Steam Machine Review

Everything Valve controls here is excellent. SteamOS on a television is the most console like experience anyone has built on top of a personal computer, with instant suspend and resume, controller navigation that never drops you onto a desktop, and compatibility work that quietly runs most of a Windows library without being asked. The box is small, beautifully made and close to silent under load. The whole Steam catalog comes with it, along with the sale prices and the mod support that no console offers.

The number on the box is the problem, and every review says so. A six core processor and a graphics part that lands between two mid range cards of the previous generation is a 1080p and 1440p machine, the eight gigabytes of video memory shuts the door on 4K, and Valve is asking more than Sony wants for a PlayStation 5 Pro. For someone with a large Steam library and no gaming PC it makes sense. For everyone else the arithmetic does not work.