Steam Hardware
A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.
As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title
The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Deck] - Steam Deck related.
[Controller] - Steam Controller related.
[Machine] - Steam Machine related.
[Frame] - Steam Frame related.
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.
If your post is only relevant to one hardware device (Deck/Machine/Frame/etc) please specify which one as part of the title or by using a device flair.
These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.
Rules:
- Follow the rules of Sopuli
- Posts must be related to Steam Hardware or Steam OS in an obvious way.
- No piracy, there are other communities for that.
- Discussion of emulators are allowed, but no discussion on how to illegally acquire ROMs.
- This is a place of civil discussion, no trolling.
- Have fun.
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I would get it if the battery life didn't suck.
~1.5 hours when streaming from PC at 144hz, and a full charge time of around 3 hours, meaning you probably can't even get unlimited playtime if it's plugged in the entire time and solely streaming from a PC instead of computing the game itself.
According to the Ars review, the 1.5 hour battery life is when running games on the Steam frame itself. Battery life is supposed to be a lot better when streaming from a PC I believe.
Also all lithium batteries slow down charging speed a lot as they get closer to being fully charged, so taking 3 hours to charge doesn't mean that it can't charge faster than the battery drains. I'm sure it can just do power passthrough to power the headset indefinitely.
I was going off the LTT number which put it at 1:36 when streaming Half Life Alyx from a desktop PC, running at 144Hz. Ars' number is when running on Performance mode with "most VR titles", so I don't know how comparable that is.
The Verge says they never got above 2 hours even when using battery-saving mode or streaming-only, and demanding games got under 1 hour.
As for charging time, LTT claims it's 3 hours to 100%, and 2.4 to 95%, and doesn't seem to state there's much of a speed increase below that point, and as far as I'm aware you usually only see a major difference in charging speed for the last ~10%, though previously The Verge did also state a power bank could keep them going up to 2.5 hours.
So with all that said, if it takes around 1-2 hours for it to die after starting from full, and it takes a minimum of 2.4 hours just to get it almost full... that means it'll still run out of battery eventually, even if plugged in.
That's disheartening about the battery times.
Once again, battery charge speed is slower than what the charger can provide. Look at it this way, it has a 21.6 Wh battery. If that battery drains in 1.5 hours, that means it drains the battery at an average rate of 14.4 W. It charges at a max of 45w. So when plugged in you can fully power the Steam frame for about 14.4w, and still have about 30w of power left over to charge the battery. It won't always use 30w to charge the battery, it will further reduce that amount based on heat and charge level, but it won't ever have a problem maintaining the 14.4w needed to keep it powered up while plugged in.
hmmmmmmm good point, I didn't consider that!
According to the Gamers Nexus review, Valve thinks there my be an issue with the software controlling the charge rate and are looking into it. So we might see a software update soon to improve the charge times
LTT is unreliable at best
If I get one I'm planning on playing with an external battery attached on my hip lol
On the other side you can go into field and play lighter games in standalone mode. This is an insane mobility for such powerful hardware.
I've not played any VR for a while, but I remember it being physically exhausting enough that I think my own battery would be empty before the Frame's
Depends on the comfort factor for the individual user+device. If it's not a good fit for you, it's going to be exhausting pretty quick.
For me it was the activity level of the game!
Fair enough, but that's kinda independent of VR.
No as in the physical amount of moving about involved in a VR game compared to sitting still with a controller
Right, and I'm saying that's not due to the VR, it's due to the moving around.
Hmm... well technically yes, I guess you could play a VR game which doesn't involve any movement, but all the ones I've played did. I'd say it's a pretty core part of VR!