Steam Controller

•              Can be used to control mouse-keyboard games
•            Highly configurable control mapping

•            Design isnt comfortable, feels like a prototype
•            Niche utility and big learning curve

Valve’s first attempt at making the living room a viable PC gaming space doesn’t feel complete yet. Sure, the Steam Controller can control games, but it still feels like an awkward midpoint between gamepad and keyboard-mouse control.

The grips are huge, part of an intentional convex design meant to arch your thumbs over the touchpads comfortably. Problem is, they’re too bulbous and jut out a bit too hard into the heel of each hand. My fingers tense up after a few minutes of play, which leads to a few too many accidental back paddle presses and thumb cramps.

The circular track pads work pretty well as a mouse replacement, especially with a bit of practice. In an FPS, if the gyroscopic sensor is enabled, using the pad to look around and the acceleration to tweak cursor precision feels like a viable way to play twitch games, just maybe not competitively. For RTS games, it’s possible to assign certain macros to buttons, while using the trackpads as mice and camera substitutes, but it would take no short amount of time to acclimate to a very particular control scheme just for the sake of sitting on a couch.

Beyond the novelty of living room play, the face buttons feel too small and indistinct for big thumbs, and the bumpers and triggers don’t always have the responsive surety required for some games. In Super Hexagon, the paddles and triggers wouldn’t respond once out of every fifty or so presses because the buttons were too slow to recoil.

It’s not possible to outright recommend the Steam Controller, even though with enough tinkering and patience, it’s a completely viable way to control a ton of PC games from the couch. Give Valve a few years to iterate, and maybe they’ll nail down the design and give a bit more incentive to make the leap to the living room.

So why is it listed here, instead of at the bottom with the rest of the controllers we tested? Because the Steam Controller does ultimately occupy a unique space: it's the only gamepad specifically built to let you play games that don't support controllers out of the box. For games that do support controllers, we prefer the DualShock and Xbox pads. But if you insist on playing PC games away from your mouse and keyboard and want to replicate their functionality as closely as possible, the Steam Controller is the best game in town.

Adjusting to the Steam Controller does mean a steep learning curve, but it's a cheaper gamble than the Xbox Elite or Razer Wildcat. And even if it’s not your favorite controller, maybe it’ll be your favorite midi player.