Valve Steam Link
Valve has been promoting its Steam Machine, Steam Controller, and Steam OS platform for some time now, but the Steam Link media streamer has
fallen through the cracks. The $xx Link lets you stream your Steam
games from any PC to any HDTV, much like the streaming features of the to the , or an Nvidia GameStream-compatible PC to the .
The Steam Link is easy to use and has a robust set of connectivity
options, making it a viable option if you can't easily run an HDMI cable
to your television. Because it works so painlessly and reliably, the
Steam Link earns our Editors' Choice distinction, and stands as our
strongest recommendation among the recent wave of Steam hardware.
Design and Setup
The Steam Link is a flat black plastic rectangle that measures 3.5 by 4.8 by 0.7 inches (HWD). Two of the narrow sides (the top and right, if you look at it from above) are stark, flat surfaces that end in sharp corners, while the other two (the bottom and left) are curved with bezels, and look more like finished sides. The flat sides hold all of the ports, with the power connector, HDMI output, Ethernet port, and two USB ports on the top, and a third USB port on the right. A Steam logo sits near the curved lower left corner. The box rests on a black rubberized foot that keeps it stable on most surfaces.
You'll need to hook up your own input device before you can do anything with the Steam Link. USB keyboards and mice, and controllers,
the Steam Controller, and Bluetooth devices are all supported. I
successfully got the Steam Link to work with a wired keyboard, a wired
mouse, an Xbox One gamepad, and a Steam Controller (which doesn't
require the USB adapter included with the controller; the wireless
connection circuitry is built into the Steam Link). The Link gets its
required power through the included wall adapter, and, of course, you'll
need an HDMI connection to your HDTV (HDMI and Ethernet cables are also
included).
Once the Steam Link is plugged in and you have a way to
control it, it's ready to set up. It was easy to configure the device to
work with our lab's FiOS test network, with onscreen instructions that
prompt you to choose the network and enter the password. Connecting to
our Steam test machine was similarly painless; once the Steam Link was
on the network, it detected the system and displayed a four-digit PIN to
enter on the PC. After I typed in the number, the PC was linked and
automatically jumped into Steam's Big Picture mode for navigating
through the Link. Big Picture is Steam's leanback mode that provides a couch-friendly interface with large, easy-to-identify menu items.
How It Works
The Steam Link extends the Steam library of your networked computer to whatever HDTV the device is plugged into. Whatever you do on your HDTV will reflect in the display of your connected PC. Because of this, you can't do anything with your PC while it's streaming.
Besides browsing and playing games, you can access other
Big Picture features. You can bring up your Friends list, see what
other people are playing, and even browse the Web. Unlike Google's or the ,
however, you can't mirror everything on your PC to your HDTV. The Steam
Link is limited to content on Steam accessible through the Big Picture
interface, but nothing outside of that ecosystem.
The Steam Link only streams within your home network, so
you can't stream your games remotely over the Internet like you can
with the PlayStation or Nvidia systems. But our tests have found
out-of-the-home game streaming to be unreliable and laggy to begin with,
so you're not missing out on a very useful feature.
Gameplay
Performance depends entirely on the speed of your router and the state of your home network's Wi-Fi signal. Internet connection speed (like our lab's FiOS connection) doesn't matter, since the Steam Link only streams games within a home network. You can reduce the risk of lag and video artifacts by using a very fast router that supports dual-band 802.11ac, and by plugging either your PC or the Steam Link directly into your router with an Ethernet cable. Valve actually recommends an Ethernet connection, though this isn't feasible for all home setups.
Even with both my test PC and the Steam Link connected
to the PC Lab test network via Wi-Fi in a fairly congested environment,
games were surprisingly responsive. The 8-bit graphics of Shovel Knight looked
crisp, and I could engage in pixel-perfect platforming most of the
time. Occasional hiccups caused video artifacts and input glitches at
times, but I resolved them with fiddling with the precise placement of
the Steam Link itself.
More impressively, the graphics-intensive was
nearly flawless. I could see where the Steam Link had to wrestle a bit
with video compression to make it play well. However, the timing of my
inputs remained responsive enough that I could parry and counterattack
enemies with ease. For a character action game like this, that's the
most important task, and the Steam Link passed with flying colors.
For $xx, the Valve Steam Link effectively extends your
gaming PC to your television over Wi-Fi, and it works remarkably well.
The whole idea of game streaming is something that's handy on paper,
but hasn't quite caught on with systems like the PlayStation Vita and
Nvidia Shield. The Steam Link is a comprehensive, broadly compatible
streamer that doesn't need a specific game system, handheld, or graphics
card to work. If any device will get in-home game streaming to catch
on, it'll be this one. That makes it worthy of Editors' Choice honors.
