By Mashable | Created at 2026-09-18 21:42:24 | Updated at 2026-09-18 22:51:32
1 hour ago
Just when you thought all was quiet on the VR headset front, here comes the Steam Frame from Valve.
Steam Frame was initially announced by Valve, the parent company of the popular Steam gaming platform, in Nov. 2025. This was after years of rumors about the company developing a VR headset. Now, as of Sept. 18, the Steam Frame is finally available.
Here's what the reviews have to say about it.
First of all, I think the most notable thing to mention is what everyone seems to be talking about. The overall product is very well designed and makes playing VR games very easy to do.
"The Steam Frame gets a whole lot right," said Jacob Ridley in PC Gamer's Steam Frame review. " It's comfortable and straightforward. Above all else, it's convenient."
"What used to slow me down with other headsets is mostly a thing of the past," Ridley explains. "I place the Steam Frame on my head and pick a game to play; VR has never been easier."
On top of that, while the Steam Frame is a VR headset, it also lets users play non-VR games on a large virtual screen. Users can play games in their Steam library using the Steam Frame. The headset acts as a big monitor.
"The Steam Frame is a fascinating VR headset," said IGN's Jacqueline Thomas. "In my time with it, I’ve spent almost an equal amount of time playing traditional non-VR games as I have VR games. In a lot of ways, it's become a replacement for my gaming monitor, one I can take around the house with me."
In Kotaku, Zack Zwiezen focused on how the Steam Frame excelled as a wireless PC gaming headset, saying it worked better than any other headset he had used for streaming games from his PC.
"I played everything using this setup and it worked without fail," Zwiezen writes. "It was so seamless and perfect that I quickly forgot I wasn’t connected to a cable. Being able to play a high-end VR game without any wires attached to me or any noticeable lag or streaming errors was revelatory, and it's easily Valve’s biggest win with the Steam Frame."
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Chis Person of gaming outlet Aftermath went as far as to call the Steam Frame "one of the most exciting pieces of hardware I’ve seen in the space in years." Person went on to say that the VR headset "is doing massive amounts of hard work to unify several different use cases into a single open platform."
Seemingly every outlet that reviewed the device had glowing things to say about what they all essentially agreed was a Steam Deck with a VR / AR component.
However, just as most outlets were united on the positives, they all seemed to have the same criticisms, too.
CNET's Scott Stein seemed to summarize the issues with the Steam Frame most succinctly, running through the device's battery life issues, buggy performance, and lack of game support at launch.
"Cook away, Valve. I’ll be curious to see what happens next," Stein said. "But right now, it’s something most people should wait on unless they want to go on an experimental journey too."
As for why they might wait, all of the reviewers seemed to agree that pricing and the gaming industry's current appetite for VR were good reasons to hold off.
The Steam Frame starts at $1,059 for the 256GB model and $1,299 for the 1TB version, making the economics of buying one a major issue, as gaming site Rock Paper Shotgun's James Archer pointed out.
On top of that, the gaming world seems to have come to an agreement that the push for VR didn't really pan out last time around and, as a result, VR game development has been lackluster.
"I have no idea who it's for in 2026," Kotaku put right in the headline of its review.
"It’s a strange time to be selling a new VR headset, and maybe an even stranger time to be buying one," Rock Paper Shotgun's Archer explained in the opening paragraph of his review, stating that the "supply of original virtual reality games has slowed to a dribble."
Devindra Hardawar of Engadget echoed the other reviewers' praise and criticism, but argued that the biggest issue for the Steam Frame is timing.
"While the Steam Frame is ultimately a solid standalone VR experience," Hardawar said. "It's hard to stomach its exorbitant price, as well as the fact that it's arriving far too late to inject much life into the declining state of VR."
Overall, it appears the Steam Frame is a great work-in-progress VR product that is being stymied by the fact that the broader virtual reality world just isn't the big thing right now.
