Norman Chan Tested VR From DK1 To Steam Frame

Norman Chan, better known as Norm from Tested, is perhaps the most trusted expert with his videos covering modern consumer hardware. He’s also among a handful of journalists who believed in VR before Mark Zuckerberg showed up to buy Oculus.

On Tuesday, we connected from my Steam Frame in New York to his in California using Riverside for a conversation about the latest in virtual reality.

Norm has had the Steam Frame since late August while mine arrived on Friday and we’ve each dropped our initial thoughts out onto our respective audiences with Tested’s one-hour-plus video being the most thorough breakdown of the hardware available right now. As Valve readies to ship out the Frame to buyers and Arcturus Industries prepares to give it color passthrough, Meta is preparing what should be the announcement of its next-generation VR glasses. It’s a big time for technological change with some folks likely to experience whiplash as they realize VR is rising from the ashes of 2026 like a phoenix with more comfortable eyewear than ever before transporting people into simulated spaces.

Listen now to the conversation with Norm as we cover his first VR experience, his favorite moment of presence, and the persistent belief in this medium.

“It still feels like such a frontier,” he said. “But there’s so much technology and so much research and so much effort that’s put into even the experiences that we have that make what we see possible, and feel comfortable and natural. And we take some of that for granted … we’re just discovering these formats and … these trillion-dollar companies are still putting money into it.”

September is turning into an incredibly busy month for VR & AR, but I’ve extended an open invitation to Norm as well as CNET’s Scott Stein for a conversation after Meta Connect as we try to digest everything that’s changing in technology.

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