After using the new Steam console for a few days, I want to apologize to the PS5

In November 2025, Valve, the parent company of Steam, officially unveiled several new hardware products, among which the console named Steam Machine drew particularly widespread attention.

Back then, everyone thought the console market, which had long been dominated by the "Big Three" of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, had finally welcomed a heavyweight disrupter: the absolute king of the PC gaming market, Valve.

However, just last month, after Valve officially announced the price of the Steam Machine, everyone's enthusiasm immediately cooled down, because its 512GB version is priced at a whopping $1049, and the controller has to be purchased separately...

To put this in perspective, this device costs roughly 7100 RMB, while the new digital edition of the PS5 (825GB with controller) is priced at only around 3700 RMB on domestic e-commerce platforms.

If you go for its 2TB version, the price directly hits 9100 RMB, and with a controller added, it's nearly 10,000 RMB.

In other words, the Steam Machine that gamers have been anticipating for more than half a year costs almost as much as two PS5 consoles, yet it offers less storage, doesn't come with a controller, and its performance may not even outperform the PS5...

Wait a minute, both you and the "Big Three" use custom AMD hardware — are your CPU and GPU literally made of gold?

This also left our gaming-loving editorial team quite frustrated — we've been hyping this device up for ages, and this is how you treat everyone?

Of course, you could blame all this on the skyrocketing memory prices and claim the Steam Machine was just released at an inopportune time. But now, the problem is no longer just about the price — it's also about whether its performance can actually keep up.

So to give everyone a real hands-on test, Tony activated the skill of making Mr. Bad Review foot the bill, splurging 10,000 RMB to get the Steam Machine. We'll find out exactly how good its performance is with a proper test, won't we?

Enough chit-chat — let's jump right into the testing!

To cut to the chase: the performance is really mediocre. Fans who wanted this device as their main console, as well as diehard Valve supporters, are probably going to be disappointed.

Let's get straight to the real-world performance tests. First up is the newly released Assassin's Creed: Black Flag - Memory Reset — overall, it's just passable, nothing outstanding...

By the standard of 4K 60 FPS, the Steam Machine can basically hit this target when medium graphics settings, FSR and frame generation are all enabled.

If you're not that interested in new games, let's pull out our go-to benchmark title, Cyberpunk 2077. At 2K high graphics settings without ray tracing, the Steam Machine actually performs decently — with frame generation turned on, it can reach over 100 FPS.

Let's crank up the difficulty. At 4K high graphics settings without ray tracing, it can still hit the 4K 60 FPS target — we have to admit, FSR and frame generation are incredibly useful...

But this is Cyberpunk 2077 we're talking about — how can we not turn on ray tracing?

So we updated to the beta firmware and tested its ray tracing performance across different resolutions and graphics presets. The result, obviously, is that it simply can't handle it properly.

Moreover, there's no noticeable performance gap between the beta firmware and the official release version.

In other words, you can only choose one between 4K graphics and ray tracing — otherwise, you'll never get a stable 60 FPS...

If the performance in Cyberpunk 2077 is already like this, then its performance in the "equalizer for all gamers" Black Myth: Wukong is destined to be unremarkable.

While it can still hit the 4K 60 FPS target, you can forget about pursuing higher graphics quality or enabling ray tracing — this is already the absolute limit of the Steam Machine even with FSR and frame generation turned on.

Even at 2K medium graphics settings, if you turn on just the lowest level of ray tracing, the frame rate will plummet to barely over 20 FPS...

We also encountered compatibility issues when testing other AAA titles. For example, in Forza Horizon 6, enabling FSR actually leads to a drop in frame rate...

That wraps up our AAA game testing. The performance of the Steam Machine can only be described as "barely sufficient".

When it comes to options like resolution, graphics quality, ray tracing and frame rate, you can only pick a few like a kid making choices — you can't have everything all at once like an adult.

At this point, some gamers might argue: "The PS5's performance isn't anything special either, right? There are tons of games that run at 4K 60 FPS on medium settings, and we never saw you nitpicking about that!"

That's true. A PS5 that costs only over 3000 RMB delivers such a great gaming experience — even if it malfunctioned, I'd still say Sony made a pretty good "firework show" out of it.

But the problem is, the Steam Machine costs nearly 10,000 RMB...

The exorbitant price tag doesn't come with a matching level of gaming performance — and that's the biggest, if not the only, reason why gamers are bashing the Steam Machine so hard.

But if you've owned consoles like the PS5, you'd know that the advantage of consoles was never about top-tier graphics — it's the pure, efficient gaming experience they offer.

Put simply, consoles are built exclusively for gaming. You don't have to wait through long boot times, there's no annoying whirring fan noise from the case, and you never have to deal with all the stupid Windows updates and random errors.

Gamers don't even need to walk over to the device to press the power button — they can just pick up the controller, and the console boots up instantly for them to start playing, running quietly in the background.

This hassle-free experience is a huge selling point that makes consoles extremely appealing.

So here's the question: the Steam Machine doesn't have a performance advantage, but can its console-level experience hold its own against the PS5?

Tony did a simple comparison with the PS5 in our studio, testing the time it takes from cold boot to launching Black Myth: Wukong, as well as the wake-up speed from sleep mode.

Surprisingly, the Steam Machine actually went toe-to-toe with the PS5. The PS5 was slightly faster at cold booting into the game, but the Steam Machine's wake-up speed was ridiculously fast — it only took 6 seconds...

Wow, is this the efficiency of Linux at work?

We also tested their power consumption and noise levels. Under full load gaming and idle gaming states, the Steam Machine performed pretty well, matching the PS5 almost evenly.

Tony then separately tested the power consumption under load for Cyberpunk 2077 and Hades 2, which came out to 190W and 93W respectively — numbers that align perfectly with the scale of these two games.

For the noise test, both devices delivered extremely similar results. Even when running a game like Cyberpunk 2077, neither of them exceeded 40 decibels, as if they were trying their best not to disturb you.

Tony also measured the body temperature. After running Cyberpunk 2077 for an hour, the exhaust vent