Pico Neo 2 Eye review — 4K, eye-tracking, untethered VR

Source: Nick Sutrich / Windows Primal

On newspaper, the Pico Neo 2 Heart looks like a pregnant step ahead of the Oculus Quest (the biggest player in the wireless VR manufacture). In many ways, it's a definite improvement over the Quest and, in other ways, it doesn't quite live upward to the Quest experience. Only hither'south the deal — it'southward not designed to be. Although the Oculus Quest does have an enterprise model, it's not necessarily geared toward businesses as the main audience.

The Pico Neo 2 Middle is designed from the footing-upwards to exist a business organisation-ready wireless HMD (head-mounted display), and in many ways, it succeeds at its goal. Information technology delivers crisp visuals with a 4K RGB-stripe display, high-performance with eye-tracking foveated rendering capabilities, accurate controller tracking that isn't affected by the limitations that optical tracking has, and the ability to hands connect to a PC via USB Blazon-C cable or wirelessly. All these things are important for enterprise-grade applications, but how does the overall package fare?

Wireless VR gets an upgrade

Pico Neo ii Eye

Business-class untethered VR

The Pico Neo 2 Middle was designed from the basis up to meet the needs of businesses who are looking to employ VR in their workflow.

Pros:

• Super crisp brandish
• Well-balanced weight distribution
• Controllers don't rely on optical tracking from the headset
• Like shooting fish in a barrel wired and wireless streaming to the PC and good SteamVR integration
• Slap-up business-class features like microSD card support and a polyurethane confront gasket
• Center-tracking enables significant performance and quality enhancements

Cons:

• Digital IPD aligning
• Weird perspective warping issues
• PU face gasket makes y'all sweaty and causes foggy lenses
• Anemic app store

Pico Neo ii Eye The ameliorate wireless VR experience?

Source: Nick Sutrich / Windows Cardinal

If y'all're into VR at all, you know the Oculus Quest has been the premiere wireless VR feel up until now. Because of that, it makes the well-nigh sense to directly compare the Pico Neo two Middle to that product. At $900, the Pico Neo 2 Heart is actually $100 less than the Oculus Quest Enterprise Edition and, surprisingly, offers significantly better specs in nearly areas, including a more than powerful Snapdragon 845 processor.

The most obvious piece on paper is the 4K resolution display with RGB-stripe sub-pixel organisation. In a nutshell, that'south the sharpest display yous'll detect on any standalone headset on the marketplace, and ane of the sharpest amid whatsoever wired headset, also. If you've ever used an Oculus Quest, yous'll immediately see the difference in clarity when putting the Pico Neo 2 Eye on. This is a glorious, cute display.

But what you don't see on newspaper is the strange warping result that's also immediately noticeable every bit soon equally you move your caput. It's about like putting a fishbowl on your head, as object dimensions warp when you look around. It'south distracting and happens in all apps and games I tried on the headset. Whether or not this is an result with the lenses or some sort of software depth-correction result is less important than the fact that it exists, and I imagine information technology'll brand a few people a bit disoriented while using the headset.

Much like the lenses and display, the headset design is significantly improved when compared to the Quest. Pico took the time to consider all the components that accept to go into a fully-wireless HMD and perfectly counterbalanced the weight between the front and back of the headset. The dorsum of the headstrap sports an adjustment wheel that pulls the straps in and, attached to the wheel, is a compartment that houses the heavy bombardment and another components. That's specially of import since this headset is a rather hefty 692 grams, which is 121 grams heavier than the Oculus Quest.

Having the weight distributed evenly is a huge step in the right direction and feels significantly better during long sessions when compared to the Quest. The headset feels like information technology sits perfectly on the superlative of the head, while the Oculus very obviously pushes down on the cheeks and just feels a bit "off" in its fit. I too establish the strap design on the Pico Neo 2 Centre to exist superior for quickly fitting to different head sizes, as you lot'll mainly drop it on top and turn the knob in the dorsum to tighten. No velrco to deal with, and you can even tighten information technology with a single hand!

It'southward got speakers built into the headset, just like various Oculus entries, but I establish these speakers to exist lacking in quality when compared to the Quest. On the bright side, they are incredibly loud and can probably even exist heard in an industrial setting with lots of ambience room noise.

The confront gasket pattern fits perfectly inside the definition of "enterprise-course", as it's a highly-hygenic PU material that doesn't take sweat at all and is super like shooting fish in a barrel to clean. That means you won't demand to purchase disposable face masks like yous would need to with foam gaskets. While that's smashing and solves several problems, this PU material is super, super sweaty feeling. My confront got very hot, very quickly and, as a result acquired the lenses to fog upwards constantly for extended periods, making it very difficult to use, having to constantly wipe them off.

Pico seems to have thought of only about everything when it comes to buttons and inputs on the headset itself. On the right side, y'all'll find convenient home, menu, and enter buttons for when controllers aren't in use, while a recessed power button is up peak next to the USB Blazon-C charging port. Underneath is a pair of volume buttons, a 3.5mm headset jack, and fifty-fifty a microSD bill of fare port for expandable storage (and quick application loading in enterprises). It's even got Bluetooth 5.0 support, which it uses for controller communication and pairing to Bluetooth audio devices (like speakers or headphones).

What's conspicuously missing is a physical IPD slider switch, which is due to the fact that the unit utilizes a single 4K screen inside. That makes concrete IPD adjustment more than difficult since the display doesn't move, and the Tobii eye-tracking congenital into the lenses likely complicates this possibility. Every bit a result, in that location'south digital IPD adjustment like the Oculus Rift Due south has, offering a range between 58mm and 71mm.

I had difficulty finding this adjustment setting though, and it's something Pico seriously needs to work on in order to brand this more accessible, especially if y'all're going to be passing it along to multiple people in a business concern environment. This design seems to contradict the purpose of having a PU face gasket, as that was chosen specifically for its ease of use in multi-user environments, while not providing a simple IPD aligning seems to propose the opposite.

Pico Neo 2 Eye A different kind of control

Source: Nick Sutrich / Windows Central

Different some other within-out tracking solutions, Pico is utilizing electromagnetic controller tracking instead of optical tracking for the Pico Neo 2 serial. Since it doesn't rely on optical tracking, it doesn't need to meet the controllers in order to know where they are. That ways you can put them backside your back, above your head, and anywhere else that yous might be able to reac. An Oculus Quest or Oculus Rift Southward, for example, wouldn't exist able to encounter a controller that's behind or in a higher place y'all.

This large range of motility is particularly of import because this is an enterprise-grade headset and you wouldn't want motility-tracking dead zones on a job site. It's not simply problematic to have those issues, information technology could literally be a game-killer.

The downside is that the tracking isn't quite as accurate every bit you'll get with headsets like the Oculus Quest or Oculus Rift Southward. Playing Crush Saber, for example, didn't feel as natural when swinging the sabers, and I institute that reloading guns or managing inventory in Half-Life: Alyx was more clunky and awkward than I had grown accepted to on other headsets. Of course, this headset isn't necessarily designed for those item scenarios, and then users may never even come up beyond these limitations.

The controllers themselves are comfortable enough and feature two confront buttons, a trigger, grip button, home button, back button, and a joystick on each controller to provide an excellent range of input options. SteamVR even recognized the controller right off the bat, showing me a perfect virtual model of it correct on my Steam Home screen. I could see these beingness mildly uncomfortable for users with smaller hands, though, as they are a little thicker and squared off when compared to come up other VR controllers.

They also don't accept a capacitive touch feature to the buttons, which reduces the bachelor inputs just a tad when compared to the Oculus Touch controllers that ship with the Quest and Rift S. Dissimilar the Oculus Touch controllers, though, these feature rechargeable batteries congenital in, with a USB Type-C port on the lesser for easy charging.

Pico Neo 2 Eye Claw information technology upwards to a PC

Source: Nick Sutrich / Windows Central

Standalone VR is important for every segment of the industry, just there'south no denying that hooking a VR headset up to a PC yet offers the best fidelity. Thankfully, Pico thought of this and packed the Pico Neo 2 series with a built-in streaming app built on the Dizzying XR platform. Streaming from a PC is supported both wirelessly and wired via a USB Type-C to Type-C cable. USB Type-C to Type-A cables are not currently supported.

Streaming is as simple as installing and launching the Pico VR Streaming Assistant app on your PC, followed past launching the assistant on your headset. You choose wired or wireless from inside the HMD and it automatically pulls y'all right into the SteamVR interface. When using this as a wired feel, I had to relaunch information technology several times, most likely due to the problems USB Blazon-C continues to have with some motherboards and chipsets on PCs. Once I got through the initial crashing stage, I never had these bug once again. The wireless experience was completely flawless from the kickoff.

On the default standard streaming quality, which is selectable with a wired and wireless experience, you'll notice some obvious pinch artifacts and a lower overall resolution than apps that run natively on the Pico Neo 2. Bumping this up to high quality streaming significantly reduces artifacts and vastly improves prototype quality, merely information technology'due south withal nowhere almost as precipitous or clear as native apps.

Playing Half-Life: Alyx on the Pico Neo 2 Heart was a skilful overall experience, although a much better experience can be had with headsets that natively run on a PC like an Oculus Rift S or Valve Alphabetize. Information technology'due south clear that the Pico Neo 2 isn't designed primarily for consumer gaming, every bit the issues with perspective warping make gaming feel weird, and the reduced quality compared to a headset that streams video through an HDMI or DisplayPort cablevision is pretty obvious.

Pico Neo 2 Eye Unfortunately, information technology's not designed for you

Source: Nick Sutrich / Windows Central

While the connectivity and interoperability with SteamVR on a PC is bang-up, the truth is that this headset, ultimately, is non designed with the average gamer in mind. In fact, you can't even readily buy the Pico Neo 2 or the Pico Neo two Eye without first contacting Pico and getting a quote. It'southward an enterprise-just design for a reason, and that experience begins from the moment y'all endeavor to order 1.

Paramount to the enterprise-only perspective is the built-in Tobii eye-tracking, which does exactly what it says. Tobii has been experimenting with eye-tracking things for a while at present and finally seems to take found a solid market in the enterprise VR segment. Eye-tracking enhances VR in a significant number of ways, including offering ameliorate performance by enabling foveated rendering; a method where the heart of your vision is rendered at loftier resolution, while peripheral vision is rendered at much lower resolution, which helps increase performance by upward to 60% or so.

Increasing performance isn't just virtually graphical fidelity, though. It'due south extremely helpful for prolonging bombardment life, which is specially of import if people are going to be using these things for their jobs. It'due south not oft someone works 2 hours in a given 24-hour interval and calls it quits, and so why should your enterprise-class headset get away with that? In add-on to improved functioning, eye-tracking can help with metric data by showing exactly where users are looking throughout headset usage.

This type of information tin can exist important to aid with training and product design, equally well as development of procedures and safety measures, especially in the manufacturing sector where distractions around complicated machinery could testify deadly. On a more consumer-friendly front, the born mirror demo shows that center-tracking can humanize virtual avatars past showing exactly where someone is looking, which helps to heighten virtual presense in a big way.

On meridian of this, Pico's app store is bloodless, at all-time. Consumers looking for more than a literal scattering of games to play would be super disappointed in their purchase, and the fact that information technology plays SteamVR games at a reduced image quality when compared to consumer VR headsets of the same price makes that an even more than biting pill to swallow. Simply put, this isn't designed for consumers, and you shouldn't consider it if you are one.

Pico Neo two Heart Should yous buy it?

Source: Nick Sutrich / Windows Cardinal

Unless you lot accept a business or a developer license, it's not likely that you can actually buy the Pico Neo two Eye as a consumer. Fifty-fifty if you lot could, though, the fact that this is clearly an enterprise-designed product means that, as a consumer, it makes a lot more than sense to cull an Oculus Quest if you're in the market for a standlone VR headset.

Businesses may find the $100 price divergence between the Pico Neo 2 Eye and the Oculus Quest (in Pico'due south favor) to be an attractive offer. As a bonus, the technical capabilities of the headset volition definitely prove this to be a superior headset to the Oculus Quest Enterprise Edition in several ways. Traits like eye-tracking are incredibly valuable to many businesses, and the overall care taken with designing a weight-balanced headset with a hygenic face gasket could get a long way to making this a better investment in the long term.

Enterprise-course VR

Pico Neo 2 Eye

Meant for the office or the factory

The Pico Neo 2 Eye is designed from the ground upwardly with businesses in mind. A 4K display, eye-tracking, microSD card back up, motion controllers that don't demand to be seen by the headset, and plenty more make this a great enterprise selection.

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