Valve's beta Steam Machine box has been in the households of 300 beta participants for over 48 hours, and now, the first impressions are starting to trickle out.

Following a thorough unboxing of the Steam Machine over the weekend, YouTube user Corey Nelson gives us one of the first looks at SteamOS. He guides us through the interface that allows you to launch and load games, gameplay itself, and the underlying Linux interface where settings and bug reports can be made.

The main interface of SteamOS reminds us a lot of Steam on the desktop. You're presented with the Steam store, a library of all your games, and a community where other Steam users can be interacted with. Game installs still take forever like on the desktop version, as Nelson had to run the machine overnight for all his games to downloads.

The games interface lets you launch a game, see achievements, access the workshop, and see which of your friends are playing. Again, it doesn't differ too far than what you'd find on the desktop version. The Steam community can still be accessed while playing, letting you once again interact with friends.

Nelson showed gameplay on Left 4 Dead 2 with the Steam Controller, a black gamepad for the Steam Machine. He called it "not as easy as the mouse in my opinion", and that working on aiming precision was the biggest struggle.

Valve took the wraps off its plans to infiltrate the living room in September with the introduction of SteamOS, Steam Machines, and the Steam Controller. Past the Steam Machines beta and its 300 participants, several hardware manufacturers have been tapped to launch a slew of SteamOS devices in 2014.

Nelson also uploaded a video of himself playing Portal.