A couple weeks ago, fully reclined horizontally on a couch at Valve HQ, I watched a video streaming from the web via a virtual browser window floating in the open air of Linux.
When I slipped the Steam Frame off my head, I congratulated a Valve industrial designer who worked on it. I had just spent four days in Galaxy XR with a thick rigid strap and a knob on the back of my head preventing me from even thinking about what I had just done so comfortably in Steam Frame.
“I don’t think I’ve experienced that in a hard shell before,” I told the Valve representative.
“I don’t think it’s been done before,” he replied, holding Steam Frame’s cushioned battery in one hand. “Starting from this and going along the strap, that’s why we eliminated all sorts of knobs or mechanism in the back that could protrude and prevent the user from laying back.”
A great many people consuming the news of Valve’s announcement find themselves curious but unconvinced the private company will land at a compelling price for the LCD-based standalone VR system. Many wanted a Quest killer and some wanted a high-end successor for their wired PC VR system. Half-Life 3 hasn’t been announced and Valve isn’t working on VR games right now. So without trying Steam Frame themselves, or knowing the price, we’re seeing people reporting potent withdrawal symptoms from extended use of copium.
Steam Frame Hands-On: UploadVR’s Impressions Of Valve’s New Headset
UploadVR’s Ian Hamilton and David Heaney went hands-on with Steam Frame at Valve HQ, trying both standalone use and PC VR.
Over the course of our recent discussion about Steam Frame, David and I found ourselves in a circular loop with our audience, essentially trying to sort out whether people could be both disappointed in Valve’s choices and sequestering funds anyway for hardware purchases sometime next year.
While we won’t have a review of Steam Frame for you until sometime next year, meanwhile, Bigscreen claimed high sales numbers on Valve’s announcement day, likely from buyers who were waiting to see what Valve decided before committing to the Beyond 2 for their wired PC VR setup.
Steam Frame’s Value
VR headsets really didn’t go into bed before the Vision Pro, and there’s no hard-backed strap design sold by Apple.
I’ve probably worn Apple’s headset as many hours in bed as I have seated, with standing active use representing a very small fraction of my time in Vision Pro. Yes, I miss Beat Saber and Walkabout Mini Golf and Half-Life: Alyx, but I recently got access to those with ALVR streaming and PlayStation VR2 controllers.
What keeps me in Vision Pro for so many hours is that the headset multitasks iPad apps in a way no iPad can while going places no iPad goes. Because I had so many surfaces around me I could use, I spent hundreds of hours in an Apple VR headset and only the tiniest sliver of that time found me interacting with fully immersive VR games.
When calculating the value of Steam Frame, your equation is deeply flawed if it assumes VR use solely in standing or seated scenarios. If you can’t imagine the headset’s grayscale passthrough as a tunnel through reality taking you from sitting on the couch to reclined in bed, so you can continue playing your favorite Steam game for another two hours, then you have no frame of reference to calculate whether Valve’s upcoming headset will add value to your life.
Valve sent out the first developer kits for Steam Frame in ski goggle cases. Its rear battery pack and cushion can travel inside the facial interface.
Any VR headset made 2014 to 2025 that used your Steam library required external equipment making it difficult to even imagine why you might want to fall asleep in the falling snow on the helipad from the opening level of Metal Gear Solid.
I had that environment on Quest set as my home from SideQuest before Meta replaced it with its new immersive home space. I’ve found that when trying to relax in a place like that with the front-heavy Quest, the battery strains the soft strap’s ability to hold the headset to your eyes. Even without the battery on the front of the face in Vision Pro, using Apple’s Dual Loop Band, I found the headset too loose to be held comfortably by its soft strap when turning on my side in bed. I’ve already shared my impressions of Apple’s new Dual Knit Band, but if there are any Vision Pro M2 and M5 owners with the strap in our audience I’d invite them to share more widely their experience with whether that balanced soft strap allows them to wear it in more places.
When I was at the San Francisco airport earlier this year returning to New York from my demo of Bigscreen Beyond 2, I spotted another Vision Pro owner in the terminal. He was carrying the large white bag strapped to his rolling luggage that Apple sold when the headset first launched. Meanwhile, I had the much more portable grey Belkin bag Apple started selling some time after, with my headset stored vertically and a flip out cover built in to protect the lenses.
Instead of strapped around my luggage, my bag goes over the shoulder with a pocket for a folding keyboard or, in recent weeks, you could find the Muse pen a useful companion ready to pop out and move windows or sketch something.
Why am I spending so much time telling you about the places a $3,500 headset goes? Because we all know Valve’s standalone makes trade-offs to come under the price of the $1,000 Index, but until you wear one you can’t believe that all of these choices result in a headset you might be interested in wearing on a 6 hour flight. When that happens, whatever the price, it will literally be measured as a fraction of what Apple charges to take Vision Pro into those same places.
The relevant comparison for calculating value here isn’t the OLED of Vision Pro vs. the LCD of Steam Frame. The comparison to think about is whether you’re sitting back comfortably or craning your neck downward at a physical display. Are you looking at the back of a seat rest for six hours or playing your favorite Steam game?
I was only half kidding about those copium withdrawals. If Valve pulls the trigger on Half-Life 3, there’s a good chance it will run flat on Steam Frame just like Portal 2 does.
SteamVR supports all PC VR headsets but Valve has really only directly supported three devices in a decade of VR – Vive, Index, Frame. And their developers are not making a VR game right now. But if Valve makes the third game in any of their trilogies? Imagine how the variables in the value equation change if Steam Frame is the most comfortable way to enjoy Half-Life 3 on a flight, train, or in bed on the ceiling.
Wake up, Mr. Freeman.
