One of the biggest goal's of Valve's latest wave of hardware wasn't necessarily to move as many units as possible, but to expand the reach of SteamOS, and it does seem like it's succeeded. There are now two things that are really standing in Valve's way in its quest to dethrone Windows 11 as the de facto gaming OS: anti-cheat and Nvidia graphics drivers. And it looks like the latter is going to be solved soon.

Ahead of Steam Frame's launch, I got a chance to sit down with Valve software developers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Jeff Leinbaugh, and I asked how Nvidia support was coming along.

"Yeah, we're working on it hard," Griffais told me. "It's definitely at the top of our list. It's one of those things just like FEX and working on the Qualcomm driver, it just takes years." That doesn't sound like the driver support is right around the corner, but it does seem like the team has at least got Nvidia GPUs working on the Linux OS, albeit with limited performance.

"We've done a few things like we've enabled the driver now in the main tree of SteamOS," Griffais told me, "so you can get things to light up on certain generations, but in terms of the performance difference between that driver and where the state of the art is, there's definitely still a little bit of a rift that we're trying to work on, but it's getting better day-to-day."

There are certainly versions of Linux that already work with Nvidia drivers, but Team Green's GPUs are always a bit of a hassle on the open-source operating system. Instead, for most people, gaming on Linux works best with AMD graphics cards, as that company has supported drivers on the operating system for years.

But for Valve's goal of getting as many people on SteamOS as possible, getting Nvidia's cards working at full performance is incredibly important. According to the latest Steam Hardware Survey, Nvidia GPUs still make up for 72.88% of Steam's player base. Getting Nvidia graphics cards up and running reliably on SteamOS would be a huge win for Valve.

Hopefully Valve is able to get these graphics cards working as intended on SteamOS soon, and then, maybe, we can finally get anti-cheat support on the operating system. Because, after all, unlocking the operating system for another 72% of the playerbase could cause a huge spike in players migrating from Windows, and that'd be hard to ignore for the Call of Dutys of the world.

Valve revealed the Steam Frame, along with the Steam Machine and Controller almost a year ago in November 2025. And while it’s taken quite a long time for all three devices to make it to market, the Frame is finally here to complete the set. Right off the jump, the Steam Frame comes off as just another VR headset, and an excellent one at that, but in the two weeks I’ve spent with this thing, it’s become one of the best ways to play pretty much any game on Steam.

While the Steam Frame’s built-in Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is strong enough to play a lot of indie games on a 2D virtual screen, where the Frame really shines is when it’s streaming content from a desktop system. Pairing it with a gaming PC strapped with an RTX 5090 and an AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D, streaming games like The Blood of Dawnwalker or Onimusha to a private theater screen with maxed out settings is probably one of the coolest gaming experiences I’ve had in years.

The problem for a lot of people, though, is going to be the price. When Valve revealed the Steam Frame last year, it said it wanted to keep the price under the $999 Valve Index. But due to a RAM crisis that just doesn’t seem to want to give up, the Frame ultimately came in at $1,059, $60 more than the Index when it came out in 2019.

Price

Just like with seemingly every piece of hardware this year, the Steam Frame’s price is hard to ignore. The headset starts at $1,059, which will net you 256GB of internal storage, or you can get the 1TB model I reviewed here for $1,299. That price is probably going to be a dealbreaker for a lot of people that just want a good standalone VR headset, especially with the $599 Meta Quest 3 on the market.

Then, there’s the $399 PS VR2, which now technically works with PC, but with lower resolution optics than the Steam Frame (though it is OLED), and a face gasket which has never quite fit me well. Plus, in order to even connect it to your PC, you’re going to need to buy a $79 adapter, and even then you’re going to be hardwired to your PC the entire time you play.

But the Steam Frame is primarily meant to be a wireless PCVR headset with standalone capabilities, rather than the other way around. Valve has put a lot of work into making the wireless PCVR experience as smooth as possible, thanks to the 6GHz wireless dongle included in the box. That, combined with inside-out tracking via the four cameras on the front of the headset, plus internal eye tracking, puts the Steam Frame in competition with dedicated PC headsets like the Samsung Galaxy XR headset or the Play For Dream MR headset, which will set you back $1,799 and $1,999 respectively – albeit with much nicer optics.

I don’t think the Steam Frame is the Meta Quest 3 killer a lot of people were probably hoping it would be, but it is still one of the best headsets I’ve ever used. Whether or not that’s worth the extra cost is ultimately up to you, but after using it for a couple of weeks, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

Design

I’ve used a lot of VR headsets over the years, and the Steam Frame is easily the most comfortable one I’ve worn. While there are a lot of headsets that feel like they’re pulling your face or weighing down the top of your head, I can wear the Steam Frame for hours without wanting to shove it in a box in the corner.

A lot of that comes down to how light it is. The Steam Frame weighs just 440g, which is 15% lighter than the Meta Quest 3’s 515g. The weight is more evenly distributed, too, thanks to the battery being mounted on the back of the headstrap, rather than on the main unit.

It’s a beautiful headset, with an attractive all-black design and glossy front cover, which holds two of the tracing cameras. Because the battery is located on the strap, the headset doesn’t protrude as far in front of your face as some other wireless headsets.

On the bottom of the headset on either side are two vents, which help keep things cool, and then there’s another, larger vent located up top. When you’re playing standalone games, these vents can get quite warm to the touch, but they do a good job of directing the air away from your face, so you don’t need to worry about getting blasted with hot air.

Behind the vent on the top of the headset, you’ll find an IPD dial. This will let you manually adjust the distance between the lenses in order to make the image clearer and more comfortable to look at. I have a very narrow IPD of around 57mm, and I was surprised that I was able to actually get the headset to adjust to that. There’s even a switch between the two lenses that’ll lock your IPD setting in place, so the lenses don’t move when you’re taking the Frame off or putting it on.

The Steam Frame has pancake lenses with an FoV of up to 110 degrees, which means you have a wide field of vision, which should do a lot to combat motion sickness. As for the display, the Frame has a per-eye resolution of 2160x2160. The refresh rate varies from 72Hz to 120Hz by default, but it can go up to 144Hz via an experimental mode. Most of the time when I was playing a game locally on the Frame, the refresh rate would default to 72Hz, but it would go up to 90Hz or 120Hz when streaming from my PC.

On the right side of the headset (when it's on your face), there are two buttons: a recessed power button, and a button that’ll let you point at things with your face and essentially use the headset itself as a mouse. This sounds like a super niche use case, but it’s actually very useful for when you put your headset on before you turn on the controllers, and need to turn on Room View to see where you put them.

There are two buttons over on the left, too, but those are just volume rockers. I do like that volume is easy to adjust, because the placement of the speakers means sound does tend to leak. The speakers are found right around where the strap meets the headset, and I was immediately worried that they wouldn’t sound great. That worry was unfounded – even when I’m playing games in a loud room, I can still hear everything that’s going on. But, so can anyone else in the room.

Right out of the box, the light seal wasn’t great for me, but Valve also sent me its ergonomic accessories kit, which included a larger light seal. That solved the issue for me immediately, but it does seem like the larger light seal should have just come with the Steam Frame, rather than being part of a $59 accessories pack. Valve said it did this to help keep costs down, but it’s just a little piece of rubber, so I don’t know how much adding a second light seal would have raised the cost.

The face gasket is a pretty standard foam attachment, and while it’s incredibly comfortable I do worry that it’s going to soak up sweat fast, especially if you play a lot of high-movement games like Beat Saber. Luckily, it’s just magnetically attached, and it’s easy to pop off and either wash it or replace with a new one, which Valve will be selling for $59.

The rest of the headset comes apart pretty easily, too. Once you pull off the face gasket, there are three little switches, one at the top and one beneath each lens. Flick those over to the side, and the whole strap assembly slips off of the headset, leaving just the lens and display assembly. I love that the Steam Frame comes apart so easily, because that means it’ll be much easier to clean, or to swap out different elements if something breaks.

Valve also included an expansion bay at the top of the headset, which will allow you to mod the device in ways that I can’t even foresee yet. When I talked to Valve, the Frame’s engineersit told me that there are different camera attachments that are possible, and I’m sure that’s just scratching the surface. There’s also a microSD card reader on the bottom of the headset, so you can expand your internal storage too. Honestly, it really seems like you can do whatever you want with the Steam Frame, and that’s huge.

The strap that comes with the headset does a good job of supporting the weight of the device, and a lot of that has to do with where the battery is mounted. Valve slapped a 21.6Whr battery on the back of the strap, which will sit right on the back of your head while you’re playing. The battery is lined with the same foam as the face gasket, so it’s surprisingly comfortable. I’ve even laid my head back on the battery while playing non-VR games, and if I didn’t already know there was a battery mounted back there, I would never have guessed.

The Steam Frame probably would last a lot longer with a bigger battery, but keeping the battery capacity down makes the headset much lighter, and with how comfortable it is, I can live with charging a little more often. The USB-C port also lives on the battery itself, so even if you want to run a wire to keep it charged, it’ll stay out of your way. Although, I will admit that I basically used the battery life as a reminder to take breaks.

The Steam Frame also comes with new VR controllers, and they look a lot like the Meta Quest 3’s touch controllers. The real difference, though, is that between the two modules, you get a full controller layout. For VR games, that doesn’t matter too much, but if you’re streaming non-VR content from your PC, it means you don’t have to connect a whole new controller just to play games.

There’s plenty of great tech built into the controllers too. They have the same TMR thumbsticks as the Steam Controller, and they feel incredible in games. Valve also worked in some incredible haptics, along with capacitive finger tracking. I’m glad that finger tracking is still there, but you will probably need that accessories kit I mentioned earlier to take full advantage of it. After all, if you loosen your grips on the controllers without the hand straps that come in that kit, you’re just going to drop the controllers.

The controllers also don’t have rechargeable batteries, and are instead powered by a single AA battery each. I actually don’t mind this approach, because it keeps the total amount of cables you need to charge the system down, and you don’t have to worry about the internal battery dying over time, either. It helps that over the course of testing the Steam Frame, the controllers only dropped to 75% battery life, so the batteries will last you a while.

You can always connect a regular controller to the Steam Frame via Bluetooth, but I never felt the urge. There’s just something super chill about kicking back and playing a game on a controller that’s essentially split in half. That’s something that I still love about the Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Cons, and now I can get that experience on PC too.

VR Headset? Or Gaming Monitor?

When Valve first revealed the Steam Frame, I was honestly a little surprised that it was launching a VR headset in 2026. VR gaming has a super dedicated following, to be sure, but it’s not exactly what I’d call a growth category right now. But now that I’ve used the Frame a lot over the last couple weeks, I get what Valve was trying to do here.

One of the problems I’ve always had with VR gaming is that I needed a dedicated device that only really played VR games. That’s always led to headsets collecting dust in my closet after I finish whatever VR game got me to dig it out in the first place. But what makes the Steam Frame different is that it’s great for any type of gaming.

It’s wild that during the process of testing a VR headset, there were entire days I spent with this thing without even touching a VR game. More often than not, I just kicked back and played some Zero Company or Blood of Dawnwalker from my host PC without even thinking about games like Half-Life Alyx.

But at the same time, just by virtue of wearing a VR headset as much as I have been, I’ve been trying out a ton of VR games, like Stellar Cafe, that I otherwise would never have given a second look. In essence, the Steam Frame has become a sort of enhanced gaming monitor, and it’s been a godsend during the last couple weeks, where the hot weather has made me not really want to sit next to my PC and play demanding games. Instead, I can just put on the Frame, sit next to my air conditioner, and play in my own private theater.

Over time, I’m fairly confident this will be the main way I use the Steam Frame, rather than playing VR games. I’ve spent a lot of time with XR glasses like the Viture Beast and the Asus ROG XReal R1 glasses, and the Steam Frame makes them completely irrelevant, at least at home. And, because it can run indie games just as well as a handheld, I can totally see myself taking it on a plane and just playing Hades II – albeit with a battery bank attached.

Performance and Gaming

The Steam Frame is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, 16GB of RAM and either 256GB or 1TB of UFS storage. That chip is a bit old at this point, debuting in smartphones all the way back in 2023, but it can still play games. Valve did get SteamOS and Proton running natively on this headset, which is a huge development.

While not every game I tried to run on the headset worked – there were a few, like Darkest Dungeon II, that straight up crashed the entire system – there are plenty you can play natively on the headset without connecting to a PC. Just temper your expectations.

For non-VR games running natively on the Steam Frame, the default setting will limit them to 720p. You can change that, but keep in mind that raising the resolution is just going to be more demanding on the limited GPU. At that default resolution, I’m able to get 120 fps in a game like Hades II, but raising the resolution to 1080p drops that to about 83 fps. And Hades II isn’t exactly what I’d call a demanding game.

There are VR games that will run natively on the headset. I spent a lot of time playing Beat Saber locally on the Steam Frame, and it was awesome. The game felt smooth, and the only time I really felt the urge to stream that game instead was when the battery frequently died after about an hour.

Valve even got Half-Life Alyx running on the Steam Frame, and I’d say it felt good enough. Running Alyx locally on the Frame gives you an image that’s pretty pixelated, and you can tell it's running at a pretty low resolution. And even with lower visual quality, the frame rate is all over the place – sometimes I’d see Alyx hit 80-90 fps, only for it to drop to the 40s in another scene. So while you can play VR games natively, I’d recommend streaming them from your PC instead.

Valve has made a big deal out of its wireless streaming solution for the Steam Frame, and it works wonders. There’s a 6GHz Wi-Fi dongle in the box that will serve as the primary connection to your PC, but the Steam Frame will also connect to your PC via your network. The idea is that, for each packet being sent to and from the Steam Frame, the device will use whichever connection has the lowest latency at that moment.

In practice, it resulted in a rock-solid connection where I couldn’t tell the difference between the Frame standalone and when it was streaming from my PC – at least as far as input lag is concerned. However I did have some growing pains. My PC was initially connected to my network via Wi-Fi, so I’d occasionally get latency spikes. But as soon as I stopped being lazy and connected my PC to my router via ethernet, the problem immediately vanished.

I do wish that the Steam Frame at least had the option to connect to your PC via USB-C instead of only relying on streaming, especially for folks with crowded networks like mine. But at the end of the day it was an issue that was easily solved.

I did end up streaming from my PC way more than playing standalone games, and a lot of that came down to the battery. In the interest of keeping the weight down, the Steam Frame only has a 21.6Whr battery, and it does not last very long at all. Playing Beat Saber locally on the Frame will completely drain the battery after about an hour. There have been a few times where I’d get the little ‘10% remaining’ notification, thinking I could finish the song I was currently playing, only for the screen to go black about a minute later.

When streaming, though, the Steam Frame sips power. I had multiple sessions where I played about two hours of The Blood of Dawnwalker on the virtual screen, and ended the session with about half of my battery remaining. Just another way that makes it feel like the Steam Frame’s standalone mode is just a bonus, rather than the focus.

Now that the Steam Frame is finally here, Valve's entire hardware lineup is officially out in the wild. I got a chance to sit down with Valve software developers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Jeff Leinbaugh to talk about the new VR headset, and it sounds like the launch is only the beginning for the Steam Frame. Because while it is more expensive than something like the Meta Quest 3, Valve is hopeful that as an open platform, the Frame is going to be able to evolve over time, and who knows what it's going to be capable of a couple years down the line.

IGN: Why not have the option to have a wired connection from the PC to the Steam Frame?

Jeff Leinbaugh: Yeah, so the goal for the Steam Frame was a wireless experience, really to get over a massive use case friction hump. We've been working on that for a long time. We've been shipping updates and supporting Steam Link for VR for a bunch of other headsets as we've worked on that technology. And then the dongle, the adapter was the next step for that, because as you know, wireless networking setups vary a lot. So the adapter's a way to say, okay, this is the minimum bar, it’s in the box and is something that we can do a lot to ensure works pretty well.

So we see the Steam Frame as a streaming first headset, which for us, we think for the majority of people using it means a wireless streaming VR headset. We do have a [wired] mode that's still restricted behind the developer toggle, but it's something that's being worked on with a USB cable, if you've got a long enough USB cable to the PC, that can be used to stream and it augments the existing wireless adapter or other connections with multilink the same way that all of them work together.

Pierre-Loup Griffais: In general our goal, our aim is for the wireless adapter to be sufficient and that you shouldn't have to change your network configuration.

IGN: If the Steam Frame is designed to be streaming first, why not release a version with less RAM and a weaker chip to keep the price down, especially now that the RAM crisis has grown so bad?

Griffais: I think at this point, things were a little bit too far in development to fully rethink the product.

I would say that despite being streaming first, the ability to run things locally has been pretty well used in our observation and play testing, and I think there's some potential there to improve the experience even further. And so I think we're pretty happy with the trade-offs that we made along the way there to have both of those sides of the experience represented. And we expect that every user is going to approach it in a different way, where streaming might work best for a bunch of them, but standalone play would also work really well for some people.

Leinbaugh: Yeah, and that identity may evolve over time because we're still in the early phases of getting compatibility verification and all of that going, just like we were in the very early days of the Steam Deck. So as the number of standalone certified titles grows, people may see this as less of a primary streaming headset, depending on what they want to do. Some people may be content with one kind of gameplay, one way of playing it, other people may come in from the other side. So we're trying to improve all those angles.

IGN: Can you talk a little bit about the process of getting Proton compatibility running on ARM?

Griffais: Definitely. So the way that things run on the headset, Proton is the same exact Proton that you're used to on Steam Deck and Steam Machine and other platforms, but it's rebuilt natively for ARM instead. So all the Proton code is native for the platform. So as soon as the game exits the WIN 32 API environment and it's on the ARM native side, there's no performance hit from the ARM translation from that point on. So a lot of the code that powers the experience is actually Native ARM when you're running a game through Proton. But to achieve the emulation on the x86 side of things, we're using a program called FEX, which is a translation layer between x86 and ARM. We actually kicked off FEX development more than eight years ago at this point, thinking that it would be useful for things like that around this time.

So there's been a lot of work that went into it and integrating into Proton, making it work for Linux native games and so on. But given all that, we're at a point where compatibility is pretty much similar to what you're used to on Steam Deck. And a lot of the games that work to the same extent just with the performance difference because the GPU architecture is a little bit different and the ARM translation incurs some different performance characteristics on the CPU as well.

I would say also there's been a lot of work on the graphics driver side of things to make the driver able to run desktop-like games that are translated from DirectX 11, DirectX 12, as typically the drivers on those mobile chip sets, that's not their primary aim. But thanks to the open source nature of the drivers on Linux and Mesa, we've been able to do a ton of first party work there and improve it greatly.

IGN: Back when I visited in November, Valve was iffy on whether or not the Frame would be able to run Half-Life: Alyx natively, and now it works great. Do you think that performance is going to improve further as drivers mature?

Griffais: I think for Alyx specifically, if any work is left there on the performance side, it's going to be on the application side to make some final tweaks. But as we go doing that, we sometimes do new features in the driver or tweaks in the driver to accommodate that. But at this point, I think a lot of the performance has been tapped into, but it's possible we might discover some new untapped way of optimizing things further. There's been a ton of work that's been happening in tandem between the people working on Half-Life: Alyx optimization for the Frame and the driver, and a lot of those learnings actually will help other games, as well as help people tweak their games to run natively on Frame.

Leinbaugh: Yeah, going through the process of making Alyx run standalone is also helping us figure out the new problem of, "How do we make sure that VR games running standalone are a good experience?" Because we now are pretty good at getting non-VR games to run through Proton and making sure that those are verified and being comfortable with what those thresholds are.

For VR, it's kind of a different story because comfort is a bigger factor. So as we've gone through the process of making Alyx run better, we're learning about what's important when we look at other VR games to make sure that we can guarantee this is a good experience without setting a bar that's just unreasonably high, but something that's really useful to people who are using that as a tool to figure out what they should play. And one goal we have is, if we can lower the requirements on a game because we have driver improvements, re-projection improvements, that we're confident we'll still make that a good experience, then that's something that we would do as well once the technology for that is improved. We're pretty confident having a game like Alyx to test a lot of that stuff against has been really useful too.

IGN: Coming in at $1,059 makes sense in the current hardware landscape, but the elephant in the room is the Meta Quest 3 at around half the price. What sets the Steam Frame apart from Meta’s headsets?

Griffais: I think there's a bunch of different facets there. I mean, in practice, generally when we think about our products and what we want to bring to the table, we're not really directly comparing it to any other platform. We're trying to make choices that we think make sense for Steam users and will improve their experience playing a bunch of games. But for sure, I think our users, there's probably a bunch of use cases around modding and installing third party apps and things that we think Frame will work pretty well with.

And we're also very happy with the comfort, the weight of it, and the quality of the optics that you get for that. But as far as the price goes, I think it's a direct representation of the hardware that's in there, and there's not a lot of work that we're doing to try and muddy the picture there.

We're just building it for the cost that the parts in there cost us, and then passing that on to users as we're doing with other hardware.

IGN: When the Steam Frame was first revealed, we heard that Valve was trying to keep the price under the Index. How much has the RAM crisis moved up the price over what it theoretically was back then?

Griffais: Yeah, if you look at other comparable products like the Steam Deck or Steam Machine and what we were looking for originally and where it landed, it's kind of a similar price difference. It's really a reflection of the price changes in the market as a whole and the conditions around both things like, of course, memory and storage costs, but also even things like the main board cost, the layers of the main board itself, the copper, shipping… Everything is more expensive than it was this time last year. So all of that stuff comes into play there.

IGN: How much have the higher prices this year affected the demand for products like the Steam Deck and Steam Machine? How well did the Steam Machine sell?

Griffais: It's a little hard to say because we're still working on getting the whole launch quantity through, but in practice, I mean I think price for sure impacts demand. We'll have to monitor how things are going, but we're pretty comfortable with the fact that all these products are trending similarly to other products in the market. So for something, the Frame or a Steam Deck, of course, the value is a little bit harder to pinpoint compared to other PCs in the market because they have different aspects that they're bringing to play. The Deck’s portable platform, the Frame being the virtual reality form factor with the optics and a few things that are not really represented in the larger PC market.

But if you look at the memory and anything that has a similar amount of memory, it's kind of trending the same direction and Steam Machine is not really getting more expensive than a comparable PC. They're kind of evolving at the same spot in the same market, and I think the same will apply to the Frame as well.

IGN: Has the current hardware shortage impacted the way Valve is thinking about actually putting a Steam Deck 2 into development?

Griffais: Not really. I think the same way that we're working back from the user experience and what we're bringing to the table in terms of the same things that we've talked about before about how we want to make sure there's a very delineated performance improvement for something like a future Steam Deck, I think we're still looking at it in the same way.

It's just a matter of looking at the current conditions and seeing how and when we can deliver something like that. But from what we're working on as far as the user experience goes and what the product that we're trying to build goes, it's very similar goals.

IGN: The Valve Index launched with Half-Life: Alyx. Why launch the Steam Frame, especially at its price, without any new game?

Leinbaugh: Yeah, a huge part of our focus with this, because we were bringing our VR product line into SteamOS and Proton and game compatibility and everything that brings, we really prioritized getting software compatibility in a good state so that there would be a huge number of games, I mean as big as possible, available to play on the device or stream to the device on day one. And that's kind of the maximum value proposition that we saw with this, that you've got a lot of games to play and a lot of options of what games to play, even if they're VR games or not VR games. And so that's kind of what we're bringing to the launch.

IGN: When using the Steam Frame, I noticed that the default light seal wasn’t great, but the one included in the Ergonomic Accessories Kit was so much better. Why not include the larger light seal with the Steam Frame?

Griffais: I think the thing you just said about it having a real cost that's tangible I think is part of the picture there, because some of these accessories are not going to be used by everyone. So we wanted to make sure that we didn't burden the cost of the base offering for folks that didn't immediately need the different shape accessories for the face gaskets and things like the hand drops if they're not playing with that. So it's really a factor of trying to reduce it to the strict minimum that we saw most people would have a good experience with, and then for folks that need more to have it available separately.

IGN: I love how lightweight and comfortable the Steam Frame is, but the battery life isn’t very long. Are there any plans to sell an extra battery pack or any battery accessories?

Leinbaugh: No specific plans to talk about, but we've been thinking a lot about battery life. We thought a lot about the battery when we were deciding what to ship with the product, because like you said, weight is a big factor, and the bigger the battery is, the more you trade off a lot of other aspects of the experience.

So what we aimed for was something that was pretty balanced that would get you one to two hours of gameplay. And then we also have included some knobs to let people tweak that if they want to try to extend the battery life a little further, or if they're near a power source and they want to go full out and use the battery up faster, that's also an option. As far as charging, a lot of off-the-shelf battery banks and things, anything that does USB power delivery, 45 watts is a good target.

I think you can actually charge it faster than it'll drain if you go down to 20-ish watts, but it'll support 45 watts and that'll charge up really quickly from a battery bank or from a wall charger. But beyond that, we've been looking into what we could bring in the future as an alternate option for the strap because we designed the core and the strap modularly.

Everything that's in the strap, the audio, the strap itself, and the battery are things that potentially could be replaced in the future. One of those things that we're looking at is a potential strap that would offer a larger battery or hot swappable battery solution so that we could maybe deliver a first party version of something like that. At the same time, we're looking at alternate audio solutions, which all came up during the development of the product, but kind of like with the battery, they were not a good fit for the kind of baseline lightweight experience we thought would be most valuable to most people.

So we're also looking at what it would take to do an Index-style off-ear audio solution, and so we're kind of excited about exploring that and seeing if we can make something like that.

IGN: Do you envision third party manufacturers coming up with their own accessories to augment the Steam Frame with?

Leinbaugh: Yeah, we hope so. We have one partner already for the front port with the RGB cameras. And yeah, the port is good for more than just that potentially, so it really depends what people want to try, and yeah, we're excited about it.

IGN: How is Nvidia driver support coming along on SteamOS?

Griffais: Yeah, we're working on it hard. It's definitely at the top of our list. It's one of those things just like FEX and working on the Qualcomm driver, it just takes years. And so we've been at it for a few years already. The team is growing. We've done a few things like we've enabled the driver now in the main tree of SteamOS, so you can get things to light up on certain generations, but in terms of the performance difference between that driver and where the state of the art is, there's definitely still a little bit of a rift that we're trying to work on, but it's getting better day-to-day, so we're really hoping that at some point we can recommend it to users running that hardware, but right now it's still work in progress.

IGN: I’ve been using the Frame to stream 2D games a lot, how do y’all use it? Are you more VR focused or do you spend more time playing 2D games on a private screen?

Leinbaugh: I've gone back and forth a lot. I think the thing that I like to do has changed depending on what I'm playing. I went a couple months where I was mostly just playing local 2D content on the headset, and I was working on that a lot, and so I was playtesting it a lot, and basically that was the primary way I used it. But yeah, I'll notice something that I want to play in VR on PC, and then I'll get into a mode where I'm going home every night and streaming a Sim game or something in VR. Yeah, I don't think I have a consistent answer that would remain true for more than two to four weeks over the last year with how I've been using it. I know a lot of people in the team are different.

Some people have rarely used it to play VR games. Some people only use it as a VR headset playing with their PC and haven't done anything else. We don't want to tell people how to use it, because people even on the team have found value in these little corners of what it can do. So our goal has just been to pick a game and play it, and hopefully you don't have to think too hard about how you're getting into it or what's happening to put the game in front of you, but just to support all of those things, because we've seen how valuable it is to approach it from all those angles.

Griffais: Yeah, lately I've been playing Metal Gear Solid 4 on it and locally it runs really well. But the fact that I can have it, like you said, in the giant theater and also have a chat window open on the side or something is interesting and opens a lot of different possibilities. Personally, I really enjoy the fact that I can recline on my chair and leave my arms by my side while I'm playing a game like that instead of engaging my shoulders and always gripping a [standard] controller like that, so it's a little bit more relaxing.

But beyond that, when I was playing, I recently did a new play through Alyx because I was helping test and tweak the game there leading up to launch, and I found myself alternating between streaming and local. So I was streaming when no one was on the Machine because I could just use it for streaming, but then when someone was playing on there or someone was watching TV or something, I would just do a span of it playing locally, and being able to flip back and forth there was very valuable.

IGN: Speaking of the Machine, when will support for streaming to the Steam Frame from the Steam Machine be officially supported?

Griffais: I think we have a specific timeline. The core elements are all there in terms of getting the actual link up and running and all that. It's really things around the user experience and setting up the wireless adapter and all that that are still a work in progress. So in terms of the core experience, if you know how to set things up right now, you can get into it and get to the actual streaming and have no problems there, but it's not in a state where we would really recommend people do that because there's a set of paper cuts on the way in and out of that experience. So we're really hoping we can improve that around launch.

IGN: I was surprised by how much 2D streaming to the Frame changed the way I played games. What are some future possibilities you’re excited to see from the Steam Frame?

Griffais: I think beyond, I mean, it's kind of a tangent, but I'm personally also excited to see how people improve the experience beyond just 2D streaming, because there's some opportunities for augmenting 2D streaming in a way that I don’t really do with a flat screen. At some point, there was an industry push for stereo displays, 3D vision and a lot of things like that, but all those games I think would actually work pretty well streamed to a headset because you could have that effect because the display is stereo capable in that context. And so I'm really looking forward to seeing if people do more with that, because the idea that you could actually augment your game by streaming it in a way like that and not just merely have a big screen is pretty fascinating to me.

IGN: What do you mean by augment?

Griffais: Well, just if a game used to have stereo support, you could actually enable that 3D effect on a flat game, and I think that's pretty untapped at this point.

Leinbaugh: Yeah, and we've seen VR mod conversions before – that's not a new thing, but it's interesting when you have a device that can play a game anywhere along that spectrum from a flat screen game playing in a rectangle in a theater view all the way up to a full immersive VR with motion controls. Any kind of feature-add along that spectrum is something that you could test and try, and there might be value there when it makes really no difference that you just load it up and you may get stereo separation or depth or something. Those are all kinds of interesting options.

Griffais: A game developer could just do a minimal kind of addition, which is just putting their HUD out of the game when you're playing on a streaming setup like that or something equally light touch, but actually would change the experience quite a bit when you're on Frame.

IGN: It sounds like there are all kinds of possibilities on how the Steam Frame could evolve in the future. Do you see the Steam Frame as a fully-fleshed-out device or an early-adopter kind of product, where people should get it to look forward to future updates?

Leinbaugh: I mean, neither. Somewhere in the middle. We like getting excited about future possibilities for sure, and a lot of people do too, but that's not something you have to get excited about to go out and use Steam Frame. When we decided to make this and ship it, we did that because this was something that you could play your game library with and have fun with, and there's value there now. So I don't think it requires some assumption that you're investing in a future update or future tech.

And that's good for us because we can deliver something that we're confident that has a value and people will like now. But then we also get to watch what people like about it and read feedback for what people don't like. And then that can drive us to do those future updates that we're already excited about working on.

Griffais: I think a lot of those cool elements will actually come from the community as well. And I'm super excited to see what people do with that. It's kind of a canvas that's differently shaped than anything else that's been done before in terms of open platforms, like the possibilities that you can have to extend a Linux desktop into VR, or mod games into VR and into those hybrid things that we just discussed. There's a ton of possibilities there and we're super excited to see what people do with it. But I do think it's a pretty fully formed offering as is. You don't need any of that. You have access to your whole Steam library, you have the streaming core experience, you have local VR, all that stuff that you're talking about is there at launch. So I think there's not really an expectation that there's a missing piece that someone will fill in later.

After nearly a year of waiting, the Steam Frame is finally here. But if you were hoping, despite all the hardware price increases, that the Frame would still sneak under the Valve Index's price, I've got bad news.

The Steam Frame will start at $1,059, which will net you a 256GB headset, powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and 16GB of RAM. If you want more storage, you can get the 1TB model, which will cost $1,299. Either model of the Steam Frame comes with two controllers, an eye spacer for glasses, and a dedicated Wi-Fi 6GHz dongle for PCVR streaming.

Still, that price is likely going to be a dealbreaker for anyone that wanted a Meta Quest 3 killer, but the Frame does have some technology that Meta's headset just doesn't have. The Frame has eye tracking, a dedicated wireless PC dongle, and twice the RAM. The headset is also designed first and foremost for streaming PCVR games, and in my time with the headset, it excels at that. But if you want an affordable VR headset that primarily plays standalone VR games, Meta's headset is probably still the way to go.

Still, among dedicated PCVR headsets, the Steam Frame's price isn't really that outside of the norm. Headsets like the $1,799 Samsung Galaxy XR or the $899 Pimax Crystal Light have a lot of the same capabilities as the Frame, though the latter is wired-only.

Just like with the Steam Machine, it's clear that the Steam Frame is more expensive than Valve was originally planning. When I got a chance to sit down with Valve and talk about the headset, I was told the same thing as when we spoke about the Machine: that the Steam Frame had a similar sort of price increase as Valve's mini PC and handheld. That shouldn't be too surprising, though. With the ongoing RAMpocalypse, prices have only been going up over the last year or so, and even the PS5 and Xbox Series X have been affected.

How to Buy Steam Frame

If you do still want to get your hands on the Steam Frame, it's available for reservation today. Just like with the Steam Machine and Steam Controller, Valve has open reservations, and you can sign up for whichever model you want between now and September 17 at 10am PST. Then, when those initial signups close, Valve will shuffle the entries and split people into a reservation list and a waitlist. If you sign up after the 17th, you'll be added to the back of the waitlist.

The Steam Frame should start shipping out on September 18, and as people on the reservation list get their units, Valve will email folks from the waitlist and move them to the reservation list. If it's anything like the Steam Machine and Steam Controller, though, you can expect the reservation list to be stretched through the end of the year, and probably into the first few months of next year.

Now that the Steam Frame is here, and we know it starts at $1,059, it's clear that Valve had to raise the price a bit due to the ongoing RAM crisis.

Just like with the Steam Machine, I got a chance to sit down with Valve to talk about the Frame, and I was told by Valve Engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais that I could look at the price increases for the Steam Deck and Steam Machine to get a good idea of what the company was initially targeting for the VR headset. For reference, the Steam Deck got a massive price increase back in May, jumping to $789, up from $549. That's a pretty sizable 43% jump, or $240.

If the Steam Frame also saw its prices jump by around 43%, it's likely that the headset would have cost around $750, just like the Steam Machine. That would mean the Steam Frame now, due to higher hardware costs for memory and the Qualcomm chip that powers it, is around $310 more expensive than it would have been in the before-times.

Now, this is just napkin math, and I could very well be off the target here, but at that original price, the Steam Frame would have been a much more compelling headset, especially since the Meta Quest 3 hasn't yet had a major price increase. Meta's headset, after all, still starts at around $499.

Still, even at its current price, the Steam Frame is far from the most expensive PCVR headset on the market right now, especially when you compare it to other wireless headsets. Something like the Samsung Galaxy XR headset will cost you $1,899, and while it has much nicer OLED optics, it has a pretty similar SoC and RAM configuration.

Valve isn't alone it its higher-than-normal prices, either. Both the PS5 and Xbox Series X have had major price hikes this year, and pretty much every part of your gaming PC is going up in price, especially graphics cards, SSDs and RAM. It's unlikely that these high prices are going to go away anytime soon, either, as it looks like the memory manufacturing capacity for next year has already been sold through, largely to AI hyperscalers.

It’s no secret that Valve is “hard at work” on Steam Deck 2 – its devs have said as much every time I’ve asked that question over the last several years, and their plans for a sequel have been clear from the start.

The crux of the message has always been that Valve is waiting for the proper technology in order to present a true “generational leap” in performance. The unspoken part of that, of course, is that Valve is waiting for not just the right level of performance, but the correct performance to price ratio that would make Steam Deck 2 a viable product.

In the time since the Steam Deck originally launched, a number of other, more powerful handheld gaming PCs have come to market – all at moderate to significantly higher prices. In other words, the performance might be there now, but the price isn’t.

It might be a worry, then, that the RAM crisis that has driven up hardware prices – everything from graphics cards to gaming consoles to the Steam Deck itself – would impact Valve’s plans for a device so sensitive to component costs like the Steam Deck 2.

Thankfully, Valve says its plans haven’t changed. My colleague Jackie recently sat down with Valve software developers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Jeff Leinbaugh, and they had a reassuring answer to her question about whether the ongoing RAM shortage has impacted Valve’s plans.

“Not really,” said Griffais. “We've talked before about how we want to make sure there's a very delineated performance improvement for something like a future Steam Deck, and I think we're still looking at it in the same way.

“It's just a matter of looking at the current conditions and seeing how and when we can deliver something like that. But from what we're working on, as far as the user experience goes and what the product that we're trying to build goes, it's very similar goals.”

To me, that sounds like Valve’s target hasn’t changed, but the timeline might have. As I said before, it’s all about finding the right price to performance ratio where a new Steam Deck would make sense.

On the other hand, the Steam Machine and Steam Frame have shown that Valve isn’t afraid of simply passing higher component prices along to the consumer. But given that Steam Deck demand has reportedly cratered due to its ballooned price, up to $789 for the 512GB OLED model that previously cost $549, I have to assume that Valve is in no hurry to push out an overpriced Steam Deck 2.

In the meantime, there’s no shortage of Valve hardware on the market, as the company’s 2026 slate of devices are finally all out in the wild. For more on that, be sure to check out our review of the Steam Frame, as well as why there’s no new Half-Life game.

When Valve announced the Steam Frame, Machine, and Controller back in November, there was this undercurrent of hope that the company would release some secret new game to complement its new hardware. And, now that the Steam Frame is here, completing this round of Valve hardware, it's clear that there is no new game coming to support it. Instead, Valve is supporting its new VR headset with Half-Life: Alyx, the game that launched with the Valve Index back in 2019.

And with how expensive all of this hardware is, thanks in large part to the ongoing RAM crisis, not having a flagship system-seller makes it hard to imagine that a lot of people are going to rush out to buy it. When I recently sat down with Valve to talk about the Steam Frame, I asked why the headset is launching without a big game to sell it, and was told that the company was focused more on wide compatibility.

That's largely because the Steam Frame is running on a chip that's most often found in smartphones, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Valve software developer Jeff Leinbaugh told me they "really prioritized getting software compatibility in a good state so that there would be a huge number of games, I mean as big as possible, available to play on the device or stream to the device on day one." So, instead of one big launch title, Valve wanted the ARM-based headset to give you "a lot of options of what games to play, whether they're VR games or not VR games."

It's definitely nice that a lot of Steam Games run on ARM, thanks to the dual translation layers of Proton and FEX, but there is a lot of room to grow. There are plenty of 2D games that run well on Valve's headset, but getting system performance ready for standalone VR games is still a work in progress.

To Valve's credit, despite telling us back in November that Half-Life: Alyx would be a lot of work to get running natively on the headset, it did eventually get a 'Steam Frame Verified' certification. Other VR games are more hit or miss, though, and Valve's aware of that.

When I asked Leinbaugh about optimization on the Steam Frame, he told me the work on Alyx is key. "Going through the process of making Alyx run standalone is also helping us figure out the new problem of, 'How do we make sure that VR games running standalone are a good experience?'" Because while getting 2D games like Hades II running natively was a relatively simple optimization process, VR is a bigger struggle.

"For VR, it's kind of a different story because comfort is a bigger factor," Leinbaugh told me. "So as we've gone through the process of making Alyx run better, we're learning about what's important when we look at other VR games to make sure that we can guarantee this is a good experience without setting a bar that's just unreasonably high."

It's clear that Valve is actively working on getting PCVR games that are designed for Windows running on ARM. Just in the two weeks I spent testing the Steam Frame, one of the most popular VR games on the planet, Beat Saber, went from having a big 'unsupported' logo in the UI to having a green checkmark. And now the game runs extremely well, and feels great to play because of how light and balanced the Steam Frame generally is.

So, when Valve says that it was focused on getting compatibility down for the Steam Frame’s launch, it seems like it’s still a work in progress. I’m not sure whether or not having a launch title would have complicated standalone VR optimization further, but it at least sounds like the company is focused on getting that performance down. The Steam Deck certainly had its growing pains when it first came out, and I expect that the Steam Frame will as well.

Luckily, thanks to the 6GHz dongle included in the box, streaming PCVR games from a desktop PC to the Steam Frame is incredible, so that should help paper over the standalone mode’s rough edges for now. And, if all you cared about was standalone VR in the first place, maybe this is your sign to grab a Meta Quest 3 instead.

It’s no secret that handheld gaming is in a bit of a renaissance right now. Ushered in by the Nintendo Switch and carried forward by the Steam Deck and more powerful handheld PCs like the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, there’s never been more options for playing games on the small screen, whether that’s away from home or just around the house without being tied to a console.

Alongside these mainstream offerings are another class of handhelds aimed more at the past than the future. In particular, Android-powered dual-screen handhelds like the AYN Thor look to offer hardware designed for emulating the Nintendo DS and 3DS. This week, Retroid entered the fray teasing out its upcoming Pocket Duo, and today we now know how much it will cost.

The Retroid Pocket Duo will cost $270 for the flagship model, which comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, though there’s a coupon to knock $20 off when pre-ordering. There’s also a cheaper Pocket Duo Lite model with half as much RAM and storage, which will cost $150. Both models come in a variety of colors, including ones reminiscent of GameCube purple, Game Boy greyish-white, and clear blue and atomic purple. Pre-orders are currently sold out.

The Pocket Duo offers a 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED primary screen, while the second screen is 4.5 inches at 960p. It’s powered by a Qualcomm Dragonwing Q-7790 processor and runs Android 16, which offers a plethora of games via the Play Store, as well as multiple options for DS, 3DS and other retro system emulation. If going this route, games should be obtained legally, such as by dumping your own game cartridges – IGN does not condone piracy under any circumstances.

There’s no word yet when the Pocket Duo and Duo Lite will launch, but these prices make it an excellent alternative to the AYN Thor, which offers a less-powerful Snapdragon 865 in its $259 Lite model, while the Thor’s “Base” model moves up to the more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for $329. Pre-orders are currently sold out, but these handhelds tend to come available in waves, so keep an eye out for future drops if you’re interested in buying one. In the meantime, we’ll be looking to go hands-on with the Pocket Duo, so stay tuned for our review as we get closer to launch.

GameStop is planning to re-open stores that it previously shut down, with one opening its doors this week.

The company announced these plans via its social media and revealed that this rollout would begin on September 11. IGN reached out to GameStop to see how many stores are re-opening, and was given the following statement from a GameStop spokesperson:

"The count is: at least one, as of tomorrow. As for the rest, stay tuned."

Your local GameStop is back.

Select closed stores are now reopening nationwide starting September 11. pic.twitter.com/OKbS0WAmy4

— GameStop (@gamestop) September 10, 2026

It's slightly amusing to make an announcement like this based on just one store, but for those who want to know the location of this specific shop, you can find it in Ohio at the following address: 4756 Ridge Rd., Suite P22, Brooklyn, OH 44144. GameStop is staying tight lipped as to how many more stores they're planning to resurrect, but hopefully there will be more news soon.

GameStop has had its fair share of struggles over the last half-decade, partially thanks to the rise of digital games. The company has closed over a thousand stores since 2020 and has been cutting costs in other ways over the years. GameStop also briefly killed off Game Informer, a gaming magazine that was owned by the retailer and sold in their stores. Game Informer inevitably found a new owner, but it took nearly a year to bring the magazine back.

Now, GameStop has another obstacle to overcome: the impending death of physical games. PlayStation announced that it is ending support for physical games in 2028, which seems to suggest the PS6 won't support discs of any kind. The jury is still out on what Xbox plans to do with its next console, but either way, physical gaming media is starting to be phased out by the industry. GameStop may be able to weather this storm, as it has been offering more collectibles and geeky items like Funko Pops for some time now. GameStop is also trying to acquire eBay, which would help diversify the company.

Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images

It’s September, so Apple just had a huge event, where it released an annual Pro phone update in the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. The standard iPhone 18 and follow-up to the iPhone Air didn’t make an appearance, though. Sorry, regular phone-havers, but you’ll have to wait a little while longer.

Featured in this article

These new slabs of glass and metal are spendier than in years past, starting at $1,199 for the Pro and $1,299 for the larger Pro Max – a $100 price jump from their predecessors. Not that you wouldn’t have wanted to anyway, but protecting them is even more important. We’ve poked around, and picked out the best cases you can grab right now.

Apple TechWoven Case with MagSafe

Best iPhone 18 Pro Case

Dbrand Grip Case

Best iPhone 18 Pro Case for Fashion

Dbrand Ghost Case

Best Clear Case for iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max

Bullstrap Original Leather Case

Best Leather iPhone 18 Pro Case

Peak Design Everyday Case

Best Budget iPhone 18 Pro Case

Your iPhone 17 Pro Case

Best iPhone 18 Pro Case (Redux)

How to Pick an iPhone 18 Pro or 18 Pro Max Case

Whether you’re case-hunting for the iPhone 18 Pro or Pro Max, the general advice I’d give is the same: Set your budget and needs, then look for options that fit it, from manufacturers you’ve trusted in the past. Given how much more durable phones are in 2026 than they were, say, 10 years ago, I tend to prioritize slimness and how they feel in my hand. But you might be more interested in a case that you could run over with a tank, or that offers extras like a kickstand or an integrated credit card slot.

If you don’t see or like the cases your favorite manufacturers have produced, your best bet is take a look at a few stories like this, figure out which cases, or at least which manufacturers, get mentioned the most. I’d only check the lists from sites you’ve heard of and that you feel you can trust. I do my best to pick cases from companies that haven’t done me wrong, but I certainly haven’t tried them all, so it’s best to get multiple opinions.

And if you’ve come here from the future, several months into the iPhone 18 Pro life cycle, you’ll probably be able to find a few actual reviews. The same thing applies, there: consider reviews from sources you trust. When I’m looking at them, I care most about people whose taste generally most closely matches my own.

I've been hooked on foldables for years now, and I carry the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra on me every day. While that phone is incredible for most of what I need to do on a day-to-day basis, gaming has never felt amazing on it.

A big part of that comes down to the aspect ratio of the larger inner screen. A lot of games will adopt the 4:3 aspect ratio, but there are plenty that just don't, leading to either an ugly, stretched picture or giant black bars. In Hearthstone, for example, I have the choice of having a third of the screen blocked off, or have it stretch out to fill the screen, only to cut off a good portion of what's supposed to be displayed.

There have been several times where I've tried to fullscreen that game, only to not be able to read a card on one of the far edges of the battlefield, because the image is cut off. Now, a lot of this does come down to the developers. Certainly, Blizzard has the resources to update Hearthstone to accommodate the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra's square display. But I've been testing these foldables for the last seven years and things haven't improved. If Blizzard hasn't done anything by now, I doubt it's going to any time soon. I'd rather not leave it up to individual developers here.

What ends up happening, then, is I spend most of my time playing mobile games with the Fold 8 Ultra closed, and that kind of defeats the purpose of having a device that can unfold to a larger screen, doesn't it? Even then, while Samsung has vastly improved the aspect ratio of its foldables with the Fold 7 and Fold 8 Ultra, its outer display is still more narrow than a typical slab phone, which has its own problems.

On the surface, it'd seem like the iPhone Duo would have a lot of the same problems. Both its inner and outer displays have an odd 1.4:1 aspect ratio, which is smack dab in the middle of 16:9 and 4:3. The difference, though, is that Apple is famously strict with its developers. The company has already published guidelines for developing for the iPhone Duo, and the very first point is that developers should build apps to resize.

Now, there are definitely going to be some growing pains. It'll likely be a couple months before most major games have been adapted to the new form factor, but it's important to remember that Apple name-checked the iPad during its presentation. Most mobile games – including Hearthstone – natively support the various aspect ratios of Apple's tablets. Apple has had that guideline baked into its design documentation for years, and it's why apps largely work seamlessly between different Apple devices.

To be fair, Google also has similar guidelines in its developer documentation, but the difference is that Android has games as an exception to this rule. That's why its a gamble whether or not the game you want to play truly supports foldables. With the iPhone Duo, it does help that both the inner and outer display have the same aspect ratio, which should make resizing less of a technical hurdle. Regardless, I'm at least confident that Apple's foldable will have more games that just work on that inner display. Now, maybe I can finally play my silly little card games on a foldable without dealing with giant black bars.

Apple just announced iPhone Duo, its first foldable phone, yesterday at its "Suprise and Shine" event. Though the concept of a foldable is new for Apple, it's entering into a vast, existing landscape of folding phones. So of course someone has already recreated the Duo's neat opening animation on an Android phone.

While the iPhone Duo doesn't come out until October 23, one of the more interesting early features shown off has been the Apple A20 Pro's ability to power both displays at the same time. This allows the Duo to have an opening and closing animation that makes it look, at a certain angle, like the phone's display is expanding. The effect is unique to Apple's new phone, but a software developer on Reddit was able to recreate it on a Galaxy Z Fold, though it isn't exactly system wide.

In the video user moomanjohnny shared to the GalaxyFold subreddit, you can see the Galaxy Z Fold 8's outer display fade out as the phone opens, only to have the inner display take the image of the home screen and expand it once the phone is fully opened. This was done by taking data from the hinge sensor and then creating a transition animation using a screenshot of the homescreen – not exactly ready for system-wide implementation.

What's stopping this from being implemented throughout Samsung's launcher is that the permissions necessary for that only exist in Android's background processes. Later in the thread, moomanjohnny explains, "SystemUI is privileged by the system in the way that it can layer itself on top of apps, and tell other apps how to render. SystemUI receives a list of surfaces and can composite them on the screen where it wants using SurfaceFlinger." That because it's a security risk. "Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, no vendor has made any of these APIs available to anything other than SystemUI."

It's up in the air whether or not this kind of opening animation will ever be supported on the Galaxy Z Fold 8, but it's clear that the hardware capability is there. With how the Samsung Mobile Twitter page threw a fit about the iPhone Duo during Apple's event, it's possible that this functionality will find its way to the Samsung Fold range at some point.

After years of it being rumored, Apple has finally revealed a foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo, at the company's "Surprise and Shine" September event.

Unlike other foldables, such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold, the iPhone has the same aspect ratio in both folded and unfolded forms. When folded, the Duo has a 5.4-inch display – about the side of a passport – and unfolds to 7.6 inches. Both of these displays have a 1.4:1 aspect ratio – for context, that's in-between a 4:3 aspect ratio (equal to 1.34:1) and 16:9 (equal to 1.7:1).

Apple says it went with this format in order to maximize the usage of the larger, unfolded display. Most other foldables have a mostly-square shape when unfolded, which Apple points out wastes space to letterbox black bars when viewing traditional 16:9 content. The screen uses wide-angle OLEDs, and has a 3,000-nit peak brightness.

As with practically every foldable announcement in history, Apple says that it worked hard on eliminating the crease, and while we'll have to wait until we get our hands on it to say for sure, it seems like the company was successful. The iPhone Duo uses what Apple is calling a "nano-texture display" to maintain optimal screen-feel while doing what it needs to do in order to not have a visable crease. When unfolded, Apple says the Duo is the thinnest iPhone ever.

Powering this foldable iPhone is Apple's new A20 Pro chipset, the same found in the iPhone 18 Pro. With other foldables with flagship chipsets, you typically see slightly slower performance, especially in sustained workloads, because the phone ironically has less space to cool the chip. The iPhone Duo, meanwhile, utilizes a vapor chamber cooling system, but we'll have to wait for hands-on testing before passing judgement on how well it keeps things cool. More importantly, the A20 Pro chip is going to power both the internal and external display simultaneously, which means that there'll be essentially zero delay when swapping between screens.

The UI has been completely redesigned for the iPhone Duo, with primary controls and the dynamic island moved to the side of the screen. This should make things easier to access and activate when holding the phone in one hand. Plus, that aspect ratio mentioned above will give you more space to watch videos and play games, meaning the iPhone Duo has a shot at becoming the best foldable for gaming.

Apple showed off a variety of interesting use cases for the iPhone Duo. Standby mode works well here, as you can prop up a semi-folded Duo on your nightstand to serve as a bedside clock and alarm.

The camera system also gets some neat tricks. You can have the outer display preview the image, so your subject can see how your framing looks before the photo is taken – surely a boon for hapless Instagram partners everywhere. There's also a cool feature that lets you display a captivating animation, such as a clip of Snoopy dancing, in order to draw the attention of a child towards the camera. Meanwhile, Duo Facetime uses both the internal and external screens and cameras to let people on both sides of the device join a FaceTime call instead of having to crowd around a small screen and camera.

As for the camera itself, the main sensor is the same 48MP shooter as the iPhone 18 Pro, though it lacks the physical aperture shutter of that phone. Meanwhile, the internal camera is 12MP and sits under the display, remaining hidden until you need it.

Battery life is always a challenge on foldables, but Apple claims the iPhone Duo will be capable of "all-day" usage. That's an impressive claim, and one we'll surely be testing when we go hands-on with the device.

The iPhone Duo will be available in Night Sky (dark grey) and Star White colorways, and starts at $1,999 for 256GB of storage, which is $100 less than the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra. Preorders start on October 16, with the phone hitting store shelves on October 23.

For more on Apple's latest hardware, including the new iPhone 18 Pro, check out our roundup of everything announced at the September Apple event.

Apple's "Surprise and Shine" event just ended, and just like was rumored, the company finally revealed its first foldable, the iPhone Duo. Rather than taking cues from many of the existing foldables, Apple opted for a wider outer display, so that when the phone is unfolded, it has a more usable aspect ratio. That should help it become one of, if not the, best foldables for mobile gaming. The Duo will be out on October 23, so we'll have to wait a little longer for it, but it is more affordable than I thought it'd be, coming in at $1,999 for the 256GB model.

Of course, that wasn't the only iPhone Apple announced today. The iPhone 18 Pro was also shown off, and it's pretty much a straight spec bump from the iPhone 17 Pro, just with a larger vapor chamber, a slightly better camera and the A20 Pro powering it. That'll be available much earlier than the Duo, too, launching on September 18, starting at $1,199 and $1,299 for the Pro and Pro Max, respectively.

Both phones are focused a lot more on Apple Intelligence than previous phones, too, which is sure to be the most divisive part for most people. Still, it does seem like the company is focused on making Siri actually usable again, so hopefully the new model actually works the way it's intended. Siri stopped being useful for me basically as soon as the company shoved ChatGPT into it, after all.

The new AI models are being worked into the Apple Watch Series 12 and AirPods 5, too, and it looks like Siri will be a much bigger part of both of those devices. Although, Apple did add 'Siri Recap' to the new Apple Watch, which is reminiscent of Copilot's Recall feature. Hopefully, Apple can avoid the security blunders that forced Microsoft to delay that feature when it first tried to roll it out in Windows 11.

I was live blogging the event, and the entire thing is included below, so you can see how this year's iPhone event played out in real time, without the trailers and cutaways that typically bloat Apple's events.

Apple "Surprise and Shine" Live Blog

Times are in Eastern Daylight Time

2:15pm: I thought the iPhone Duo would have been more expensive, but it starts at $1,999 for 256GB of storage. That's $100 less than the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra. You can preorder it on October 16, and get it October 23.

That's the whole show wrapped up, what a way to end it. The iPhone Duo looks incredible, and it isn't even as expensive as I feared it'd be. Can't wait to get my hands on it.

2:11pm: There are only two lenses on the iPhone Duo, rather than the three on the 18 Pro, but it has the same 48MP main shooter. But this isn't the type of phone you get if you want the best camera anyways, so I just look at this as a bonus.

2:08pm: The Duo is of course powered by the A20 Pro, but what's wild is that the chip is going to power both displays simultaneously, which should make for virtually no delay when you're swapping between the display modes. The difference between that and something like the Galaxy Z Fold 8 will probably be pretty hard to notice, but it's still cool. The Duo is also eSIM only, which lets the phone have a larger battery. Battery life is a massive pain point for foldables, but Apple claims that the phone can last up to 24 hours when using both display modes equally. That'd be huge if its true, and we'll just have to wait to see until it's out in the wild.

2:07pm: The iPhone Duo will have a nano-texture finish, that Apple claims minimizes the crease. That's something that every phone manufacturer has been trying to do for years, and while I can't see a crease in the footage so far, I'll only feel comfortable declaring Apple's success when I see it in person.

2:05pm: With that outer display's aspect ratio, the iPhone Duo really does remind me of the Surface Duo, just without the weird dual-screen design that Micrsoft's weird office-centric phone had. This will also come with the latest processor, which is something Microsoft was afraid to do with both iterations of its Duo.

2:00pm: Thank goodness, you'll be able to use the Apple Pencil on the Duo, so now I have an excuse to dig mine out of whatever drawer it's hiding in right now. The outer display apparently has 90% of the screen area of the iPhone 18 Pro. The frame is reinforced with ceramic fibers, which, according to Apple, makes the Duo extremely durable, and it helps that it has an IP67 waterproof rating. Which is something that took other foldables years to achieve. That's the benefit of being seven years late to the foldable party, I guess.

1:59pm: Apple has a new UI for the Duo, and the dock is now vertical on the side of the screen, rather than the bottom, which should make it easier to open everything with a single hand, rather than needing to grip it with both hands. When the Duo is unfolded, it looks a lot like an iPad. It looks like the OS will react naturally to whatever state the phone is in, so you should be able to prop it open in a sort of L-shape and bring up a keyboard, like a mini laptop.

1:56pm: Apple is going with a bit of a wider aspect ratio for the outer display, which is apparently "the same size as your passport". That should make the aspect ratio of the inner display a bit more usable, which seems to be Apple's goal. And, unlike the 18 Pro, the camera is underneath the display with no dynamic island. When it's unfolded, Apple claims that the iPhone Duo is the thinnest iPhone yet.

1:54pm: One more thing. Here we go. John Ternus is introducing the first Apple Foldable. It is starting off with a trailer flying over a desert, and ended on the unfolded phone with what looks like a default Mac wallpaper. And here it is, the iPhone Duo.

1:51pm: Both the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 are available for preorder today, and launch on September 18. They'll cost the same as the Series 11 and Ultra 3, respectively at $399 and $799.

1:45pm: Now we're diving more into the AI capabilities of Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4. The first feature is 'audio intelligence', which will help you make sense of what you hear, which seems silly, but it can be helpful for anyone who's hard of hearing. The watch will notify you if something like a doorbell or a siren is detected. There's also a live rewind feature, where you can double tap the crown and get a transcription of what someone just said to you. That does likely mean that the Apple Watch is always listening to you, but I will admit that sometimes I zone out when someone is talking to me, so I can see the appeal here. And if you don't want the watch to listen to everything, you can turn Siri Recap off. And even if you leave it on, Apple promises that the recordings are only temporary and that Apple cannot access them.

1:42pm: The Health Sensing System will now give you a readiness report, just like the latest Pixel Watch, which will let you know when your body is ready for a rigorous workout. That way, you should be able to avoid unnecessary strain on your body. You can also order bloodwork from the Apple Watch, and the data from those tests will be uploaded to the Health app. I hope that's covered by insurance!

1:40pm: Now for the new Apple Watch 12 and Ultra 4, and of course Ternus is leading with how the Apple Watch will extend the reach of Apple Intelligence. The new watch has upgraded sensors, which make up a new "Health Sensing System." Background heart rate readings are now taken every 5 seconds, which is 60 times more frequently than the Apple Watch 11.

1:35pm: AirPods 5 is here, and it will of course have access to Siri AI, which will help you do things like live translation. And unlike the iPhone, it isn't going up in price, and will still start at $129 without noise cancelation. The new AirPods Pro is here too, with up to 5 hours of battery life with ANC enabled, and those will start at $149, which is $30 less than the last generation. Both will also be available on September 18.

1:31pm: The iPhone 18 Pro will be available for preorder on Saturday, and will be available to buy on September 18. It is more expensive than the 17 Pro, starting at $1,199, but it did say you could get it for $34.99 a month using the upgrade program. That's more expensive, but it's not as bad as I thought it'd be.

1:30pm: Apple is shrinking the dynamic island, but it doesn't seem like it's disappearing this year. I don't mind it, but I know a lot of people don't like having part of their screen cut out.

1:28pm: Apple is introducing 'Apple reference image,' which will have the camera digitally sign photos at the time of capture, so you know that it's not AI-generated. It'll also create a digital negative that can't be altered, so there's always a reference shot that you know hasn't been touched by AI.

1:23pm: The iPhone 18 Pro has a new 48mp main shooter, and it actually has a physical shutter, so you can adjust aperture beyond just software effects. This should be huge for shooting in low light, and could make the iPhone 18 Pro one of the best camera phones, but again, that's something I'll have to test when I actually get my hands on the phone. Apple is also introducting new pro controls, including white balance and lens aperture in the native camera app. Some of these photos look incredible, but professional photographers can take incredible pictures on pretty much any device, so that doesn't say much.

1:20pm: I'm excited to see how much battery life has improved. Apple claims that 5 minutes of charging will get you 6 hours of video playback. We'll see! Now we're looking at gaming on the 18 Pro, and Apple showed the phone running Monster Hunter Outlanders, and it looked incredible. I'm going to have to check that one out.

1:18pm: Apple debuted its new vapor chamber on the 17 Pro, and it looks like there's a next-generation version of it on the 18 Pro. It has three times the surface area, which will hopefully make it a bit more effective. In my testing on the iPhone 17 Pro, the vapor chamber didn't actually impact sustained performance by much. Maybe it'll be different this year.

1:15pm: Apple Intelligence will be availble in 16 languages when the new iOS update launches later this month, and I have to admit I'm curious to see if it's actually good again. It's been a while. Now we're going to start looking at the A20 Pro, the new chipset. It has a 6-core CPU, with 2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. Apple claims that the 'Super cores' are desktop class, which I'll have to wait and see when I test it. The A20 Pro also has a new 7-core GPU, each with a neural accelerator, which is how Siri AI will be running natively on the phone. There's also two seperate Neural engines built into the chip, which should make the iPhone 18 Pro incredibly strong for on-device AI work.

1:12pm: It looks like Siri AI will have much more customization for the voice. I can't stop thinking of that one scene from Companion where she's trying to steal the car.

1:10pm: Apple 18 Pro seems to be built around AI, which isn't super surprising, but the company is also launching 'Siri AI'. I hope this means Apple has its own model, instead of offloading the work onto ChatGPT like previous versions of the assistant. Unrelated, it doesn't look like the dynamic island is going anywhere this year.

1:08pm: Apple is kicking off the iPhone event with another trailer, featuring the moon and then zooming in on the A20 Pro, the chip that'll be powering the iPhone 18. "This is what happens when you go to the moon, come back and ask what's next".

1:05pm: Ternus is kicking off the event talking about a new smart hub for your phone, and I'm pretty sure he's going to use this AI talk to introduce the foldable. That "big screen" he mentioned is the big clue. Either way, he's positioning the iPhone as the "ultimate personal hub". Expect a lot of Apple Intelligence here.

1:02pm: The trailer then cut to Tim Cook, introducing John Ternus as the main character. And, well, yeah I guess he is at this point.

1:00pm: Here we go! Apple spent the last 15 minutes playing music over a vague blue and pink image, which turned out to be a super-zoomed in Apple logo. Surprising! Apple kicked things off with a man burning down what looks like a circus cart. There was also an old woman who peeled off her face to reveal a younger woman! This is quite the Apple event so far.

12:45pm: The show starts in 15 minutes, and we even have music playing! It's going to be the first Apple event with John Ternus headlining, and I half-expect a Tim Cook highlight reel to kick things off. I've been watching this iPhone event every year for more than a decade now, and I wonder if the structure is just going to feel exactly the same as it has for the last few years. At least I don't have to wait long to find out.

12:30pm: We're 30 minutes out, and I still don't know how I feel about the name "Surprise and Shine." I swear Apple finds the silliest way to name its big showcases. It's even funnier, because if the big surprise is the foldable iPhone, its one we all saw coming from a mile away at this point.

12:00pm: The event starts in about an hour, and I'm still not entirely sure what is going to be there. The rumors heavily suggest the foldable is going to be there, and Mark Gurman is even calling it the 'iPhone Duo' at Bloomberg. That just makes me think of the Microsoft Surface Duo (RIP).

Apple has just announced the iPhone 18 Pro at its 'Surprise and Shine' September event.

While last year's iPhone 17 Pro Max had a new chassis, with an improved camera shelf and a new vapor chamber, the iPhone 18 Pro has largely adopted the same design. Instead, Apple seems to be focusing on upping the spec, loading the phone with the new Apple A20 Pro processor, which is built on 2nm technology and the company claims to have 40% faster gaming performance than last year's model – though we'll be putting that claim to the test. It also packs in a second neural engine to effectively double performance in AI workloads.

Apple led the announcement touting the capabilities of Siri AI, showing things like email construction, system dictation, and camera integration, letting you ask questions about stuff you see in the wild, or pulling event details from a flyer and adding them to your calendar.

Apple says the iPhone 18 Pro uses a new vapor chamber for improved thermals. The battery is expected to match the iPhone 17 Pro Max – approximately 36 hours of video playback – while the iPhone 18 Pro Max will be capable of up to 45 hours. Apple claims that 5 minutes of charging will get you 6 hours of video playback.

Apple also discussed the phone's new camera capabilities. The iPhone 18 Pro has a new 48MP main camera featuring a physical shutter, which means that you can adjust the aperture manually beyond what's capable in software effects. In particular, this should make the camera excellent for shooting in low light settings.

This might not be the most exciting followup in Apple's history, so it doesn't help that it also comes with a higher price tag. Apple is charging $1,199 for the iPhone 18 Pro to start, compared to $1,099 for the 17 Pro, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at $1,299. Apple did avoid raising prices on the 17 Pro throughout the ongoing RAM crisis so far, so it seems to have been waiting for this new model. Still, the $100 price jump is less extreme than some other devices, so it seems like Apple is absorbing some of the cost of RAM, at least for now.

Preorders start on September 12, with the phone on store shelves on September 18.

Europe's biggest tech show, IFA just wrapped in Berlin, Germany, and Acer decided to show off not one, but two working prototypes of its "Project DualPlay Mini."

The handheld gaming PC seems fairly innocuous at first glance, other than its aggressive, brand-appropriate Predator styling, but a quick lift of its front gaming panel and a subtle flip of its screen turns it into a surprisingly adequate mini PC.

It's very important, now that I've hyped this up, for me to mention this is only a prototype. This isn't something you can buy anytime soon, if ever. Acer told me they're basically feeling out the market with it, seeing if there's enough interest. Now this is purely anecdotal, but an informal survey of "me" says "yes, please, I want this device in my life."

For a prototype with no solid release plan, the Project DualPlay Mini was surprisingly full-featured. I played Forza Horizon 6 and it looked great, and I was really surprised there were rumble features built in. If there was anything pre-release about the rumble feature, it's that it was surprisingly loud. But other than that, it worked really well and helped add an extra dimension to the already cool experience.

The buttons and joysticks also felt awesome, with great tactile feedback and an extremely smooth thumbstick experience. The screen looked amazing, although Acer's representative wouldn't give me much in the way of specs since the units on display are still in the prototype phase.

Turning from gaming to mini laptop mode is legitimately fun. You just open up the top and give the screen a little flip to get it into laptop mode. The one big downer here is there's no trackpad, but the prototype did have a touch screen, and I had no trouble navigating around the Windows 11 desktop and in the Steam app.

Honestly, when I first opened it up into laptop mode, I got heavy 2011-esque Netbook vibes, and I say that from a place of love. Those teeny Netbooks are just old enough now to evoke some wistful nostalgia for that weird age when smart phones weren't quite smart enough but regular laptops were still too clunky. I found the keyboard to be a pleasure, as far as laptop keyboards go, and while it's meant to be a convertible gaming handheld, the WASD and arrow keys are highlighted on the face of the keys.

This could be the best way to play mouse and keyboard on a handheld device, should it ever become a reality. And honestly, after my very brief time with it, I want so badly for it to be real. It's the best of both worlds and I feel like busting one of these out on the train or the airplane would have the same feel as busting out a T-Mobile Sidekick circa 2006.

Please, Acer, make this into a reality.

Seth Macy is Senior Social Commerce Producer, and just wants to be your friend. You can find him on social media sites @SethFromMaine.

The SteelSeries Aeon Pro is one of the most advanced controllers I've ever tested. It's also the most expensive – but it brings some features never before seen in a controller.

Notably, the Aeon Pro borrows the outstanding "infinite battery" system from the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro line of gaming headsets. Instead of relying on a cable or dock to charge the controller, the Aeon Pro has two rechargeable batteries – one in the controller and another that charges in the base station. Like the Nova Pro, when one battery runs out of juice, you simply pop it out and swap it with the fully-charged one from the base station. In less than 10 seconds, your controller is fully juiced up and the previously depleted battery is tucked back in the dock to charge.

I'm a big believer in this "infinite" battery system. It's one of the most revolutionary features to come to gaming headsets and is the reason I continue to recommend the Arctis Nova Pro, so I'm thrilled to see SteelSeries implement it in a controller. Even better, the base station also serves as a dock for the controller, giving it a home to live on your desk or entertainment center when not in use.

The dock also solves another headache for players like me who game across multiple systems. The dock has separate USB-C connections for both Xbox and PC, and when both are plugged in, you can swap between them (and a third Bluetooth connection) on the controller itself. Unfortunately there's no PS5 or Switch 2 functionality here.

The one drawback to this system is it doesn't work great if your PC and Xbox aren't near each other. If they're in different rooms, or far enough that a wired connection from the base station to each device would be cumbersome, a simple dongle that you can unplug and take with you would be more convenient. It would be a lot more useful if it had PlayStation support, since your consoles likely all live with your TV, while PC is the wildcard that might be in another room.

The Aeon Pro packs in just about every high-end "pro-controller" feature on offer. Hall-effect thumbsticks join an Xbox-layout of ABXY buttons backed up by tactile switch connections. The triggers have two-stage Hall-effect sensors as well, while around back there's four paddles for additional inputs. All the buttons, bumpers, paddles, and even the D-pad, as well as the triggers when set to the short-throw position, offer a pleasing audible click.

Finally, there's a small OLED display above the Xbox button to show battery life and aid in configuration, whether that's just swapping between systems or full-on custom button remapping. It's a useful feature that takes the guesswork out of wondering which profile or custom button map you have active, though it's not quite advanced as the "has its own OS" capabilities of the totally over-engineered Genki Manta.

I spent most of my testing time slashing through corrupted fiends in the excellent new Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and the Aeon Pro served as an outstanding conduit for my mind-body-sword connection. Whether I was slashing and dodging or chaining together Issen counterattacks, the Aeon Pro felt excellent in hand and never failed to deliver my strikes.

All of this adds up to an excellent controller that is quickly becoming my go-to for anything that I don't need the Steam Controller's trackpads. The biggest caveat of course is the price. At $260 it sits well above even other high-end "pro" controllers like the Turtle Beach Stealth Ultra and Asus ROG Raikiri II, but it does offer unique features never before seen in a controller.

I haven't spent enough time with the Aeon Pro yet to render final judgement, especially considering how expensive this thing is, so I'll be testing it more over the next week and will update this article with my final thoughts once I've fully put it through its paces.

At the heart of any PC setup is your monitor. You can have the fastest and most powerful rig and peripherals going around, but it’s all bottlenecked by how fast and detailed you can see it.

LG has long been one of the leaders in the space, and the tech giant has just launched two new models that have caught our eye.

For those tight for space, the 27” LG UltraGear evo GM9 (27GM950B) Hyper Mini LED 5K monitor. And for gamers with a more spacious setup, the ultrawide OLED experience offered by the 39” LG UltraGear evo GX9 (39GX950B).

These are the next evolutionary step for the LG range, a foray into the territory of 5K content driven by an industry-first feature – AI upscaling to 5K in a gaming monitor. Game experiences outputted at WFHD (2560×1080) or higher resolution, are upscaled - on device! – up to 5K (depending on input quality), providing huge benefits to gamers.

Why? You don’t have to level-up your rig to get the result. As the 5K upscaling is done on the monitor, your existing PC hardware isn’t put under any additional strain, and you may not have to upgrade your desktop to benefit.

Breaking down the 27” LG UltraGear evo GM9

You’ll struggle to find a 27” monitor as sharp as the LG UltraGear evo GM9. Its 5120x2880 resolution presents over 14-million pixels at 218PPI, which doesn’t just make text far easier to read, but brings details like an opponent’s weapon into clarity.

The Hyper Mini LED panel also plays a key role. The “hyper” referring to the improvements in dimming zones (2,304) and LEDs (9,216) over a traditional Mini LED monitor (1.5x and 5.9x respectively). It allows the monitor to hit a peak brightness of 1250 nits and achieve both HDR 1000 while dramatically reducing blooming. All with Mini LED durability!

Sick of not seeing a muzzle-flash? Missing enemies hiding in the shadows? Is your target blurring as it runs across the screen? Not with the GM9.

It’s rich with other gaming features, too, including a 1ms grey-to-grey response time and VRR (NVIDIA G-SYNC, AMD FreeSync Premium). But Dual Mode has the most dynamic impact. At 5K, the monitor can refresh 165 times a second, accepting a very solid frame rate in full detail. But if you’re happy to sacrifice resolution for speed, Dual Mode doubles the Hz while reducing the resolution, happily receiving 330fps at 1440p.

It’s all unlocked by Ultra‑High Bit Rate 20 (UHBR20) support via the DisplayPort 2.1 port. It’s the highest bandwidth mode available in 2026, allowing that great resolution, refresh rate and HDR to journey from your GPU to the monitor.

That’s excellent. You can still immerse in 5K cinematic gaming experiences, then activate Dual Mode when speed-of-play is key – like multiplayer or racing games.

Breaking down the 39” LG UltraGear evo GX9

If you’ve never gamed on an ultrawide curved monitor before… oh boy. It takes immersion to a new level as the game world bleeds into your periphery. It feels like you’re really racing that car. Really standing on the bridge of that ship. Really climbing that ancient ruin. Plus, it’s awesome for productivity, too – like having two desktops in one.

Historically, ultrawide means sacrificing resolution, but the GX9 doesn’t compromise with its 5120x2160 (5K2K) resolution at 143ppi. The contrast in these panels is insanity at 1.85M:1, hitting a peak brightness of 1500 nits and HDR True Black 500. All leaning into the benefits of OLED, with a 0.03ms grey-to-grey response time.

The space between black and light is so distinct it pops – Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake, Hellblade and the like find new life. And like the GM9, it can keep pace with even the most powerful rigs, delivering 165Hz at 5K2K, or 330Hz at WFHD via Dual Mode. All while stuttering and tearing is fragged by the VRR power of NVIDIA G-SYNC and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro.

Gaming Gets Good

In gaming, now remains then… but with these new LG monitors, the gap is closing. These specs aren’t window dressing. They work together in a meaningful way to ensure you can finally see what your PC is delivering, meaning you can react faster. For gaming that means more immersion, better performance and more victories. While for your work productivity, you get to benefit from crisp clarity, more realistic colours and deeper contrast, reducing eye fatigue and improving precision.

Life’s good indeed.

A custom pre-built gaming PC like the Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 is going to save you a lot of work if you’re not technically savvy or simply don’t have the patience to put together a modern-day puzzle. With its Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card and AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, you’re getting solid mid-tier performance. And it’s all packed away in an easy-to-open glass case with shiny RGB components.

That said, it’s not without issue. Upgrading or replacing components is likely going to take moving a few things out of the way, as it’s a bit crowded on the motherboard. Even if you don’t plan on upgrading, you’ll either be annoyed by the finicky RGB lighting or the fact that the power button and front ports are at the very bottom of the tower, making floor placement very awkward. These may not be dealbreakers for some, but you should know what you’re getting into.

Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 – Case Design and Build Layout

The Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 isn’t terribly bigger than your average mid-tower, coming in at 18.3 x 20.6 x 9.4 inches. A good chunk of the sides are wrapped in tempered glass and RGB LEDs, with light bars found around the case, on the seven case fans, the two RAM sticks, and the PSU shroud – the GPU is the only component left out of the fun. The rest of the case is painted black, which isn’t my favorite gamer aesthetic, but it does allow the rest of the RGB to shine.

Breaking into this rig is pleasantly easy. The glass panel pops off with a little pressure, held in by several pegs and a larger clip. The RTX 5070 isn’t terribly large, but it doesn’t leave a lot of headroom for one of the two PCIe 4.0 x16 slots that are available just beneath it. If you did want to plug something in there, it’d need to be relatively thin, and I’d worry about how tight it would be squeezed up against the GPU. All the cables are neatly tucked away, but you’ll need to work around a few things to replace some components. For example, the CPU fan cables are blocking the RAM and the SSD sits very snugly between the CPU and the motherboard’s heatsink.

Popping open the panel on the opposite side was just as easy, held in place by the same mechanism. All the cables are zip tied and lined up cleanly on the front, but of course, there’s a mess of wires down by the 850W Gold PSU. The PSU is non-modular, too, so if you need to replace a cable, you’re going to have to buy a new PSU and play connect the dots.

The front glass panel pops off easily from the top and slots back in just as smoothly. You’ll find the front connectors just below the glass panel, near the power button. There’s a headphone jack as well as two USB 2 Type-A and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C slot. The placement for the power button as well as the ports is mighty annoying if the PC is placed on the floor as opposed to your desk.

On the back, you’ll find two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, five USB 2 Type-A, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, an RJ-45 Ethernet, and three audio ports. There are also connectors for Wi-Fi 6 extenders as well as an HDMI and DisplayPort on the motherboard, which are helpful for troubleshooting. There was a sticker on the back blocking the ports and pulling it off left a sticky residue in places, which is very silly, but you’ll need to clean it up.

Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 – Software

Fortunately, there’s no real bloatware clogging up the metaphorical pores of the Skytech Gaming Blaze 5. However, it does come packaged with the SignalRGB app, which is a slightly annoying app that gives you access to the system’s RGB lighting settings as well as control over your fans and the ability to monitor hardware performance. You do have to customize the monitoring interface yourself. And it asks you to create an account to get access to more lighting features. And then it asks you to sign up for a Pro account ($6 per month) to remove the ads. Yes, there are ads in your RGB lighting configuration app. Like I said, it is an annoying app to deal with.

I also noticed some issues with the RGB lighting overall. There’s no direct setting to turn off the RGB – only to pause or dim the effect, both of which do disable the lighting. However, the lighting will occasionally flicker back on and then off again. And when starting the PC, the app doesn’t remember that you disabled the lighting so it’ll kick back on. Another issue I noticed is that the RGB lighting occasionally stutters when active, like it’s skipping a beat.

Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 – Performance

The Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 features an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 12GB GPU, AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and 32GB of RAM, which will get you mid-tier gaming performance. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like mid-tier pricing (at $2,299), but perhaps that’s to be expected given the current computing climate. Overall, you can get roughly 50 to 60 fps in select AAA games at 4K on high settings. And of course, Nvidia’s DLSS frame generation will get you further to capitalize on high refresh rate displays.

Taking a tour through Night City in Cyberpunk 2077, the Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 averaged 60 fps at 4K on the Ray Tracing Ultra and DLSS Performance settings. It achieves greater heights with frame generation (x2), scoring 97 fps, and then 167 fps with frame generation (x4). Unfortunately, the RTX 5070 can’t reach the full potential of super high refresh rate panels, like 240Hz.

With simple DLSS Performance, the Blaze 5 managed 56 fps in Assassin’s Creed Shadows and 78 fps with frame generation enabled. Naturally, the Blaze 5 fell low on the Metro Exodus benchmark, at 40 fps, since it’s a heavier workload with no upscaling. In a more competitive game, like Black Ops 7, it operated smoothly at 121 fps, which is more than enough to get you up on those leaderboards.

Pragmata is a little intense to run on an RTX 5070 at 4K, max settings without any additional help. I started scouring space-dystopian New York City in the space-daddy simulator, and I averaged 40 fps on the highest settings with DLSS Performance enabled. Then I turned on frame generation (x4) and fought the freaky baby-looking robots that haunt my nightmares, which got me around 124 fps. Meanwhile, at 1440p with no frame generation, the Blaze 5 scored 71 fps.

You can definitely get by when gaming at 4K, but the Blaze 5 will really shine with a 1440p monitor, capturing those higher frames you want to see. It does cost a hefty sum, so you might as well optimize accordingly.

Rami Tabari is a contributing writer at IGN with over 9 years of experience in the tech and gaming industry. You can find his bylines at Laptop Mag and Tom's Guide (and on a random Predator review at Space.com). When Rami isn't wading through a sea of the latest gaming tech, he's agonizing over the worldbuilding in his upcoming novella.

Asus already had one of IGN’s favorite 4K gaming monitors on its hands with the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDP, delivering a gorgeous OLED panel that could render 4K games at a zippy 240Hz or swap to 1080p for an even faster 480Hz. It’s still an excellent option on the market and made all the more affordable by its age. Now almost two years on, Asus has the ROG Swift OLED PG27UCWM, a very similar monitor with a smaller 27-inch panel that gets some new display tech for slight visual refinement. Of course, newer tends to mean more expensive, and this model is set to come in at $1,199, putting it well ahead of other competing OLED displays like the earlier PG32UCDP, which was sitting at $859 at the time of writing, or the 1440p/500Hz MSI MAG 272QP QD-OLED X50 at $599. Let’s have a look at how it stacks up.

Design and Features

Asus didn’t leave much out when it designed the ROG Swift OLED PG27UCWM. That said, it doesn’t have speakers, but you’ll find it checks boxes in just about every other department.

From the front, it looks like a fairly tame, cleanly-built gaming monitor with perhaps a bit of a gaudy stand thanks to the angular, gamery aesthetic and the LED bat signal of the ROG logo that it wants to splash onto your desktop day and night (this can be turned off, thankfully). If you want, you can swap for a VESA stand using an included adapter. The provided stand is plenty functional, though, offering the typical range of adjustments you’ll find on a high-end monitor. There’s also a slot in the neck of the stand for passing through cables, and where some monitor stands make it quite a squeeze to even get power and a single HDMI cable through this portal, the PG27UCWM provides plenty of room for multiple cables.

The PG27UCWM is ready for a lot of cables, too. You’ll find two HDMI 2.1 ports, a DisplayPort 2.1a port, and even a capable USB-C port that’ll take in video and send out up to 90 watts of power. There are two USB ports for passing data to a connected system, letting the monitor serve as a USB hub as well with a KVM switch so you can pass that connection to the USB-C link or a separate USB-B link. If you want to connect speakers, there’s a headphone jack, too.

Around back, the PG27UCWM spices things up a little. Rather than the classic black ABS plastic you’ll find on half the monitors in the world, the PG27UCWM opts for a transparent plastic that gives it something of a cyberpunk aesthetic. It may still feel like cheap plastic, but it looks damn good.

Another feature is a presence sensor that can help preserve the lifespan of the OLED panel by dimming it whenever you step away. I didn’t find it overly sensitive, so I wasn’t concerned it’d blink off while I’m in the middle of a game.

Adjusting settings in the monitor is easy with a joystick control for navigating menus and making selections. This sits just behind the presence sensor at the bottom edge of the display.

Then there’s the display itself. The ROG Swift OLED PG27UCWM packs a 4K/240Hz display with HDR10 and Dolby Vision support, variable refresh rates down to 48Hz, and a setting that swaps the display to 1080p and cranks the max refresh rate up to 480Hz.

The display is glossy, which can hurt in a bright room, but it has a decent anti-reflection coating that at least cuts down on how bright reflections appear.

Testing

The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27UCWM proves its worth with strong performance in objective measurements. My colorimeter measured a wide color gamut with 100% coverage of sRGB, 89% coverage of AdobeRGB, and 97% coverage of DCI-P3 color spaces. The monitor delivers the color accurately with an average dE1976 of 1.04 and a max of 2.66, making this a solid option for creative work. The monitor achieved these results in its default Racing picture profile, but not all different settings will perform as well. The Scenery picture profile, for instance, had a bad color accuracy dE1976 average of over 10.

By default, the display ran a tame 147.6 nits that would be comfortable in a modestly lit room, and that comes alongside infinite contrast thanks to 0.0-nit black levels. This level came alongside a standard 2.2 gamma curve and a comfortable 6600K whitepoint. Bumping the brightness level to 100% raised the white level to 249.7 nits.

HDR is a specialty for this display. It may not go incredibly bright for a full screen in normal use, but it can bring out more light in HDR. I measured a 294.8-nit whitepoint for a full screen and a 519-nit whitepoint for a 10% window with the remaining screenspace blacked out. That could go higher still for smaller highlights, but required switching the monitor to its Adjustable HDR setting and raising the brightness to 100%. In those conditions, I measured a 4% window at 1,066 nits and a 1% window at 1,172 nits. Those high brightness levels can sag quickly, but for temporary, bright bursts of HDR highlights, they’ll dazzle.

Motion clarity is also exceptional. The monitor's support for a 240Hz refresh rate in 4K or 480Hz in 1080p combined with the ultra-fast pixel response time of OLED keeps details sharp in fast motion.

Gaming and Performance

The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27UCWM’s panel is excellent for both work and play. OLED panels had already been shifting away from troublesome sub-pixel layouts that could show color fringing on fine detail and text or basically anywhere with a sharp edge. With the PG27UCWM, Asus incorporates a panel with an RGB strip sub-pixel arrangement, aligning with the sub-pixel arrangement of your typical monitors and thus avoiding the issue entirely. Working in text documents, watching movies, and playing games, I never spotted the color fringing that had impacted some earlier OLED display.

Even if it had the fringing, it might have been hard to spot since the 4K panel is stunningly sharp on a 27-inch screen. I didn’t find myself pixel peeping. The screen looks great for movies, which are sharp and really play up the contrast and color the panel can provide. If you pair the monitor with the right video source, you can even tap into Dolby Vision.

Gaming just makes things all the better. Getting to run at up to 240Hz even at 4K makes the ROG Swift OLED PG27UCWM quite the sight, and for more competitive or fast-paced games, the option to drop down to 1080p and crank it up to 480Hz can come in clutch. I played through a chunk of Assassin’s Creed Shadows and enjoyed the sharp detail and potent contrast that brings the game world to life one day, and the next swapped over to 1080p so I could blitz through levels in Hades 2 and power through enemies in Trepang2. The monitor kept up with all the intense action and kept the details incredibly clear.

Switching modes is also simple. A single tap on a dedicated shortcut button switches between modes (a clear on-screen indicator of this happening would be helpful, though).

The 1080p resolution starts to hurt a little on the 27-inch panel, but you really only need to swap over when you are playing something that calls for more than 240fps, and in those cases, the pixels will generally be moving too fast to notice them individually.

Mark Knapp is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything electronics and gaming hardware. He has over 10 years of experience in the tech industry with bylines at PCMag, Reviewed, CNET, and more. Find Mark on Twitter @Techn0Mark or BlueSky at @Techn0Mark.