After trying it out, I’m ready to strap on the motion trackers and take a punt on the compelling new Pico 4 Ultra.
A Picture of Pico
The best VR headset you probably haven’t heard of is coming to European shores. At a launch event in London, Pico announced that the Pico 4 Ultra is coming to stores around the world on 20 September 2024 for £529 / €599 or local equivalent. Building on the success of the Pico 4 VR headset, this new launch includes all the best features of earlier models, with some compelling upgrades.
Between the chaos of Gamescom and the London commute, we’ve had a chance to take a look at the Pico 4 Ultra. Already available in China, this offering will bring the latest Mixed Reality tech to consumers, and Pico hopes that it will soon be strapped to eyeballs around Europe.
For those who haven’t heard of Pico, this VR company is an interesting alternative to the likes of Meta and HTC. Spinning out of TikTok owners ByteDance, the company first brought a VR headset to market over the years, but really managed to break out of its local niche with the launch of the Pico 4 in 2022.
The Pico 4 Ultra brings more than just wire free VR gaming to consumers but it’s no surprise that it looks a lot like its predecessor. The clean lines and curved front panel that are prominent in my own Pico 4 are still present. This time, the opaque black front panel plays host to a pair of new full color pass through cameras, with a total resolution of 32 MP. There’s also a depth sensor hidden behind this façade, and 4 environmental tracking cameras too. The unique shape and mix of shades differentiate this headset from the bulbous oval frontage of other contemporaries and sits closer to the Apple Vision pro in terms of aesthetics. This isn’t several thousand dollars of chrome and glass. Instead, it’s a pleasing mix of form and function that understands that it’s pleasing to wear pleasing looking things.
Moving away from the front facing camera and other technical bits, the returning design features continue. For anybody who didn’t grab the last headset in this range, a wraparound plastic enclosure wraps around the head, and comes together at the battery.
Once again, the form of this headset draws on the best of the Pico 4, although you might be more inclined to compare its ass end to the PSVR2. Attached here is 276g of battery power, with ample padding and a twist to tighten dial. With 304g on the front of this hardware, that makes the Pico 4 Ultra almost perfectly balanced, give or take a British portion of crisps (potato chips).
Technical Specifications
Processor & Storage: Snapdragon®️ XR2 Gen 2
Memory and Storage: 12 GB + 256 GB
Wireless : Wi-Fi 7 (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax/be)*
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 5.3
Cameras: 32 MP color passthrough camera ×2
iToF depth-sensing camera ×1
Environment tracking camera ×4
Display & Optics:
Resolution: 2160 × 2160 (× 2), 1200 PPI (pixels per inch)
Rendering resolution: 1920 × 1920 (× 2)
Refresh rate: 90 Hz
Pancake lenses
105° FoV
20.6 PPD (pixels per degree)
Audio: Dual speakers
Microphones: 4 microphones and supports spatial audio recording
Headset Battery: 5700 mAh rated capacity, 5774 mAh typical capacity
Controller: AA batteries ×2
Just looking at he Pico 4 Ultra, it’s clear that a lot of design decisions overlap from the Pico 4. That’s certainly no bad thing. It’s easily more comfortable than Meta branded models, despite actually being heavier overall. Pulling on the Pico 4 Ultra for a Gamescom test run, I could still feel the same core construction and reassuring grip that that continue to keep big blue’s offering off my desktop most days.
What’s New!
While the best bits, from the balanced design to the pancake lenses remain, the Pic 4 Ultra makes some upgrades. There’s more power under the hood, with a Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 aligning it with the obvious competition, and a good amount of memory and storage at around 12 GB and 256 GB LPDDR5 respectively. The inclusion of Wi-Fi 7 means it should blaze away all day, whether you’re streaming content, opening multiple windows for productivity, or streaming your VR games directly into your eyeballs.
When we got in to play for a few rounds, the Pico 4 Ultra did manage to feel genuinely responsive. That might be down to the Wi-Fi 7 systems, the new controllers, the 90Hz refresh rate, or the silicon brains of the thing, but we do know that going fast isn’t the only trick it’s got waiting.
Outside In
The Pico 4 Ultra really starts to identify itself from the rest of the market when we got connected to the brand-new Pico Motion Trackers. Looking like a pair of tiny detachable discs with a grey fabric strap, these new trackers take just a few moments to setup. They were wrapped around my legs and then the setup screen invited me to peer down at my virtual legs. Combined with the controllers or hand tracking, and a level of environmental awareness thanks to the new cameras, this setup suddenly brings you fully into the virtual realm. It ditches the base stations that you might expect and incorporates a mind blowing breathed of sensors to fully map and track the motion of human movement. Accelerometers, gyroscope, geomagnetic sensors, and active infrared sensors al all crammed into a tiny disc that measures barely 38.5mm in diameter and is tweaked with hundreds of hours of test data to understand how us meat sacks move.
The result is a set of strap ons that allows for full body tracking in a VRChat and more. This time we tried out a rhythm game that uses hands and feet. It mostly ends up with me screaming forward into the wall in front of me for the first few minutes, but it’s also kind of inspiring to see a simple set of trackers flip a traditionally cumbersome interaction become nuanced enough to use all four appendages. It’s going to be interesting to see where developers take this new hardware, and how long until you see this on a VTuber near you soon.
If bringing the player right into the action wasn’t quite enough then how about bringing the real world into VR. Mixed Reality isn’t a new idea but it’s difficult to achieve at the Pico price point. Somehow, however, the two passthrough cameras and positional trackers manage impressively. The 32MP cameras can render the outside world in 8MP images and 20.6 PPD. Thanks to edge distortion tweaking and a bunch of technical bits, the result is surprisingly clear color pass through. Combine this with the depth sensor and a proprietary environment perception algorithm, and you’ve got the potential for a headset that brings the outside world into your online reality. It’s an impressive idea, and one that warranted a technical demonstration. Cue me throwing virtual balls at the booth around me and watching as it ricocheted a virtually mapped room while labelling the relevant objects in the room. It isn’t perfect. Somebody ended up turning into a table, but it probably shouldn’t be possible at the £529 / €599 range.
Granted, this was a limited run through, so we couldn’t test the battery life, play with the spatial video, or conduct a full review of what’s coming. What I do know is that base stations are not for me and my limited space. I know that I haven’t ever loved the unbalanced aesthetic of the Quest, and the Pico 4 Ultra has a chance to carve out a niche that breaks out beyond the stoic realm of existing headsets. Cutting the cords, bringing the body into the virtual realm, and adding impressive Mixed Reality gives The Pico 4 Ultra plenty of potential.
Sold
The Pico 4 Ultra is set to hit shelves on 20 September 2024 across Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Austria , Switzerland, UK, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden via major online retailers and websites. Anybody looking to pick it up early across Europe will be able to nab a bundle featuring the Pico 4 Ultra, a free set of PICO Motion Trackers, and four games included: Blade & Sorcery, Nomad, Infinite Inside, Let’s Get Fit VR and FootPool. Whether you throw money at the screen is entirely your call. However, after trying out all the hardware coming from Pico, I’m very intrigued how full body motion tracking breaks free from the tyranny of base station budgets and takes the Meta to task. You can find out more about the Pico 4 Ultra on the official website now.
