Valve's new virtual reality headset, the Steam Frame, has officially been released - but it comes at a high price.
The hardware is excellent - a light device which feels comfortable to wear and is packed with clever technology - so long as you're willing to pay a whopping £1,089 for a headset with 1TB of storage.
The variant with 256GB of storage, meanwhile, costs £889.
Both are capable of streaming from a PC as well as playing games on-device, with varying degrees of success.
But it carries a price tag which will make a lot of people roll their eyes, and doesn't do much to dispel criticism that increasingly-costly VR headsets are pricing people out of the hobby.
What makes the Steam Frame really stand out is its new tech, including what developers call its "foveated streaming".
The tech displays only the exact thing you're looking at in the highest quality, while making things in your peripheral vision less clear.
You don't notice the low quality bits because you're not looking at them - saving a massive amount of bandwidth.
It means you can stream VR games wirelessly from your PC in high quality without being tethered by a cable, and it works well.
And it does this while sending two signals at once - combining your household Wi-Fi with a dongle which plugs into your PC.
The hardware is excellent - a light device which feels comfortable to wear and is packed with clever technology - so long as you're willing to pay a whopping £1,089 for a headset with 1TB of storage.
The variant with 256GB of storage, meanwhile, costs £889.
Both are capable of streaming from a PC as well as playing games on-device, with varying degrees of success.
But it carries a price tag which will make a lot of people roll their eyes, and doesn't do much to dispel criticism that increasingly-costly VR headsets are pricing people out of the hobby.
What makes the Steam Frame really stand out is its new tech, including what developers call its "foveated streaming".
The tech displays only the exact thing you're looking at in the highest quality, while making things in your peripheral vision less clear.
You don't notice the low quality bits because you're not looking at them - saving a massive amount of bandwidth.
It means you can stream VR games wirelessly from your PC in high quality without being tethered by a cable, and it works well.
And it does this while sending two signals at once - combining your household Wi-Fi with a dongle which plugs into your PC.
