Man vs Machine

The Steam Machine is Valve's new piece of hardware entering the scene as a mini PC built for living room gaming. I love a lot about it, had some issues with it, but overall came away from my time with it feeling very positive. The big question mark has been around the Steam Machine price. After the Steam Deck had a jump in price, we knew that would be a major factor in who to recommend this to for PC gaming. The Steam Machine specs in coordination with how well it works with the Steam Controller being still make this an appealing PC rig to consider.

A wonderful design can't beat the ugly realities of pricing, performance, and consumer value.

Valve opened Steam Machine pre-orders, giving you a chance to get your name down early for a reservation, though it may be a while until you get it .

The Steam Machine is a pricey proposition compared to a PS5, but some perks do help sweeten a tough deal.

There’s no way around it, the Steam Machine is extremely expensive for the level of performance you get out of it. I still think that anyone who’s only looking to play games would probably be better served with a PS5 or an Xbox Series X, especially if you don’t already have a Steam library. In general, the Steam Machine performs very similarly to the PS5, even if it falls short in some of the games I’ve tested. As a follow up to my review of the Steam Machine, I pulled up four games to test side-by-side with the PS5 in ‘Performance’ mode, which typically locks games to a solid 60 fps, to see e