Chinese VR hardware company Pico is back with its latest headset, the Pico G2 4K VR headset.
Announced ahead of CES in Las Vegas next week, the G2 4K is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a 4K version of the Goblin 2 standalone headset that the company revealed last August. It’s powered by a Snapdragon 835 chipset (the same processor seen in Oculus Quest and a step above the 821 in Oculus Go) and features 4GB of RAM and 32GB storage. It weighs in at 278g and runs both Pico’s own store and HTC’s Viveport M storefront.
The headset is an enterprise-level kit. The Goblin line consists of three degrees of freedom (3DOF) tracking and that doesn’t appear to be any different here.
In a prepared statement, Pico CEO Henry Zhou said the company currently felt like that enterprise market held ‘far more untapped potential’ than the consumer side of VR. “The use cases for VR and AR are limitless and we aim to help businesses realize this with our products including the Pico G2 and Pico G2 4K headsets,” he said.
To that end, the G2 4K features enterprise-focused aspects. A Kiosk Mode tailors the headset to run a single application for events much like CES. There’s also a hands-free control option for suitable apps. Earlier this week we reported that Oculus was looking into a similar offering for the Go headset.
We’ve had mixed feelings about Pico’s past products. The original Goblin was a decent standalone VR headset though it cost $50 more than an Oculus Go and couldn’t contend in terms of content. However, when we tried the 6DOF Neo at CES last year we struggled with controller tracking.
There’s no price on the G2 4K but it will launch in H1 2019 in the US. We’ll try and get our hands on it at CES later this week. Pico raised $24.7 million in funding last year. Now we know where at least some of that money went.
