How Does The Pico 4 Ultra Compare Against Its Competitors?

Are you too thinking of purchasing the Pico 4 Ultra for your next projector? 

Well, no wonder the PICO project market is growing rapidly to a whopping 6.46 billion dollars by 2028, which shows that projectors are actually becoming a favorable option (Source: The Business Search Company, 2024).

But how well does the Pico 4 Ultra perform in comparison to its other counterparts? 

To inquire about this, in this article, we are going to talk about its features, its performance, its value, and how it competes with the other projectors in the market. 

Thus, following this blog post, you will have a clearer understanding of what projector would best appeal to your needs.

The Hardware 

The specifications of the Pico 4 Ultra and the Meta Quest are almost identical, and even though they use a similar processor, the top display resolution is also broadly the same. 

Nevertheless, the Pico 4 Ultra does have a greater subpixel count which is a bit over said center but most of the population won’t even notice this shift.

One plus, however, is that the Pico 4 Ultra has greater RAM by about 4 GB when compared to the Meta Quest. 

This means that it runs games a little bit smoother, particularly the more demanding ones. 

It is marginally heavier than the Meta Quest, but again, most people aren’t going to notice a couple of grams.

Check out the graph below for a precise look at the Pico Projectors Global Market Report 2024

Software 

One area that the Pico 4 Ultra isn’t too good at right now is on the software front as the Meta Quest has had a whole lot longer to build up the software collection available on their service. 

Well, that and the fact that Meta has been spending a huge amount of cash trying to make things a bit more exclusive to their platform. 

The Meta Quest has some amazing exclusives, including top AAA games that have been converted to VR.

Unfortunately, this means that we doubt the Pico 4 Ultra is ever going to get close to the Meta Quest on the software front. 

Though Meta is too far ahead to be caught up right now, there are still a lot of options in terms of software on the Pico 4 Ultra. 

Just bear in mind that you may be missing out on some of the top games that will let you squeeze every little bit of the extra RAM you have.

What is clear though is that the apps that the Pico 4 Ultra does have run incredibly well, especially those that focus primarily on live-streaming video.  

For example, those who do a lot of in-play blackjack on LeoVegas, find that the gameplay experience on the Pico 4 Ultra is significantly superior.

Extra Features 

The Meta Quest has a major problem – it is too far ahead of the pack, and they seem a little scared to innovate because they don’t want to lose their customer base. 

Look at how many minor changes Apple has made to iOS, despite Android having made those changes years before them; Apple is afraid of change. 

They know their customers don’t want it, the same as Meta knows that their customers don’t want massive changes made to their Quest. 

The Pico 4 Ultra doesn’t have the same problem, which means it has a couple of features that blow the Meta Quest out of the water.

The first is better motion trackers, which means that the Pico 4 Ultra is far better than its competitors on the whole-body tracking front. 

Now, if only it had the AAA games available that would allow them to use this to its full capabilities.

The camera on the Pico 4 Ultra is better too, and if you’re out and about, and you don’t want to look slightly odd with a rather hefty Pico 4 Ultra on your head.

Then you’ll find that you can grab some stunning 3D pictures that you’ll be able to look at in the future. 

Although, sadly, we doubt that this is a feature that the vast majority of people want, or even care about; we just love snapping photos with our headsets, so we love it.

Do You Know?
The PICO project started when the PICASSO and COUPP groups merged in 2013.

In Conclusion 

In our opinion, the Pico 4 Ultra is significantly better than its closest competitor, the Meta Quest. 

It has better hardware and considerably better tracking, these are definitely two areas in which you want your VR headset to excel. 

Unfortunately, it does lack a little on the software front, and we doubt it is going to change there since Meta has managed to snap up far too many software exclusives. 

Still, there is a lot going for the Pico 4 Ultra, and as long as you’re not planning to play the latest AAA VR games, you should be fine with it.

---