For people that own a Steam Deck, how do you like it? And how do you use it? I would like to talk myself into buying one, but I can’t think of a decent use case.
One feature that doesn't get mentioned or appreciated enough is the perfect sleep capability. I have 2 young kids and busy work/family life so I struggle to dedicate gaming time. I might get 20min or I might get interrupted in 30s after I sit down. No problem! You hit the power button and it sleeps instantly, and whenever you have time next you seamlessly and perfectly pick up where you were. This removal of overhead for booting and loading the game makes a massive difference for people like myself.
Otherwise, its interface is great and gets out of the way. There is any number of awesome games available and I've found I've played games I might not have on pc anyway. And a lot of games have seamless cloud saves too - for example I'm playing witcher 3 now and I can play here and there during the day on steam deck and then if I have time for a bigger session I pick it up on pc.
Games I've enjoyed on it include outer wilds (CANNOT recommend that one enough!), steam world dig 2, Dex, into the breach, backbone, and a lot of others.
Edit / p.s.: for me it's size is a plus btw. With Kishi+phone, Nintendo ds and even Nintendo switch, my fingers tingle and wrists hurt after a while. The wider and more natural spacing / angle of the larger steam deck means I can play with no such ergonomic issues.
Outer Wilds gave me plenty of enjoyment, but isn’t a favorite. I got through nearly the entire game on my own. Near the end there were two sequences (the collapsing ground area and the sandy/thorny area) where I knew roughly where I wanted to go, but making a single mistake meant restarting from scratch, then sitting and waiting about eight minutes for the stars to align so I could try again. I finally resorted to a guide to navigate those two paths.
Later, I found the final sequence so frustrating that I gave up and watched the rest on YouTube—and was glad I did, because that ending would not have landed for me, at all. It reminded me (to its detriment) of Majora’s Mask, a game that actually did a good job of convincing me to care about the NPCs and their situations over the course of the story.
Funnily enough, Outer Wilds has been on my mind lately, because I just played through Tunic, a different (and for me, much more enjoyable) take on the “play the game blind” concept.
Fair Enough! I agree with you there, and I did drop the game once for a week or three because I couldn't nail platforming sequences. My memory just erased those bits and focused on fun parts :->
Can you let me know about Tunic? I first heard of it literally yesterday when I googled for "Zelda but on Steam Deck"...
I found the world and exploration very fun, but the “platforming” challenges were extremely frustrating for me, and I didn’t enjoy the random messages and the miscellaneous details that you translated. Basically the gameplay loop was filled with things that didn’t quite ring with me, even though the overarching design and story were compelling.
Interesting; I found the baseline Outer Wilds one of the most original and fascinating adventures of last few years. I can't wait for my kids to get older so we can (re)play it together - I want to see them make the same connections and their eyes light up and feel all clever! :->
(It is a bit of a slow burn; but if you've invested time and it doesn't quite meet the hype, fair enough :)
I don’t mind the slow burn at all! I however did not like being forced to do frustrating platforming / movements while having to start from scratch every time I run out of time or die.
I like it. I use it fairly frequently too.
The killer feature: instant on/off AKA 'Pause'.
I've had a single-player game of CIV5 going for MONTHS now. The Steam Deck is PERFECT for pick it up, play for 5 minutes (or a couple of hours), pause it, and resume later.
I have 2 main use-cases:
-couch-playing. When the Wife-unit is watching her shows, or I get bored but still want to be in the same area as her; I can play this on the couch without it being intrusive.
-kids playground. When the kids are at a playground I'll start playing as a way to pass my time until it's time to leave and/or I need to play with the kids too.
Both situations can have frequent interruptions, IMHO the Steam Decks' ability to suspend the game and then let me resume without a problem is incredibly helpful.
I also LOVE that because it's a "real PC", I don't need to fight with config oddities with linux on a laptop. Plug in an external monitor/keyboard/mouse and you have everything you need.
The main feature I notice to be lacking on Deck in this regard is that you can't download updates while the device is "off." This doesn't really affect me personally because I can do background downloads with the kind of games I play without issue, but if I played AAA FPS type games I would probably find this quite annoying, since those games generally have large downloads and also require as much disk performance as you can muster.
I've been on the fence about getting one. The one thing that's slowing down my decision making is whether or not the matte anti-glare screen is worth the premium price, or if the regular screen glare is fine enough inside. Also seen some people say a screen protector works, but can bubble with the heat.
Happen to have any insight on this? $360 vs $540 on sale right now is tempting. Upgrading the storage to a larger NVMe is likely to happen either way, so the premium price would just be for the screen.
I have the 256GB version which has regular screen. Glare hasn't bothered me inside at all in the year and a half I've owned it. However, I have not played it outside - in the shade / twilight it may be OK depending on your personal threshold. In sunlight, forget about it :)
FWIW I've added a microSD card and it's fine. Updating the internal nVME is not on my radar, because the whole point of SteamDeck, for me and my personal use, is for it to be "play and forget", as opposed to a hobby in and of itself :). YMMV :-)
Note that there’s something like 30x difference between SD and NVME performance. Not an issue for smaller games, but definitely something to keep in mind for games that stream data. On the other hand you’re likely not using the largest textures and models games come with anyway.
That was my understanding as well of the upper limits of bandwidth of the two technologies.
But several folks around the interwebs have done practical tests of loading actual games from internal nvme vs external microSD in steam deck, and actual differences were far lesser than specs would indicate.
I'm about to disagree with another user.
The 512GB version (The one I own) is best described as 'semi-matte'. You can use it inside and not worry about 90% of potential glare. Outside use: depends/sometimes able to use.
Based on videos I have seen online, the 'glossy' version is almost mirror-like. So ANYTHING would be an improvement over that.
I’ve had a good experience with an anti-glare screen protector so far. And there’s also the possibility of swapping the screen later, as it’s only something like $100. Although changing the screen is a bit of work, I think.
> For people that own a Steam Deck, how do you like it?
It's one of the best hardware purchases I've done in years. It's surprising how well it managed to balance "It just works" with "You can still customize/modify/install things you need.". It's not perfect (screen could be better, battery life could be better, it's a bit chunky).
> And how do you use it?
I use it as a "secondary" gaming device. I have a gaming PC where I play games with a Steam library. Since Deck shares that library and seamlessly syncs save games, I can sneak in some game time before sleep, when travelling or when commuting with a lot of game time. When I have more time, I usually move back to my PC where the games and saves are waiting for me.
The fact that it goes instantly to sleep and suspends games is amazing - it really reduces a lot of friction for short gaming sessions because you don't need to wait for games to load.
If you don't play games though... it's probably pointless to get one.
You can install GOG games the same way you do on any Linux desktop from the Deck's handheld mode (usually through Lutris or Heroic). After that, you add the games to Steam as a "non-Steam game" and it'll show up in handheld mode just like any Steam game.
Installing new GOG games from the GOG library isn't quite as easy as installing Steam games is, and you don't get the extra testing and verification for running games on Linux that you get on the Deck.
You do get all of the benefits from the Steam UI, though, like controller remapping and game specific performance profiles.
Not all games from other platforms work out of the box, even if the steam version does. Although my main issue there is with epic that doesn’t provide Linux versions even for games that have them. But then again the launcher is also a windows executable.
Like others mentioned, it’s totally possible to use another launcher. I have Cyberpunk on GOG for example and a couple games installed I bought on Epic.
But, the Deck absolutely 100% works the way Valve intended: I find myself preferring to purchase games on Steam because it’s easy, even if it’s a couple bucks more or I have to wait for the Steam sale. It’s just a better experience.
My Steam account is possibly most oldest active account anyways and I have always preferred it, but if you primarily use another store it might be a bit annoying to have to do all the manual steps for the majority of your games
> My Steam account is possibly most oldest active account anyways and I have always preferred it,
You just made me feel old. I think my Steam account is even older than my Gmail account. It has accompanied me through several phases of my life... I first created it using a very silly username, later I grew up and became extremely ashamed of it. I remember frequently checking if it was already possible to change the username, but they never allowed it. And now that I'm older I just laugh about it as a memory of my teen years.
Mildly annoying to setup sometimes, use Lutris or Heroic as others said but once it's done it's more or less the same as the Steam version. Lutris and Heroic let you easily setup shortcuts to Steam so it will appear in the game UI, you can use all the same features as you would for a Steam game, framerate limit etc.,. Occasionally you can run into issues with the GOG version that don't crop up with the Steam version but usually the Lutris installer does a good job. Heroic is a bit hit or miss IME. Epic and EA games work too but sometimes DRM adds an extra layer. It's about as complicated as getting a game from say 2005 working on a modern PC.
Seconding Lutris. Just install Lutris from the Flatpak store and login to your GOG account.[0] I have played a couple of games this one. The only one that wouldn't install was the first Jazz Jackrabbit which I didn't debug. I have a feeling it was because by default it used the Linux installer rather than just running the Windows executable via WINE/proton.
Installing them can be annoying (switch to desktop mode, run Heroic Launcher, find the right Proton version that works), but after initial setup they run seamlessly. Heroic Launcher also now supports GoG Cloud Savegame sync so it hasn't been seriously problematic.
(About half the games I play on Deck are from GoG.)
I have had mine since April 2022 so I have ~14 months of usage on it.
It has become the only way I play games now. The single USB-C is great, I plug it into the same dock [a Dell WD19TBS] I use for my work MBP and personal XPS which provides dual screen, keyboard, mouse, Ethernet, additional USB ports, power, etc over a single cable.
I use it any time I'm travelling which can be anything from 20 mins to 15 hours. Depending on which game I'm playing, I can still get ~6 hours of battery in a single charge and it still charges quick enough. It uses the USB Power Delivery 3.0 standard so any >=45 W charger from a phone or battery pack will work.
This is a bit like the original Switch adverts when it first came out. Where people are playing a game on their sofa at home, then take the console with them to a party on a roof somewhere.
I thought I would never use the trackpads but they are probably the killer input. I use them extensively, they've very sensitive which makes them perfect for fine input controls, and they have rumble motors in them so it feels like you're physically moving something.
The suspend-resume is fantastic, it's very quick and works even though games were not designed for this usecase like they are on consoles.
One complaint I've heard a few times if from people who have already spent a lot on a powerful PC to play games, and are then disappointed that games are less impressive on a device optimised to run at 10W. I was already used to running AAA games on low->medium graphics so in some cases the Steam Deck was actually an upgrade for me.
I’ll go against the grain and say I don’t actually like mine very much and here’s why. I’ll caveat it with saying I got it for trips.
- it’s underpowered. I knew that going in but so many games have to be played at either a really low setting or you chew through battery life quicker than i can manage.
- battery life is pretty poor. Most games give me an hour or two of use. While I rarely game that long in a stretch, it means that on a trip I’m always thinking about battery. The charging port is in a location that shifts the ballance in an unfortunate way.
- you can’t download while it’s asleep or in the background. So if a game needs to be downloaded or updated, you have to leave it lying there, turned on and doing nothing. You can opt to have it download while you play but it stutters a ton if you do so.
- screen is mediocre. I knew that going in but it’s really hard to appreciate how dim and dull it looks compared to my phone screen for example.
- it’s loud and hot. It’s not something I can play silently therefore. The fans are really working overtime to relieve that poor SoC
- the ergonomics are so so. This one is really subjective. It starts out feeling pretty good, but I find the weight distribution makes it really uncomfortable for me after a whole. I feel a lot more cramping in my fingers and wrists.
Now, it was relatively cheap so I don’t mind, but I find myself not wanting to use it unless I’m on a solo trip or my partner is using the TV.
Just to add some context here. Some of this doesn't line up with my experience.
- my battery life is roughly 2-4 hours depending on the game. I'm playing Yakuza like a dragon right now and the battery lasts close to 3 hours
- my screen is plenty bright. I don't play in direct sunlight, but I do sit out on my porch during the day and it's fine.
- I've not had an issue with it being underpowered. I played Harry Potter on it which is a pretty demanding game and it seemed comparable to the performance my daughter had on the PS5 with her copy.
- I've never noticed an issue with downloads and stuttering while playing.
- Loudness is about the same as a laptop or console while gaming. Same for temp.
- Ergo is a small issue for me as well. The size and bulk of the deck can make my wrists hurt after some time.
I’m glad your experience is better but I’d just point out a few things.
Battery life is heavily dependant on the games being played. Yakuza isn’t typically that demanding so I’m not surprised you’re getting more. Playing something like Forza kills my battery pretty quickly.
The screen is 400nits. It’s also not got great gamut coverage. That’s what I mean by it being dull and dim. It’s usable but it’s really dependent on the content and context what clarity is like.
Yes it can play Harry Potter but at what settings and frame rate? The capability to play a game isn’t an issue, it can play most things. But it’s essentially a mobile PS4. Which is great, but it’s also only capable of playing games at settings comparable to a downclocked PS4. Again, something I knew going in but I figured they’d have better thermal management if I was giving up more contemporary performance.
I played Harry Potter on medium-high settings. If you keep the resolution at the native screen resolution and turn off things that aren't needed on a smaller screen (eg AA or super sampling), the performance is better than PS4 and roughly the same as a PS5. Performance isn't really a concern for me unless I'm plugged into an external display.
But that’s exactly it. You’re playing at a lower setting by turning off AA and playing at low resolutions
I’m glad performance is fine enough for you though. I still find it quite underpowered, where every game I play requires both feature and resolution compromises. Playing without AA is just not acceptable to me in this decade. At least not unless I’m getting significant battery life or thermal freedom to compensate.
It's not needed on smaller screens. The switch does similar things. It's a common tactic on handhelds to disable those sort of features as they add no noticeable improvement.
The switch does it for *some* games when running portably and then enables most things when docked. A lot of that is battery management.
The steamdeck does not really have a concept of dual modes, per your own statements about playing on a bigger screen.
And I completely disagree that AA isn’t needed on smaller screens. You can see aliasing at any screen size.
Again, perhaps it meets your threshold of quality. That does not mean it meets mine nor does it mean that the form factor somehow obviates it. It just means that we have subjectively different preferences.
But again, I disagree that “it’s not needed”. That’s not why games will disable AA in handheld mode. AA is expensive and a cost they try and mitigate with art direction that tries to avoid much of the losses.
The steamdeck is not just playing games designed for a small screen. Many games suffer from shimmering and shifting. Whether that’s an issue for you or not is independent of whether they exist and might be issues for others.
I just checked and I have the newer fan. My deck is only a few months old as well.
It’s not that it’s making an unpleasant whining sound like what the older fan was meant to be, it’s that it’s trying to push out so much heat all the time that it’s perceptibly loud.
It’s the difference between tone and volume.
All my other devices in the house are relatively quiet compared to it. My switch, my Macs, even my PS5. None of them are fanless but they’re pushing out much less air at any point.
The steamdeck is fine for some games, but once it hits the thermal ceiling it gets so loud.
> - you can’t download while it’s asleep or in the background.
Are you saying this is something unique to the Steam Deck? If my Linux desktop is anything to judge by, you should be able to enable background downloads in Steam settings. I'm also fairly sure there should be a way to get logind to inhibit sleep during the download.
It’s unique to the primary non-desktop mode of the steamdeck.
If you put it to sleep, it pauses downloads. Out of the box, it pauses downloads when you play games unless you enable a checkbox that says it will degrade performance.
If you switch to the desktop mode instead, you can download things as you would on a Linux desktop with all the other requisite performance state management caveats, and it’s very much now how the device is designed to be used.
As a parent working a full time job - I can finally play games again. As weird as it sounds, there was always a pychological hurdle to go and sit at my desk, boot my pc, select a game and play it.
With the deck, I just sit on the couch and play games - the sleep/standby function is amazing.
Caveat: I'm not a frame rate chaser and I'm not obsessed with graphics quality, so a lower end GPU running at 40hz is perfectly fine by me.
The huge win for me is sleep mode. The fact I can pick up my deck, play during some downtime, then put the thing to sleep and pick it up later, is huge. Couple that with the fact I can play anywhere and it allows me to play during those fragments of time when, previously, it was just too much of a pain to trundle off to my desk, fire up my rig, and get a game going.
And the range of control options means short of a fast twitch FPSes, where I still prefer m&kb (tbf I was never that good, and a lot of folks do just fine with stick+touchpad+gyro or a flick stick setup), there's little I can't play on the deck after some tweaking to get the controls the way I like.
I love it and ended up using it a lot more than I expected (and a lot more than I used the Xbox Series X and PS5 that I bought a little bit before).
Something about how quickly you can turn the device on and off and just start playing really makes me want to play more.
I've been playing different kind of games I play on console (Hades, Vampire Survivors, Hollow Knight, Brotato), just because they also help with the quick sessions.
I find myself picking it up several times a day when I need a break, and even when I'm stuck in some task at work.
As others have said, it is truly an outstanding achievement by Valve. Most things just work.
Of all my electronic purchases in the last 5 years or so, the Deck is by far the one that had the best cost/benefit. And the one that surpassed my expectations.
As a counterpoint to the other comments here - I’ve been quite disappointed with mine.
It’s a wonderfully flexible device, and extremely fun to tinker with - but the ergonomics are shockingly bad. I don’t know if it’s the size, weight or shape to blame, but it quite reliably gives me the worst hand/wrist pain I’ve ever experienced from a device like it. I’ve tried plenty of purported solutions - adjusting my grip to various positions, attaching grip tape to the handles, etc - and none of them have made any difference.
I played it for two hours last week and it gave me such severe hand cramp that I wasn’t able to fully close my fingers without pain for three days. The only way to fix the pain is to simply not use the console.
There are scattered accounts along these lines on places like /r/SteamDeck - I gather I’m not really unique in this respect.
It’s tremendously unfortunate, really - it’s excellent at what it does, but I expect I’ll have to just sell mine and hope that a future revision to the hardware makes it a little less painful to use.
I have the same issue if I try to hold it suspended unfortunately. It gets very painful very quickly. If I lay my wrist on something, like a cushion on my lap for example, then it is fine.
Same issue, I now lie on my couch and rest it on semi-folded legs to alleviate the weight. Works a lot better, but not as great for action games in my opinion.
It's great, just not fantastic (yet). I'm kind of eager for further hardware revisions, but on the other hand, I've already used it a lot when I otherwise wouldn't have had the option to start up the big desktop for gaming (commuting, or even just to use some time in between things). And while I bought a Switch before, the main benefit here is of course the entire Steam library being available, so no buying the same title more than once.
Biggest dislike is the on-screen keyboard. On the one hand it's usable with the two trackpads, but, I still take way to long to enter text, even compared to a phone screen. It's also very slow to appear and bugs out too often. I really hope that that can be improved so it can pop up and disappear without noticeable delay.
I'm not sure about underpowered, I was actually quite happy to install some rather resource-intensive (Windows!) games and while it's getting quite warm, I never ran out of battery immediately, but yes, if you've got to save energy, better turn on all the options for that. And that's actually quite cool to be able to turn down energy consumption on a whim, or with per-game profiles, etc.
As long as they're going to optimise the experience more and not just keep it as-is, because "it works fine", then it could be a really good platform going forward.
Same question for the dock though, is it worth it?
It's absolutely amazing. The screen is the only weak point and I don't mean the resolution, as I'd rather have 1280*800 native for that size than FHD and the associated performance hit, but it's a bit uneven in lighting, especially in a place near the top where it seems to be affixed and I have a hot (permagreen) pixel. Of the rest, the form factor is brilliant, it's very ergonomic and nice to hold. Scaling of battery drain with performance demands will seem like magic to someone used to Windows laptops. The software stack and the amount of control it affords the end user is easily the best part, nothing is locked down.
I REALLY like it. It feels great for a lot of reasons.
I like being able to detach from my gaming computer but still make progress on my RPG games. The device is very hacker friendly—- valve has done an amazing job creating something that is user friendly (versus user hostile e.g. Windows). The device is able to render good graphics without (much) slowdown. I like connecting it to my TV and using it like a console. I like knowing the games I buy for it are accessible on my PC. It’s great.
Screen is kinda small for newer, high res games but still enjoyable. More suitable to PS2 1024x968 era so perfect for emulator PS2 and earlier. For indies or 2d like stardew it'll be no problem.
Form factor is good, no problem so far with controller position. Rather big and rather heavy, not as portable as psp or nds but definitely portable.
Battery lasts only 2 hours-ish for AAA games though, much longer for lower specs.
Suspend and continue works wonder, though anticipate for hang or freeze that you'll need to save before if can.
Controls can be mapped freely for each game which is amazing, 4 back buttons works wonder to add more functionality to already limited buttons. Moreover the radial menu with trackpad is superb.
If you don't have gaming pc or laptop, you'll definitely like this, though maybe you'll need usb hub, keyboard and mouse if you want to enjoy games that doesn't support controller (sim city). If that's the case, slap an external monitor too since you'll need a bigger screen to play those games.
Otherwise you can lie sideways on couch, or I read you can lie on the back with pillow to rest your hand to play deck. Perfect for open world and action games.
Haven't really tried sd card so I don't know how flexible it is to play from it, but I guess it'll works wonder for less than latest AAA games.
> Screen is kinda small for newer, high res games but still enjoyable.
Agree. When rewriting an older game for Steam I ended up in-biggening the artwork a touch to look good on the Steam Deck. Of course the game now looks positively Duplo on a normal PC monitor now.
Can't really blame anyone, nowadays monitor really ranged from small, deck sized to big, dual monitors sized with resolution ranged from 1200-ish for older or smaller monitor to 4k.
Without adjustable ui size the text will undoubtedly be small in some instances.
Just to pile on with everyone else, it's my main gaming device.
The only times I pick up my Switch is for Tears of the Kingdom. I put my old gaming PC to storage because I hadn't turned it on for 6 months (too shitty to bother selling).
I own an Xbox Series X, but the times I can hog the only big TV in the house are rare. The Deck I can just pick up and start playing where I left off. I also take it with me on commutes and sometimes play it at the office to wind down or keep the front of my brain occupied so the rest can think in peace =)
Even if new games became too resource intensive for it to run starting tomorrow, I'd still have literal hundreds of games I can play with it. And that's not including emulation. Combine that with the readily available spare parts and upgrades, I'll be keeping this for years.
People (rightly) talk about how great it is at playing steam games. One thing that’s often overlooked is that it is excellent at emulation too.
I’ve played with emulators in the past but they’re always a little laggy, or the controls aren’t quite right, or there is some other nagging issue. EmuDeck isn’t perfect but it handles a lot of the hassle and is the only setup where I have 100% completed the old mario and zelda games of my childhood.
https://www.emudeck.com/
really liking it myself. I used to not have much time to boot my PC to game anymore and the Steam Deck made it easier to get back into gaming with short sessions - the sleep mode is perfect to leave a game paused and start again whenever you are ready.
Have you done any ie- PC-98 emulation? I've been debating whether to just host a VM dedicated to that and remote in or try running natively on the deck.
Steam definitely has porn games but publishers usually need to cut the actual R18 content from Steam releases of eroge. For some games, you can restore those removed parts with either official or fan patches, but those usually require you to run some kind of an installer executable. And since applying patches is such a pain in the neck in a Wine environment, the Steam Deck actually makes for kind of a bad device for eroge/nukige.
I need to apply a translation patch to my Steam copy of CHAOS;HEAD NOAH, but running the installer on the Steam Deck seems like a massive pain. I think I need to try to just copy over the patched game directory from my Windows PC to my Steam Deck to get it done without losing my sanity and installing a bunch of crap on the Steam Deck.
Interesting, I didn’t know that. I haven’t played one of those games in at least two decades lol. But while on Steam, I did click on a “gameplay” video for some popular game recently, and the gameplay definitely looked very graphic to me. Not that I’m opposed to it lol.
(Also, not a direct reply to your comment about trying to install something on the Steam Deck, but the comments here about cloud saves working seamlessly don’t compare to my experience. I mean, it wasn’t hard to fix. I’m a software engineer and could follow the instructions on some wiki to move some specific file in the terminal. It only took like 2
15 minutes max, including finding the wiki itself and a workaround without having a Bluetooth keyboard. But still, it was more than I wanted to do and I initially thought I was going to go down a rabbit hole. The device is still really good though!)
I think the issue with cloud saves is that developers are pretty free to use them as they wish, and some of them wish to use them in craptastic ways.
I spent a couple of hours diagnosing why I couldn't get save files for a particular VN sync via the cloud between my Steam Deck and my gaming PC. Turns out that they implemented cloud saves so that Steam syncs the cloud saves to Location A on the file system, and when the game boots up, it checks if there's a save file in Location B, it loads that, and if there isn't, it copies the save file from Location A to Location B and then loads it. The end result was that all of my Steam Deck saves were on my gaming PC immediately after I installed the game on my gaming PC, but neither device ever refreshed the saves because the actual save location was different from the cloud sync location, and there was no mechanism to override local saves with cloud saves.
My only real complaint: My eyesight isn't good enough to play on the built-in screen, and using USB-C to connect to a monitor leads to an overly fragile connection when you're using gyro control and just in general moving the "controller" a lot. Often the cable "logically unplugs" for a second.
I fear my Deck's USB-C connector is going to fail in a year, and think I need to use an external controller to let the Deck sit stationary on a desk. I wish there was a sturdier hardware connector.
It's literally the best piece of hardware since the iPhone; and unlike the iPhone it proves that you can have your cake and eat it too when it comes to "usability for regular people" AND "hackability for geeks."
Even if you have zero mobile use cases, it’s a comfy way to lay back on the couch and stream games from your PC. The controls are very nice and some games feel nicer in a small form factor embedded thing than desktop/TV gaming.
It's been great, as a new dad with a young kid, I no longer had time to boot up my gaming pc. Now that I have a steam deck, I play a lot more games. It's also by far the game console I fight the most over with my wife. She loves playing with it.
I don't mind the ergonomics. I find it comfortable to hold. Battery life is not great but I mostly play at home and I don't mind.
We also have a switch but don't play it that much. The steam deck is just more convenient because of the steam integration and the fact that games on steam are much cheaper and there are a lot more games.
I love mine. I use it both in handheld mode and docked to a TV. It's great for playing games anywhere around the house if you have a few spare minutes. Also great for travel. The openness is really cool. I've added several non steam games to mine (e.g. Plex). It's not perfect though. I find I get a decent amount of lag using bluetooth controllers while docked and some games don't play super well (even "verified" ones). Occasionally I'll use it as a linux desktop too, but not often. I like that it has the option though.
Absolutely love it. Between work travel, doctor's appointments, and just not being locked to the desk or couch, the portable nature has completely changed how I play and think about playing videogames.
I've barely played games the last 5 years or so, but the Steam Deck has been much better than I ever thought it would be and it has brought back gaming for me.
The instant standby/resume from inside any game, from anywhere, is a true game changer. If I have 5-10 min somewhere I can jump into a game and be back in a second.
Another use-case is playing some mouse/keyboard games in the bed or sofa. I've been playing tons of FTL and the trackpads work exceptionality well (for slower games or games you can pause).
Or just emulate almost any older game (and many newer switch games).
Do you want to game away from your computer? That's the use case. Think of it like a big Sega game gear that runs steam and plays most steam games. You could do other things with it but it's literally purpose built to run steam, it's form factor is set up for gaming, and it's big and chunky not throw it in a bag and forget it sized.
It doesn't replace a gaming desktop or even an ipad. It's a mobile gaming console that plays steam games for the most part.
Similarly, I ended up using mine docked a lot of the time. Performance when docked, and outputting more than 720p is pretty lacking. I really liked having a second input on my monitor to switch to for my games, so I ended up getting a 2nd PC with ChimeraOS (basically SteamOS) installed on it. I played through the entirety of Diablo 4 with that.
I like the hardware, but yeah I've had a harder time recommending it to some of my friends because my first question is "do you go anywhere?". Plenty of them say no.
It's great, I've been using it for my long hour 45 commutes by train and I can usually get there and back without a charge (but cutting it close).
I've been playing Nier Automata & Devil May Cry 5. Both on pretty good settings but I've locked the refresh rate in the decks settings to 30fps and lowered the TDP of the processor per game so they both run at a smooth 30 while drawing as little power as possible. It's great for the commutes.
I guess I’m a naysayer but I hate mine. It’s so big in its case that’s it’s impractical to take on trips with me. The games I happen to want to play don’t work on it without hacks and I find it pretty uncomfortable to hold.
I recently got both a GPD Win 3 and 4 and I’ve found they’re much better in all the areas I care about. They’re more expensive of course but better to spend more on something that you use than spend less for something you don’t.
It's a (kind of) portable PC. A much clunkier version of the Switch, which for some that might be a good thing as the Switch is mostly a toy.
It's not for everyone for sure, but it's an excellent way to have every PC game, including emulators, on the go... Which is basically 90% of all games ever created.
Personally I wouldn't take it outside my house, but I could see myself bringing it with me if I were to travel a lot.
I use mine as a desktop replacement since I don't want a full PC sitting around. I dock it via USBC, use desktop mode, and it's pretty good. It has more than enough power for me, and it's nice to be able to undock it and just take it somewhere
I do wish the desktop mode was slightly better when portable. It was a little inconvenient issuing CLI commands from my bed last night. Still better than doing it on a phone screen though for sure.
I love my deck. It's my preferred way to play games these days. For better or for worse, it's also been the reason I've spent more time playing games this year than the years before.
The console like quality gives it a different feel compared to a controller hooked up to a gaming PC in my opinion. The fast sleep/resume also makes it super easy to pick up and play for a short while without having to worry about not making it to the next save point in time.
SteamOS/HoloISO is so good that I seriously consider installing it on my next gaming computer when the time to upgrade eventually comes. It has tons of issues with Nvidia hardware (as with any kind of Linux distro) but other than that it's one of the first times I've seen Linux for the mainstream done right. Read only system images, all software installed in the user directory makes for a very stable hassle free update experience. You can unlock the system partition if you want, but I intend to keep it read only for as long as I can.
It's not some kind of magical machine that will make you experience fun, though. If you're already happy with the amount of game time you're getting and you don't think you'll use it, don't get one. It is what it is, a handheld console. I bought mine knowing I'd probably spend a significant amount of time on it playing games in bed and on the go, and that's where it has really shined for me, especially when I was too sick to sleep for a few days.
If you've already got a gaming PC or console and a tablet/large smartphone, consider getting a comfortable controller grip for that instead and stream the games over your network. I've got pretty good experiences streaming games over WiFi and even over the internet this way. It's fiddly to set up, but it'll work for significantly less money than a separate game console.
If you've got money to throw at your gaming hobby, also consider more powerful alternatives. I think the 1200x800 screen is fine for the Deck screen size, but some people don't like it. The machine is also clearly optimized to play games at that resolution, hooking it up to a monitor can quickly show the limitations of a 15W chip. There are more powerful gaming handhelds out there, often running Windows and some kind of homebrew console environment, for a significantly higher price.
If you know anyone with a Deck, ask them to try it out for a few minutes.
I bought one about a month ago. It's portable around home which is handy. It's quite big so it's less portable outside of home - but I've got books to entertain me there!
I agree with the standby / sleep modes. Super useful if you need to stop gaming and run for whatever reason.
I think there's a big sale on them right now (I do wish I'd waited a month!).
One underrated use case that hasn't been mentioned here is that you also have the option to install Windows on it and then it's just like any other gaming PC but portable. No need to faff about with Proton and Steam or worry about compatibility, every game on every storefront just simply works.
It's much more ergonomic gaming from the couch or moving around the house, than hunching over a PC. Persona 4, Phoenix Wright, Tangle Tower, Halls of Torment, older action adventure games. Going through a lot of my backlog as it's easy to just pause and come back in small increments.
I love it. In fact I haven't turned on my PC with the intent to play games since I bought the deck. I highly recommend it particularly if you have a busy schedule and want to be able to jump in and out of a game once in a while.
I have a huge steam library but only has a macbook, steam deck enables me to play a lot of those games. For some games I even prefer to play it on the deck over my PS4, for example I had a great time playing Sekiro on the deck.
I really love it. Though I barely play outside, it's still fantastic as a portable console. Amazing compatibility backed by (almost) butter smooth UI. Some people pick SteamOS as the number one reason to buy Steam Deck.
Best gaming device ever. I find it funny that some are complaining about the heat. When I am cold I fire up Dune Spice Wars and now I have a portable heater for 2 hours.
