After reports that Valve had received shipments of the accessory, a Steam Controller review has appeared. Deleted ahead of a likely release date update, a YouTuber praised its responsive dual trackpads. Even so, the price may make it more difficult to discount the Steam Machine.
There are so many videos of people going through insane quantities of controllers. I would say to take each with a grain of salt though, as a lot of preference comes in. For me, I wanted mechanical buttons + triggers, buttons on the back, and an option to switch to short triggers that felt better than a lot of the ones where a feeble piece of plastic seems to just slide in the way. I tried quite a few, gave some to friends, and ended up championing the GameSir Cyclone 2. It is not perfect, but it works with my Linux setup and feels great with all the clickyness everywhere. My gripe is how the thing looks: it isn’t a pretty controller in my opinion. I think I got mine for around $50 with the dock included. I think standard is $50 without dock and $10 more for with the dock.
I do have my eyes on some other options though. Mostly because the start and select buttons are in a stupid spot on the Cyclone 2. Nothing has swayed me away from it yet though, and that has only been a problem in games where I push those very very frequently (I have no navigation skills and open my maps very often).