Valve's Steam Frame is excellent - but at over £1,000 is VR still too expensive?

ByTom Gerken

Technology reporter

Valve's caller virtual world headset, the Steam Frame, has officially been released - but it comes astatine a precocious price.

The hardware is fantabulous - a airy instrumentality which feels comfy to deterioration and is packed with clever exertion - truthful agelong arsenic you're consenting to wage a whopping £1,089 for a headset with 1TB of storage.

The variant with 256GB of storage, meanwhile, costs £889.

Both are susceptible of streaming from a PC arsenic good arsenic playing games on-device, with varying degrees of success.

But it carries a terms tag which volition marque a batch of radical rotation their eyes, and doesn't bash overmuch to dispel disapproval that increasingly-costly VR headsets are pricing radical retired of the hobby.

But earlier we get into that hefty terms tag, is the Steam Frame really immoderate good?

I've owned VR headsets for good implicit a decade, and Valve's latest effort makes a promising archetypal impression.

Games tally good - truly the bare minimum considering the terms tag - and it's casual capable to use.

One of the bully things is, similar Meta's Quest 3, it has level "pancake" lenses allowing you to spot intelligibly erstwhile you enactment the headset on.

It's airy - weighing small much than a tin of soup. But what makes it comfy is the determination to abstracted the internals up.

The artillery battalion rests connected the backmost of your caput portion the surface is astatine the beforehand - meaning you don't consciousness front-heavy, a communal disapproval of different headsets.

But determination are amended screens retired there. The PlayStation VR2 for illustration has unthinkable OLED displays, albeit without the pancake lenses.

Apple and Samsung some person fantabulous screens excessively successful their ain headsets.

Yet these travel astatine a superior premium, costing importantly much than the Steam Frame.

When Meta launched the Quest 3 successful June 2023, its 128GB exemplary retailed for £480. Less storage, but a overmuch little price.

Three years later, it's hard to judge VR conscionable keeps getting much costly erstwhile the Quest 3 felt similar a turning point.

"VR contiguous is yet a high-end niche," gaming writer Christopher Dring told me.

"Meta had been subsidising the Quest hardware, and it's hard to ideate they volition going guardant arsenic they pivot distant from those experiences."

Of course, determination are reasons for prices going up. AI developers are gathering elephantine information centres filled with racks of almighty servers, utilizing galore of the aforesaid components needed to marque devices similar the Steam Frame.

Ram prices unsocial more than doubled successful terms betwixt October 2025 and the commencement of 2026. Meanwhile, the graphics paper I bought for £500 a fewer months agone present sits astatine person to £650.

As prices ascent higher and higher, hardware developers don't person overmuch of a prime but to enactment up their own.

"We acceptable retired to travel retired with a instrumentality that would person been overmuch much affordable," Valve developer Jeremy Selan said.

"But the planetary Ram marketplace has impacted america the aforesaid mode it's impacted everybody."

The Steam Frame is surely not a fund product.

But not everyone agrees with the proposition that VR successful wide costs excessively much.

"The thought that it's excessively costly is 1 of the biggest misconceptions astir VR," UploadVR website exertion David Heaney told me.

He pointed retired portion immoderate headsets whitethorn beryllium expensive, Meta's Quest 3S fund exemplary costs £320 but has been connected merchantability for £250 respective times.

"In context, a Nintendo Switch 2 is £420, an Xbox Series S is £430, and a PS5 is £470 - Quest 3S, which is chiefly utilized for gaming, is cheaper than different games consoles," helium said.

He said the large obstruction to much radical getting into VR was simply that "we're inactive successful the aboriginal days".

"You person to spot VR successful the aforesaid timeframe you'd spot idiosyncratic computers successful the 1980s," helium said.

"Even if they had been cheap, which they weren't, they weren't yet bully capable for mainstream adoption.

"VR is lone conscionable getting started, a tech successful its 1980s PC era, not thing anyplace adjacent maturity."

What makes the Steam Frame truly basal retired is its caller tech, including what developers telephone its "foveated streaming".

The tech displays lone the nonstop happening you're looking astatine successful the highest quality, portion making things successful your peripheral imaginativeness little clear.

You don't announcement the debased prime bits due to the fact that you're not looking astatine them - redeeming a monolithic magnitude of bandwidth.

It means you tin watercourse VR games wirelessly from your PC successful precocious prime without being tethered by a cable, and it works well.

And it does this portion sending 2 signals astatine erstwhile - combining your household Wi-Fi with a dongle which plugs into your PC.

But past again, you request to walk adjacent much wealth connected a decent PC if you privation to payment from that - which doesn't assistance with concerns astir price.

Valve says contempt it being a VR headset, the Steam Frame is not conscionable for VR games.

Selan told maine the anticipation is radical volition besides usage it to play their non-VR games too, utilizing the headset arsenic a screen.

I'm not definite I'm convinced developers are going to optimise their non-VR games to tally connected the headset natively, fto unsocial whether radical volition beryllium successful their surviving rooms playing a crippled connected a VR headset alternatively than their TV.

But it's an absorbing thought - and I'd emotion to beryllium proven wrong.