[00:00] This is the Steam Frank and it's Valve's first VR headset in like seven years. There's a lot of very impressive tech that's happening inside here. It's a very simple headset to use, it's lightweight, it's comfortable, and the wireless streaming is awesome. Like really low latency, plays games
[00:15] really well. It's a great headset. The hardware is truly fantastic, but despite that amazing hardware, I don't feel like this headset solves the current problems with VR gaming. So let's
[00:27] get into it. I am coming at this video from the perspective of a very casual VR gamer. I'm someone who picks up a headset, usually a mainstream one. So over the years I've had the HTC Vive, the Vive Pro, the Index, Quest 2, Quest 3. That was the last one. Also Vision
[00:44] Pro, but that's a separate conversation. And I'm not a VR chat guy. I'm not into sim racing. I'm someone who buys the headset, plays a bunch of games for a while, and then it ends sitting on my shelf a little bit before I end up selling it or something. Okay, so for this device,
[00:57] in the box you have the headset, you have your two controllers, you also have a spacer that pushes the headset a little bit further away from your face if that's how it fits for you, there's the wireless adapter for the best kind of streaming experience, and also a cable. There is, however,
[01:13] no charger included in the box. They sell you one, there's a 45 watt $29 charger, but it's really weird that they don't include it in this package. Now in terms of fit and comfort, I struggled with
[01:25] that for the first little bit. I had to tweak it a little just to kind of make it fit for my face and head shape. So one thing I learned was to put the kind of like the fat part of it further up or higher up on my head just to make it fit a little bit better. But also on the inside, the rubber
[01:41] kind of gasket or light seal, the one they include in the box is a really short one. And I found that I had to use this much larger one because the stock one that comes in the box is just so small
[01:54] that I had to force that headset really tight on my face to get the optics on the screen to look proper. So the unfortunate thing is that this extended light blocker does not come in the stock product. You have to get this $59 ergonomic accessory kit to have access to this.
[02:12] It comes with the top strap and some straps for the controllers, but this to me is such an integral part of like fit and just usability that I think this should have been included right in the box. But once I had it dialed in, I found it super comfortable.
[02:27] Like the padding is very soft and if you do get it super gross and sweaty, it just attaches or removes magnetically. And I just threw this into the laundry. Like I just put it in with socks, with black socks, and I just pulled it out, came out fresh and attaches nice, very easily. And
[02:43] same at the back this also attaches magnetically or no I lied it's velcro on the back like little small pieces of velcro but again threw it in the wash came out perfectly good and it's like very soft very comfortable and when you
[02:55] have it on it's not front heavy like the Plus 3 like on this product all of the hardware is up front so it just like sag on the front of your face and you have to use all the strapping to keep it fit properly this has a pretty like evenly
[03:09] weighted or comfortably weighted battery in the back and it just acts as a counterbalance for everything this is remarkably comfortable once you set it up right and I didn't need the top strap or anything because it's a pretty lightweight headset so I set it all up and I booted in I'm
[03:23] going through the list thinking okay what's the game I'm going to use to test the ultra low latency of this thing I'm excited and going through I'm like you gotta be kidding the thing I'm going to be testing is Beat Saber like a game from 2018 on this new headset I'm strapped into
[03:37] the latest and greatest thing from Valve, and I'm testing Beat Saber, like there's got to be something else, right? But I look into it, and right now, as I'm shooting this video, there are 131 titles that Valve says is great on the Steam frame. And of that 131, I think
[03:53] 72 are VR games, the rest are just titles running in big screens on this device. And when I look at my own games, of the 340-something Steam games that I own, only 11 or 12 of them
[04:06] were on that list. 11 games that I own are great on the Steam frame. There's not a lot on them. Now, granted, this is Valve, and they're going to update that list constantly. That number is
[04:18] going to grow quickly. But out of the gate, this doesn't have a ton of games verified as working well in standalone mode on this device. So that is like 72 frames per second at a decent resolution. Now, this headset does include a copy of Half-Life Alyx. It's like a $60 value, and I think that's
[04:34] nice kind of value add but I would imagine that most people looking at this product who are even remotely interested in VR have experienced Half-Life Dogs. It's an amazing game. I think the best single-player game that's ever existed
[04:46] but I beat it like three times and it not like you get a coupon or anything if you already own it in your Steam library So it cool but it been years since any major publisher has put out a PC VR game and I think that is a major problem because on hardware relief like this like you have
[05:02] amazing hardware, this, in my opinion, should be accompanied with the launch of an equally amazing software title. Like, it's just, to me, it doesn't even make sense that this thing, something so
[05:15] incredible as this would launch with no new games. The VR industry badly needs new games, ideally from Valve, because they're the guys that have the best IP to make incredible VR experiences. But imagine Valve came out tonight and was like, you know what? We're launching
[05:30] Half-Life 3, but you can't play it on a new headset. It's a VR title that requires like an old headset with the lighthouses and the cables running everywhere. People would be so excited.
[05:42] Like, people would set up their stuff tonight and be playing it immediately, because that is what, like, that's the stuff that gets people excited. This is why people buy hardware, for titles, for, like, really good games. I'm here testing, like, nine, ten-year-old VR titles on this amazing hardware, and it's just feeling off.
[06:00] And when I bring this up, like, you know, this whole conversation about new games, like, Dave, this is a tale as old as time. Why are you bringing it up now? Let me tell you. When I look at Valve's recent track record with hardware releases, like the Steam Deck, when that thing came out, it influenced people in a bizarre way.
[06:19] This was a product genre that was so small before, like handheld PC gaming. No one bought those things, but the Steam Deck comes out, and now it's transformative. It moved and shaped the industry to be something completely different, something amazing.
[06:34] Same with the Steam Machine. Granted, that thing's very expensive. but there are people who look at the Steam Machine who have never, ever considered having a gaming desktop before. But they see the Steam Machine this year, small and intuitive,
[06:46] and it's like, hey, that's something I'm interested in now. Because that's what Valve does. They make hardware that is actually transformative in the spaces that they occupy. And this, I feel like it should have been that. This could have been that. If this had launched with some cool games,
[07:00] we had seven years since Alex to work on stuff like that, like six and a half years. They had time to make some cool games. It launches and it's like, alright Dave, we're playing 8 year old games, 10 year old games to test this thing out.
[07:13] And it just feels so bizarre. You have amazing hardware and this is what I'm doing with it. So anyways, over the past few weeks I've been testing very old games. Now there are two main ways to play games on the Steam frame.
[07:26] The first is by streaming, so you'll have like a gaming laptop or a gaming desktop and it's doing all the heavy lifting but it pipes the visual and audio output to the headset so you can play VR and non-VR games inside the headset, like, separated.
[07:40] There's no cable, there's nothing, it's just a streamed experience, and it's very good. The second way is through a standalone mode. So inside this thing is its own chip, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and it's capable of delivering a gaming experience inside the headset by itself.
[07:56] Now, that first method, that streaming method, is what this thing is built for. Valve is very upfront about that. This is a streaming first product and it is so good at that. So you'll take that wireless adapter, you plug it up to your gaming PC and it creates its own Wi-Fi network just for the headset.
[08:13] There's no competing traffic. It doesn't go through your router. It's a direct link between the gaming PC and like your eyeballs as you're looking at the stream that's coming in. And it's fantastic. Over the testing period, this was the most impressive part of the whole headset.
[08:27] The latency is super low, it feels very responsive, all while being fully wireless. You can be like 15, 20 feet away from the wireless adapter, and it still feels really good. Now, the clever thing about this whole setup is their foveated streaming.
[08:41] If you'll remember from their announcement, the headset tracks your eyes, and it'll only send full bitrate video to the exact spot that your eyes are looking at. And as you move around, it follows it and keeps that part in extremely high bitrate,
[08:54] But everything else in the periphery is sent low bitrate video, but you'll never notice it because it's in your periphery. And as you move around, dart your eyes around, you track it, and it does it all flawlessly. And I looked for this. I checked it in November, and in the retail version, this was so good.
[09:09] Like, you just cannot tell that it's doing it. Now, the purpose of it is to have as little data being sent over the air as possible to the headset. Like, the less data you have, the lower the latency, and the more stable the experience in your gameplay.
[09:22] There's also a new multi-link feature where it uses both Wi-Fi at the same time, so like the Wi-Fi adapter and your existing Wi-Fi network, so if one connection has a hiccup, the other one covers it, and it just gives this headset a very stable visual experience.
[09:36] But do keep in mind that the actual gaming performance that you get is entirely dependent on the system that streaming it out right They give a fantastic system You give you better frame rates etc But if it a mediocre or weaker system this won save you for the streaming experience You can also play regular non games and virtual
[09:56] screens in here. You can resize them and make them like gigantic screens. The first one I tried, I thought it was pretty cool because I was sitting on a couch with these giant screens to play with. But the novelty wore off after a few days because, for one, you have to keep track of battery.
[10:08] like you're sitting there for a while and you're like oh I gotta plug up and then the whole experience is a little bit different I find that if you have a normal setup like a normal table and like a decent screen that experience is at least for me more comfortable than what this was
[10:22] also I found the experience really isolating like I'd have it on and my kids would come by and be like hey dad I'd take it off and they're like wait did I pause the game or just Dave the dad we're gonna drown here and then I put it back on and like hey you know have a conversation and then
[10:35] you go back into it. It's cool, but I don't think I'd choose this experience over a regular desk setup for the typical gaming experience, at least for me. Everyone's going to be different. This is a very subjective thing. Okay, the second way that you can play games on Steam Frame is through
[10:50] standalone mode, and standalone is very interesting because this is an ARM chip, right? Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is a Qualcomm ARM chip that is playing games that were written for x86 Windows,
[11:04] So there's like multiple layers of translation that's happening. First, you've got to have Proton turn those Windows calls into a Linux instruction. And then you have to have that x86 instruction turn into an ARM instruction that is done by Sex.
[11:17] Now, the fact that it works at all is incredible. The performance is way better than I thought it could possibly ever be. It's very cool, but there's still like a 10% to 15% performance.
[11:29] I think it's actually 10% to 20% is what Valve is claiming. The thing is, there's a lot of games that don't work right now. Many of them had hiccups and stutters, and some don't even boot, but it's so early on in the process that I can't really blame them for it.
[11:41] And I do understand that this is something that will get much better quite quickly. I do think sex will be a real force in the gaming space. Now, the most impressive game team that I saw on this thing was the native ARM port of Half-Life Alyx.
[11:55] So Half-Life Alyx is a very demanding game. You need a good system built to play it with smooth framerates. They were able to get a native ARM version running on device in standalone mode at like 70 frames per second.
[12:09] It's so cool. It uses foveated rendering, so it looks much better for me as a person playing the game with my eyes being trapped than you watching this gameplay. But they didn't cut out any assets, and they made it work so well and look so good with just 16 gigs of RAM.
[12:24] This is running on device on an ARM chip. It's so impressive. Okay, the speakers on this thing sound quite good. The upper frequencies are good, like the higher treble stuff, but the mids and lows are not well represented.
[12:37] The speakers come from the side of the device, get projected to the ears, and they sound, I'd give it a 7, maybe a 7.5. The thing I'd say that it lacks is volume, and it's important because the fans on this system can get reasonably loud.
[12:53] So if you're in the streaming mode, it doesn't use the system all that hard, that doesn't get super hot, so the fan is relatively quiet. But if you're playing in standalone, particularly Half-Life, it's pegging the system full blast for the entire time you're playing,
[13:06] and the fans ramp up, you can hear them, I find that the speakers aren't, or the sound system isn't quite loud enough. Battery life is a little shorter than I'd hoped. I think one of the reasons why this system is so lightweight
[13:20] is because the battery on the back isn't particularly big, but it shows. when you have a streamed game, you're getting like three hours, maybe a little bit more with full screen brightness. All right, the display. It's an LCD. It's not an OLED panel, obviously.
[13:35] And the experience is, in my opinion, very similar to a Quest 3. So this has a similar resolution and just a similar visual experience to the Quest 3. I think that the biggest difference
[13:49] is just fit. Like, because this fits nicer on my face than the Quest 3, I'm just taking it off so I can show you the thing a little bit better. Because this fits nicer, like, the experience
[14:02] of the ergonomics is just, like, a better fit than the Quest 3, and it doesn't, like, sag the front, you get a better visual experience, but the actual image quality is similar to the Quest 3. It's good, but once in a while, I would experience some screen door effect. Okay, the pass-through cameras,
[14:17] They are monochrome, black and white only, and it's because the cameras that come with it are incapable of sending anything other than black and white. But there is a company called Arcturus Industries that does have a camera, a color camera, built for this.
[14:33] And it snaps up front like that It connects in the port down over here and there a yeah it just connects like that and it becomes a full color pass Now this looks much
[14:48] better than I thought it would. It's got 10-bit HDR, it's 32 megapixels of cameras, a pair of them. It's way better than the black and white image but it is a $150 add-on. But I guess if you're you're serious about pass-through and need it for whatever reason, that option is available.
[15:04] Okay, the controllers. These are pretty comfortable. I don't love the ergonomics on them, but this is just the nature of any kind of VR controller. They never feel all that great in your hands because they're designed to handle so many different types of VR games. These ones have
[15:18] capacitive finger sensing on the bottom, so you can just see what your fingers are doing on screen as you, you know, touch and let go of it. There's also hand straps in the ergonomic accessories kit, But these, yeah, they are, as you'd expect, I think for VR controllers, they're very good.
[15:34] It's just I don't love the ergonomics of VR controllers. They always feel weird and just too bulbous in my hand. So another thing, the cameras that are built into the front of this, I think they have the hardware to do this,
[15:48] but they currently do not have the software support for finger tracking, where you could place the controllers down and just use your fingers to do things, like you can see on the Quest and, I guess, the Vision Pro. but I do think it's something Valve is looking into, and hopefully will add down the line.
[16:03] Another thing, though, that is not working as a gate is support for the Steam Machine. So the Steam Machine has a USB port. You could technically connect the Wi-Fi adapter and stream a game over,
[16:17] but right now, as of, like, at the launch time, it doesn't support streaming from Steam Machine yet. I'm sure it'll come eventually. Okay, where does this leave us? like my take on this. I think this is arguably the best hardware experience
[16:31] you can get for a wireless VR game. The wireless streaming is very cool, but the thing I have always thought about VR, and it's even more prevalent after the launch of this hardware, is that it's never been about hardware.
[16:44] The whole VR industry and the whole ecosystem around VR, it's never been hardware that's holding it back. Obviously, nicer hardware, better wireless hardware, better, like smoother, latency-free wireless experiences, that stuff is always going to make
[17:00] this stuff an improved experience, right? But what I think this whole industry needs is something that makes people stay in the VR experiences for like extended periods of time. Things that make
[17:12] us come back to these VR headsets and just use them regularly. And the only thing that can do that is gaming. Unfortunately, that is something that is, I was going to say, it's not something that Valve has full control over, or has any control over, but that's not true, because they could
[17:27] make something as amazing as Alyx, and so if they can make Alyx, and they're given seven years, you'd expect them still to make other things that are also awesome, but yeah, I think they're leaning on other developers to make great VR games, and maybe with sex,
[17:43] it becomes a little bit easier, and maybe that's something that this, like, maybe that's what this whole plan was, right, maybe this particular piece of hardware isn't designed to pull in all these people into VR gaming. Maybe that's not what this is for.
[17:56] Maybe this is something to make it easier for developers to do a certain thing and make it slowly happen, but yeah. My take on it is this. Oh, pricing. Because pricing ties into this heavily.
[18:08] This thing launched at $1,060 for the base model, and I think $1,300 or something for the one-carat model. Now, the pricing is not great, obviously because of the memory and the component pricing,
[18:21] But at the same time, it is not as awful as it could have been, or what I was worried that it might be, considering the Steam machine pricing. But because this is priced so much more than Quest 3, it becomes very difficult.
[18:36] Like, I know this is not meant to be a competitor directly to Quest 3. Like, that's not the only purpose here. But you can't help but compare it, because that is the kind of standard on the market. You look at Steam, you see what people are using.
[18:48] The Quest products are very popular. It's mostly because of price. this from a pure value perspective is hard to argue over a quest tree because like that's $600 this is almost double the price and I think it'd be difficult to argue to get double the product
[19:01] but there is value and merit to just not being part of meta's world like you know every time you use a quest headset I'm sure meta is just slurping up all of your personal info to do weird
[19:14] things with it this removes you from that which is nice but it's a $500 premium okay there you So there you have it, Steam Frame, incredible hardware, but I just wish it solved more of the VR problem than it actually does.
[19:27] Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video.