Valve Steam Frame

What hackers pick instead

• Meta QuestRecommended as strong standalone VR hardware at a low price, though many owners rarely use it, find the software buggy, and dislike being tied to Meta.106recommend
• Oculus VR headsetRecommended for solid hardware, good value as a standalone headset, and fun for gaming and watching content. Common caveat: Meta privacy concerns and Facebook integration.21recommend
• Valve IndexPeople recommend it for comfortable long sessions and reliable tracking that works with little tinkering. The most common caveat is fiddly setup, with cable clutter and dated screens also criticized.15recommend
• Bigscreen Beyond 2Recommended for its light weight, comfort, high resolution and perfect blacks; critics note it needs base stations, a PC and a cable, and is poor value.10recommend
• HP Reverb G2People recommend it for working well on Linux via Monado and for racing and shooting games. The main caveat is that random features broke after Windows deprecated Mixed Reality services.6recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 292 comments. Each links to the original.

1. The weight on your face is half that of Quest 3, they put the rest of the weight on the back which perfectly balances it on your head.

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

2. the frame's battery is on the back specifically for this reason in addition to the whole thing being relatively light anyway

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

3. It suffers from LCD, low pixel density, and awful passthrough, but the software is some of the best and only getting better.

   Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Way to Play Super Mario 64: On Apple Vision Pro”

4. The frame is easily the lightest, or at least, the most manageable headset I've tried and the most comfortable long term.

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Way to Play Super Mario 64: On Apple Vision Pro”

5. wireless functionality is definitely one of the pluses; the higher resolution panels also make a significant difference

   Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

6. It has pretty important benefits - lowest possible latency & being able to just pick the headset any play anywhere.

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

7. has eye tracking, enabling very nice and useful eye tracking based optimizations for both rendering and streaming

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

8. can run standalone, doesn't have a bunch of wires dangling from it, and is pretty much a fully working Linux box

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

9. You used to have to choose between wireless and slow or wired and fast. Now you can have both wireless and fast.

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

10. I'm personally quite hyped to see the first commercially available Linux-based standalone VR headset announced.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

11. along with it being your machine instead of a locked down Meta android device is worth 2x the price for many

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

12. Valve giving users root access out of the box is huge. It puts the headset in the same category as a real PC

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

13. A VR headset with an ARM CPU which runs a full fledged Linux operating system, can play x86 games via Proton

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “I don’t need a Steam Machine”

14. It does suck that this more than twice as much (although some of it is obviously the current surge pricing)

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

15. for VR it absolutely improves not dealing with a cable that you can't see and will tangle yourself up with

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

16. the steam frame is open enough for you to develop upon and customize to meet whatever use case you desire

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

17. If you want to 100% opt out of Steam and write your own driver stack, they're not standing in your way.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

18. Not having to faff about with Meta's developer program or whatever to side load my own homebrew stuff

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

19. the custom processing units Valve is using to handle the eye tracking, which are (a) industry leading

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

20. as a Linux device there's also a lot of stuff where you just don't have to care about Play Integrity

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

21. A shitty monitor showing an even shittier monitor while you have a fat brick strapped to your face.

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

22. The dedicated communication dongle between the PC and the headset sounds like a real game changer.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

23. The Frame is half the weight on your face, so active games are going to be a lot more comfortable.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

24. It actually runs arch Linux and Steam says “it’s your computer, you can do what you want with it”

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “UHF X11: X11 Built for VisionOS and Apple Vision Pro”

25. Steam Frame is solving this with a dedicated dongle, if I recall, which I think is a good choice.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

26. it looks like this Valve product will actually be quite light, the weight could be another factor

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

27. Despite the poor timing and somewhat high price tag I am glad there's competition in this space.

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

28. Shame about the monochrome camera, but maybe I can use an add-on camera to colour in the world.

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “UHF X11: X11 Built for VisionOS and Apple Vision Pro”

29. The resolution is a major problem. You can't do this on a VR headset, because the pixels on your virtual screen don't precisely correspond with the pixels in the headset's displays.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

30. You really think people have been waiting to drop $1k for a device that lets them play games designed for a monitor inside of a headset

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

31. when that implies they could have released a dumb unit that depends on the Steam Deck or Steam Machine for far less

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

32. The Frame's screens aren't good enough for general computing. This is purely an entertainment device.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

33. Except without color AR it will not as many of the interesting things HNers want to do require it.

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Steam Machine”

34. It's delusional to think people are going to drop $1k on an optional, almost-single-purpose gadget

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Meta VR Glasses”

35. Including standalone and an SSD and ram and stuff does nothing but jack up the prices drastically

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Steam Frame starts at $1059”

36. A resolution of 2160@110° is kind of low normally, effectively being around 20 pixels per degree.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

37. the headset hardware had reached a sweet spot for the moment, but with this announcement the software situation is now also going to be reaching a similar place

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

38. The current price estimate for the Steam Frame is $1200 vs Quest 3 at $600 which is still a very reasonable price given the technology

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Frame”

39. When the Steam Frame comes out, then we'll see how much of a difference having full control over your VR hardware can make.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15”

40. Excited for Steam/PC games on ARM to get better as a side effect of the Frame running using a Snapdragon CPU.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Steam Machine”