Today Pico 4 was officially announced with some really impressive specifications and features. Here’s how it compares to Meta’s Quest 2, at least on paper:
| mission 2 | Peak 4 | |
| Release | October 2020 | October 2022 |
| visor weight | 470 grams | 295 grams |
| screen per eye | 1832 × 1920 LCD | 2160 × 2160 LCD |
| Max update rate | 120Hz | 90Hz |
| lens type | fresnel | Pancake |
| lens separation | 3 stages (58mm / 63mm / 68mm) | Granular 62mm-72mm |
| Chip | Snapdragon XR2 | Snapdragon XR2 |
| RAM | 6GB | 8GB |
| Pass through | Low Resolution Grayscale | high resolution color |
| charging | 15W | 20W |
| Price and Storage | €449 (128GB) €549 (256GB) |
€429 (128GB) €499 (256GB) |
Of course, the paper spec sheets don’t tell the whole story: we have peak 4 practical impressions here and we’ll post a full review when it ships.
Weight and form factor
Pico 4 is the first fully standalone pancake lens headset to be launched outside of China. Pancake lenses support smaller panels with a shorter lens gap and therefore a slimmer, lighter design.
But this is not the only way that Pico reduced the weight of his scope. Like its predecessor, the Pico 4’s battery is located at the rear of the strap. The Quest 2’s battery is in the visor, adding to the front-heavy feel.
While Qu de Metaest 2 with fresnel lenses and battery in the front weighs 470 grams without straps, Pico 4 without straps is almost 40% lighter at 295 grams. We’re listing the weight of the visors rather than the full earcups, as that’s what you’ll actually feel against your face.
Resolution and field of view
Quest 2 uses a single 3664×1920 LCD panel. Single panel headsets cannot use all the pixels because there is unused space between the lenses. And since the Quest 2 has lens offset adjustment, Meta had to leave even more space unused. That means the actual resolution provided to each eye is noticeably less than 1832×1920.
Pico 4 uses two LCD panels, one for each lens, with a resolution of 2160×2160 each.
Pico says that Pico 4’s field of view is 105diagonal. Meta doesn’t provide an official FOV figure, and different companies tend to measure differently anyway, so we’ll give you an actual FOV comparison in our review.
DPI adjustment
Each person has a slightly different distance between their eyes: their interpupillary distance (IPD). If the headphone lenses are not aligned with your eyes, the image may look blurry and even cause eyestrain.
Quest 2 only offers three preset lens separation distances: 58mm, 63mm, and 68mm. Move the lenses between these three positions manually by hand.
Pico 4 lenses are continuous and motorized, supporting interpupillary distances (IPD) of 62-72mm. You set your IPD on the interface inside VR, and the lenses move to match.
Pass through
Quest 2 uses its corner tracking cameras for passing, fed into a reconstruction algorithm. Their transfer mode was originally only intended for room settings: these cameras have a low angular resolution and do not output color.
Pico 4 has a dedicated 5K RGB camera in the center for color transfer. In our practice, we notice that there is still distortion on nearby objects, and it doesn’t look as clear as in real life. But it’s still a marked improvement over the grainy black and white of Quest 2.
microprocessor and RAM
Pico 4 and Quest 2 work with the same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 processor like other current major standalone headsets. XR2 is a variant of the Snapdragon 865 smartphone chip that first shipped in early 2020.
The Quest 2 pairs this with 6GB of RAM, while the Pico 4 pairs it with 8GB.
controllers
Both Pico 4 and Quest 2 use their four-corner fisheye cameras to track infrared (IR) LEDs under plastic geometry in their drivers.
But while the Quest 2 controllers house these IR LEDs in a ring in front of your hand, Pico 4 controllers have them in an arc above your hands. Pico points out that this means your hands can be closer together without hitting the controls, for actions like cocking a gun or pouring water into a cup.
Pico also says its new controllers have a “HyperSense broadband engine” for more realistic haptic feedback. We will test this in our review.
Price and availability
The Pico 4 base model with 128GB of storage is priced at €429 and a model with 256GB of storage is €499. Ships to Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Pico says it plans to launch in Singapore and Malaysia later this year.
The Quest 2 base model with 128GB of storage is priced at €449 and a model with 256GB of storage is priced at €549. Ships to Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United States.