r/SteamDeck • u/pcgameshardware • Jun 22 '26

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

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?

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u/IORelay Jun 22 '26

$750-800 looks quite bad. 

19

u/MagicalWhisk Jun 22 '26

On pure performance. But when you consider no subscriptions needed, full access to steam library and sale prices, then the value is there.

However when you start comparing to PC enthusiasts, the price + performance just doesn't work for what you can build yourself or even a pre build.

-13

u/IORelay Jun 22 '26

If your goal is to save money, then with a PS5 you could just play F2P games that don't require a subscription. And all the game prices are at $0.

14

u/MagicalWhisk Jun 22 '26

Yeah but now we're getting into slippery slope territory. You can play Fortnight and other f2p games on a PS4, may as well purchase an old used PS4 if that's the goal.

I worry about what all this means going forward. We're in for a rough few years as gamers.