Some products look ridiculous at first glance; and then you realize they’re only ridiculous if you’re not the exact person they were built for. The JLab Blue XL speaker headphones are one of those rare cases where “that’s dumb” quietly turns into “okay, that actually makes sense.” At $99.99, these aren’t headphones pretending to be serious audio gear. They’re wearable Bluetooth speakers with dual 2.5-inch drivers, passive radiators, and a claimed 30 watts of output that can hang around your neck or sit on a table when the party migrates.

Twenty hours of battery life seals the deal for tailgates, backyard wins, hotel rooms, and let’s be honest, places like Mardi Gras, where wearing them a certain way may result in beads, questionable life choices, and stories you don’t repeat at work.

Are there physical implications? Absolutely. Are they practical for commuting or critical listening? Not even remotely. But for a very specific American use case—celebrating loudly, publicly, and without shame the Blue XL makes an oddly convincing argument. Only in America.

JLab Blue XL Speaker Headphones: 30-Watt Wearable Bluetooth Speakers

The JLab Blue XL speaker headphones are about brute force and convenience, not subtlety. Audio is handled by dual 2.5-inch drivers with a rated frequency response of 100 Hz to 20 kHz and a 4-ohm load, which tells you right away these are tuned for output and impact rather than finesse.

There’s onboard EQ switching via a physical control knob. No app, no firmware rabbit hole, no “just update it” nonsense. They fold, support Wireless Share Mode, and use faux-leather ear cushions that are less about luxury and more about keeping this thing from feeling like gym equipment hanging off your neck.

Connectivity is straightforward and current: Bluetooth 5.4 with SBC and AAC codec support, a claimed range of 30+ feet, and the usual protocol alphabet soup (A2DP, AVCTP, AVDTP, AVRCP, SPP) to keep everything talking without drama. Power comes from 2 x 3,000 mAh batteries, good for up to 20 hours of playtime, charged over USB-C in about 3 hours. No charger is included; welcome to 2026. So you’ll need a 5 V / 2 A source delivering between 2.5 and 5 W to hit maximum charging speed.

Wear them around your neck like oversized headphones or drop them on a table and let them do their thing. Are they elegant? Not even close. Are they honest about what they are and who they’re for? Absolutely—and that’s why they work.

The Bottom Line

The JLab Blue XL speaker headphones do one thing well—they play loud, hands-free, and without pretending they’re something refined. Dual 2.5-inch drivers and real output make them genuinely useful for backyard hangs, tailgates, garage nights, or parked next to the BBQ while you grill in -19° weather like a person who has fully given up on comfort.

What they do poorly or rather, what’s absurd—is the idea of wearing them on public transit, at the beach, or anywhere involving water, dust, or other humans with patience. There’s no water resistance, no dust protection, and absolutely no reason to wear these on the subway unless you’re looking for something solid to swing at a mugger.

At $99.99, they’re reasonably priced if they sound decent, but this is not a Super Bowl party savior if you’re ordering late, and it’s definitely not a lifestyle product. These are for a very specific user: someone who wants loud, social sound without earbuds, without fragility, and without shame. Leave them on a table, keep them out of the sand, don’t take them on public transit and suddenly, they make a weird amount of sense. Sounds about right for the times.

Where to buy: $99.99 at JLab

Related Reading:

ExpressVPN is back on sale again, and its two-year plans are up to 81 percent off right now. You can get the Advanced tier for $88 for 28 months. This is marked down from the $392 that this time frame normally costs. On a per-month basis, it works out to roughly $3.14 for the promo period.

We’ve consistently liked ExpressVPN because it’s fast, easy to use and widely available across a large global server network. In fact, it’s our current pick for best premium VPN. One of the biggest drawbacks has always been its high cost, and this deal temporarily solves that issue.

ExpressVPN

Get two years (plus four bonus months) for $88.

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In our review we were able to get fast download and upload speeds, losing only 7 percent in the former and 2 percent in the latter worldwide. We found that it could unblock Netflix anywhere, and its mobile and desktop apps were simple to operate. We gave ExpressVPN an overall score of 85 out of 100.

The virtual private network service now has three tiers. Basic is cheaper with fewer features, while Pro costs more and adds extra perks like support for 14 simultaneous devices and a password manager. Advanced sits in the middle and includes the password manager but only supports 12 devices.

Kyndryl Ireland’s Des Ryan discusses how businesses are changing their cloud strategies due to data sovereignty and AI.

Cloud computing remains one of the tech sector’s biggest industries, with the global cloud market being valued at more than $900bn last year.

Toward the end of 2025, enterprise technology services provider Kyndryl published its annual Cloud Readiness report, highlighting how businesses are navigating cloud strategies – with particular attention being paid to the technology’s relationship with AI.

As shown by Kyndryl’s report – which compiled insights from 3,700 business leaders across 21 countries – cloud’s importance within organisations is clear, with the tech becoming a significant backbone of enterprise operations.

But while cloud is cited as a significant consideration for organisations, 70pc of CEOs stated they arrived at their current cloud environment “by accident, rather than by design”. But this reactive approach to cloud seems to be shifting, according to the report.

“After years of rapid migration, many organisations are reassessing environments that were built reactively rather than by design,” says Des Ryan, managing director of Kyndryl Ireland.

“Hybrid and multi-cloud are now firmly the norm. 84pc of leaders intentionally use multiple clouds, while 41pc are bringing at least some workloads back on-premise to strike a better balance between control, performance and compliance.

“Cloud is increasingly about locating workloads where they make the most sense.”

Defining forces

As Ryan explains to SiliconRepublic.com, sovereignty and security are majorly reshaping cloud strategies.

According to the report, three-quarters of business leaders are concerned about geopolitical risks linked to global cloud environments, while 65pc have already modified their cloud approach in response to new data sovereignty regulations.

“Digital sovereignty has moved from a regional compliance issue to a global strategic concern,” says Ryan. “Geopolitical uncertainty and new regulations are pushing organisations to reassess where data lives, how it is accessed and who controls it.”

He explains that many organisations are adopting “more flexible architectures” as a result, which is “enabling workloads and data to move across providers and locations without disruption”.

“Some are also moving sensitive data or workloads to on-premise environments to reduce exposure and increase control. Put simply, sovereignty concerns are encouraging more deliberate, interoperable designs that preserve choice while meeting regulatory obligations.”

Unsurprisingly, AI is another “defining force” of shifting cloud strategies – particularly in relation to AI deployment and computational demand.

“While 89pc of leaders say cloud investments have made it easier to deploy AI, 35pc cite integration challenges as a major barrier to realising a return on their investment,” says Ryan.

“This is driving interest towards more specialised infrastructure, including private AI environments and GPU-optimised neoclouds which are designed to support AI workloads efficiently while keeping costs and computational requirements in check.”

Cloud disparities

In terms of cloud strategies, Ryan says the biggest divide he’s seeing is between organisations that treat cloud as a strategic platform and those still managing a fragmented infrastructure.

“Many leaders acknowledge that their current environments evolved without a clear plan, which limits their ability to respond quickly to regulatory change, security threats or AI demand,” he says.

“A successful cloud strategy starts with intentional design. That means aligning architecture, governance and data, and security from the outset, rather than adding controls afterwards.

“This includes the need for hybrid capabilities, which provides the option to run workloads seamlessly across on-premise, public and private environments, while managing them through a consistent operational and security framework.”

Ryan emphasises that security and compliance must be embedded by design in an organisation’s cloud strategy.

“As threats increase and regulation evolves, adaptable architectures are critical,” he says. “This is why such a large number of organisations are now investing in AI-driven cybersecurity.

“Integration is key, particularly relevant when it comes to AI. While cloud enables AI adoption, the results depend entirely on how well data, platforms and processes connect across environments.”

Cloud’s future

The renewed focus on strategy highlighted by the Cloud Readiness report is set to continue according to Ryan, who predicts that the future of cloud will be “less about scale alone and more about precision”.

He believes that organisations will continue to move towards hybrid, interoperable environments designed to support AI, security and regulatory agility simultaneously, while specialised infrastructure for AI – especially private AI and GPU-optimised platforms – will grow.

“At the same time, cloud security will continue to evolve rapidly, driven by real-world outage experience and the expanding AI threat landscape,” he says.

“Ultimately, cloud will become more intentional, more regulated and more deeply integrated into business strategy, delivering a flexible foundation for whatever comes next.

“One thing is clear, however, and that’s the fact that cloud utilisation is on the rise. What that looks like and who provides it may be very different in the years to come, and that’s something we can only guess.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

ICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNA

Enjoy today’s videos!

To train the next generation of autonomous robots, scientists at Toyota Research Institute are working with Toyota Manufacturing to deploy them on the factory floor.

[ Toyota Research Institute ]

Thanks, Erin!

Okay but like you didn’t show the really cool bit…?

[ Zipline ]

We’re introducing KinetIQ, an AI framework developed by Humanoid, for end-to-end orchestration of humanoid robot fleets. KinetIQ coordinates wheeled and bipedal robots within a single system, managing both fleet-level operations and individual robot behaviour across multiple environments. The framework operates across four cognitive layers, from task allocation and workflow optimization to VLA-based task execution and reinforcement-learning-trained whole-body control, and is shown here running across our wheeled industrial robots and bipedal R&D platform.

[ Humanoid ]

What if a robot gets damaged during operation? Can it still perform its mission without immediate repair? Inspired by self-embodied resilience strategies of stick insects, we developed a decentralized adaptive resilient neural control system (DARCON). This system allows legged robots to autonomously adapt to limb loss, ensuring mission success despite mechanical failure. This innovative approach leads to a future of truly resilient, self-recovering robotics.

[ VISTEC ]

Thanks, Poramate!

This animation shows Perseverance’s point of view during drive of 807 feet (246 meters) along the rim of Jezero Crater on Dec. 10, 2025, the 1,709th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Captured over two hours and 35 minutes, 53 Navigation Camera (Navcam) image pairs were combined with rover data on orientation, wheel speed, and steering angle, as well as data from Perseverance’s Inertial Measurement Unit, and placed into a 3D virtual environment. The result is this reconstruction with virtual frames inserted about every 4 inches (0.1 meters) of drive progress.

[ NASA Jet Propulsion Lab ]

[ Unitree ]

Representing and understanding 3D environments in a structured manner is crucial for autonomous agents to navigate and reason about their surroundings. In this work, we propose an enhanced hierarchical 3D scene graph that integrates open-vocabulary features across multiple abstraction levels and supports object-relational reasoning. Our approach leverages a Vision Language Model (VLM) to infer semantic relationships. Notably, we introduce a task reasoning module that combines Large Language Models (LLM) and a VLM to interpret the scene graph’s semantic and relational information, enabling agents to reason about tasks and interact with their environment more intelligently. We validate our method by deploying it on a quadruped robot in multiple environments and tasks, highlighting its ability to reason about them.

[ Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Autonomous Robots Lab ]

Thanks, Kostas!

We present HoLoArm, a quadrotor with compliant arms inspired by the nodus structure of dragonfly wings. This design provides natural flexibility and resilience while preserving flight stability, which is further reinforced by the integration of a Reinforcement Learning (RL) control policy that enhances both recovery and hovering performance.

[ HO Lab via IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters ]

In this work, we present SkyDreamer, to the best of our knowledge, the first end-to-end vision-based autonomous drone racing policy that maps directly from pixel-level representations to motor commands.

[ MAVLab ]

This video showcases AI WORKER equipped with five-finger hands performing dexterous object manipulation across diverse environments. Through teleoperation, the robot demonstrates precise, human-like hand control in a variety of manipulation tasks.

[ Robotis ]

Autonomous following, 45° slope climbing, and reliable payload transport in extreme winter conditions — built to support operations where environments push the limits.

[ DEEP Robotics ]

Living architectures, from plants to beehives, adapt continuously to their environments through self-organization. In this work, we introduce the concept of architectural swarms: systems that integrate swarm robotics into modular architectural façades. The Swarm Garden exemplifies how architectural swarms can transform the built environment, enabling “living-like” architecture for functional and creative applications.

[ SSR Lab via Science Robotics ]

Here are a couple of IROS 2025 keynotes, featuring Bram Vanderborght and Kyu Jin Cho.

– YouTube www.youtube.com

[ IROS 2025 ]

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The 2026 Canva Bundle has six courses to help you learn about graphic design. From logo design to business cards to branding to bulk content creation, these courses have you covered. It’s on sale for $20.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

If you primarily want a tablet device to mark up, highlight, and annotate your e-books and documents, and perhaps sometimes scribble some notes, Amazon’s new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft could be worth the hefty investment. For everyone else, it’s probably going to be hard to justify the cost of the 11-inch, $630+ e-ink tablet with a writeable color display.

However, if you were already leaning toward the 11-inch $549.99 Kindle Scribe — which also has a paper-like display but no color — you may as well throw in the extra cash at that point and get the Colorsoft version, which starts at $629.99.

At these price points, both the Scribe and Scribe Colorsoft are what we’d dub unnecessary luxuries for most, especially compared with the more affordable traditional Kindle ($110) or Kindle Paperwhite ($160).

Announced in December, the Fig color version just began shipping on January 28, 2026, and is available for $679.99 with 64GB.

Clearly, Amazon hopes to carve out a niche in the tablet market with these upgraded Kindle devices, which compete more with e-ink tablets like reMarkable than with other Kindles. But high-end e-ink readers with pens aren’t going to deliver Amazon a large audience. Meanwhile, nearly everyone can potentially justify the cost of an iPad because of its numerous capabilities, including streaming video, drawing, writing, using productivity tools, and the thousands of supported native apps and games.

The Scribe Colorsoft, meanwhile, is designed to cater to a very specific type of e-book reader or worker. This type of device could be a good fit for students and researchers, as well as anyone else who regularly needs to mark up files or documents.

Someone particularly interested in making to-do lists or keeping a personal journal might also appreciate the device, but it would have to get daily use to justify this price.

The device is easy enough to use, with a Home screen design similar to other Kindles, offering quick access to your notes and library, and even suggestions of books you can write in, like Sudoku or crossword puzzle books or drawing guides. Your Library titles and book recommendations pop in color, which makes it easier to find a book with a quick scan.

Spec-wise, Amazon says this newer 2025 model is 40% faster when turning pages or writing. We did find the tablet responsive here, as page turns felt snappy and writing flowed easily.

Despite its larger size, the device is thin and light, at 5.4 mm (0.21 inches) and 400 g (0.88 pounds), so it won’t weigh down your bag the way an iPad or other tablet would (the iPad mini, with an 8.3-inch screen, weighs slightly less). You could easily stand to carry the Kindle Scribe in your purse or tote, assuming you sport a bag that can fit an 11-inch screen. Compared with the original Colorsoft, we like that the Scribe Colorsoft’s bezel is the same size around the screen.

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft features a glare-free, oxide-based e-ink display with a textured surface that makes it feel a lot like writing on paper. This helps with the transition to a digital device for those used to writing notes by hand. It also saves on battery life — the device can go up to 8 weeks between charges.

Helpfully, the display automatically adapts its brightness to your current lighting conditions, and you can opt to adjust the screen for more warmth when reading at night. But although it is a touchscreen, it’s less responsive than an LCD or OLED touchscreen, like those on iPad devices. That means when you perform a gesture, like pinching to resize the font, there’s a bit of a lag.

Like any Kindle, you can read e-books or PDFs on the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft tablet. You can also import Word documents and other files from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive directly to your device, or use the Send to Kindle option. (Supported file types include PDF, DOC/DOCX, TXT, RTF, HTM, HTML, PNG, GIF, JPG/JPEG, BMP, and EPUB.) Your Notebooks on the device can be exported to Microsoft OneNote, as well.

The included pen comes with some trade-offs. Unlike the Apple Pencil, the Kindle’s Premium Pen doesn’t require charging, which is a perk. It has also been designed to mimic the feel of writing on paper, and it glides fairly well across the screen. Without a flat side to charge, the rounded pen doesn’t have the same feel and grip as the Apple Pencil. It’s smoother, so it could slip in your hand.

Amazon’s design also requires you to replace the pen tips from time to time, depending on your use, as they can wear down. It’s not terribly expensive to do so — a 10 pack is around $17 — but it’s another thing to keep up with and manage.

There are 10 different pen colors and five highlight colors included, so your notes and annotations can be fairly colorful.

When writing, you can choose between a pen, a fountain pen, a marker, or a pencil with different stroke widths, depending on your preferences. You can set your favorite pen tool as a shortcut, which is enabled with a press and hold on the pen’s side button. (By default, it’s set to highlight.) If you grip your pen tightly and accidentally trigger this button, you’ll be glad to know you can shut this feature off.

The writing experience itself feels natural. And while the e-ink display means the colors are somewhat muted, which not everyone likes, it works well enough for its purpose. An e-ink tablet isn’t really the best for making digital art, despite its pens and new shader tool, but it is good for writing, taking notes, and highlighting.

From the Kindle’s Home screen, you can either jump directly into writing something down through the Quick Notes feature, or you can get more organized by creating a Notebook from the Workspace tab.

The Notebook offers a wide variety of notepad templates, allowing you to choose between blank, narrow, medium, or wide-ruled documents. There are templates for meeting notes, storyboards, habit trackers, monthly planners, music sheets, graph paper, checklists, daily planners, dotted sheets, and much more. (New templates with this device include Meeting Notes, Cornell Notes, Legal Pad, and College Rule options.)

It’s fun that you can erase things just by flipping the pen over to use the soft-tipped eraser, as you would with a No. 2 pencil. Of course, a precision erasing tool is available from the toolbar with different widths, if needed. Thanks to the e-ink screen, you can sometimes still see a faint ghost of your drawing or writing on the screen after erasing, but this fades after a bit (which may drive the more particular types crazy).

There’s a Lasso tool to circle things and move them around, copy or paste, or resize, but this probably won’t be used as much by more casual notetakers.

There are some other handy features for those who do a lot of annotating, too.

For instance, when you’re writing in a Word document or book, a feature called Active Canvas creates space for your notes. As you write directly in the book on top of the text, the sentence will move and wrap around your note. Even if you adjust the font size of what you’re reading, the note stays anchored to the text it originally referenced. I prefer this to writing directly in e-books, as things stay more organized, but others disagree.

In documents where margins expand, you can tap the expandable margin icon at the top of the left or right margin to take your notes in the margin, instead of on the page itself.

A Kindle with AI (of course)

The new Kindle also includes a number of AI tools and features.

The device will neaten up your scribbles and automatically straighten your highlighting and underlining. A couple of times, the highlighting action caused our review unit to freeze, but it recovered after returning to the Home screen with a press of the side button.

Meanwhile, a new AI feature (look for the sparkle icon at the top left of the screen) lets you both summarize text and refine your handwriting. The latter, oddly, doesn’t let you switch to a typed font but will let you pick between a small handful of handwritten fonts (Cadia, Florio, Sunroom, and Notewright) via the Customize button.

The AI tool was not perfect. It could decipher some terrible scrawls, but it did get stumped when there was another scribble on the page alongside the text. Still, it’s a nice option to have if you can’t write well after years of typing, but like the feel of handwriting things and the more analog vibe.

The AI search feature can also look across your notebooks to find notes or make connections between them. To search, you either tap the on-screen keyboard or toggle the option to handwrite your search query, which is converted to text. You can interact with the search results (the AI-powered insights) by way of the Ask Notebooks AI feature, which lets you query against your notes.

Soon, Amazon will add other AI features, too, including an “Ask This Book” feature that lets you highlight a passage and then get spoiler-free answers to a question you have — like a character’s motive, scene significance, or other plot detail. Another feature, “Story So Far,” will help you catch up on the book you’re reading if you’ve taken a break, but again without any spoilers.

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft comes in Graphite (Black) with either 32GB or 64GB of storage for $629.99 or $679.99, respectively. The Fig version is only available at $679.99 with 64GB of storage. Cases for the Scribe Colorsoft are an additional $139.99.

from the too-stupid-by-half dept

I have to admit: the first one-and-a-half paragraphs of this CNN report had me thinking the Trump administration was shedding another pretense and just embracing its inherent shittiness.

Justice Department officials are expected to meet Monday to discuss how to reenergize probes that are considered a top priority for President Donald Trump — reviewing the actions of officials who investigated him, according to a source familiar with the plan.

Almost immediately after Pam Bondi stepped into her role as attorney general last year, she established a “Weaponization Working Group” …

We all know the DOJ is fully weaponized. It’s little more than a fight promoter for Trump’s grudge matches. The DOJ continues to bleed talent as prosecutors and investigators flee the kudzu-esque corruption springing up everywhere in DC.

But naming something exactly what it is — the weaponization of the DOJ to punish Trump’s enemies — wasn’t something I ever expected to see.

I didn’t see it, which fulfills my expectations, I guess. That’s because it isn’t what it says on the tin, even though it’s exactly the thing it says it isn’t. 1984 is apparently the blueprint. It’s called the “Weaponization Working Group,” but it’s supposedly the opposite: a de-weaponization working group. Here’s the second half of the paragraph we ellipsised out of earlier:

…[t]o review law enforcement actions taken under the Biden administration for any examples of what she described as “politicized justice.”

The Ministry of Weaponization has always de-weaponized ministries. Or whatever. The memo that started this whole thing off — delivered the same day Trump returned to office — said it even more clearly:

ENDING THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Administration officials are idiots, but they’re not so stupid they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t actually want to end the weaponization. They just want to make sure all the weapons are pointing in one direction.

Trading in vindication hasn’t exactly worked well so far. Trump’s handpicked replacements for prosecutors that have either quit or been fired are a considerable downgrade from the previous office-holders. They have had their cases tossed and their careers as federal prosecutors come to an end because (1) Trump doesn’t care what the rules for political appointments are and (2) he’s pretty sure he can find other stooges to shove into the DOJ revolving door.

The lack of forward progress likely has Pam Bondi feeling more heat than she’s used to. So the deliberately misnamed working group is going to actually start grouping and working.

The Weaponization Working Group is now expected to start meeting daily with the goal of producing results in the next two months, according to the person familiar with the plan.

Nothing good will come from this. Given the haphazard nature of the DOJ’s vindictive prosecutions efforts, there’s still a chance nothing completely evil will come from this either. It’s been on the back burner for a year. Pam Bondi can’t keep this going on her own. And it’s hell trying to keep people focused on rubbing Don’s tummy when employee attrition is what the DOJ is best known for these days.

Filed Under: doj, donald trump, pam bondi, trump administration, vindictive prosecution, weaponization

Valve revealed its lineup of upcoming hardware in November, including a home PC-gaming console called the Steam Machine and the Steam Frame, a VR headset. At the time of the reveal, the company expected to release its hardware in “early 2026,” but the current state of memory and storage prices appears to have changed those plans. 

Valve says its goal to release the Steam Frame and Steam Machine in the first half of 2026 has not changed, but it’s still deliberating on final shipping dates and pricing, according to a post from the company on Wednesday. While the company didn’t provide specifics, it said it was mindful of the current state of the hardware and storage markets. All kinds of computer components have rocketed in price due to massive investments in AI infrastructure.

“When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now. But the memory and storage shortages you’ve likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then,” Valve said. “The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).”

Valve says it will provide more updates in the future about its hardware lineup. 

What are the Steam Frame and Steam Machine?

The Steam Frame is a standalone VR headset that’s all about gaming. At the hardware reveal in November, CNET’s Scott Stein described it as a Steam Deck for your face. It runs on SteamOS on an ARM-based chip, so games can be loaded onto the headset and played directly from it, allowing gamers to play games on the go. There’s also the option to wirelessly stream games from a PC. 

The Steam Machine is Valve’s home console. It’s a cube-shaped microcomputer intended to be connected to a TV. 

When will the Steam Frame and Steam Machine come out? 

Valve didn’t provide a specific launch date for either. The initial expectation after the November reveal was that the Steam Frame and Steam Machine would arrive in March. Valve’s statement about releasing its hardware in the first half of 2026 suggests both will come out in June at the latest. 

How much will the Steam Frame and Steam Machine cost? 

After the reveal, there was much speculation on their possible prices. For the Steam Frame, the expectation was that it would start at $600. The Steam Machine was expected to launch at a price closer to $700. Those estimates could easily increase by $100 or more due to the current state of pricing for memory and storage.