DOOM VFR

Steam Frame: The Ars Technica review

Those years of Valve’s benign neglect of VR make the imminent release of the $1,059 Steam Frame—which starts taking reservations today—more than a little surprising. The Frame even sports fancy extras like eye-tracking for effective foveated rendering in the center of your vision and an SD card slot for expanded storage (you can also splurge for a $1,299 Frame version that upgrades the internal storage from 256GB to 1TB). But the relatively weak Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor in the Frame means the games are limited to relatively undemanding 2D titles or older 3D titles (Portal 2, anyone?) Even a game like Returnal, which can hit a “Playable” 30 fps on the aging Steam Deck, managed a paltry 9 fps in benchmarks on the Frame at 720p “Low” graphics settings. Late to the party For most players, it’s hard to recommend the $1,049 Steam Frame over a $599 Meta Quest 3 (or even a $349 Quest 3S for the more budget-minded).