What you are gaining is that you can recommend it to your friends rather then building them a pc with unpaid work-hours, becoming the scapegoat and tech support the moment there is any complication.

Also brings them over to linux as a bonus.

It was, but then a cabal of secret powerful pedophiles caused a whole mess of problems trying to stay out of prison (with the help of AI techbros).

They put it together and guarantees that it works. Valve also now has a tech stack in case their presence on Windows is threatened.

Valve is perfectly happy if you build your own machine and install SteamOS on it.

I'm guessing it's for the people who like the form factor and don't really care for building their own pc and managing their own OS on it? Honestly if I hadn't already built a decent PC just recently I might have been interested in the Steam Machine, even at the current price point. Just seems like a pretty easy way to get into Gaming on Linux

The value is in the form factor, thermals, lower power draw, support, and novelty.

Those may not be valuable to you, but they will be enough to sell out this production run.

The paper specs are very close to DIY builds, but smaller, quieter, and cooler.

The performance specs are not equivalent, you're paying a performance tax for the aforementioned qualities.

Epdt: The SSD upgrade is overpriced, by any measure, and only be justified if you desperately want one and are willing to pay a few hundred more bucks to increase your odds of getting one now.

Well, unless you have no extra storage, and speculate that SSD prices will continue to increase by the time you need >512.

It was originally to be sold for a price around $750 then some idiot with AI decided to hoard all the RAM and now prices of RAM and SSD are 200% higher

Anyway, the main sellin point is that it's plug and play, low power and silent, all packed in a 15 cm³ (~6 inch³) form factor

Mmm yesss, don't sign up.... You don't want to...

Well, first of all it's not that much more expensive than building a system yourself, I think in GN's video they calculated about a $70 difference from similarly spec custom build, so you're paying $70 for:

• Smaller form factor
• CEC
• Console experience (without losing system access)
• Idle mode with almost no power consumption and fast wake
• Resume/suspend functionality like on the Deck
• Quieter system

And the downsides are:

• Slightly worse performance
• Less upgradability

At the end of the day it's a personal choice, I won't be buying one at that price since my desktop has already become a console like system. But if I didn't have one I think it's a fair value considering how much parts are now, and the features it provides vs a custom made are worth it for me.