Steam Controller Review

It’s been more than 10 years since the original Steam Controller, Valve’s take on a gamepad designed specifically for PC gaming. That controller only ever found a small cult following. Its most innovative feature – haptic touchpads intended to give more detailed control of a mouse pointer – was also its most polarizing, given that the touchpads took the place of standard thumbsticks, turning off anyone looking for a traditional gamepad experience.

While the original Steam Controller failed, its innovations paved the way for the touchpads found on the excellent Steam Deck (thankfully now in addition to traditional thumbsticks, not instead of them). In turn, the Steam Deck’s success has begat a new batch of Valve hardware: the forthcoming Steam Machine and Steam Frame, as well as this new Steam Controller, which after two weeks of testing has quickly become my favorite controller for PC gaming.

The new Steam Controller will look familiar to anyone with a Steam Deck, but odd compared to the default Xbox controller. It has a standard controller shape with a symmetrical dual-thumbstick layout most akin to the base PS5 controller. Its ABXY face buttons and D-pad again mostly mimic the PS5 controller’s layout, though they’re very slightly more in-line with the thumbsticks. The face buttons feel solid: they’re not particularly clicky, but they have a satisfying press without any instability or rattle.

The D-pad is similar. It has a nice bit of travel to it and doesn’t feel mushy, but it lacks the clickiness found on the Xbox core controller. It’s perfectly serviceable for platforming in Hollow Knight: Silksong, but lacks definition on the intercardinals and doesn’t feel like it’d excel at quarter-circles or other fighting game inputs. Of course, for that you’re better off opting for a dedicated fightstick anyway.

On top are the triggers and bumpers. The bumpers feel about the same as the face buttons – neither clicky nor mushy – while the triggers have a comfortable lip and travel distance. There’s no switch or trigger stops to adjust their physical actuation point, but using Steam Input you can change them to activate on a slight pull, or assign separate actions to a soft vs full pull, if you like.

Around back are the rear buttons, which rest exactly under your middle and ring fingers when holding the controller. I found them easy and comfortable to press, though the bottom two – R5 and L5 – occasionally press by accident if I rest my hands on my leg in a certain way while holding the controller. Not a huge issue overall, and only a problem if you happen to cross your legs and rest your controller hands in the exact same way that I do, but something to be aware of nonetheless.

The analog sticks are excellent, with a shallow concave top and a rubberized lip around the ring. They’re comfortable to use, and quickly snap back to the center position when released. Unlike most controllers, though, these have capacitive touch capability, which means that they can detect whether your thumbs are touching them or not, and use this information to toggle advanced features, like gyroscopic controls.

But that’s not the only advanced tech behind the sticks – they use Tunnel Magnetoresistance (TMR) sensors under the hood, which means they use magnets to achieve a higher polling rate, lower power consumption, and greater level of precision than traditional analog or Hall-effect sticks. Most importantly, TMR sensors are virtually immune to stick drift, as there’s no physical component to the sensor that will wear down over time. The Steam Controller should last years before the sticks degrade in any way.

Below the thumbsticks are the Steam Controller’s most unique feature: its pair of large square touchpads, similar to those found on the Steam Deck. Like the sticks, these pads are capacitive, and they offer a pleasing haptic feedback whenever you touch them. The pads themselves don’t click in, but they can be used as buttons in a variety of ways. By default, the whole pad functions as a single input, but you can customize this via Steam Input to mimic four directional buttons, a radial wheel, or a variety of more complex control schemes that you can customize or just download from the thousands of available profiles built by the Steam community.

All that said, while I adore my Steam Deck, I rarely use its touchpads. They are a nice-to-have in the event a game doesn’t offer controller support, but in most cases I’ll just not play those games on my Deck rather than attempting to navigate complicated menus or carry out complex unit control via the touchpad.

My experience with the Steam Controller’s touchpads has been the same. For the sake of testing, I tried playing Crusader Kings 3 and Against the Storm with the Steam Controller, neither of which have built-in controller support. In both cases, the games were playable, but it’s not a very efficient or enjoyable experience, and I gave up in frustration after a few minutes, even when employing one of the community profiles already built for the Steam Deck.

Still, they’re a feature I would rather have than not. If nothing else, they make controlling the Windows (or Mac or Linux) desktop significantly easier if you ever find yourself outside of Big Picture Mode and don’t want to reach for (or haven’t connected) a mouse and keyboard. That’s not a huge need when you’re sitting at a desk, but for couch and TV setups, it’s critical.

Float Like a Console, Sting Like a PC

Rounding out the front of the Steam Controller are its four Start/Select-like buttons: View on the left and Menu on the right, Quick Access Menu down below between the trackpads, and finally the large Steam button dead center. The Steam button has a variety of functions that cascade depending on if the next step is already active or not. In other words, it turns the controller on, then launches or focuses Steam if it’s not already. If you’re already in Steam, then it launches you into Big Picture Mode, achieving its final form, where it simply opens or closes the Steam menu. It’s a useful sequence of controls, meaning that other than turning on your PC, you only need to press the Steam button a handful of times to move from the Windows desktop into the controller-centric Big Picture Mode, upon which it’s easy to select and launch a game. While it can’t boot your PC (if it’s running Windows, at least), it’s the closest the living room PC experience has come yet to mimicking the ease of getting into a game that comes from traditional consoles – and will get even closer once the Steam Machine comes out later this year.