Pico 4 Ultra review
Let's address the Meta-shaped elephant in the room, The Pico 4 Ultra feels intentionally designed to combat the Meta Quest 3, which is currently the best VR headset right now. If you're looking for a reason to try out another headset or think a RAM boost or different headset fit will suit you better, the Pico 4 Ultra actually does a very good job at giving an alternative—provided you're in the UK and EU. For now, it's not available in the US.
At £529 for the 256 GB model, which is the only version you can currently buy, it's a little more expensive than the cheapest Quest 3, and a little less pricey than the highest-specced Quest 3. This places it pretty much in the same market and makes it a decent competitor out of the box. Both headsets came with a free game, with the former currently getting Blade and Sorcery: Nomad until February 2025, and the latter getting Asgard's Wrath 2 back when it was released.
Out of the box, the Pico 4 Ultra is a super smooth experience with the controllers feeling natural in the hands, and the glasses spacer snapping into place intuitively. This makes it incredibly easy to just pop it on, use the headset with glasses, and take it off again once you are done. I thought the relative speed at which I could put on that bracer might cause it to slip out during play but it never did. There's a Lego-esque effect to this that works well.
It does, unfortunately, lead to a small amount of light leakage—where the headset doesn't entirely wrap around your face—but this is an unfortunate expectation for glasses users. As well as this, with glasses on, it results in that dreaded pressure on the bridge of the nose. Once again, this doesn't seem hugely avoidable for VR headsets, but Pico isn't fixing a longstanding problem here and won't be the headset that changes your mind on VR.
Tracking: Inside-out tracking
Lens tech: Pancake lenses
Resolution: 2160×2160, 1200 PPI
Refresh Rate: 90 Hz
FOV: 105°
RAM: 12 GB LPDDR5
Storage: 256 GB
Chip: Snapdragon
