On September 23, third-party peripheral maker JSAUX GAMING announced the launch of two highly creative swap-in smart front panels for Valve's new Steam Machine gaming console.

The two products feature a 5.83-inch E Ink display and a 7-inch RGB pixel-array design respectively, both priced under $100, successfully turning Valve's earlier official design concept into a retail reality.

When Valve unveiled the Steam Machine late last year, its compact physical shell and open design with replaceable front and rear panels drew attention — the company even showed off a prototype front shell with an E Ink display at the time.

JSAUX has now officially commercialized that vision. The mass-produced 5.83-inch E Ink panel retails for $99.99 (about RMB 705), with a 640×480 black-and-white resolution. Its signature feature is disguising the front of the console as a retro display of an early Macintosh computer.

In terms of features, the E Ink panel supports up to eight display modes. In everyday use, it can show basic information such as the time, weather, and calendar in real time. Linked with the system's underlying data, it can also intuitively display the console's current hardware status and game completion progress.

For users running AI workloads on the console, it even offers a dedicated "AI agent status" monitoring mode for viewing benchmark scores and model training progress at a glance.

The other panel, a $89.99 (about RMB 635) 7-inch pixel-matrix panel, takes a nostalgic route: it comes with a full-color RGB display whose resolution is deliberately low — just 64×54 pixels — to recreate the retro feel of old dot-matrix screens.

It supports displaying images and GIF animations, and comes with a dedicated app that provides dashboard-style functions such as hardware monitoring, similar to the E Ink panel.

Both panels support Bluetooth connectivity and have built-in batteries. The companion app will be offered through the Steam store in the future, and early buyers will also receive a quick installation guide.