00:00This is the Steam Frame, Valve's new VR headset that starts at $1,059 and I've been testing it
00:05for the past three weeks so here are my first thoughts. First off, the comfort on this thing
00:09is exceptional. It is very well balanced between the front and the back. You've got the core module
00:14at the front here that has its own processor in it, RAM, SSD and the optics pancake lenses and
00:20on the back you have the battery. So if you're used to the Quest 3 then the optics on the
00:23Steam
00:23Frame are going to be pretty familiar and that is a bit of a tougher sell when the Quest 3
00:27is quite
00:27a lot cheaper. One thing it does have going for it though is a high level of binocular overlap. I
00:32mentioned it about 77%. This is the amount of the image that is shared between both screens on the
00:37headset and so the higher it is the less eye strain you get generally while playing. So Valve is rolling
00:42out SteamOS on the Steam Frame. It's actually made an ARM compatible version especially for this
00:47device. You wouldn't really tell the difference to be honest because once you put it on your head
00:49it is very much just Steam. Though you can decide between whether to play the game on the headset
00:55itself using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip inside it or streamed from your gaming PC using
01:01a small wireless adapter which has its own dedicated 6 gigahertz connection to an antenna on the Steam
01:07Frame. That's definitely the best way to play. The battery life is improved. It's about two hours
01:12versus one hour of standalone play and the quality is absolutely fantastic. It uses something called
01:17foveated streaming which with the eye tracking built into the Steam Frame means it doesn't have to
01:21use as much bandwidth over that wireless connection. The quality is great and you don't
01:25really notice that your peripheral vision is actually lower quality. But you could play a game
01:29directly on the Steam Frame's own processor. You could install an ARM native game through Steam and
01:34then it'll just run as it should in an APK file format or you could install a normal VR game
01:39on here
01:39and it will use a thing called FEX to translate that to run on the ARM hardware in here. And
01:44that does
01:45have a bit of a performance hit and you do notice a bit of a quality dip by running it
01:48on the Steam
01:49Frame itself but it is a little bit more flexibility for Valve's new VR headset compared to its last
01:54gen Valve Index. One of the Steam Frame's strongest features is the tracking is excellent. Not just the
02:00controller tracking, the play space tracking. Once I set up the play space around me I just don't have
02:05to bother with it ever again. I mean if the headset runs out of battery or I leave it on
02:09the floor
02:10it's always pretty much bang on exactly where I left it. The one downside is the charging is a little
02:15bit
02:15slow it can take a couple of hours to fully charge the battery and that means you are just sort
02:19of sat
02:19twiddling your thumbs hoping for it to come back. Overall I do think it's the best all-around VR
02:23headset right now especially for PC VR fans though the price definitely has been hurt by the memory
02:29crisis but the same could be said for pretty much every Valve launch this year so tell us what you
02:34think
02:34in the comments.
