Apple Vision Pro vs Pico 4 VR

So many choices in VR now, which do you choose between the Vision Pro and Pico 4?

Table of Contents Table of Contents

For quite a bit of time, VR was a bit stagnant, but now there are more and more options coming out. So we see how the Apple Vision Pro vs Pico 4 compare so you can know which one suits your needs better. Although they might be targeting different crows there is still some perspective to see when comparing their capabilities.

Firstly, the Apple Vision Pro release date is still upcoming and quite some way away. As it is said to be coming in early 2024, and only in the US only with the rest of the world later. Compared to the Pico 4 VR which came out in October of 2022. More of a gaming focus headset from ByteDance available in Europe and East Asia in competition to the Quest 2.

PICO 4 VR headset

Chipset

Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2

Storage

128/256GB

RAM

8GB

Display resolution

2160 x 2160 per-eye

Battery Life

2.5 hours

Weight

1.29lbs/0.58kg

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Apple Vision Pro vs Pico 4 VR specs

Battery life

Both standalone headsets, rely on battery power to run. As such the capacity and drain of that will affect how much you can use it for. And the Pico 4 has a capacity of 5,300 mAh and it has been said to run between two to three hours on a charge. Although you will be able to run it while plugged in with good power running to it.

Whereas, the Apple Vision Pro is said to have two hours of runtime on its external battery. Which you do have to plug in and carry separately. Or you can also run it plugged in for a constant run time.

Display

For the screens, the Pico 4 uses two 2.56″ LCD screens with a 75/90Hz refresh rate and a 105° field of view. Giving it a resolution of 2,160 x 2,160 per eye and a PPI of 1,200. Whereas Vision Pro is saying it will have 23 million pixels across two mini OLED screens. Which gives each one 11.5 million but we don’t yet know the resolution or size of them.

Audio

For the Pico 4 you have binaural stereo speakers for sound field reconstruction and creating that immersive audio. It doesn’t have quite the capabilities to be a full option to the more budget-focused headset.

As Apple has gone all out for the two audio pods it uses for speakers. And integrating audio ray tracing into it, they can recreate great immersive audio that adapts to your surrounding for full spatial capabilities.

Processing

For the compute power available on the devices there is quite a change too. With the Pico 4 runs a more mobile-focused processor with the Qualcomm XR2 running with the Pico OS 5 system. Compared to the Apple headset which has the M2 and R1 processors to make the system its own computer. As such both can be standalone devices with varying performance.

Use cases

The two Apple Vision Pro vs Pico 4 VR are aimed at different people. Gaming on the Pico versus casual and professional uses on the Vision Pro. So it’s really more what you can achieve. As the Apple device only has the Apple Arcade with no games specifically being made for 3D gaming.

Price

A huge difference between the two headsets is the price. The Pico 4 can be found for around £379 or more. This also means it is much cheaper than the $3,499 price point of the Vision Pro. As such if you only have more casual and gaming experiences, then the Pico 4 is a much better option to go for.