Steam Frame Teardown Finds a VR Headset You Can Actually Fix

iFixit took a screwdriver to Valve's new Steam Frame headset, and for once a VR teardown doesn't end with a shrug and a pile of broken clips.

According to iFixit, the headset ships with a quick-release headstrap, a replaceable battery, magnetic lens stacks you can pull without a heat gun, and a microSD slot for storage you can actually expand yourself. Under the hood sits a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with 16GB of RAM, a stack of infrared hardware for tracking, and cooling engineering iFixit calls clever, which from a teardown channel is basically a standing ovation. They also opened up the new Steam Frame controllers and ran a CT scan to look at the TMR joysticks Valve is using this time.

That's the headline: a VR headset built by a company that seems to expect you'll still own the thing in three years. Compare that to the usual VR box, where a dead battery means a dead headset and a new one goes on the pile.

It's not flawless. iFixit flags the cooling fan buried deep inside the shell, which turns a routine fan swap into a bigger job than it should be, and the battery still relies on adhesive instead of screws, the same shortcut that makes half the phones on earth harder to repair than they need to be.

So Valve brought some of the Steam Deck's fix-it-yourself thinking into VR, and mostly followed through. Two flaws don't erase the rest of the list. Now let's see if the parts and guides iFixit's own partnership promises actually show up when a real one breaks.