Linus just unboxed a real Steam Frame on ShortCircuit. Not a Valve HQ teaser. A review unit. Thirty minutes in a living room.
This is one of the first real Steam Frame reviews, not another Valve HQ handshake demo. Linus got a review unit on ShortCircuit and spent 30 minutes living with it. His opener is the point: a quantum leap in high-quality PC VR, and “my life just went wireless.”
The early verdict hangs on the 6 GHz dongle and eye-tracked foveated streaming. Valve toggled the trick on and off. Linus still couldn’t catch the drop. “I can’t move my eyes fast enough.” Then the first-review money shot: Half-Life: Alyx wireless. Versus the wired Index at home? No worse. He walked the adapter across the room — past any tether that should exist — and it still just worked. Best tech, he said, is the kind that doesn’t beg for applause.
First-look hardware matches the hype: Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, 16 GB, 256 GB or 1 TB plus a microSD slot in the face gasket, SteamOS with Proton and FEX so x86 games run on an ARM headset. Dual 2160×2160 LCDs, 72–144 Hz, pancake optics, IPD locks Linus loved, rear battery that actually balances the face. AA controllers, ~40 hours. Speakers punch above their distance. Comfort already beats “some trillion-dollar company’s” headset. LCD fringing and a little light leak are in the notes. He still called the image pretty darn sharp.
Three ways to play on day one of reviews: stream, standalone, or a giant virtual screen. Swap headsets with two boops. Software is early. Steam Machine streaming isn’t ready. The first-review impression still landed like a mic drop: the wire lost.
