While the Pico Neo 3 will be sold as an enterprise device in the West with the name of Pico Neo 3 Pro, it is currently on sale as a consumer-oriented headset in China. It costs around $400, and it features amazing games like Synth Riders, Red Matter, SuperHot VR. Not bad for a device that wants to jumpstart the consumer VR ecosystem in the country of the Red Dragon. But a question popped up in my mind: could it also be used here in the West as an alternative to the Oculus Quest 2?
UPDATE 2021.06.01: I have written this article to talk about the possibility of using the consumer Pico Neo 3 in the West, since some readers asked me if there was a way to do it. After the article was published, some readers have made me notice that it may seem that I want to invite people to start a grey market about Pico Neo 3 in the West, and I’m sorry about that, because the article was written with the opposite purpose, that is making you notice that the procedure would be so complicated, that in the end, it has little sense trying to do it. And besides that, there are also all the legal implications of importing a product that is not sold in your country. So, if you are in China, get a Pico Neo 3 consumer, if you are in the West, either you buy a consumer device like the Quest 2, or buy a professional headset like the Pico Neo 3 Pro. With this explanation, I leave you to the (slightly retouched) article here below.
The Pico Neo 3 as a Quest 2 competitor?
The Pico Neo 3 is rather affordable, has a store with pretty good games, and has basically the same hardware as the Oculus Quest 2. All in all, it would be a decent consumer headset also here in the West, especially for those people that would like to have a standalone VR device without having to give their data to the Zuggity Zuck.
As someone that has some connections in China, it wouldn’t be that difficult for me to find a friend that buys a consumer Pico Neo 3 for me and sends it as a parcel here in Italy, for a total cost of the device of around $460 (hoping that the customs don’t charge too much for the package). Before the pandemic, I could even hope to buy one directly during one of my travels to the Far East, or ask some friends of friends to buy it and bring it to me when traveling to Italy as a gift: in this case, the price would still be around $400 because I wouldn’t have to pay for the shipping. $400-460 is not as cheap as $299, and of course, the Neo 3 has not all the enormous game catalog of the Quest (including the thousands of App Lab games), but it could still be a decent alternative.
Since many people are looking for an alternative to the Quest 2, and would be happy even to spend a bit more to not have their data tracked, the Chinese Pico Neo 3 looks like a viable alternative in this sense. Not a perfect one, but a good one.
I asked so a Pico representative here in Europe if such a trick would be possible to perform.
Most likely no
Pico is quite skeptical about the use of a Chinese consumer Pico in the West.
First of all, the Chinese headset has been designed for Chinese faces, and it would be rather uncomfortable to wear for any Westerner. In this blog I often talk about the importance of ergonomics in VR: a headset must be comfortable to wear, or your VR experience, in the long run, will be very disappointing. When a Westerner wears a headset designed for a Chinese head, it’s highly improbable that he finds it comfortable, especially because certain parts of the device would fit very badly with the shape of his head. I can confirm this from my experience with many Chinese devices: when I tried the Skyworth 4K, for instance, I had to put a cloth on my big nose because the headset was hurting there like hell after various minutes of usages.
But let’s suppose that you are an Asian person, or that you have a head compatible with one of most Asians people. If the ergonomics don’t stop you, you have still to consider that outside China, you wouldn’t have any kind of support and warranty. And that the SDK, the runtime, the companion app… everything would mainly work in Mandarin. And everything would be also designed to work in a way compatible with the current lifestyle of Chinese: in the hands-on video by Nikk Mitchell on the device, you can see that to buy the apps he must purchase Pico Coins using Alipay or WeChat Pay, services that are not very popular in the West.
If you are happy with all these conditions, there is another bad news for you: the store doesn’t work outside China. The system checks the region from where you are connecting and prevents you from downloading games from the store if you are not in China. So basically you would have a device with no games… missing completely the point of having a consumer VR device. The only way to prevent this is doing some kind of networking magic so that Pico thinks you are connecting from China even if it is not true.
And then there is the problem that of course if you’re importing a device through some friends just to have fun, it’s ok, but if you are importing more than one device through unauthorized resellers, you are for sure violating some laws.
…unless you’re really determined
So, technically you may still use the Pico Neo 3 as an alternative to the Oculus Quest 2 if you really want to. You just have to:
- Find a way to have the headset shipped to your house through some contacts in China
- Have a head with Asian characteristics or mod the headset so that it feels comfortable on your head
- Learn Mandarin (太难了！)
- Have an Alipay account
- Pray your gods that the device never breaks
- Use a VPN or a proxy directly on your router so that the headset when it connects via wi-fi, thinks that it is currently inside China
- Be happy of sharing your data with the CCP (since you become a de facto Chinese user, most probably your activity would be somewhat tracked)
- Be careful of customs and importing laws
Some Chinese immigrants may do that, but for most people, it is a huge hassle most probably not worth doing. Especially considering that the Quest offers much more and it costs less. It is still a theoretical possibility, but remember that, as someone has made me notice, this wouldn’t be legally the right way of importing and working with the device anyway.
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(Header image by Pico Interactive)