Reviews Gaming Valve Steam Machine review: This would’ve been perfect five years ago The Steam Machine isn’t worth the price that Valve is asking. By Jessica Conditt July 8, 2026 3:00 pm EST Engadget RATING : 6.5 / 10 Pros Puts Steam in your living room Very quiet Gives the Steam Controller a home Cons Too expensive Underpowered compared with current consoles/PCs No upgrade path Existential gaming issues When I appeared on the Engadget Podcast last week , I casually compared the Steam Machine to the Steam Deck, essentially calling my review unit a beefed-up version of Valve’s handheld. Now that I’ve spent a few more days with the box in my living room, and Valve has rolled out additional updates, I’m willing to admit that was a too-harsh comparison. In truth and totality, I’d compare the $1,049 Steam Machine to an entry-level ninth generation console, or perhaps a decent gaming PC back in 2021. As a contemporary living room console, the Steam Machine is fine. It’s not quite good and it’s not particularly impressive, but it will be able to run most games at reasonable framerates and resolutions. The Steam Machine is powered by semi-custom AMD hardware, much like the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles or, of course, the Steam Deck. It has a Zen 4 CPU with six cores, an RDNA3 GPU with 28 CUs, 16GB of RAM and 8GB of VRAM. It runs SteamOS, though you’re free to install Windows if a game you want to play requires it . Though its hardware setup is different from Sony’s console, its raw ability to push pixels falls just short of a PS5’s. Benchmarking games Engadget Hopefully that provides a framework for the types of games the Steam Machine can handle. Specifically, I played Mixtape in full without issue, and the Steam Machine and Steam Controller handled all of its oddball interactions beautifully. The Machine also seamlessly runs titles like Forbidden Solitaire and Balatro , though Balatro ‘s HDR settings required some tweaking in my playthroughs. If you have a Steam library of indie titles and less-demanding experiences, the Machine should serve you well — but then again, so would a Steam Deck, or an old PC, or a laptop, or a phone with Steam Link. If you’re looking to play Black Myth: Wukong , avert your gaze. Benchmarking Black Myth , the Steam Machine struggled with native 1080p high, averaging 43 fps, and only managed to hold 60 fps when upscaling from far lower resolutions. That’s playable, of course, but it doesn’t perform as well as the current-gen consoles, and ray-tracing features weren’t feasible at all. Besides that, the Steam Controller added a layer of clunkiness, as the software automatically used the gamepad’s gyro as a mouse but mis-mapped the click. It’s easy to switch profiles and customize inputs for each game, but needing to do that to get past a game’s terms and conditions screen is not a great experience. The Steam Machine also supports keyboard and mouse controls, of course, but since I’m using it as a living room device, I’m solely interested in the gamepad configuration. As a console running Black Myth , the Steam Machine was crappy. As a $1,000+ PC, it was just disappointing. Putting the Machine through its paces did reveal one positive feature: It’s whisper-quiet, no matter how hard you push it. In the Phoenix summer my house has a high noise floor, and it was impossible to hear the Steam Machine’s fans over the HVAC without holding my ear directly to it. Cyberpunk 2077 fared a little better than Black Myth , running shy of 60 fps in 1080p ultra, which could be cleaned up to a 60 fps lock with some settings tweaks or upscaling. Adding in “low” ray tracing immediately tanked the framerate, and with FSR in performance mode it could just about lock to 30 fps. If you want to play Cyberpunk 2077 for the sixth time, you’ll be better served with a PS5, Xbox Series X or S, Switch 2 or whatever PC you’ve already played it on — because obviously you already own a piece of hardware that can run these types of games, so wh
Sumber: Engadget