Return of The King
Back at the end of last year Valve announced a slue of new hardware, the Steam Machine, a consolised PC for a more powerful native steam experience compared to the Deck their handheld device, the Steam Frame an ARM powered VR headset that can either run games streamed from a PC like its processor or some games it can run through valves latest instruction interpolation layer, now going beyond just proton converting Windows Direct X instructions to Vulkan Instructions for Linux, but now taking it a step further to convert it yet again in real time from X86 instructions to ARM instructions meaning you can play a full PC game developed solely for Linux on their Android powered headset.
Valve Steam Machine
Sadly due to the recent supply chain issues with RAM, CPUs, and GPUs as well as other tariff and world economics issues, the Steam Machine and Steam Frame are still currently M.I.A as of May 2026, although there was some recent reporting that valve potentially had some shipments inbound to the US containing something that did not match previous shipments of Steam Decks or Steam Controllers.
There was one other thing though that valve announced back in November and that was an all new Steam Controller! This one was an absolute gimmie for a lot of people. It took lessons they learned from the original Steam Controller in 2015 as well as The Steam Deck and just put it into a controller.
Valve Steam Controller (2026)
Many of us who for various reasons wouldn't be getting the steam machine, in my case my PC is already hooked up to the TV and is more powerful so it was sad to see that it seemed like the controller was being pushed along side the machine although understandable. Until a couple of weeks ago out of the blue it was announced that 4th of May Steam Controllers would finally go up for order. The price was also announced at £85/€99/$99US/$149CAD which is on the higher end of controllers but not much over 1st party controllers with the Xbox Series and Dual Sense base Controllers being £50-55 and Switch 2 Pro Controller being £65 and given the upgrade this controller has over those for PC gaming with the Dual Trackpads, Back Paddles and TMR Joysticks arguably its more on the level of a Xbox Elite 2 (£150) or Dual Sense Edge (£180) and at that point it seems like a bargain at half the price.
So naturally I did my best Fry impression and as soon as it dropped I yelled "Take My Money!" and ordered it. Much to my surprise this was not a pre order either. Just over a week later, I had it in my hands.
My first impression was its a very nice controller with a great set of ergonomics. The plastic is on the cheaper side, but not much different to a base Xbox controller so not a huge sin and its very durable feeling still I think on balance its the best compromise as "Premium" Features like rubber overmolding as seen on the elite controller, can have durability issues either peeling away or suffering from rubber reversion where it turns into a sticky goopy toxic mess after 5-10 years so in the interests of durability, longevity and repairability the hard plastic is fine even if it is a tad slippy after a few hours of playing.
The face buttons feel great and smooth no rubbing which is common on Xbox controllers, the sticks are also nice and smooth and thanks to their TMR technology they will last for a long time to come. I am glad they decided to implement TMR from the factory this time as that was one of the first mods I did on my Deck basically straight out the box was convert it to Hall Effect sticks, the predecessor to TMR. The pack paddles are nice too, they have moved from the square sprung style paddles from the Deck to round buttons, on this more compact formfactor I don't hate this as on some controllers I do find the back paddles can kinda get in the way. I still think though that the Elite controller has the best back paddles of any controller, being customisable in length and number as well as being removable if you don't want them for some reason but I assume Microsoft has some kind of patent on them so that's why we haven't really seen anyone copy that system sadly.
Then we come to the star of the show, the real reason you would buy the Steam Controller over any other controller for PC gaming and that is the trackpads, unlike its predecessor now the trackpads are complimentary to the joysticks rather than in place of them they have so much utility. The can be used to emulate as the joystick if you prefer that, or as a configurable button in either 4 way or single button mode, or you can use them for straight up mouse control. This is the biggest thing to me, using the Gaming PC on the TV before meant keeping a Logitech K400 around until you got into game, which is not really a fun experience, now though with this I can get through the login screen, the desktop to big picture mode, now just one click of the steam button and into my game no extra peripherals required and honestly its worth the cost alone for me. While I haven't tried it at this point in time, allegedly the trackpads also work in the bios of the machine which is nice and hugely helpful if you need to diagnose something.
The other big benefit is as they have essentially cloned the Steam Deck layout into a controller it can take advantage of Steam Input, and all of the both developer published layouts and community layouts published for the Steam Deck. This means that even games like, Factorio, Satisfactory, Cities Skylines are now technically playable despite, poor or no controller support. It also means you can have game by game layout changes meaning in one game a trackpad can be a joystick and another it can be mouse control. Honestly its almost as fun as actually playing games to just mess around with the remapping interface and really optimise a layout and once you have you can share it for the rest of the community to enjoy.
I have only one small teeny tiny complaint, and its the dongle, or well lack of a separate dongle, the 2.4GHz receiver is built into the charging puck which for some setups is nice however I think is a bad setup for the core use case of using this on a Sofa with a TV, to me the charging puck should be like the elite 2 controller in that it is a separate item and then if they want to they could make it have a pass through for the wireless dongle so it can still be a compact puck for those that want it, that would be a a more flexible for people however its not the end of the world for now I just have to keep the controller in my media console rather than on the sofa side table. For a desk setup though the integrated puck and dongle seems like a great idea to reduce clutter.
So what's the verdict? Should you buy this or should you wait? Well I think that entirely depends on what kind of gamer you are, if you want to play on PC but at a TV then this is an instant buy in my opinion, If you play at a desk but like to use a controller for some games, I think this is also a compelling option if you don't already have a controller but if you have an elite controller or another premium controller like the 8BitDo Pro 3 I would just skip this for now unless you really just want it and have the extra cash but it is absolutely not a need in that scenario. Of course too if you want to play games on a Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo or Mobile you controller is in another castle this is really not one you should be considering as my understanding is they don't work at all or in limited fashion due to the weird loopholes valve has used to get this working.
Last Edited: 1 week ago.