Steam Controller Review – It Just Works…Most of the Time

The first of three new hardware products from Valve has finally arrived and is in players' hands, as the Steam Controller (2026) officially launched on May 4, 2026. When Valve first announced the controller alongside the Steam Machine and Steam Frame last year, it was cause for excitement.

For anyone who remembers the first iteration of the Steam Controller (2015), 'excitement' for a new one isn't what you'd expect, but a lot has changed when it comes to Valve's hardware products since the Steam Controller V1 was discontinued in 2019.

The biggest change, obviously, is the Steam Deck, which showed just how capable Valve is of making a bit of hardware that just works as you'd expect it to. Sure, it's not as seamless as console gaming, considering that there are several games the Steam Deck's hardware just can't handle, and there are some games that still don't work natively in SteamOS and require users to work-around them through cloud streaming or side-loading Windows onto their device. But the promise of all your Steam games on the go is, more or less, one Valve has fulfilled with the Steam Deck.

With the Steam Machine, the promise is to have a home device that "just works" with all of your Steam games, and with the Steam Controller (V2), the promise is to deliver the last controller you'd ever need to buy for all of your games on Steam.

While we wait for Valve to potentially fulfill its Steam Machine promise, I can tell you that it has, more or less, fulfilled the Steam Controller's part of that promise. It is likely the last controller that I, or anyone who gets their hands on one, will ever need to play their Steam games. For the most part, it just works, in every sense of the phrase. But that's not the whole story.

Comfortable Almost Undersells It

When I picked up the controller for the first time, I was pretty surprised by a few things. Firstly by how it sat in my hands and where my thumbs rested. To my delight, they fit exactly on the thumbsticks as you'd hope they would for any controller.

I don't own a Steam Deck, so I can't speak to how it is on that device, but my main concern with the Steam Controller going in was the distance between my thumbs, the thumbsticks, and the trackpads. My guess was that I'd be constantly pressing the trackpads without meaning to, making it totally useless for me as a controller. To clarify, it's not like I've held back on buying a Steam Deck just because I was worried about the trackpads, but that might've been enough for me to never consider purchasing a Steam Controller.

Thankfully, those concerns were all for naught, because it was clear after a few minutes of PlatinumGames' stellar 2010 third-person action shooter Vanquish that while my thumbs fit perfectly on the thumbsticks, the trackpads are slightly depressed into the face of the controller to ensure the kinds of mis-presses I was concerned about wouldn't happen.

Each button has a satisfying press, with the face buttons, D-pad, bumpers and triggers all feeling soft and weighty. The four additional buttons on the back of the controller also stand out with a satisfying click to them in comparison. It all feels premium, with the trackpads as the biggest and most impressive standout.

Again, I can't speak to how they compare to the Steam Deck trackpads or the V1 Steam Controller, but I have to imagine they are far and away an improvement because the haptics on these feel incredible. Controlling the mouse takes some getting used to with your thumb, but in-game and while using the controller on your desktop, it's actually quite a nice feeling when you get the hang of it.

Everything about the Steam Controller feels like a premium package when you pick it up and use it for the first time, and it still feels like that when you pick it up the 20th time, as it connects to the Puck automatically and without issue, and you hear it wake up with a cheerful tone.

I'm pretty sure it'll feel like that for a while still, and if you have any intention of buying a Steam Machine, this controller more than makes a case for why you should spend the extra $99. It is absolutely the perfect companion to any PC that's dedicated to Steam. And therein lies the rub.

Price, Unboxing and Technical Specs

Before I get into that, here's what you get with the Steam Controller for $99 USD / $149 CAD / €99 / £85 / $149 AUD:

Controls and Input
Gamepad Controls	A B X Y buttons D-Pad L and R analog triggers L and R bumpers View and Menu Buttons Steam and QAM buttons 4x assignable grip buttons
Thumbsticks	2x full-size magnetic thumbsticks (TMR) with capacitive touch
Haptics	4x haptic motors: - 2x LRA haptic motors in trackpads - 2x High output LRA haptic motors in grips for HD game haptics including rumble
Trackpads	2x 34.5mm square trackpads with haptic feedback, pressure-sensitive for configurable click strength
Gyro	6-axis IMU
Grip Sense	2x capacitive areas along back of Steam Controller handles
Connectivity
Steam Controller Puck	2.4Ghz wireless connection ~8ms full end-to-end, 4ms polling rate (measured at 5m), up to 4 Steam Controllers per Steam Controller Puck. Steam Controller Puck connects to PC via USB-C
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.2 minimum, 5.0 or higher recommended
USB	USB-C tethered play
Power
Charging	Steam Controller Puck charging interface or USB-C connector
Battery	8.39 Wh Li-ion battery, estimated 35+ hours of gameplay
Size and Weight
Size	Steam Controller: 111mm x 159mm x 57mm Steam Controller Puck: 50mm x 28mm x 9mm
Weight	Steam Controller: 292g Steam Controller Puck: 16g

The controller arrived in a neatly packaged box along with a small manual, the Steam Controller Puck, and a USB-C to USB-A cable long enough for you to keep the Puck plugged in on your desk or plugged directly into your controller for any setup. It's all recyclable material, and it's a simple, minimal design.

The phrase "Your games at your fingertips" written across the left and front side of the box along with the packaging design presents a product that is without fluff. It's all you need and nothing more. 'It just works,' you might say, is the message that comes across.

A quick firmware update for the controller and the puck the first time you plug into your PC and open Steam, and once that's done you're off to the races. It's a quick startup, so quick that it unfortunately feels incomplete, since it would've been prudent to also direct users to the Controller settings and Steam Input, since you'll be diving into those settings a fair bit with this device.

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Speaking of which, while Valve doesn't point you directly there, it would be worth your while to head over to the Steam Input settings, which can be easily found by clicking the Controller icon on the right side of the main page of any game in your library. Once there, you can select 'Edit Layout' to assign functions to the four back buttons, trackpads, and joystick clicks, customizing the layout to your liking.

And while I'll still stipulate that Valve should take you there when you plug in the controller for the first time, to the company's credit, there is a long and detailed blog post within the Steam Hardware blog you can find for yourself that takes you through everything Steam Input related and how you can create your own templates or download ones made by the community.

Overall, for the $99 USD you'll spend to get your hands on a Steam Controller, it comes with the feature set to back up that price point and even undercuts top-end controllers like the DualSense Edge and Xbox Elite controllers which both have a similar feature set, save for differences like not being able to hot-swap parts of the controller.

Though it's worth pointing out that opening up your Steam Controller to replace parts or just customize it with new shells has been engineered to be as simple as possible, short of being able to hot-swap pieces with magnets. There are also easy-to-find guides to take you through it, if you need to replace the battery or the joysticks down the line. Thankfully, the latter of those is actually the one that's less likely, thanks to the premium TMR sticks built into the controller.

All Roads Lead Back to Steam

This finally brings us to the core issue with the Steam Controller, which is honestly something I find myself struggling to criticize, though it categorically is a reason not to buy the controller if you don't want to deal with the issue. Which is the simple fact that the moment you try to move away from Steam, you start to have problems.

Unless you've mapped out a layout for your controller to follow outside of Steam (which is why it's important to head straight to Steam Input), you'll find that the 'it just works' mantra dies almost immediately. The controller is not read as a gamepad outside of Steam, and while it's possible to get it working as you want it to, you're still diving back into Steam and ensuring the proper layout is selected before opening your desired launcher and playing what you want to play.

Now, if you're anything like me, most of the games you play on your PC will be on Steam already. But if you're like me, you also have a ton of games you got for free through the Epic Games Store. Games like Alien: Isolation, a game I originally played on consoles at launch that I picked up for free (whether through the EGS or an Amazon giveaway, I can't recall), but am currently revisiting after the teaser for the sequel put the sci-fi horror back in my mind.

The point is, unless you're someone who refuses to use any launcher besides Steam, at the time of this writing, you'll have to create different controller configurations for each game you want to play through a different launcher. Convenient as it might be to have the trackpads feel so good and easy to use with simple desktop tasks, that added functionality is what gets in the way of other launchers recognizing it as a gamepad. You'll always have to jump into Steam, even for a moment, to play your games on the EGS and any other launcher.

It's not the biggest problem, because realistically, it just means some extra time spent on an ultimately tedious task. It's more about what this speaks to, which is the fact that you can get a regular Xbox or PlayStation controller or a controller from a trusted third-party maker like 8BitDo for cheaper, plug it into your PC or use Bluetooth, open any launcher and start playing without a problem. Yes, you don't get the trackpads or the additional back buttons, but you get convenience and a smoother experience each time you sit down at your computer to play anything, whether it's on Steam or not.

Of course, we may see that change over time with future updates, but it's worth noting that the Steam Controller is not a seamless one-size-fits-all controller for your PC gaming. At least not right at launch.

Does What it Says on the Box

As I implied earlier, the lack of a seamless experience for all of your PC games is a gripe, but it's one I struggle to call a real problem. It's the Steam Controller after all. It's made to work best with Steam and as a companion to the Steam Machine and Steam Frame. In that capacity, even without sniffing those devices, I know this will be an excellent controller to pair with both of them.

Launching into Big Picture Mode practically shows you the full vision, and for anyone who has a PC dedicated to their living room TV right next to their consoles (or lack of consoles), the Steam Controller is probably the last controller you'd ever need to buy.

Whether I was playing something I'd usually stick to a mouse and keyboard for or not, the Steam Controller worked exactly as I expected it to. It actually made me even more excited for the Steam Machine, which I didn't think was possible, as I now spend my time gaming at my desk dreaming of how sweet it will be to play these same games from the comfort of my couch on my TV.

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