Pico's next VR headset will launch against Valve in 2026, but it doesn't look like the Steam Frame rival I was hoping for

Pico has teased its new flagship XR headset, saying that it's gearing up for launch in 2026. That's a bold claim, because right now the VR market feels like it's in full anticipation mode for the arrival of Valve's Steam Frame headset, which has been delayed due to RAM shortages. Surprisingly, though, while Pico's previous VR headsets have felt like gaming-tilted competition to Meta, Pico's new Project Swan feels a lot more Apple Vision Pro coded.

Everything about Pico's developer special event felt like it was trying to emulate the hype of the Apple Vision Pro and Samsung GalaxyXR, actually. The initial teaser images feel eerily similar to both of those brands, and the majority of the event looked into Pico OS6, which has fancy XR features like automatically adapting to the light in your surroundings.

If the Apple Vision Pro and GalaxyXR are anything to go by, that likely means Pico's next headset won't be a rival to the Meta Quest 3 or even the Steam Frame, simply because high-fidelity micro-OLED displays usually mean a much higher price tag. So far, we don't have an inclination of price from Pico itself.

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"For the last three years, we have been engineering a new flagship device," said Jiesi Ma, head of OS product at Pico.

"The goal of Project Swan is to break through the bottlenecks of XR. If this device is going to replace your monitor, you need to see text perfectly", he said. He went on to detail the aim of achieving a pixel density level of 40 - which trounces the 25PPD of the Meta Quest 3. Project Swan will do this by utilizing reengineered Micro-OLED displays and a custom optical design. Pico hasn't said yet whether this is Pancake lenses or a new system entirely.

Talking more about the processing power needed for these kinds of optics, Ma then said, "At every step, we must meet the rigorous demands of {the} human visual system. Standard software and hardware cannot keep up. So in 2022, we committed to designing our own custom silicon. We built an XR chip specifically for mixed reality."

Pico's Silicon will purportedly minimize system latency to 12ms, which Pico says is the difference between feeling like you're seeing something on a screen and feeling like it's real.

Project Swan won't solely rely on Pico's own processor though. It'll have a dual chip design with an as of yet unnamed "Flagship SoC" that supposedly doubles the graphical and computational power of the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 (the processor used in the Pico 4 Ultra and Meta Quest 3 devices).

I'm certainly impressed by the specs and features Pico is teasing for Project Swan, but I was personally hoping the market would step away from this trend of "spatial computing", high-end, mixed-reality devices. For me, gaming is the true appeal of VR, and when a Vision Pro or GalaxyXR essentially wants you to replace so much of the technology you already have in your home for a $1,000+ investment, this type of headset isn't the most practical against the gaming ones that cost far less.

While Pico's shift away from a gaming-first strategy plays into Valve's hands, I don't think the Steam Frame is completely out of the woods yet. Just last week, I wrote about how the longer Valve waits to launch its new headset, the more other brands in this space will try to sweep up its hype. VirtualDesktop has already enabled foveated streaming on any and all eye-tracking headsets with access to its app, which will almost certainly be a boon for Pico's Project Swan.

Ma hasn't said when in 2026 the headset will launch, but did say that the company is in "the final stages of bringing this device to you". Interestingly, no mention was given to RAM shortages making manufacturing more difficult, and I'd be interested to know whether or not this has changed Pico's plans for Project Swan.

On another note, Samsung's GalaxyXR headset is yet to arrive in the UK, and seeing as Pico doesn't service the US, this type of high-end headset could be an interesting gap in the market for Pico to fill.

With no more word on when Valve will launch the Steam Frame, I'll be eagerly watching the finish line to see who can get their device out first.

Not done reading? Check out the best Meta Quest accessories, Meta Quest 3 vs Pico 4 Ultra, and the best gaming PCs.