so let's get this out of the way first what this video is not is a
comprehensive review of Steam OS what this video is is my Impressions from
having used the Alienware steam machine which was provided free of charge by
Dell as a gaming console for the last little while so expect a mishmash of my
thoughts on both the hardware and the software and what they add up to in
terms of the user experience
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start with the hardware there are going to be no surprises here if you've been following Steam OS through its long and
arduous birthing process over the last two years because this is pretty much
the same piece of kit that Alienware first unveiled as a living room console
running Steam OS almost 2 years ago then
when it became apparent that valves Steam OS and steam controller teams were
operating on oh I don't know say valve Time released a few months later as the
Alienware Alpha running Windows with a living room friendly game launching UI
and an Xbox 360 controller to presumably to recoup some of the hardware
engineering costs that went into it so
yeah it's got somewhat dated but actually not totally incapable hardware
for cas ual games and even older AAA titles like BioShock Infinite at low to
medium settings my model is equipped with a haswell-based core I3 dual core 8
gigs of RAM a 1 TB hard drive and an 860m 2 gig is equivalent custom Maxwell
based GPU Alienware is touting the steam machine as upgradeable like a PC as well
but I'd say that's a little misleading you can add RAM and a larger drive or
SSD but the motherboard and video card are both non-standard so if you bought a
Mac out config today there would be no upgrade path with the graphics card
being the biggest concern here since it's the same all the way from the 449
price point to the 749 price point not
the way that stepup options usually are handled on a gaming machine but a
necessary limitation with this kind of Highly customized form factor on that
note I'd say industrial design-wise Alienware did a really great job it's
not as small as an NVIDIA Shield Android TV or anything like that but the overall
look is very subtle and if it wasn't for the glossy plastic I'd be giving full
marks here the black housing features a couple USB 3.0 ports an alien head
shaped power button and Steam logo on the front the color of these backlights
by the way can be changed or disabled altogether around the back you'll find
the power input HDMI 1.4 output HDMI
input note though that this is a pass through only not a capture card an
optical audio output note also that there is no analog audio output a bit of
a head scratcher a land port and two more USB ports this time of the 2.0
speed variety a fifth USB port is on the
inside for the wireless receiver that supports up to four steam controllers
the unit is quieter than a spinning optical drive at idle and underload when
oh I don't know you might be playing a game say for example with sound it was
significantly louder than that but in audible over the background music and
ambient sounds of any but the quietest games like limbo speaking of games in
addition to the console you'll get a couple of games in the Box as well as a
steam controller although I'm going to leave the long-term use functionality
focused review of this puppy to Luke who is working on that right now in the
meantime let's get into my experience using Steam OS when you run the initial
setup you are prompted to connect to a network uh prompted to run some updates
if applicable and then to create or log into an existing steam account text
entry with the touchpads is actually pretty clever but my account name has an
underscore in it so I actually had to go get a keyboard to plug in to log in
because the onscreen keyboard has two tities for some reason and no underscore
strike one then at the home screen my controller started tweaking out with the
vibration motor going crazy and overriding my keyboard and mouse inputs
so I actually had to hard reset the system and then finally upon reboot I
was prompted to update the controller firmware which fixed the issue so far
not a great experience strike two next I headed to my library to download some
Linux compatible games where I was surprised by a couple of things number
one while the game count that valve
keeps throwing around is utterly meaningless I mean there were over
10,000 total PlayStation 2 games but come on how many of them were worth
playing there are some pretty decent
indie games like Super Meat Boy and papers please and while mostly somewhat
dated way more AAA grade games than I
expected like BioShock Infinite Borderlands 2 and Borderlands the
Pre-Sequel Witcher 2 civilization 5 and Metro last Light that run on Linux the
valve titles that are supported we can kind of take for granted here but those
are good too but the thing that really stands out is that third-party developer
support for Linux has improved in the last two years to the point where if you
bought a steam machine just for playing native games it would be pretty hard to
get bored and speaking of things that are hard browsing and buying games I
searched valiantly in the store for a Steam OS compatible tag until finally
near the bottom I was like Hallelujah steam machine tag only to realize that
that tag is to buy a steam machine come
on valve here's a request for this feature from five years ago instead of
being able to just see all the Linux games in one place I have to check every
product page individually and look for the small little OS support icon and
then buy it and the worst part is that nothing in the checkout process prevents
a newcomer who doesn't know about this from buying incompatible games I mean I
I know that steam allows refunds now but preventing issues like this is a lot
better than fixing them after the fact strike three once I got gaming though
things got a little smoother again for Native games launching them is Fast and
the performance is fine as long as you don't over estimate the capabilities of
your hardware and you account for the constantly shrinking but still
significant Linux performance penalty and there's more good news for the games
that are not Linux compatible if you have a capable Windows gaming box
Elsewhere on the house logged into the same Steam account and your home network
performs very well the Steam OS interface allows those games to not only
be run remotely using steam and home streaming but also even installed
remotely and usually as long as you don't have a UAC popup to deal with or
something like that without ever actually getting off your butt and
putting down your steam controller and going and looking at that
computer but lonus hold on a minute if I wanted to stream games over my local
network steamlink can do that for 50 bucks why am I spending 500 plus dollars
on a full PC for this exactly great
question and I wish the answer was something like well it's got all these
other great capabilities but it doesn't
and to address the Linux Army that is undoubtedly charging to the comments to
inform me that there's a checkbox to enable the desktop Linux experience so
you can sudo it up I know but I don't
care that's completely irrelevant to the target audience for this product the
audience that isn't already just running a normal steam client on Linux for even
better customizability the audience for whom overscan settings are apparently
called resolution the console audience I
mean for people who just want to veg on the couch in front of their gaming box
honestly I think even issues like the default Gamepad mapping for Tomb Raider
being an unusable disaster that required me to go Source One of the thankfully
surprisingly usable Community created ones are going to be a
showstopper and these people really don't want to hear that they're going to
need an external capture PC to stream to
Twitch and that this alleged game console doesn't support all but
ubiquitous features like being able to Netflix and chill or well okay arguably
actually watching movies is not a prerequisite for that so I guess you're
good there but but when it but what it can't do without an add-on app purchase
or the requisite Linux ninja training is just playing Netflix or Hulu or stream
most content in general while YouTube thankfully works the built-in browser
makes it a frankly fairly rubbish experience in if I did want to watch a
YouTube video I would expect pressing the steam button on the controller would
indicate that I would like to mute that video and switch to another task now but
no it just keeps playing in the background and that's just one of the
many annoying things about the
experience hopefully more tightly integrated native apps arrive in the
future to make the experience more complete but I have a hard time seeing
where developer support is going to come from unless valve can figure out how to
sell some consoles which at this point I
think is just plain not going to happen
because right now a steam machine is a
Super Nintendo without Super Mario World it's an Xbox without Halo it's the Wii
without a gimmicky game in the box that lets you flail a weird dildo and watch
graphical representations of you and your roommates poning each other at
bowling so while valve is a smart company and I'm sure someone over there
has after very careful consideration
decided that exclusive content doesn't align with the core purpose of this
entire freaking project a desire to unshackle Gamers from their dependency
on closed systems from the likes of Microsoft or Sony and drive Linux as a
more open gaming platform that doesn't change the cold hard truth that this is
a different market and your Noble philosophy is not going to sell consoles
great exclusive titles sell cons conses and Steam OS has nothing that doesn't
run on the regular steam client it manages to deliver none of the core
benefits of the PC the versatility to run anything through a web browser and
any app you could possibly want wide compatibility nearly Limitless gaming
experiences with VR surround endless peripheral choices Etc and manages to
deliver none of the benefits of a console plug andplay ease of use
exclusive titles familiarity to Casual users and I guess just can't see who it
would appeal to other than Tech heads with enough disposable income to toss
out a random extra box that doesn't really do much under their TV and even
for them wouldn't they just have an extra $100 then for a Windows license it
looks like to me that steam os's biggest competitor aside from Steam link which I
mentioned before is steam itself running
in Big Picture Mode a much more sensible option for Ballers who want to dether
that living room gaming experience from their desktop one in case Little
Sally wants to make a PowerPoint presentation or whatever while they're
gaming on the TV something that steamlink cannot do because it has to
display exactly what is on the screen of the computer so if I had to place my bet
today and it's not the first time I've said this I'm with Razer and NVIDIA on
the Android gaming bandwagon that is a
platform with a massive install base and developers who have a track record of
releasing software on it and expecting to make a good return on the their
effort as much as I hope I'm wrong and as much as this isn't alienware's fault
or any of the hardware Partners I'm pronouncing the Steam OS platform Dead
on Arrival unless there's a seemingly impossible philosophical change at valve
but you know what doesn't require a dramatic philosophical change to
appreciate fsp's hydrog g750 power
supply it features 80 plus gold efficiency with a zero dbel zero noise
mode depending on the load on the power supply for that 135 mm fluid Dynamic
bearing fan it is fully modular and it has ecaps that are made in Japan with a
focus on reliability they're using what they call a server grade design with
copper bars joining the main board and the daughter board to increase
conversion efficiency and it comes with three hydr G sticker choices to match a
variety of build color themes something I wish more manufacturers actually did
because it can be like everything's matching except there's like your power
supply sticker and I mean the case industry has gone as far as to make
cases that cover the power supply so that you don't have to worry about that
but still there are very very few that feature that so it's nice to see those stickers anyway if you want to learn
more about that power supply check out the link in the video
description so that's pretty much it guys thanks for watching if you dislike
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