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.
- 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.