Steam had a sale on their Steam Link device over Christmas and the following week. I picked one up for dirt cheap and figured even if it wasn’t that great, it wouldn’t be more than a few bucks lost.
I got the unit in the mail last night and was impressed immediately with the packaging: It all looks like a nice retail box and set up, not just some brown box that’s bland.
The install/set up is incredibly simple. I plugged into the unit into power and into another HDMI on my TV. Plugged in a mouse into one of the 3 USB ports on the Steam Link, and went through a simple set up which prompted for an update and restart. All total, this might have taken 20 minutes.
Once this is done, you go through some prompts on your computer used for streaming to this which involved confirming a PIN code quick and setting up a new Audio driver (Steam Link can play audio over the TV from the computer!) for streaming to itself. I will say, getting the full sound bar usage off my desktop PC system has been wonderful.
Now, I ran into a couple snags with some games but this was a a mod issue with Fallout 4: Fallout 4 Script Extender (F4SE) uses a custom launcher which isn’t supported properly by Steam. To fix this, you go into Steam and “Add a non steam game”. Browse and find the F4SE launcher/binary, add it to your library and you can now launch it from the Steam Link properly!
Overall, I love it and how simple it is. I’m using a wired Xbox 360 controller and it works great, even over WiFi (AC, 5GHz) and there’s very little lag or latency. Definitely recommend checking it out!