As a kid, a lot of hardware I had growing up were hand-me-downs. I had some late-90s desktops, my first gaming consoles were an NES & Sega Genesis (in 2004!), but my strongest hardware memory is with two laptops: A 2001 Dell with an unnecessarily large screen for such underpowered hardware, and a Windows Vista laptop that struggled to stay running most of the time. Despite this, having a portable computer blew my mind, and I carried a laptop everywhere. I took them to parties, coffee shops, restaurants, visiting relatives, if I was leaving the house, there was a good chance I took a laptop with me.
Then one day, I stopped leaving the house. I abandoned the laptop & relegated myself exclusively to my then-obsolete desktop ‘gaming’ PC. At that point I also got a 3DS and my first smartphone, which let me do pretty much everything I was already doing with a laptop. So it just wasn’t something I needed anymore.
Even now that I’m caught up with modern hardware I still don’t leave the house that often, tethered to my desktop & needing direct access to a computer at all times. The Steam Deck is my first portable computer since 2014, and it may be a gateway for me to start going out more.
How’re the buttons?
Before its launch, I heard some people say the Steam Deck was too big to be portable. But I find that laughable considering the things I went through just to carry a laptop everywhere I went, and I know I wasn’t alone in that. But for an actual size comparison, it’s not that much bigger than a Switch with third-party Joycons. If you consider the Switch portable, you’ll consider the Steam Deck portable.
Layout-wise it really reminds me of a Wii U gamepad; from the triggers, the button & joystick placements, the touchscreen, binaural speakers, it even has a microphone. In fact if you look at the Steam Deck booklet, there’s a page showing all of its prototypes, and I’m pretty sure it took direct inspiration from the Wii U gamepad.
The buttons feel alright. They’re a little firmer than a Dualshock 4, but it doesn’t take the same pressure as an Xbox One controller. It does, however, use the same glossy finish that Xbox controllers have, and they can feel a bit slippery; especially since the buttons on Deck are about the same size as official Joycons. The glossy finish is also present on the D-pad.
The analog sticks feel a bit weird to rest my thumbs on. They’re concave, but not as deep as most other controllers, so you can still kinda feel their edges. The sticks themselves are fluid & nice to rotate at least, and they even have touch detection to enable gyro aiming.
Beneath the analog sticks are dual trackpads. This was something Valve experimented with in the form of the Steam Controller, but the mistake there was expecting you to do everything with those pads. Here you can tell Valve made them optional, and they work a lot better that way. In fact I use them a lot more since there’s a lot of mouse application, but I’ll get to that.
The back of the Deck features four extra buttons, which can be customized to your liking. A lot of third-party controllers have these too, and I generally bind them as more convenient L&R bumpers. But on Deck I’ve also customized them as convenient left & right clicks while using the trackpads.
Before I move onto software, there are two other notable things about the Steam Deck’s hardware: First, just like the Switch, it charges through USB-C. But unlike the Switch, it’s really demanding about what exactly it’ll charge in. Obviously it comes with its own power brick, but things like a USB 3.0 port in my desktop, Fast Charging bricks for phones, even my portable power bank aren’t strong enough to charge the Deck while it’s running. Granted, using hardware while they charge is bad for their batteries, but with an essentially two-hour battery life (running high-performance games at 60FPS) that’s a little bit frustrating. But I also recognize that’s probably something beyond Valve’s control, due to hardware shortages & general thermodynamics.
The other thing of note is Valve has been making hardware tweaks to the Steam deck since launch, and some are immediately recognizable. The main one being SD cards. Day-one Decks did not have any form of memory expansion beyond replacing its m.2 drive directly, so Valve added a full-size SD card slot. But since then (and on my Deck) that’s been downgraded to a MicroSD card slot. That’s arguably a good thing, since MicroSD is a lot more accessible than full-sized SD nowadays, but something I saw before getting my Steam Deck was people essentially making their own game cartridges out of SD cards, labels & all, and I kinda wanted to do that myself. But it’s not a big deal.
Okay, NOW let’s talk software
I own a 512GB model Steam Deck, which is honestly kinda low when you think about how big games can get. I was considering a 256GB deck as I began my investment, but I’m glad I didn’t do that for reasons I’ll get to. For obvious reasons I strongly advise against the 64GB model because that’s basically phone storage.
Of my nearly-890 Steam games, less than 500 are considered playable, and nearly 200 are officially verified. I ended up selecting some games that I knew I could play endlessly, or games that I could bring to local events like parties or conventions. Every verified/playable game on Deck uses Steam’s built-in controller emulation, which can be freely customized to your liking. Some games require the trackpad for mouse use, others can be played with the touchscreen, you have a lot of options.
Performance-wise it’s been pretty consistent. I think the most demanding game I have installed as-of writing this is Devil May Cry 5, and that can manage a fairly solid 60FPS. Being a portable PC, you can customize video settings in-game to improve performance, and there’s a menu you can open to add things like frame limiters to save battery life.
If a game doesn’t work, you can utilize remote play from your desktop & stream the game to your Deck. This is one of the reasons I initially bought it, but I encountered one major problem: My desktop uses a 1080p monitor, and the Steam Deck’s native resolution is 1280x800. Seeing a game get squished down to half its original resolution is really off-putting, and I ended up installing games I initially streamed because they were so hard to look at. It can even make some text unreadable, and if you have a 1440p or 4K monitor I’m sure it’d be a lot worse.
Actually that’s another issue I have with the Steam Deck: it uses a 16:10 aspect ratio. 1280x800 is starting to get pretty arbitrary, and a few games I’ve tried don’t even have options for it; defaulting to 720p. At least it gets letterboxed instead of trying to stretch the resolution, but it might’ve been better to just cut off the extra 80 lines of pixels for better compatibility.
Now I did want to install more Steam games onto the system, but I’m holding off a bit until I can expand with SD cards. Because…
This is literally a Linux PC
If you hold down the power button, you get an option to switch over to a desktop mode. The Deck runs a custom Linux distro called SteamOS Holo, and most notably it has the KDE Discover library; which if you’re unaware, is a massive library of free & open-source software. This is why I’m glad I bought the 512GB model, because I didn’t anticipate I’d be filling up my Deck with non-Steam software alongside my games. If you want, you can keep the Deck in desktop mode exclusively and run all your games through here. Or you can replace the Linux distro, do completely non-gaming related activities, hell you can even install Windows if you really want.
The hardware is modifiable too. The whole thing is held together with eight screws, all of which are on the back & easily accessible. I personally have no need to open up my Steam Deck just yet, but it’s designed to give users immediate access to everything for repairs & replacements. But the only one I personally see myself doing is maybe replacing the SD card slot. I really wanted to make custom game cartridges dammit!
Who is the Steam Deck for?
Personally, I wanted a device that I could play games in bed with, get remote access to my desktop, have a portable emulation machine that wasn’t my phone, and leave the house without feeling disconnected from my PC games (most notably Final Fantasy XIV). The Deck succeeds with a 3/4 score in that regard. But I also think this device benefits people as one of the cheapest budget gaming PCs you can get your hands on. It cost me $700 including tax for the 512GB, and a search on Amazon for a laptop with similar specs gets me results that cost over $300 more.
Granted, there is a waiting period with the Steam Deck. I reserved mine in late July and was a two month wait before I could finally buy the damn thing. (EDIT: As of October 2022, Steam Decks are readily available without reservation! However they have stated that they may fall back to reservation if shortages get bad again.) You’d also want some accessories if you’re gonna use it as a PC, but the trackpad & touchscreen keyboard work well enough with a bit of adjustment.
Overall, I recommend the Steam Deck to anyone who just wants a portable gaming PC. If you want a laptop but you see yourself gaming more than other computer stuff, a Steam Deck would be the better option. If you want a gaming PC & have a burning hatred for Windows, a Steam Deck is a viable option. If you play games with a high demand for keyboard & mouse inputs, eh… maybe if you set up a dock with it?
Ultimately if you look at the Steam Deck and think it’s something you could benefit from, you probably will.
