Pico 4 Ultra is a refresh of Pico 4 with upgraded chipset, RAM, passthrough cameras, sensor suite, battery, Wi-Fi, and controllers.
The lenses, displays, and overall design of Pico 4 Ultra remain almost identical to the original, except the company says the display is now 25% brighter.
Pico 4 Ultra uses the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset as Meta Quest 3. Pico 4 Ultra comes with 12GB RAM instead of 8GB in Quest 3. The Pico 4’s monocular camera has been replaced by two 32-megapixel ones, which according to the manufacturer will deliver perspective-corrected passthrough and low distortion. The passthrough feature only uses 8-megapixel cameras. The system combines each block of four pixels into one, a technique known as pixel binning which is used by many modern smartphones.
ByteDance claims the angular resolution of Pico 4 Ultra’s passthrough is 20.6 pixels per degree (PPD), compared to the 18 PPD Meta claims for Quest 3’s passthrough.
The color cameras are also used for 3D video capture, up to 2048×1536 at 60 FPS. Additionally, ByteDance says Pico 4 Ultra can natively decode Apple spatial videos captured by iPhones and Vision Pro.
Between the two color cameras is what Pico describes as a time-of-flight sensor which is used for 3D environment meshing, similar to the purpose of Quest 3’s depth projector.
The battery in the rear of Pico 4 Ultra’s strap is slightly larger than the original’s, though the company isn’t claiming longer battery life, so this is likely to power the additional sensors. The new battery can charge at 45W, which is more than twice the power of Pico 4’s original 20W. This should enable charging from 0% to 100% in roughly an hour.
Pico 4 Ultra is the first headset to support the new Wi-Fi 7 standard, which could enable more stable PC VR streaming for those who have a Wi-Fi 7 router.
Finally, on the hardware side, Pico 4’s distinctive arc controllers have been replaced with new ringless controllers that weigh only half as much. The controllers are similar to
, but have a slightly larger handle and a more curved handle.