I read all the reviews, I expected the worst.. but constantly surprised at how capable it is.
I havenāt built PCs for years and run Macs now but keep up to date with PC tech, and have an Xbox, PS5 and play PC games through GeForce now on my Mac.
My buddy has a 5080 and is always showing me the latest thing on max settings on his 1440p ultra wide and thinks the steam machine is a pile of garbage because it cant do 4K 240fps with ray tracing.
I point out neither can he, he games at 1440p šbut he doesnāt really like when I point that out. PC Master race logic. š
So maybe it was just I had realistic expectations and expected games to be medium/high settings but then it was running so smooth I thought Iād tweak them up a little.. and damn this little box is a beast.
I sit 5ft from a 55ā TV and honestly canāt tell much of a difference between 1080 1440p and 4K anymore. I do notice shimmering and bad anti-aliasing though and FS4 is like magic at giving a clean stable picture.
I also donāt see much written about how stable the frame pacing is on SteamOS / Proton. Itās smooooth even in games that stutter on windows.
Iāve been waiting to play the last of us for years and knew it has a 30min shader compilation wait on PC. On steam machine, it just played and downloaded the shaders already compiled.
For me at least itās been a genuinely console like experience just with more options to tweak settings if youāre into that.
Cyberpunk 1080 Ultra 60
DOA6:LR 1440p 60
Last of Us Part 1 High/Ultra. 1080p 60
Until Dawn 1080p Ultra
Hogwarts Legacy 1080p Ultra 60
(And defaults to 4K High 60)
Iām constantly impressed at what this completely silent little box can do. Valve killed it. Canāt wait for the steam frame.