains that it has no contracts with ICE, that customers own and control their data, and that any federal access must be granted locally and lawfully. It states that it paused all federal pilot projects in August 2025 and has since shipped remediation, including mandatory NIBRS-based offense codes on every search (December 2025), a single administrative toggle that disables all federal sharing (January 2026), and login disclaimers referencing state immigration and reproductive-care laws (February 2026). Its chief legal officer has argued that abuses have been rare and were exposed precisely because of the audit transparency that critics call inadequate. In June 2026, Flock engaged the security firm Bishop Fox for a cybersecurity assessment, without committing to publish the findings. On the Texas case, Flock continues to describe the search as a missing-person matter and the contrary reporting as false. Note the pattern in Parts I and II when weighing these responses: several of the remediations exist because an earlier assurance failed publicly first.

Sources: Flock blog, Oregon Capital Chronicle, ABC7 Chicago, Tech Times