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.
The touchpads make controlling the Windows desktop significantly easier.“
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.
Connectivity is handled by a small puck attached to a 5-foot USB cable, which connects magnetically to the back of the controller. It’s a small detail, but I appreciate the rubber grips on the bottom of the puck, which help keep it anchored on your desk when not in use. Similarly, move the controller nearby and the puck jumps up to attach with a satisfying snap. This made it easy to use the controller “plugged in” when it needed to charge, and the puck’s USB cable is actually a USB-C port that the cable plugs into, which means you can swap it for a longer (or shorter) one if you like. Valve claims a 35 hour battery life, and the ease of connecting to the puck meant I never came close to running dry while testing the controller. In the event you misplace the puck or want to charge or connect without it, there’s also a USB-C port on top of the controller where you’d expect it. You can also connect multiple Steam Controllers to a single puck, if you’re in a multi-controller household.
The controller also supports Bluetooth, though it takes a somewhat complicated button combination (while the controller is powered off, hold the B button and right bumper, then press and hold the Steam button for 5 seconds) to enter Bluetooth pairing mode. I was able to pair to my PC and phone without issue, the latter of which surprised me when I was able to use the touchpad to control a mouse pointer, something I’d never seen before.
You then have to use another button combo (A button plus right bumper and Steam button) to get back to puck mode (the controller remains in Bluetooth mode otherwise, even if you turn it off and back on) and like pairing in the first place, this must be done starting with the controller powered off. Thankfully you can hold the Steam button for 10 seconds to turn the controller off, but it’s overall a fairly cumbersome process if you plan on swapping between devices frequently.
While Steam is integral to the Steam Controller’s identity, and necessary for setup and configuration, it’s not 100% necessary for playing games. Once Steam Controller is set up and connected, it works just fine with PC games from other launchers, though you won’t have access to things like Steam Input’s community profiles. It’s possible some of this is accessible if you add the games to Steam via the “add a non-Steam game to my library” workflow, but my only non-Steam games are on the Epic Games Store, and there’s not an easy way to get those added to Steam, so I wasn’t able to test it myself.
To be clear, the Steam Controller is not compatible with consoles. Just to see, I tried connecting it to my Switch 2, but it neither showed up as an option for pairing via Bluetooth nor was recognized when plugged in via USB. PS5 meanwhile will let you control menus if it’s plugged in via USB, but stops working once you get into a game, and Bluetooth doesn’t work at all. Valve is clear about this, but I was still hoping that the controller’s broad Bluetooth connectivity would allow it to link up with the Switch or PS5 like it did my phone.
$99 is an excellent price for the level of features you get here.“
The Steam Controller costs $99, which is an excellent price for the level of features you get here. There isn’t a hard definition of what makes a “Pro” controller, but the standard hallmarks found on many include customizable controls of some kind, back buttons, better-than-usual stick or button sensors, swappable parts, and other advanced control options not found on the default console controllers. The Steam Controller checks most of those boxes – with the addition of its unique touchpads – while costing significantly less than high-end controllers like the Xbox Elite or the Dualsense Edge.
While there are cheaper controllers out there with some high-end features, like the $40 PowerA Advantage, they often cut corners elsewhere, typically being wired-only or lacking in rumble. The Steam Controller, meanwhile, is as full-featured as they come. It doesn’t offer every high-end controller option – notably missing are short-throw trigger stops, the ability to swap out parts, and its face buttons are merely perfectly fine rather than being particularly outstanding – but it has top-notch thumbsticks, outstanding haptics, and those touchpads you can’t find anywhere else.
Bo Moore is IGN's Senior Manager of Tech. You can find him online @usebomswisely.
