Valve's second VR headset arrives

Valve has released the Steam Frame, its second attempt at a flagship VR headset after the 2019 Valve Index, which captured only thirteen point two percent of Steam VR headsets by February 2025.

Stand-alone and streaming in one

The Steam Frame operates as a stand-alone headset like the Meta Quest 3 while letting users stream games from a more powerful remote machine, promising to reimagine PC VR gaming.

Solid specs, dated processor

The Steam Frame packs a Snapdragon eight Gen three chip from two thousand twenty-three, sixteen GB of RAM, and either two hundred fifty-six GB at one thousand fifty-nine dollars or one TB at one thousand…

Comfortable and well-balanced

The Steam Frame weighs four hundred forty grams, seventy-five grams lighter than the Quest three. Valve moved the battery to the rear head strap for better balance and added cozy padding.

Glasses wearers face a problem

The Steam Frame comes with a spacer for glasses, but internal dimensions remain too narrow for most spectacles. Custom Zenni prescription lenses are available but cost extra.

Sharp visuals with wide field of view

The Steam Frame uses two LCD pancake lenses with per-eye resolution of two thousand one hundred sixty by two thousand one hundred sixty, delivering sharp visuals and a one hundred ten-degree field of view.

Controllers are the best part

The dual controllers feature precise Tunneling Magnetoresistance thumbsticks, a full D-pad, four ABXY face buttons, shoulder triggers and underside buttons with full six-degrees-of-freedom tracking and excellent haptics.

Game compatibility is unclear

Of a library of one thousand three hundred-plus games, only eighteen were marked Great on Frame. Half-Life: Alyx, which comes free with purchase, runs without issue but is not officially listed as compatible.

VR games perform unpredictably

Dedicated VR games installed directly on the Frame are hit and miss. Obduction crashed repeatedly, Doctor Who: The Edge of Time ran with juddery performance, while Dungeons of Eternity and Surgeon Simulator VR ran fine.

Cinema mode shines for 2D games

The Frame can play any 2D game on a vast virtual cinema screen. Playing Hades II blown up to Imax-scale was fantastic, though performance remains unreliable across different titles.

Streaming setup rarely works

The Frame includes a dedicated six-GHz wireless adapter for streaming from a PC, but testing on Windows eleven, Windows ten and Steam Machine showed the adapter appeared connected but unpaired in most cases.

Battery life is disappointingly short

Battery life reaches two hours maximum for locally run games and maybe three hours for streaming. The inability to physically connect the Frame to a PC with a cable worsens the streaming problems.

Price and potential remain at odds

At one thousand fifty-nine dollars, the Steam Frame does not feel worth the cost, especially when its performance only just beats the significantly cheaper Quest three. Software updates could change this.

“It's not trying to claim VR is useful for productivity, or office tasks, that ship sank along with Apple's Vision Pro”