As the team developing immerGallery, we wanted to examine the practical experience of viewing media on Steam Frame standalone. In our app, the tested images worked well on both headsets, and Steam Frame completed our combined format detection and thumbnail generation test sooner than Quest 3. Video playback showed clearer differences, with successful playback for several formats and limitations as the workload increased.
The software context is central to those results: Our Android build runs through Valve’s Lepton compatibility layer on SteamOS. In the setup we tested, hardware video decoding was unavailable to immerGallery through that path, so the app used software decoding.
Steam Frame’s chip has dedicated video-decoding hardware, documented in Qualcomm’s product brief. We consider it technically plausible that future SteamOS/Lepton updates could make this available to Android/Lepton apps such as immerGallery. However, we are not aware of a confirmed Valve commitment or release date for this.
Our YouTube video covers playback of 4K, 6K and 8K test files, MV-HEVC spatial video from iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, and Blu-ray 3D MVC video in an MKV container without conversion to side-by-side.
We also look at refresh-rate matching for video playback, hand tracking, passthrough, removable storage, network access and comfort while lying down. Our battery comparison uses a looping gallery with image effects and 4K60 video.
We conclude that for someone already choosing Steam Frame for gaming, its photo viewing and supported video playback can be useful additions. For demanding standalone immersive video, our current tests favor Quest 3. Watch the video for the individual playback results, benchmark timings and battery figures that explain that recommendation.
Details on testing: Tested 17 September 2026 with immerGallery 1.4.5. Steam Frame software: SteamOS build 0.3.0, SteamVR 2.17.9, Lepton build dated 13 September 2026. PC-rendered VR streaming was not tested.
Related articles
- immerGallery 1.4.5: hand tracking and Steam Frame support
- Headset cameras and the Arcturus Vision Camera
- Steam Frame reservations and Arcturus availability
Thanks for that very helpful and practical review of multimedia playback usage. Looks like we still need to wait for Steam Frame many firmware updates to get its performance at least comparable to Quest3. Yes, Steam Frame has a very sophisticated Operating System software stack, but gosh, still having video hardware decoding access hiding from third party apps borders with ignorance. Lets hope that this limitation will soon be removed.