In case you missed the news, I’ll briefly summarize: Valve has announced its new headset, the Steam Frame. The Steam Frame is a standalone device, but it is also amazing to stream content from your PC using a dedicated dongle. Valve has also announced a mini PC called the Steam Machine, where you can run all your Steam Games and stream them either to your Steam Deck or your Steam Frame.
Steam Frame launches in early 2026, for a price that has been described as “less than an Index full kit”. For now, Valve is only shipping devkits to developers asking for them.
The Steam Frame is definitely a good headset, and I’m very happy it has been released. For sure, it is introducing some innovations, and for sure, it is going to bring some new gamers into VR. But at the same time, I don’t see anything that is disruptive for the market: the use cases it covers were already covered before, and its technology is just a good polishing of some technologies that were already on the market.
Black and white pass through is crazy. I really hated that on my Quest 2 but was glad they made it color on the Quest 3. I can actually walk around my house in color and do things when I pause my games. I couldn’t do that as easily in black and white on the Quest 2.
Feels like there’s going to be a situation like the Steam Deck OLED but with color..? I think I’ll wait on that reason alone. And there will likely be other upgrades too in a refresh a year or two later.
I was planning on ditching my Quest 3 for this, but doesn’t sound like it. It’s for the best because I don’t want to shell that much on a new headset so soon anyway.
I found the monochrome passthrough to be much more clear, personally. I could read a book or my phone in passthrough on the Q2. I can't read shit through it on the 3 unless it's really large text. Color is nice, but it's much blurrier than the B&W.
Oh yeah, reading is crap on the Q3 for sure. I don’t remember ever trying on the Q2.
But just for walking around and seeing my surroundings, especially when the dogs or cat come around, was so much better in color, especially in lower lit areas. B&W was near impossible in low light.