Steam Frame vs. Valve Index Specs: Wireless VR Gameplay That’s Generations Ahead

By
Scott Hayden
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12

Valve announced Steam Frame today, but what’s the difference between the company’s first VR headset, Valve Index? Read on to find out.

Index is a tethered PC VR headset that uses the company’s SteamVR tracking standard, requiring laser-emitting basestations that the headset and Index controllers use to localize spatially for room-scale gameplay. You also need a VR-ready PC, since it’s not a standalone device.

When it was launched in 2019, there were a few VR headsets on the market that made use of optical tracking, sometimes called ‘inside-out’ tracking, like Rift S, Windows Mixed Reality, and the original Quest—which weren’t as precise as SteamVR’s decidedly more cumbersome tracking standard. If you were primarily a PC VR gamer looking for the best all-around headset at the time though, Index was a no-brainer.

Valve Index | Image courtesy Valve

But PC VR headsets are lighter now, and the ‘no-brainer’ award for users in the SteamVR tracking ecosystem has moved on to slim and light PC VR headsets—like Bigscreen Beyond 2, which supports the full gamut of SteamVR tracking devices, like Tundra trackers, Index controllers (aka ‘Knuckles’) and more.

Early next year though, there will be a new headset in town: Steam Frame. Like Index, Steam Frame can play PC VR games, although you can ditch the basestations and two-meter tether, because Valve’s latest and greatest uses optical tracking and comes packed with a Wi-Fi 6E dongle in the box, which plugs into your computer for directly streaming Steam games (VR or otherwise). That means you’ll be sacrificing those hard-earned SteamVR tracking accessories, but maybe going fully wireless will be worth it.

Since it’s a standalone sporting a Qualcomm Snapdragon Series 8 Gen 3 (released in 2023) running SteamOS, you can actually directly download flatscreen and PC VR games to play natively. No wires, PC, or anything else required. While not all PC VR games played natively are guaranteed to work well out of the box, Valve seems to have a plan.

Image courtesy Valve

Valve says flatscreen games should play on Frame just fine, although more demanding PC VR games will need to be optimized by developers first: exactly why the company is first releasing dev kits to studios. We also expect to see some sort of badging system on Steam in the future (à la Steam Deck) that lets you know when natively downloaded PC VR titles run great, okay, or not at all. Whatever the case, Valve isn’t stopping you from trying.

But because dev kits are only now just heading out the door, that means price and release info is still MIA, due to come in “early 2026,” Valve says. In the meantime though, you can have a look at just what Valve has cooked up for its long-awaited first standalone VR headset in our hands-on with Frame—which handily beats Index in nearly every measurable category.

Nearly. While Frame’s 2,160 × 2,160 per-eye LCDs and pancake lenses beat Index’s 1,440 × 1, 600 per-eye LCDs and Fresnel lenses by a long shot, Frame’s monochrome passthrough definitely feels last (last) gen over the full-color passthrough on Index.

Hackers may be able to remedy that by jacking into the gen 4 PCIe slot in the user-accessible port, which supports up to two 2.5Gbps camera sensors. Like Index’s ‘frunk’ USB port, Valve isn’t making anything first-party for the PCIe slot, which is a bummer. Whatever the case, gen 4 PCIe certainly has more bandwidth than the ol’ frunkster.

Steam Frame vs. Valve Index Specs

Steam Frame (top), Valve Index (below) | Images courtesy Valve
Steam Frame Valve Index
Base Retail Price Expected lower than Index (TBD early 2026)
$1,000 (headset, controllers, 2 SteamVR basestations) Gaming PC required.
Weight 190g core, 435g (with headstrap, incl. facial interface, rear battery)
809g (with headstrap)
Chipset Snapdragon Series 8 Gen 3 (SM8650), 8 core CPU ARM processor (4nm) N/A
RAM 16GB Unified LPDDR5 RAM N/A
Operating System SteamOS
No native OS. Tethered connection to Windows or Linux PC
Wi-Fi Wi-Fi 7, 2×2 – Dual 5Ghz/6Ghz streaming for simultaneous VR and Wi-Fi N/A
Storage 256GB / 1TB UFS storage options N/A
Expanded Storage microSD card slot for extended storage N/A
Optics Pancake optics
Dual-element canted Fresnel lenses
Display 2,160 × 2,160 LCD (per eye), 72-120Hz refresh rate (144Hz experimental)
1,440 × 1, 600 LCD (per eye), 144Hz refresh rate
FOV up to 110 degrees
108 degrees horizontal, 104 degrees vertical
Tracking 4x outward facing monochrome cameras for controller & headset tracking
SteamVR 2.0 basestations for controller & headset tracking
Dark Environment Tracking Outward IR illuminator for dark environments
Basestations allow for tracking without ambient light
Passthrough Monochrome dual camera passthrough (1,280 × 1,024 resolution)
Color dual camera passthrough (960 × 960 resolution)
Eye-tracking 2x interior cameras for eye tracking N/A
Rendering enhancements Eye-tracking drives video stream, sending highest resolution to where you’re looking
Resolution scaling possible via SteamVR
Other Wireless Adapter included, Wi-Fi 6E (6Ghz)
Third-party devices available for wireless streaming
Audio Dual speaker drivers (per ear), integrated into headstrap
Dual speaker drivers (per ear), integrated into headstrap
Mic Dual microphone array
Dual microphone array
Port USB-C
DisplayPort 1.2, USB 3.0
Expansion Port User accessible expansion port – (2x 2.5Gbps camera interface / gen4 PCIe)
Faceplate ‘frunk’ expansion port: USB 3.0 Type-A
Battery 21.6 Wh Li-On Battery N/A

More Steam Frame Announcement Coverage

Valve Unveils Steam Frame VR headset to Make Your Entire Steam Library Portable: Valve shows off Steam Frame, the standalone headset that can stream and natively play your entire Steam library—with only a few caveats right now.

Hands-on: Steam Frame Reveals Valve’s Modern Vision for VR and Growing Hardware Ambitions: We go hands-on with Valve’s latest and greatest VR headset yet.

Steam Frame’s Price Hasn’t Been Locked in, But Valve Expects it to be ‘cheaper than Index’: No price or release date yet, but Valve implies Steam Frame will be cheaper than $1,000 for the full Index kit.

Valve Says No New First-party VR Game is in Development: Valve launched Half-Life: Alyx (2020) a few months after releasing Index, but no such luck for first-party content on Steam Frame.

Valve is Open to Bringing SteamOS to Third-party VR Headsets: Steam Frame is the first VR headset to run SteamOS, but it may not be the last.

Valve Plans to Offer Steam Frame Dev Kits to VR Developers: Steam Frame isn’t here yet; Valve says it needs more time with developers first so they can optimize their PC VR games.

Valve Announces SteamOS Console and New Steam Controller, Designed with Steam Frame Headset in Mind: Find out why Valve’s new SteamOS-running Console and controller will work seamlessly with Steam Frame.

Steam Frame vs. Quest 3 Specs: Better Streaming, Power & Hackability: Quest 3 can do a lot, but can it go toe-to-toe with Steam Frame?

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Sofian

    Quest 2 resolution in 2025/26/27/28/29… sad.

    • Tommy

      Quest 2 has a resolution of 1920×1832
      Steam Frame has a resolution of 2160×2160

      I'm not mathologist, but that's approximately 33% more

      • Paul Bellino

        UNDERWHELMING IS THE ONLY PHRASE THAT SHOULD BE USED.

  • Berstich

    Feels like a step down to me. Hopefully they still have an Index 2 in the works.

  • Mrquestion

    Monochrome passthrough hurts! Why you do this?!?!

    • philingreat

      I assume because the majority of users don't care about passthrough

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      TL;DR: it's slightly lighter and cheaper, but the main reason will be the added computational load for hires color passthrough that isn't all that important for a HMD solely focused on gaming. So it is sort of a pragmatic solution, even if it kills a number of use cases.

      Because it doesn't require any extra cameras, only the four b/w tracking cameras with their IR filters removed to allow tracking the controllers and the room even in darkness thanks to the integrated IR illuminators. You cannot replace any of these with color cameras, as removing the IR filter causes color errors, so they'd need to add extra hires color cameras. Which would slightly increase the weight, but mostly add a lot of compute requirements that add on top of the already heavy load for emulating x86 on the SD8 Gen 3.

      So monochrome passthrough at only FHD resolution is a painful, but very pragmatical approach. I recently bought a couple of small 3MP cameras with fisheye lenses for DIY eye tracking with EyeTrackVR, paying less than USD 4 for each, and you can get 5MP/8MP modules for the Raspberry Pi for less than USD 10. With the Frame providing two standard MIPI camera connectors attaching directly to the SoC, it should be relatively easy and cheap to create a hires color passthrough add-on.

      The problem will be that you also need software for 3D object detection and proper geometry projection for this to create usable passthrough. The Quest 3 still struggles with heavy distortions, and Apple threw a separate dedicated (and expensive) R1 coprocessor at this to get to good results at still only about 6MP resolution. Good passthrough is a hard (software) problem, so Valve, who are it VR and not MR, probably decided that it is important for convenience and quick environmental checks, but not worth the significant development and compute effort required to compete with Meta or Apple hear, as they are solely focused on gaming.

  • I have to admit I'm disappointed. Eye tracking is awesome, but black and white passthrough, at a time when MR games and apps are FINALLY starting to appear on Quest 3? Resolution no better than Quest 3 even though better screens exist? Controllers with a maddeningly different button layout? Valve purports to do all this focus group testing with their games and stuff… how can these problems be slipping through unchecked? What's the point of eye tracking and foveated rendering when the screens are so low resolution it won't make much difference? Sigh… Was really counting on Valve to knock it out of the park. Quest 4 will be coming and will probably beat this on every technical level to compete with Apple. This is not good for building a competitive marketplace… we need competition to drive things forward, not a headset roughly equivalent with two year old tech!

  • Paul Bellino

    NO its not. You guys are still dreaming the Dream. They lost their MOJO like Austin Powers. This headset is totally Pathetic. and no Half-Life Alyx 2 to Boot. How in the world are they going to compete with Metas almost as good 400 Dollar headsets. Today Valve just shattered my dreams

  • Zombie

    I'm disappointed the controllers are not lighthouse compatible.
    Yeah it would take a bit more engineering, but supporting people with lighthouses/basestations would have been the goat.

    • Fred

      Could somone make a SteamVR module for the headset running off the PCIe slot and then you could just add Vive or Index controllers?

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        You don't need a SteamVR module on the headset to do this, the Vive/Index trackers are independently tracked. With some minor hacks and configuration you can already used Index controllers with the Quest 3 for PCVR streaming, as long as you also have lighthouses installed. So it is very likely that you will be able to use Vive or Index controllers with Frame from day one in a similar setup.

        What wouldn't work is creating a module for the Frame that replaces the lighthouses, because these work as fixed reference point in space, creating a sort of light net that the sensors on the Index itself as well as Vive and Index controllers can "sense", with the position calculated from different light run times. The light source has to stand still for this to work.

        Making the Frame controllers directly compatible with lighthouses would have required to equip them with the same light net detecting sensors, which would have been possible, of course increasing cost and weight, and there aren't that many use cases. Pretty much the only people interested in this would be those that have bought a hires HMD like the Beyond 1/2 or Pimax (without inside-out tracking), or still use an older HMD, but wanting Frame controllers as a replacements for whatever they are using now.

        With Valve having stopped the Index (controller) production, these users may at one time run into troubles with replacing controllers, leaving pretty much only Vive wands, Pimax Sword or eTeeController. Or the self-tracking Surreal Touch controllers, developed mostly for the AVP, as an option that works with everything using SteamVR. But their future is also uncertain with AVP now supporting PSVR2 Sense controllers.