Engadget has published its review of Valve's newly released Steam Machine, a living-room games console-cum-PC, awarding it 6.5 out of 10. Reviewer Jessica Conditt concludes that while the concept is appealing, the hardware is too expensive and underpowered to justify its $1,049 starting price, arguing it would have been an excellent product had it launched around five years ago.

The Steam Machine uses semi-custom AMD hardware — a six-core Zen 4 CPU, an RDNA3 GPU with 28 CUs, 16GB of RAM and 8GB of VRAM — and runs SteamOS, with the option to install Windows. It handles indie and less demanding titles well and is impressively quiet, but falls just short of a PS5, averaging 43fps on Black Myth: Wukong at native 1080p and struggling with ray tracing. The reviewer notes the Steam Controller adds some clunkiness, and questions the timing of the launch amid rising hardware prices, a memory and storage crisis linked to AI infrastructure spending, and an imminent new console generation. The 2TB model costs $1,349, and neither price includes the Steam Controller, which adds $79 to $99.