Who is the $1,059 Steam VR headset for?

0:02Sean Hollister:Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of one-pound VR headsets. I'm Sean Hollister, and today we're talking Steam Frame with CNET's Scott Stein. He's a friend, and both of us have reviewed VR headsets going all the way back to the original Oculus Rift. We were two of the first journalists to play with it, and now we've been reviewing Valve's new Steam Frame. Today we're going to give you the rundown, but I also wanted Scott on to talk about what are Valve headsets like to review. Because this one feels a bit unfinished. But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds of The Verge for Monday, September 14th, 2026.

0:37Sean Hollister:Is it time for AI companies to slow down? All of a sudden, a lot of people who stand to make a lot of money from AI think so. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says we should slow down. Anthropix says we should pump the brakes. Even Elon Musk agrees. Microsoft suddenly saying people matter more than AI, that's a quote, and publishing a 37-page code of conduct. It's not clear whether they're actually scared for humanity or just their liability after the next big AI hack, or if they're just trying to avoid regulation by making a show of regulating themselves. But you know who thinks we shouldn't slow down at all?

1:11Sean Hollister:Donald Trump and the Chinese government, who both seem to be enjoying the arms race. Speaking of AI, cars can now tell if you're armed. Terence O 'Brien has the story of the Waymo Robotaxi that called the cops after its riders reportedly stuck a ghost gun to their Google car in San Francisco. And Andy Hawkins explains how your own car is probably selling your data, too. And speaking of selling your data, LG has finally responded to the allegations that its TVs are spying on you. It says its TVs do not continuously record or transmit user conversations, but that continuously is doing a lot of work.

1:45Sean Hollister:You can read more at TheVerge.com, and that's 90 seconds on The Verge for Monday, September 14, 2026. You're listening to DeepGram Flux TTS. Different voices. Same model, all ready to speak. Flux TTS is a streaming text-to-speech model built for voice agents. Flux reads the room. It holds context across the conversation, turn after turn. With consistent tone, interruption handling, and plenty of personality. So your agents keep it flowing and customers can just keep talking. Try Deepgram Flux TTS free now until September 12th. Visit deepgram.com slash keep talking. Terms apply. Bye. I'm Ina Garten.

2:25On my new podcast, Happy Hour with Ina, I'm inviting really interesting guests to join me for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. I'll be getting personal with chefs, actors, comedians, musicians, and writers I admire. So grab a snack, pull up a chair, and join us. Subscribe to Happy Hour with Ina on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes will be available every Wednesday starting September 16th.

3:00Scott, welcome to the Vergecast. Hey, thank you, Sean. It's good to be on here. This is like a reunion seeing you again.

3:07Sean Hollister:It's been a bit. And we, Scott and I, I think I may have just mentioned, we spent a lot of time playing with VR headsets together over the years. And this one is something that I don't think I expected. This is the Steam Frame. And if you're watching a video of this, this is the Steam Frame with an Arcturus Vision camera on the front. We both got them up here. And this is a VR headset from Valve that's not exactly just a VR headset. Can you tell me the basics a little bit? Sure. So, Valve has made VR headsets before. They were partners basically with HTC Vive, if you know VR history, all the way back when the Oculus Rift launched.

3:48they have had steam vr but what they're announcing here is in one sense if you look at this it's like a meta quest this is a standalone vr headset that valve is making at long last but in the other sense the frame which is an interesting name is this uh steam compatible gaming device so it can play 2d steam games and it can also wirelessly connect with your pc so it is a vr headset but it's also being set up to play other stuff, your mileage may vary.

4:19Sean Hollister:It plays standalone games on its own chip, on like a fairly weak compared to your PC, Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, like something that'd be in your phone. And then it also streams games from your PC. It's supposed to do flat games inside of there, like you're playing your Hades 2, you're playing your Tunic in there, But it's also doing your VR expansive games. You can theoretically port VR games from a MetaQuest right over here, take the Android version and put it on this headset, even though it's not exactly running Android. It's trying to do all of these things in one. And so while it looks like that MetaQuest, it isn't quite that.

4:59Sean Hollister:And so you and I, we've spent this time reviewing it. One thing that we know that nobody else knew outside of the reviewer circle before today is the price. How much is this and how much does that compare to those MetaQuest, to that Valve Index? Yeah, so not surprising based on the cost of the Steam machine. It is$1 ,059 for the one with 256 gigabytes of storage, which is the entry one. And then it's$1 ,299 for the one with a terabyte of storage. It's funny because, yes, that's expensive. But then also, if you've been looking at the prices of VR headsets and XR things, I'm not defending that price.

5:38But other than Meta, they've all been like, you know, the snap specs are like$2 ,000, the Vision Pro and Galaxy XR was$1 ,899. So, yeah, I mean, it's definitely not the console price I want, but that's what we're dealing with here. It's$1 ,059 and up.

5:55Sean Hollister:I wasn't expecting this to cost$350 like the MetaQuest 3S or$600 like the Quest 3. I definitely knew it was going to be more than that because it's trying to do more and because it's Valve. But what surprised me is that it's not just the games. There's an entire Linux desktop in here running on that chip. You can run it side by side with the games that you're playing. I'm running Discord in a web browser to talk to my friends over here while I've got a giant screen over there across my living room playing Super Battle Golf with those friends. Like I can do multiple things at the same time. Valve exposes a lot more to the power users than Meta does, than anybody else does, right?

6:44Yeah, and I haven't even really started dipping my toes in that. Like I've opened the desktop, I've played around with some of the apps in there. I've done some browser-y stuff. And then I've just gone back to playing games. But, you know, it's also partly like because it's Linux and because you're going to kind of have to like log in and download stuff, it's not as like lazy easy where you're just going to like, you know, connect your ecosystem like a Google or Apple. I mean, meta, you're starting all over again because you're, you know, you don't have your work apps or things easily logged in.

7:13But, yeah, it does expose a lot more. um it allows you to fail which is which is a very valve thing in the sense that you know you could launch something that doesn't run that well on it and um you can launch any steam thing on it you know even if it's not approved uh or or you know like a grade on frame uh labeled including vr things and uh you can just watch something totally fail out if you want or you can try to optimize for a better experience or go the smooth, easier path.

7:47Sean Hollister:The whole Steam frame, it's a stack of technologies to make things work on this phone chip that almost all of them were not designed to work on Linux on that chip. There's the new Lepton compatibility ladder. You've heard of the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs Windows games on Linux with a technology called Proton, a compatibility ladder built on wine. This one has a new one called Lepton that does that for Android. It also has a version of Proton that's been ported over to ARM, so it can run those Windows games on this smartphone chip on your face. So when you put the Steam frame on your face, you and I have both experienced this, how does this compare to playing games on your flat TV, to putting on a MetaQuest, to putting on a Vision Pro?

8:34Sean Hollister:What do you see in here and how do you interact? So if you've ever used a VR headset, if you've used something like a MetaQuest, it's kind of similar in that what you see is suddenly you get this fuzzy camera pass through, like you can see through these black and white cameras. You see the real world. You see the real world while the screen floats in front of you that you can resize with your controllers. But not with your hands. There's no hand tracking on this headset. Not yet. So you only use controllers. Not yet. And then you browse and if you use a Steam device like a Steam Deck or a Steam machine or Steam in general, it's got a very similar layout.

9:18It looks like just that monitor, that very familiar interface has popped up once you log in and then you've got your games on there.

9:25Sean Hollister:That's just floating in your living room, that window. That just floats in your living room and you can float it near in this little pop-up dashboard or similar to meta and others. You can hit a theater mode where it pops out far. And then it's a curved screen that you can then also make flat if you want. You can make it so big. You can make it so big. It's like my entire living room wall. Yeah, like a huge room filling thing, which is very fun. And you can also pop up other windows if you want. Although it's mainly designed, I think, to be that one screen. You can do others. And like you're pointing out, you could run other apps at the same time.

10:01And then you're using the controllers. So these controllers, which you hold in your hand, for someone who's used VR, very familiar in that you're kind of using them as pointers because there's a laser pointer that activates when you press this button that arcs across and you can click on things that you want from a distance.

10:20Sean Hollister:This isn't an actual laser. It's a virtual laser pointer that you're using to move your windows around and select things. That's exactly it. But then you can also click that again and then you're in controller mode. and then this is these are all just the same as almost the same as a steam controller minus the trackpads so you got the d-pad and buttons and so you can just browse around click around like you would on a steam deck and check your menus etc you can swap between i really love the laser mouse feature on these i mean with the vision pro if you're in the apple vision pro you're using your eyes to look at things and so and so you got to like retrain your brain a little bit to be like The thing I am looking at right now with my eyes, when I pinch that, it will move and make the window bigger or it will drag a window around and place it somewhere in my room.

11:06Sean Hollister:And with these, instead with the controllers, you click this button and this button is the mode switch. So like if I press this grip button on the controller, this very clicky button, one time it will go from I'm in the middle of my game. They are my hands in the game or they are my gamepad in the game because they've got all the same buttons. It's like an Xbox gamepad. They will go from that to becoming this laser mouse. And so in an instant, I can be like, oh, this window isn't as big as I'd like. Or no, I want this window to be on that wall instead of floating in the middle of my room. And so I'll just be like, OK, I'm going out of gamepad mode, click the button.

11:39Sean Hollister:Now I'm in laser mouse mode. Drag that thing over there to that window where I want it instead. Resize it a little bit to make it bigger or smaller. Maybe I'll even pick it up and carry it with me to another room and then let go of it. Press that button one more time. And now it's my gamepad again. It's this mode switching. I really like it. except when the laser mouse disappears and fails to work, which it has for me on some occasions. Yes. And I didn't even know how to make it work at first. I felt like an idiot because it was a little bit of fumbling where, you know, I saw laser mouse at the bottom and there were these trigger marker button indicators.

12:12And I kept pressing the top buttons here and going, oh, is that the laser mouse? And I was like, is this the laser mouse? There is no laser mouse. And then I finally realized, wait, it's the grip button that does the laser mouse and swaps. And then I really liked it.

12:24Sean Hollister:I do like that theoretically, and they haven't like mapped all the controls yet. I think developers may have to do these per game, but you can theoretically use it as a mouse in your games too. So when I'm, when I'm selecting, you know, play a new game or changing the graphics settings in the game, I can use my laser mouse, press those buttons on the menus in the screen, and then just tap it again. And I'm back in, in a gamepad mode again, assuming the gamepad mode is recognized and it goes back into that. And then another feature, there's this other, this Steam button at the bottom here of each of the controllers.

12:57Sean Hollister:If you tap it one time, you'll make all of your extra, you know, menus and windows and Chrome's disappear. So then you've just got your floating windows. If you tap it two times, you can switch between your real world, you know, pass through vision of your living room, between that and the virtual environment where you're completely enclosed in a bubble of video game graphics. And so you can quickly swap between those things if you have to walk around your room or if you just want to be there with your wife on the couch like me versus I want to be fully enclosed in a space that other people are not intruding in, which I like.

13:32Sean Hollister:And there's also spatial audio. What did you think of the spatial audio? Tell me about that. I thought it was fine. You know, I don't really think it like, it didn't shock me and it didn't, it didn't, maybe the fact that I didn't think about it is a good thing. Because when I was playing the 2D games, it felt very fine and natural. And in that sense, maybe the spatial audio applied to the 2D game theater experience was well done. VR felt like VR as I remembered it. The speakers were reasonably loud enough. And yeah, I think, I think, I don't know. I didn't think about it much and that's interesting.

14:07Sean Hollister:The thing I do like, and maybe this is for productivity rather than for games. I ended up writing a bit of my Steam Frame review on the Steam Frame, which I always think is a fun gag when you can do it. The windows in your world, if you pull a window out to the side, the audio comes directionally from wherever the floating window in your room actually is. So if I'm watching, you know, Peaky Blinders from Netflix on the screen in front of me, and I turn to the left, well, I still hear the audio coming from that screen over there onto my right, no longer from directly ahead of me all the time. So it gives you that extra sense that the windows are where you place them in the world.

14:42Sean Hollister:They just don't necessarily stay where I place them for me. I don't know if this happened to you a lot, but I would be manipulating some windows or switching back to my Chrome so I can control where all these floating windows are in my house. And suddenly one of them would be down in my lap or pop up to the right of where I thought it was going to be, things like that. Oh, my God. And that's because I didn't even try opening a huge amount of windows. but I kind of felt, I got the feeling that the frame was struggling if you push it. And that's where I kind of felt like, unlike, I mean, the Vision Pro is running an M5 processor, you know, so it's got a lot in there.

15:20Even the Galaxy XR with its chipset felt, you know, relatively fine. I felt the fan kicking in a lot on the Steam frame. And sometimes even some basic things, like I kind of finally learned how to record in-game clips and then convert them over to my phone. And, um, it was, it was chugging on that and, um, getting real hot. Um, not all the time, but I felt like there's sometimes a little stuttery slowdown when things like that happen. You and I've reviewed a lot of these products.

15:51Sean Hollister:We've, we've played with a lot of headsets and VR is not in an amazing state right now. I would say, there's there's there's not a ton of new stuff to play um and i don't know who this is for other than really nerdy folks like me who want to push it to its limits and do everything possibly the thing they possibly can on it i want to ask you about that and i also want to ask you what it was like to review this product it is weird to review a headset and it is especially interesting to review a Valve product. We'll talk about why. Let me start with the first one, though. Who is this for? First thought I had was this is maybe for that person who had a Valve index and was thinking, I want a SteamVR wireless headset that could be standalone, and no matter what, and I want it to be made by Valve.

16:47There's that person. I think, though, there are so many VR headsets out there that work with Steam and with PCs that I feel like, you know, I don't know if you can justify that price for that. I don't think it's for the person that wants a portable game system because to me, it has compromises compared to the Steam Deck. And the Steam Deck is already multiple years old. So not only does it not play the whole catalog, it's a subset of things. Like it won't play, you know, I tried playing things like Elden Ring, Spider-Man 2, Ratchet & Clank, forget it. Play Baby Steps. You know, we played some not authorized for Steam frame games really well.

17:21Baby Step Sektori was great on it. Crazy Taxi, the old Crazy Taxi game. You know, some like nice surprises in there. You'll find nice surprises, but it's a real scavenger hunt. And then battery life, which I found really limiting on this, even more than I felt like other VR headsets. I felt like I was kind of always ready to go for a recharge or to tether it. And then there's the price. Because also, as much as you may, and there are many reasons to be freaked out about meta, the fact is that the price that they've put it at and the game catalog on the Quest, it can't touch that right now. And the Quest is very versatile.

18:03So you kind of have this thing where you go, it's an amazing Swiss army knife of an experiment. But in the current moment, very experimental.

18:13Sean Hollister:I think it's absolutely for early adopters who already have a powerful desktop PC and want to stream their games. Like you said, a Valve Index replacement. So the Valve Index, for those who aren't aware of this, this was, I think it was$1 ,000, right? $1 ,000 corded headset, wired headset that came out basically just as the industry had decided we didn't want wired to be the way we do things, that the cord got in the way. And certainly there were excellent experiences you could have while sitting with a cord, even standing with a cord if you weren't moving around too much. I remember Star Wars Squadrons and jumping in that X-Wing.

18:52Sean Hollister:And that was just amazing to be in the cockpit of the X-Wing playing that in VR, an entire full, you know, AAA game in VR that way. That was something special. Half-Life Alyx, very special if you're standing around. and the teleport kind of controls in that game makes it so you don't get tangled in the cord too much. You teleport around with a thumbstick. You don't need it. There's, by the way, there's a standalone version of that here on the frame. If you're the kind of person who has this beefy gaming PC and you're like, but my home network, but I don't like the cord. I don't want to trip over a cord, but my home network is not great for streaming things.

19:28Sean Hollister:This comes with a six gigahertz dongle. It's fairly short range. I walked, you know, 12 feet away, 12 feet and one wall away and it kind of cut out. So you have to be kind of in the same room or very close outside of the room for that to work. But if you're sitting, if you're standing in front of your PC, standing in front of your PC, that gives you a dedicated wireless link. So you're not getting all kinds of lag. You get something Valve is calling a foveated streaming where it'll track your eyes many, many, many times per second and give you the highest resolution where you're looking and the highest streaming quality should say where you're looking and lower elsewhere.

20:03Sean Hollister:that's super nice. I could imagine doing this with my powerful PC. I'm just not sure about if I don't have that, if I don't have, and if I don't have specific VR titles that I want to play, or if I don't, if I'm not sure I want to have this headset on my head. For me, sitting that 12 feet away on my couch, being an irresponsible person who likes to push hardware to its limits and being okay with being an early adopter, I'm like, ooh, I could play those games I'd play on my PC. Instead of them on my 24-inch monitor, I can play them on a screen the size of my entire living room wall, and that's cool.

20:38But do I want to pay the extra thousand plus for that?

20:43Sean Hollister:I'm not sure. Yeah, absolutely. And also, we didn't even talk about the display, but just in terms of the display looks, again, I thought it was good. I thought it was fine. I didn't think it was spectacular. And that's exactly where it's landing, where it's like 2160 by 2160 per eye LCD. Not OLED. Not OLED. It's kind of like Quest 3 equivalent. um it's not vision pro it's not galaxy xr um and then also you know the pancake lenses which are on there are really nice and crisp sometimes a real optical weirdness and maybe it's also i had to use prescription lenses um which by the way this doesn't fit my glasses well at all i was going to ask you yes i'm i was for the for listeners scott is notorious for having the biggest glasses in the industry of VR reviewers.

21:28Sean Hollister:I'm sorry, Scott. But it makes you an amazing reviewer among all your other talents because everybody comes to you after they do their review and they're like, but what did Scott say about glass? What did Scott say about his glasses? So unfortunately, these are not smart glasses. These are just regular. These are my glasses. They're a cram. Now I fit them in there, but I was jamming them in there and they stuck when I took them out. Not ideal. Also would kind of stick in there and fog up the lenses. So it was a miserable experience. And Zenni sent me prescription lenses to try with this, which was great.