Recently, Valve invited me to their headquarters to check out their new
cutting-edge VR headset, the Steam Frame.
As you might have noticed in this little B-roll shot here, I packed a whack of
other headsets that I had intended to compare against it. There's just one
small problem. I had less than 2 hours with the bloody thing.
That was to learn about the headset, experience the headset, gather my
thoughts, write a 1,700 word script, and then shoot the video, which I ended up
having to do partially at the airport, and even then I still missed my flight.
>> [music] >> We need some way to avoid this kind of thing in the future.
>> [music] >> Anyhoo, now that I'm in the comfort of my own studio, they can't stop me from
gathering up all the key VR headsets from the major players like Apple.
Just kidding, Apple. From the major players like Meta and Valve themselves,
as well as from some more niche players like
Apple. And also Bigscreen and Sony.
[music] That last one is pretty key because the Frame takes one of the best
features of the PSVR 2 and steps [music] it up to a whole new level. But, it's
not all sunshine and yachts. In some ways, the Steam Frame obsoletes
everything [music] else on the market, but in others, it still lags behind.
>> [music] >> So, let's sit down and talk about what I saw. Oi.
This is a standing desk, just like the standing Segway. To our sponsor, Ow
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computer. Check out the DH-2300 at our link in the video description. Before we
jump into these headsets, let's do a quick recap of the Steam Frame. Elijah,
time me. Powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and 16 gigs of LPDDR5X memory, the Frame
features an ARM-based computer running SteamOS with the ability to play native
ARM games, Linux x86 games, and even Windows x86 games on a big virtual
screen. Or, if you're more about total immersion, you can play the aforementioned flavors of VR games
either on device or you can power them with your dedicated desktop and stream
video to the Frame using the included Wi-Fi 6 GHz dongle. Valve uses an
incredible technology called foveated streaming. More on this in a bit. To
deliver low-latency, high-fidelity video wirelessly to the Frame's 2160 by 2160
LCD displays at up to 144 Hz, all while
weighing just 185 g including the integrated 21.6 Wh battery. Time.
Pretty good, right? I think you were a little generous. With the head strap,
it's more like 440 g. >> Ah, okay, not what I meant. And besides,
even with the head strap, the Steam Frame is still around half the weight of
some of the other headsets that we're looking at today. Why don't we start
with one that isn't on the table? The original, the Valve Index. Right out of
the gate, the Index has some glaring disadvantages. [music] The ergonomics
were fine at the time, but when we compare to the Frame, not only does it
weigh far more, not to mention need to ratchet onto your noggin, but the light
seal is worse, the balance of the weight is worse with it all kind of hanging off
the front of your face, and the constant drag of the cord is something that many
have tried to overcome, but even the best solutions seem to be plagued with
issues. And that's not the only way that the Index has aged
>> [clears throat] >> ungracefully. [music] Even at the time of its release, its field of view and its resolution are
hardly groundbreaking, and they were quickly surpassed by competitors like
Pimax, HP, and HTC. The Frame is going
to have a major advantage there, upgrading not only the display
resolution, but also the optics to dramatically enhance the perceived image
quality. With that said, that doesn't make the Index suddenly irrelevant for
everyone who owns one. One area that Valve didn't even aim to improve was the
field of view, and like the Index, the Frame uses LCD panels still. So, don't
expect the same kind of mind-blowing contrast that you might get from some of
our other headsets today. Another area that Valve didn't even try to improve
was tracking. They told me point-blank that the target was as good as Index,
but that also ain't a bad thing. The Index used anywhere from two to up to
four base stations for room scale tracking. These little guys sweep
infrared lasers across your entire play area to determine the exact position of
your headset and controllers. This form of tracking, from the outside in, is
still considered the best because even if one sensor gets blocked, you can
basically guarantee that another will be able to pick up the slack. With that
said, Valve sounded very confident that the wide, near 180° side-mounted cameras
on the Frame would allow their new inside-out tracking to capably handle
even unusual positions like drawing an
arrow out of a quiver. What I'm less sure about is unusual VR accessories.
I've had a lot of fun over the years streaming with a full-body VR avatar,
and unless Valve releases one later, I have a hard time imagining a way to get
reliable tracking on my waist and my feet [music] without relying on an
outside-in system. Another mixed bag is the controllers. On the one hand, I can
see why Valve chose a more industry-standard approach this time. It
will make default keybinds simpler for VR developers, and it allows flat-screen
games to be easily enjoyed without learning a new controller layout, but I
and many others loved both the ergonomics and especially the
five-finger awareness of the Knuckles controllers. The good news is that with
a modestly priced upgrade pack, you can maintain a similar feel, and personally,
I love the change to a single AA battery
per controller because that means no more waiting around to play. You just
drop a freshly recharged battery in, and you're good to go. The last point is one
that I'm particularly nervous about. The Index's onboard audio is nothing short
of legendary. The near-field speakers sound great, and somehow they leak very
little externally. That can be a pretty big deal depending [music] on the things
you [clears throat] like to do in VR. And the microphone is so good that my
chat was often flooded with messages demanding to know what amazing
microphone I was using. Now, Valve says that the Frame should be on par, and I
haven't got a reason to doubt them, but I do worry a little bit that the
position of the speakers might make it hard for them to sound quite as good,
and it may cause more leakage. Thing is, I love my Index, and many on-paper
superior headsets have come and gone through my house with the Index staying
part of my setup. It's just one of those truly great products that is more than
the sum of its parts. But, it's not the only great VR headset. Let's compare now
to the GSOAT, the greatest selling of all time, the Meta Quest series. The
current king of the hill for Meta is the Quest 3, and this really shows you what
an unlimited budget will do for you. This thing is a couple of years old now,
but it has aged like fine wine and still holds up surprisingly well. It boasts
nearly the same per-eye resolution as the Steam Frame, and it also uses
low-profile pancake lens objects. Meta has invested heavily in attracting VR
game developers to their platform, even going as far as to acquire Beat Games,
maker of the smash hit Beat Saber, and it even got a $150 price drop for the
512 gig model, making it the obvious choice for a value VR setup until its
little brother, the 3S, showed up more recently. Even now though, the Quest 3
is going to be a tough package to beat from a bang for the buck perspective. It
also boasts convenient inside-out tracking thanks to its camera array, and
it also plays games on board thanks to its Snapdragon XR Gen 2 processor. It
also allows streaming from a SteamVR PC either over a USB-C connection or
wirelessly, and it features color rather
than black and white passthrough cameras like Valve chose for the Frame. But,
worry not, Valve fanboys, for GabeN didn't come to this gunfight equipped
with just any knife. It's a Karambit Doppler Sapphire knife. OH MY DAYS.
[screaming] First things first, the Frame is not only lighter than the Quest 3, but the
weight distribution is noticeably better. See, all the weight of the
optics, the computer, the battery hangs off of the front of this bad boy. Valve
moved the battery pack around to the back, which gives you less weight
directly on your cheeks and nose, and also less swing pull, which is not a
real term, but it's like the way that when you swing, it kind of pulls.
You know what I mean? Valve also holds a slight advantage when it comes to screen
refresh rate. While both headsets officially top out at 120 Hz, Valve
includes an experimental 144 Hz mode.
Finally, the Quest 3 does not have out-of-the-box eye tracking. This makes
it way harder for someone to realize that you're checking out their VR avatar
and >> [music] >> uh come over and talk to you. Either to say, "Hey, I like your avatar, too."
Or to say, "Stop looking at me, weirdo." But more importantly, it gives Valve a
giant advantage for wireless streaming. It's time to talk about foveated
streaming. See, when Meta beams a video frame from your connected PC over to
your Quest 3, they do so using the same bitrate or the same quality for the
entire frame. That's because Meta has no way of knowing where you're looking, and
you probably wouldn't want them to the way they would use it. By contrast,
Valve uses high-speed sensors to track your gaze, and then encode only the part
of the frame that you're actually looking at at the highest quality level.
In practice, it works amazingly well.
Like, [music] I could not flick my eyes fast enough to focus on a
crappier part of the image before it updated and started rendering it at full
fidelity. And to ensure a smooth experience, Valve came up with a really
clever way to reduce the likelihood of network congestion by giving you a 6 GHz
wireless dongle that connects directly from your PC to your headset. 6 GHz
wireless enables higher speeds and is less prone to interference. Now, one
drawback of 6 GHz is range and obstacle
penetration, but I mean given the bar is
a cord, Valve seems to be clearing it handily. It's also worth noting that the
Quest 3 also supports 6 GHz Wi-Fi, but
depending on your Wi-Fi access point and your network configuration, your
experience with it may vary. As for controllers, I'd call these a draw
because Valve pretty much copied Meta's homework, but I do expect audio to be a
disadvantage for the Quest 3 along with the closed ecosystem and its dependency
on Meta, who no, we haven't forgotten,
is basically Facebook. Only time is going to tell how battery life and
tracking performance will compare and whether Valve will build gimmicky
features like camera-based hand and finger tracking, which the Quest does
have. Now, for the most gimmicky of all of our headsets today, the Apple Vision
Pro. Not because it's bad. I mean, the technology is really cool. It's just
that Apple really really like
desperately wanted this thing to be anything but a VR headset. So, they
ended up with this, which is maybe a great spatial computer, but nobody even
now knows what the that is, which really sucks because as a VR headset,
this thing had so much potential. Oh my god, it's so heavy. I haven't tried the
the M5 one yet. It's so heavy. Starting
with one of the highest resolution displays on the market and not just high
res, high fidelity. Thanks to Apple having the R&D budget of a small nation,
they shipped micro OLED displays that boast otherworldly contrast and
incredible color accuracy. They also equipped the Vision Pro with probably
the best full color passthrough cameras on the market, which makes it great just
for VR, but even for augmented reality.
For about 5 minutes. Apple should have
borrowed Monster Truck marketing, right, for their battery life? 2 and 1/2 hours,
but you'll only need the edge. It is no understatement to describe the
ergonomics of this thing as horrible. Even after putting the battery
in a separate pack, it is still among the heaviest headsets on the market and
the way that it rests on people's cheeks or noses really does not do it any
favors. The M5 version does come with a new strap that I'm trying for the first
time and it does seem to actually help take some of the weight off of my nose,
but oh man, it's still rough, dude. Now, one
advantage that the Vision Pro currently has over the Frame is its ability to
watch stereoscopic content. This is great for spatial photos and videos that
you might record on your iPhone or for watching 3D movies. Valve does say that
they're looking at adding that in the future, but hey,
you can refer back to the Vision Pro for proof of this. You should never buy
anything based on a promise. With that said, as easy as it is to rip
into Apple for their confusing choices and prices, one thing that they nailed
on the Vision Pro was hand gestures and the no controller experience. VisionOS
really does provide a seamless way to move things around and interact with 3D
space. Even if Apple's prudishness and
their apathy towards gaming ended up boxing out two of the biggest app
categories for VR users. Sorry. Excuse me. I mean, spatial computing
enthusiasts. >> [music] >> Which raises another problem with this device. In spite of its up to 120 Hz
refresh rate, not to mention god tier displays, it's not a gaming headset. So,
no matter how good it is, and it is good, even the speakers are okay for
their size, it's not really a competing product or maybe Apple wishes it was.
Valve confirmed for me that the Frame is also going to support desktop
projection, which was one of the best use cases that I personally found for
the Vision Pro, just setting up like giant virtual monitors in your
workspace. That leaves Apple with a pretty tough sales pitch and I've hardly
even talked about the price. For the cost of this Vision Pro M5, I could buy
a VR capable gaming system and our next
VR headset, the Bigscreen Beyond 2. It's
expensive. It's a little light on the extras, but it is impossible to not
marvel at the size and the phenomenal displays that they packed into this
thing. Like the Vision Pro, Bigscreen gets great contrast and outstanding
motion performance thanks to using micro OLED displays. They are at a lower
resolution and a lower peak refresh rate of 90 Hz, but with how close they sit to
your face, not to mention their new upgraded pancake optics, you get a
measurably wider field of view to go along with your great contrast. There is
no question in my mind that the Frame will fall behind the Beyond 2 when it
comes to image quality. And when it comes to weight, the Beyond 2 boasts a
super lightweight of just 107 g.
Okay. All right. They lean pretty heavily into that number in their
marketing, which does not include the weight of their head strap, a head strap
that I would describe as garbage on any other headset, but the Beyond 2 gets
away with it a little bit because it is still so light and that's not even the
best part of the ergonomics. When you get one of these, you can send in a scan
of your face to get a custom molded face
plate that will [music] fit you perfectly. Unparalleled comfort, zero
light spill. Does make it a little trickier to share your headset unless
your housemates also buy their own face gaskets, but with this level of
immersion, are you going to want to share with your SO anyway?
Well, maybe because otherwise they might object to a few things. First being the
base stations and the headset tether that are going to be lying around in
your shared living space. Yep, the Beyond 2 uses Valve's second generation
outside-in tracking solution, which kind of raises some questions about how
they're going to support themselves in the future now that Valve has moved
their first-party base stations to end of life. The second big one is the
price. This headset I'm holding is 1,100. That's for the base non eye
tracking version and includes no base stations, no controllers, and not even
an audio solution. You have to BYO USB-C
headphones. Now, you can get an audio strap from Bigscreen, so you don't have
to put headphones on and off every time and it's pretty nice. They use cost
drivers. But it's 130 bucks, man. Still,
you got to give these guys credit. They came out of nowhere. They set a goal,
build a no compromises lightweight headset, and they absolutely nailed it
with diamond encrusted golden nails. Which I guess brings us to the PSVR 2,
which is on the other end of the spectrum, an unbelievable bang for the
buck if you don't mind being tethered to your PC.
Originally launched as a standalone accessory for the PlayStation 5, Sony's
sales of this device allegedly did not meet their expectations and they later
opened up compatibility for PC. They also dropped the price from a launch
price of $550 to just 400 and there is a lot of value
on the table at that price. I'm talking 2000 by 2040 OLED displays at up to 120
Hz. There are some drawbacks. They're not micro OLED and they're using Fresnel
lenses rather than pancake optics probably to squeeze out as much
brightness as possible from those OLEDs and the ergonomics do leave a little bit
to be desired with some light spill and kind of a one-size-fits-all approach,
but again, at that price, you're getting the headset, you're getting the
controllers, and you might not care about this, but you're also getting
compatibility with the PlayStation 5 and the PlayStation 5 Pro, something that
you won't get from any of these other headsets. Which finally brings us to the
Frame and maybe the toughest part of our discussion. What price does the Steam
Frame need to hit to be the industry disrupter that we all want it to be? So
far, all that Valve has said on the subject is that they expect it to be
cheaper than the Index, but >> [music] >> as much as people might hope that they
meant just the headset, there is zero
shot of that. So, all that that tells us then is that they expect it to be under
the $1,000 price of the Index bundle.
And if I'm being honest, I don't think it's going to be by much. Incoming hot
take here. Come closer. One of the reasons is that I don't think
Valve has to price it any lower than the Index. I think they can charge however
much they want for it. And that sucks. But [music] hearing people internally
talk about this thing, it is very clear that people are willing to spend a ton
of money to get this device because there are so many other layers to the
Frame that none of our other headsets even approach. The FEX compatibility
layer that allows you to play Windows x86 games on this thing or the expansion
port that will allow third-party manufacturers to make all sorts of
modules. The generally open approach that Valve takes to their hardware that
you purchased. I hate that that sets them apart,
but it does. Now,
I have a pretty decent wish list for a Frame 2 already. I want OLED displays. I
want a better light seal around the nose and maybe, I hope not, but probably
better audio. But there is no denying that Valve has
put together an outstanding package and even if it is $1,000, I'm going to be
buying one on launch day and so will a lot of people. Just like I hope you'll
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Center holiday deals at the link in the description below. If you guys enjoyed
this video, why not go check out the original Steam Frame video where I got
hands-on and gave my first impressions. I'm super excited to get my hands on
this thing and take [music] a look at it in more depth in the future.