well, is there a better alternative for the money? I'm asking because i'm in the market for this

I'd say that heavily depends on what you see as alternatives. For some the Steam Machine is filling an unmet need in the market, for others it's a more expensive gaming pc or gaming console.

As we are on HackerNews, there's a good chance that you can build / setup your own pc with better specs which you might want to look into and then decide.