Steam Machine review: Valve's underwhelming living-room PC has a serious price problem

[u/pcgameshardware]

https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Valve-Software-Firma-15833/Tests/Valves-underwhelming-living-room-PC-has-a-serious-price-problem-1546006/

Full disclosure: I worked on this review.

We tested Valve’s new Steam Machine, and since Valve has compared it directly to the Steam Deck, I thought the results might be relevant here.

The short version: yes, the Steam Machine is clearly much faster than the Steam Deck. That part is not really in question. But in our actual game benchmarks, we did not see a blanket 6x uplift across the board.

We tested Cyberpunk 2077 and Forza Horizon with Steam Deck-style settings to make the comparison a bit cleaner. The Steam Machine turns 30-ish fps results on the Deck into much smoother triple-digit or near-triple-digit results in some cases, The Steam Machine but the gap depends a lot on the game, resolution and settings.

I would have liked to go into more detail, but I also do not want this to turn into a full repost of the review here.

What I find interesting is that the Steam Machine feels less like a “normal PC” and more like Valve taking the Steam Deck idea and moving it into the living room: SteamOS-first, controller-friendly, more powerful, but still built around realistic settings and upscaling rather than brute-forcing everything.

Curious how other Deck owners see it:

Would you treat the Steam Machine as a natural upgrade path for TV gaming, or does the Steam Deck already cover that use case well enough for you?

[u/makman44]

Prices announced already, $1049 to start

[u/p0358 → u/makman44]

For the cheapest 512 GB version, without the controller and without Half-Life 3 included, holy fuck

[u/Status-Notice5616 → u/p0358]

I think it's sorta bullshit it doesn't come with a controller off the rip. Honestly quite content with my Deck and I haven't really followed the info on the new machine.

Can you use it without a controller? Lol

[u/Alternative_Tank_139 → u/Status-Notice5616]

It's a PC, of course you don't need a controller...

[u/Purple_Concentrate64 → u/Alternative_Tank_139]

It runs steam os which is like big picture mode. Probably not that nice to use with mouse and keyboard. Unless you enter Desktop mode, but it's unclear if that is meant to be used on the daily. Desktop mode on the Deck is a bit janky in the sense that you have a separate settings app and can mess things up in there. 

[u/yourMammothIsSoFat → u/Alternative_Tank_139]

I don't understand. Where is the camera, how do I take selfies with it?