Pico 4 Review in a nutshell

Pico 4 Review in a nutshell

Many advantages of the Pico 4 only exist on paper. The higher resolution and the larger field of view are hardly noticeable in practice.

On the other hand, some kind of smearing or ghosting and reflections in areas with high contrast plague the image. The screen-door effect is clearly visible, partly because of some kind of "bubbles" or "holes" that appear quite irregularly in the pixel grid. The image generally appears quite dark with washed-out colors. God-rays, on the other hand, are mostly gone.

The smaller form factor and the significantly lower weight are positives. However, a suboptimal head strap design immediately negates any comfort gain from the lower weight.

Tracking and the new VR controllers work very well. The Pico Store grows very slowly, but Wi-Fi streaming and streaming via USB-C cable from Steam worked well enough for me - if there are no bugs like broken sound transmission.

If you trust your data with Bytedance more than Meta, if you can live with the risk of various bugs, and if you aren't concerned with the aforementioned problems, the Pico 4 is a viable alternative to the Quest 2.

Pico 4 is suitable for you if you ...

  • want a VR headset with a really light front end,
  • value a slightly higher resolution and field of view,
  • prefer improved edge-to-edge clarity,
  • want color passthrough,
  • like the new VR controllers with the new tracking arcs,
  • want decent-to-good VR streaming,
  • have a sensitive budget.

Pico 4 is less suitable for you if you ...

  • need an overall clear, clean, and smooth image,
  • clearly notice the irregular screen-door effect,
  • value a stable, comfortable headset fit,
  • need color passthrough for augmented reality,
  • value large native software offerings,
  • live in an area where Pico doesn't (yet) offer consumer support,
  • don't want to send data to China.

https://mixed-news.com/

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