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@Gordon
Hi - yes, the Pico is fine with up to 16v because of the onboard regulator. It'll be drawing under 40mA as long as you're not powering anything else from the 3.3v line, so the regulator is unlikely to have any problems at 12v.
As @allObjects says if you're planning on hanging other stuff on the 3.3v line that brings it up to near the regulator's 250mA limit (like an ESP8266 WiFi) then you might want to consider a regulator to bring the volts down to 5v so the poor regulator doesn't heat it too much. It has overtemperature protection, but it might cause the Pico to reboot :)
Just a note though: You can power the Pico from up to 16v just fine, but the IO pins can only take up to 5V signals in :)