Pico Reportedly Developing Sleek Mixed Reality Goggles to Compete with Next-Gen Meta Headset

Alright, here goes something a bit more, well, real talk. So, there’s this whole thing going on with Pico, y’know, the folks who work under ByteDance, yeah, the same crew behind TikTok. They’re cooking up this mixed reality doodad. And apparently, it’s gonna give Meta’s next-gen XR headset a run for its money—or that’s what The Information hints at, at least.

So, these ‘goggles’ they’re working on, which have this fancy codename ‘Swan’—not sure how they come up with these names, seriously—are supposed to be super thin, like featherweight, barely-there thin. We’re talking around 100 grams. Can’t get much lighter than that without them floating away, maybe?

And here’s the kicker: the Swan’s got this hybrid-ish thing going on. It’s got a tethered compute puck—don’t ask me what that looks like—so the glasses themselves don’t need all the heavy processing junk. I guess that makes them sleeker than what we’ve got with the Quest 3 or Pico 4 Ultra. Who knew a puck could carry that much weight… metaphorically?

There’s a pic of the Pico 4 Ultra floating around, looking all impressive-like, if you’re into that sort of tech visuals. It kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Anyway, Swan’s supposed to ditch those physical controllers too. We’re talking eye and hand tracking taking center stage here. I imagine it’s kinda like when you pretend to catch a bug, but, uh, without the bug.

And about those chips, there’s some brainy stuff going on here. Pico’s putting together these special chips so the techno-doodads keep up with us without freaking out—like what you see won’t lag behind what you do. Pretty neat, right?

It’s all a bit like what Meta’s brewing with their own mystery headset. There’re whispers about names like ‘Phoenix’, ‘Loma’, or even ‘Puffin’. Can’t they just pick one and stick with it? Anyway, theirs might land sometime between 2026 and 2027 and might not even break the bank (under a grand, supposedly).

Now, there’s zip on what Swan will cost or where it’s gonna pop up. Pico stuff usually goes for a bit more than Meta’s, and you mostly see them in places like East and Southeast Asia, and Europe. North America? Nah, they haven’t really ventured there yet.

And that’s the scoop—more or less. At least, until something else pops up.