00:00So the Steam Machine is here and I really wanted to love this thing.
00:05This was supposed to be that perfect middle ground between
00:09a games console and a gaming PC, but at $1,049 without the controller.
00:19It's kind of in no man's land.
00:26You were the chosen one. It was said that you would destroy the console wars, not join them.
00:33Let me go into one of the reasons why I do love this thing.
00:35And trust me, there are a fair few because this thing does the thing that Steam Deck does so well.
00:42It takes something as massively complicated as PC gaming and makes it a plug and play experience,
00:50just like a console.
00:51You've got all of the bigger, well, smaller things such as stuffing it all into a six inch cube.
00:59You've got a semi-custom AMD GPU that runs on RDNA 3 architecture.
01:04So something similar to what you found from AMD a couple of years ago.
01:07There's 16 gigabytes of DDR5 RAM and eight gigabytes of VRAM.
01:12That's a problem.
01:13Up at the front, you've got two USB-A and a micro SD card slot.
01:17Super helpful for if you've got a bunch of games installed on your Steam Deck.
01:21You can just pop that out, pop it in here and you don't need to download everything.
01:24On the back, you've got two USB-A, USB-C, gigabit ethernet,
01:29your figure eight power adapter, HDMI display port.
01:32Now, technically that HDMI port is HDMI 2.1, but Linux doesn't support it yet.
01:38But it probably will do in a future update.
01:41And the fact that they've managed to pack it all into this and put a giant heatsink
01:46and a fan on the back, which means that the air comes in through the front and out the back,
01:51really, really quietly.
01:53In fact, it did so quieter than my PS5.
01:57That's a pretty solid effort given how small this thing is.
02:01One of my friends looked at it and immediately thought of the GameCube.
02:04And now I can't get it out of my head.
02:07Also, I know that this is the review of the box, but shout out to the controller.
02:11It is so comfortable to use.
02:14The buttons feel great on it.
02:15And also the touchpads, once you get used to them,
02:18makes it an absolute breeze to use things like on-screen keyboards,
02:22or even going around the Linux desktop mode that's on here.
02:26And of course, one of the big wins here is SteamOS, which I love it on the Steam Deck.
02:32It looks just as great on a big screen TV as well.
02:36There are some weird oddities to it.
02:39So for example, say you download a game, you open it, and you're like,
02:44Oh, Steam Machine's website said I could run this at 4K, but why can I only pick 1080p?
02:49Well, turns out you've got to go into the properties of each game you install,
02:53change the resolution from default to 4K.
02:57Hopefully that's something Valve can update and fix soon.
03:00And last but not least is what I'm going to call all of the games console niceties of it all.
03:06So we've talked about the small size of it.
03:08We've talked about the thermal management, which is pretty impressive,
03:11but this is going to get a bit nerdy.
03:13I want to talk about the HDMI port, because it's an HDMI CET,
03:17which means that just like pretty much every games console you can buy right now,
03:21instead of it just sending video to your TV.
03:25It can also send a little bit of code to your TV on standby that says,
03:28Hey, I'm turned on. I'm in HDMI too.
03:31And the TV will turn on automatically and give you that signal.
03:36That is something that unless you're willing to figure out some weird dongle situation,
03:41it's something that a PC cannot do.
03:44In these ways, Valve has made a box that gets around some of those peak frustrations of PC gaming.
03:53And for those reasons, I do love it.
03:57But it is so complicated.
04:01Now, the reasons why you should skip it.
04:05Where do I begin?
04:07So first of all, to Valve's defense, they have cooked up a pretty decent system for 1080p gaming
04:16and a little bit of 1440p to hit that 60 frames per second mark that most TVs will do.
04:24Their promise of 4K60 is a bit of a dicey one.
04:30Now, don't get me wrong.
04:31It absolutely is possible.
04:33You've just got to turn on a whole lot of FSR, switch it to ultra performance,
04:39and then you'll probably get it.
04:41But then games like Black Myth Wukong end up looking a bit like a watercolor painting.
04:48Valve may say it's 4K60.
04:51Stick to either 1080p or 1440p to get the most out of it.
04:55And even at that, that 8 gigabytes of video memory in here will start to struggle.
05:00As you can start to see it really stutter in games like Black Myth Wukong.
05:06Then say you want to go over to ray tracing, Cyberpunk 2077, 1080p, 17 frames per second.
05:14Didn't even run at 4K until I juiced up the FSR and put on frame generation.
05:19And even at that, I had to turn off ray tracing.
05:23So whatever you do, don't try to RT on this thing.
05:27You're going to have a bad time.
05:29And let's take a journey through Valve's marketing of this.
05:32At first, they really started pushing hard about this being a console that's also a PC.
05:39While leaning on the console bit more.
05:42Now with it coming out, they're really leaning more on that,
05:46oh, and it's also a PC that you can do stuff on kind of bit.
05:49And on the PC side, as you'll start to realize there's laptop parts in here to keep the wattage low.
05:58And as you can see by the Geekbench scores, you're getting what I would call casual productivity performance.
06:05Fine for doing a little bit of Chrome browsing.
06:07Fine for a little bit of word processor work.
06:10But anything more intensive and you'll see this start to sweat and slow down.
06:15But that will be all fair and good, I say to myself, so long as that price remains fair for
06:20it.
06:21So long as it's something within the same realms as the PS5 Pro.
06:27The PS5 Pro is expensive and it's also limited to the PlayStation library.
06:31Whereas that openness of this, I would take a slight knock in performance to get that accessibility to my Steam
06:39library,
06:40but then also have Linux to potentially put emulators on here and stuff like that.
06:44But $1,049 or 879 quid for my fellow Brits.
06:55Like I said, this changes the whole conversation from this being the middle ground between a console
07:01and a PC to essentially being in no man's land and being really difficult for me to recommend.
07:11So what do we ultimately think of this?
07:14Well, it's a heartbreaker really.
07:17I really, really wanted to love this thing.
07:20But at this price, with what it can do, it's a skip at the moment.
07:27Now, I'm hoping that this RAM crisis dies down,
07:31so that the price of this can be brought down to something that I would consider reasonable.
07:36Because there's a lot to like about this.
07:39From the way that SteamOS really brings PC gaming and focuses it into a console gaming experience.
07:48I also love the size of it and the design.
07:51It's not a blaring, RGB-laden gaming PC. It's just a box.
07:56But when you take a look at what we call that price-to-performance ratio,
08:02how much are you getting out of it for every dollar you put into it?
08:06That is way out of sync right now for how much Valve is asking for it.
08:13They acknowledge that this isn't the price they wanted to sell it at.
08:16You've probably seen some of the interviews where Valve has basically hinted towards this
08:21being around 800 bucks, 700 bucks, which is a much fairer price for this thing.
08:29But at four digits...
08:33Damn it.
08:36This was supposed to be the thing, but it's not.
08:41And I want to know what you think. Would you pick up something like this?
08:46What would be the price that would make you go for it? Because
08:50I have no doubt that if there's ever an opportunity where Valve could reduce the price of this,
08:57then they probably would. What would be the number that gets you to buy this?
09:03And also, if you're pondering picking up one yourself and you want to see what a game performs
09:07like on this scene, let me know. I'm doing a live Q&A. I'll put the link in the description
09:12below.
09:13And as always, I've been Jason Lingland from Tom's Guide and I'll talk to you soon. Cheers!
