Pico Certified a Headset With No Wi-Fi and a Puck That Carries All of It

Pico's grantee code took two FCC grants on September 1. One of them is the part that goes on your head, and it is authorized to transmit on exactly one band: 2402 to 2480 MHz. No 5 GHz. No 6 GHz. The tethered unit next to it carries the entire network stack.

Grantee code 2A5NV belongs to Qingdao Chuangjian Weilai Technology Co., Ltd, on Songling Road in the Laoshan District of Qingdao, registered with the Commission in March 2022. Thirteen applications sit under it, including VR All-In-One Headsets granted in July 2022, April 2023, May 2023 and August 2024. Both September grants name Sheng Han as technical contact at a bytedance.com address, and Wenle Xu of PICO IMMERSIVE US INC. as non-technical contact, also at bytedance.com. Nobody has to guess whose hardware this is. It is on the form.

Which one is the headset

The filings call both products Mixed Reality Computer, which settles nothing. The exhibits do. The label and location document filed under FCC ID 2A5NV-AA1Z0 is titled HMD, for head-mounted display, and the application is flagged as a composite device: no. The matching document under FCC ID 2A5NV-B3110 is titled BOX, and that one is flagged composite device: yes. UploadVR read the two nameplates on September 5 and reports that the printed labels call them a Mixed Reality Headset and a Mixed Reality Main Unit, both carrying the model number B3110, and that the main unit's label lists a 7,000 mAh battery rated at 54.32 Wh.

So this is one product filed as two authorizations, not two products. That distinction is the whole story.

The radio split

B3110 holds four equipment classes. Part 15 Spread Spectrum Transmitter at 2402 to 2480 MHz. Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure TX running from 5180 through 5885 MHz across the usual U-NII blocks. Digital Transmission System on 2.4 GHz. And a 15E 6 GHz Low Power Indoor Client covering 5955 to 7095 MHz. The exhibit list backs each one: Bluetooth Classic, Bluetooth Low Energy, 2.4 GHz WLAN, U-NII-1 through U-NII-4, dynamic frequency selection, and a stack of SAR appendices.

AA1Z0 holds one equipment class and one range. Digital Transmission System, 2402 to 2480 MHz. Its radio test report is named for an nRF part, which is Nordic Semiconductor's short-range 2.4 GHz family, the kind of link a controller talks over. Its exposure filing is an MPE report rather than SAR.

Read the two grants side by side and the tether stops being a power cable. Wi-Fi, in this design, is somewhere other than your face. VR.org reported on August 20, from Pico's teaser art and leaked SDK footage, that the battery and possibly the compute had moved into a puck. The certification record goes further than the art did. The networking moved too.

There is a weight argument for that, and an antenna argument, and a thermal one. Three radios and their amplifiers generate heat, and heat on a face is the constraint every standalone headset is designed around. Moving them to a box on your hip also means the puck is not optional in any meaningful sense. Whatever the headset does without it, it does without a network.

The keyboard has been sitting there since July

FCC ID 2A5NV-C6110, a Wireless Keyboard, cleared the same grantee code on July 27, on the same 2.4 GHz band as the headset link. A company certifying its own keyboard five weeks before its headset is telling you what it expects people to do in there, and it is a cheaper document to read than a keynote.

The dates line up with what Pico said

Pico pulled its September 2 Beijing event on August 24 and moved Space Pro to Q4, blaming a late software upgrade. Road to VR carried the notice, and VR.org covered the cancellation two days later. The grants are dated eight days after that, on the day before the event would have opened.

Which supports the explanation Pico gave. Compliance testing is a long pipeline with a fixed end date, and the hardware side of this program hit its date while the reveal came off the calendar. Whatever slipped to Q4, it was not the radio work.

Keep the ceiling low on what that buys, though. This code has taken headset grants in 2022, 2023 and 2024, so a grant is routine here rather than a signal, and equipment authorization is permission to market a device in the United States, not a ship date and not a region. VR.org made the same point about Valve's Steam Frame grant in July.

The rest of the file stays shut for a while. User guides, internal photos, external photos and test setup photos on both grants are held under short term confidentiality until February 28, 2027, which is 180 days out from September 1. Block diagrams, schematics, the operational description and the parts list are held long term.

For anyone weighing this against a Vision Pro or a Galaxy XR later in the year, the useful part is not the certification. It is the architecture the certification describes. Space Pro is a two piece machine, and the piece with the radios in it is the one you put in a pocket. Pico still has not attached a price, a region or a date to any of it.