Valve’s Steam Deck has been in the wild for over a year. How has this portable PC stacked up? Let’s talk. Subscribe for more: czcams.com/users/gameranxTV?su...
i completed cyberpunk exclusively on the steam deck last year, playing each day on my way to work and back. couldn't run it on my pc. this little thing is a monster
@@nc1901 what settings did you use? Every time I loaded it up it was a laggy mess. I want to give it another chance, but Id like something to base my tweaks on yk?
@@firefoxx903 Hmm I don't think I didn't anything crazy. But I do remember looking on google and searching for the best settings for cyberpunk on steam deck. Mine works good and looks pretty great. Definitely give it another shot if you can. It's a game that is absolutely worth it to experience in terms of the story, characters and music.
Best gaming purchase I’ve made in years.. that extra hour or 2 I can play before bed without sitting at my desk has allowed me to play games I never thought I’d have a chance to play. Not to mention the nostalgic classics I can emulate
@@gooeypanther That 64GB is going to be your boot drive, which is ok with me but its quite slow eMMC storage. For an SD card, 512GB is enough - if you need more, replace your 64GB eMMC with a 512GB SSD and it will still be cheaper than a single 1TB.
I decided to take the plunge and go all out and buy the 512gb version. I drive 18 wheelers for a living and i work about 8-11 hours a day depending on how fast warehouses are operating and there are days where i wait around for hours and hours. I bought a verified to work car charger and i'm going to be firing this thing up on slow days and connecting it to my hotspot and just gaming while i wait. Glad to see the deck is such a great value.
@@davebloomfield8468yeah the switch kinda feels like a kids toy compared to this. Don’t forget screen protectors everyone! Anyone taking this thing outside should consider dust caps for all the electrical ports, a protective case & a carry case. It’s not built outta bricks.
As someone who doesn’t have a gaming pc, this has been incredible. Being able to dock it to a monitor allows me to play the city builder style games with all the little details, whilst still being able to go handheld for the simpler stuff. Great console!
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The steam deck has been great for me as someone who has disabilities. I can't sit at a computer some days, but having the steam deck lets me play my games anyway 😊 I prefer the switch for travel because it's lighter but you can't really beat that extensive steam library.
Steam Deck is one of the greatest consoles I have ever owned. This is what I always wanted the vita to be. It’s super convenient if you have had steam for years, then you already have games ready to play on there. I find myself playing on here more than my PC mainly for the comfortability of laying in bed and playing my games. Absolutely love this device.
@@SuicidalSummerSnowWoman so one person moaning about his freezing all the time has put you off from the the hundreds of comments here praising it? Get a sense of proportion.
Had my Deck for a little over 3 months , And I am still being impressed by how well it runs both modern and old games and with AMD FSR getting better and better I am sure the current iteration of the device will have plenty of life in it before most people actually NEED an upgrade. I have a full size PC with a 3070 but keep going back to my deck for all but the most demanding games or stuff that is better on a proper PC like Flight Simulator.
it literally does not run AAA games lol what are you playing hello kitty island adventure lmao show me one AAA game that can get more than 25 fps ill wait.....
@@fullsend_ny7948 "One of the first video games to be produced at a blockbuster or AAA scale was Squaresoft's Final Fantasy VII (1997)" It runs that at 300+ fps. Easy, next...
@@tomsmith5642 So you're playing a Bugthesda game that doesn't seem to be Steam Deck Verified. How is it shocking. Especially considering the developers.
@@pulseofme6884 Hes saying its not specifically modified to run on the steam deck like it was to run on the switch. you can play hella old games on the deck fine, its because Bethesda games are notoriously glitchy and crash alot.
Its actually interesting to see this be such a success. Their Steam Machines thing didn't go so well for them but they persevered and seem to have found the sweet spot for what people actually want from a Valve produced gaming machine.
I don't think it was too much of a surprise that steam deck has been a success back when the steam machine first released games which actually supported controllers was alittle lacking compared to what there is now and performance seems great for the price & form factor
@@Videogamer96_ Plus it index was a VR headset rather than a fully independent gaming system, you needed a pretty good PC as well. The price is the reason I have a Quest 2 and not an Index, though Id love the money for one,.
with the new big picture mode I do believe steam machines could be a success in the future. that being said big picture does need a LOT more stability updates before it would be ready for that
been loving my deck since i got it in late August. im still using it regularly as a time-killer at work, usually Vampire Survivors. i've moved away from modern AAA games on the deck cause i have a beefier PC, but it's great to know the deck can do it if asked to. it's easily the most important piece of gaming hardware in the past 5 years or so, it's really changed and expanded what "pc gaming" can be, and it's made every pre-built under $600 or so obsolete (for gaming)
Got one in January and I’ve loved it so far. The build quality is great, interface is convenient and it’s so easy to set up emulation. My dad also loves it to play his retro games.
@@WHITExTRASH101 Yes anything you can do on any pc is possible on steam deck. Now graphically intensive mods might tank your performance. Someone would have to identify steam deck friendly mods.
@@starscream6629 sorry for asking but I am really thinking about getting a steam deck especially for my vacation coming up. What search engine does the steam deck have as the default?
In the spirit of community support, it's also awesome that not only are devs starting to mention how their games will run on the Deck when promoting them, but I've noticed a few CZcams reviewers now explicitly having a "How does it run on Steam Deck?" section on their reviews of games now, even sometimes highlighting the steps they need to take if it's not officially verified by Steam, or if it's a silver/gold ProtonDB title. That's really awesome, and is only going to encourage even more exploration and tinkering with the device.
@Jack Smith don't really understand the need to compare it to the Switch. They have different use-cases. I own both a Steam Deck and a Switch (multiple Switches actually: original, OLED, and Lite), and consistently use my OLED Switch and Steam Deck for different games and reasons.
1 year later still one of my best purchases. The new fun feeling for me still hasn't worn off. It's just way too convenient of a device and knowing future iterations will be even better and more powerful makes it all the more interesting.
Have been using it stream a lot of games using it as a primary controller as of late, I really enjoy the feel of its layout, also this thing is literally S tier device for flights, you will have to run some smaller indies to manage a long lasting battery, but it definitely works without hassle
I literally got mine today! We ordered it about Wednesday last week and so far I’m loving it. Bit of a learning curve and some fiddling with key binds, but so far so good!
I think the tinkering does wear off but it is nice going through that phase and becoming well versed in your options and how to execute them. So when you do run into something that doesn't work quite the way you want it to, you have a lot of first hand knowledge to solve it.
I think the only reason tinkering has cooled off for me is that most of the tweaks and mods an average user/gamer would be interested in are already available and streamlined. Decky Loader and EmuDeck have made it so easy to set themselves up, there's hardly any tinkering left to do.
Except when you go to Linus Tech tips, Linus is always making some kind of improvement on the design of the steam deck in order to improve performance heat exchange, and Power usability. And I'm super glad that he keeps uploading new and interesting changes and other people doing the same thing on their channels, because ultimately what's going to come of this is valve will just keep improving on it and using the information they have researched from these CZcamsrs and create something just like that for the deck in the future, I think the future is very bright for the steam deck. It actually kind of reminds me of Android when they first came out, people had iPhones laughed at it, thinking that it would never become as great as iphone, well in more ways than one the Android has rivaled over in many cases, maybe not all, but most people typically go towards Android anyway for various other reasons, but that's because they kept on that same Improvement Route and just kept improving upon the technology. And funny enough, when the crypto Market was taking all the gpus and CPU technology and making it really expensive, that market actually sped up the process of making better cards, yes they were expensive, but I believe that is coming down and we get the fruits of that labor in better Hardware, which is another reason why the steam deck exists funny enough. Steam needed good enough Hardware to run most of their games, and here we are, and I only see improvements on this technology into the future.
My PSP 1000 and PSP vita were my favorites growing up, but this steam deck is beautiful. The device has only been with me for seven months and I love it. I have a decent PC built , but lately I was feeling overwhelmed by sitting in a chair and booting up my computer. With my steam deck, I've been playing more than I do with my pc. It comes in handy on trips , little stuff around the house etc. I haven't even scratched the surface of the emulation yet, but valve created an awesome machine. Definitely one of my best purchases last year, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.
I just got one. It looks pretty cool but what I'm most happy is that it's pushing a lot of improvements to Linux, specially Linux gaming! Also liked that it's repairable and not a black box that if you change anything it's instantly bricked
I recently got my deck about 2 months ago and I love it. Helped play some old games I loved. New ones. Etc. It works amazingly. So many tutorials online too to mod it and put emulators. It's great
The sales numbers given by the KDE developer are perhaps some of the most accurate. Because the linux OS on the steamdeck uses the KDE desktop - the KDE devs can see some variation on how many unique devices are pulling in the KDE software updates.
Thanks a lot for this update! You touched on some of the reservations I still have (mainly battery life and compatibility with newer, more demanding games). I'm still in two ways about it. On the one hand, it looks like a fun thing to mess around with but on the other hand, it seems like a lot of money (from my personal point of view) for something which I'm not yet sure I'll use very often as I spend most of my time behind my computer screen anyways. I do enjoy watching these kind of updated review video's. I'm happy to see that the reception for the Steam Deck is still positive
I'm in front of my pc all day for work and the deck is amazing. Can easily move around the house with it. Battery life is no big deal, I get about 3.5 hrs on red dead 2. If I'm not near an outlet I just play a less demanding game if I want to save on battery. I could play Hogwarts at max settings on my pc but I prefer playing it on the deck just because it's the kind of game that is perfect to play in bed. Its def worth grabbing one. And if you are home you can just stream from your pc to the deck and get like 8 hrs
@@thomasjameson9011 they said the next one will have the exact same specs but be more compact. ayaneo next 2 is the ultra powerful new one people will be getting if they care about more graphical power. but valve wants it to be uniform so developers can easily optimize it for the deck without having to optimize it for multiple decks
@AntonioRivera28 well I mean you have to get the new one to keep up with modern games. If not than you have an emulation machine anyone can get for 100 bucks
Finally got mine last week and I’ve made more progress in my games than I did with my laptop in the last year (hadn’t purchased any games since nov 21) and I got mine within 5 days so supply seems really good
Same, and I got the docking station and enjoy how all I had to do was plug to TV and pair my PS5 controller and Steam automatically sets all the settings so it's just plug'n'play. Not having an Xbox, being able to play Vampire Survivors on a TV with PS5 controller is too great.
@@tomsmith5642 really? That’s the first game I installed when I got mine with no changes and it worked flawlessly, haven’t finished it or even gone to bleakfalls battle yet but I’ve done some missions from the companions, maybe try reinstalling the game and then maybe a fresh install of steam? Might be something didn’t get updated?
Still loving this device because of Valve's bravery to use Linux instead of Windows. Also, you can use it as a normal desktop PC when you hook it up to an external monitor or a lapdock.
Best thing since sliced bread! I'm an adult with a 10y old child, a job and (because I hate Windows since I studied Computer Science;) without a windows PC in my home. So I can't really play much since around 10 years. And now, boom, I play with my daughter retro games and Nintendo games, and when she goes to bed, I can play my huge backlog on the couch :). A life changer!!
I took my steam deck on a 10 hour road trip and it never died. I occasionally had to play it while it was hooked up to the usb charger in the car, but it still managed to play No Man's Sky without issue across multiple states.
@@dionysus3774 I picked up No Man's Sky a few days ago on steam deck (Steam sale was too good to pass up). Imo it runs great! I have it on standard settings capped at 40fps and for the most part it holds that pretty well. The only time I get heavy dips is when exiting/entering a planet's atmosphere, but it's very brief and imo doesn't impact playability.
the queue went back up around christmas, said it'd take till march, then round january the queue was gone, and i managed to get mine in by the end of january. loving it so far.
I freaking love my steam deck. I'm going to have to have an overnight stay at the hospital after surgery here soon and the fact that I can have my deck to fight the boredom makes it was less of a big deal for me
In short, I’m three months into having my bb & I’ve had a great experience with my Steam Deck; as Jake mentioned in the video as well, I found myself having a blast getting familiarized with the tweaks & different specs (none of which I knew) to custom fit each game. From someone who’s never much batted an eye to the PC gaming scene, my whole experience, I feel like has also made me lil more tech-savvy most notably in the emulation scenes, lol from now paying attention to optimization features, VRAM, CPUs, & other specs, things I would’ve never paid attention to as a console gamer, etc My experience from 16 Gen up until WiiU, I’ve had a blast. Maybe in a few years, we’ll see Valve drop a Deck 2 with OLED but overall .. Thank you, Valve ❤️
Yo, I just wanted to ask how hard it was to figure out how to emulate or the difficulty in doing that? I'm not particularly tech-savvy but I'm thinking about getting a Steam Deck. Do you mind sharing what I should expect if I get one? Or how big and long the learning curve would be? Thanks in advance ^^
@@questionsayer honestly not too bad at all, I’d say from NES up until PS2/GameCube era, you shouldn’t have too much difficulty (once you watch a good guide for better understanding), but it’s as simple as finding a good Emulator(software used to run emulated games) & a trusty “Rom” site, to download your game, and dumping the games into the correct folders corresponding to the system. In hindsight, it may look daunting, but overall it’s a positive bettering experience.
Absolutely love mine. From playing Indies/ random cravings like Overlord 2 to solid emulation and recently getting WoW running on it so that I can keep up while away from home this little thing is a dream
@@alaskanmalamute101 I've thrown a small keyboard and a mouse in my bag along with a USBC hub so that I can play mostly as I would when home but if you tinker with mods and such you can get it to feel okay as a gamepad
Got one for my birthday a few weeks ago and it’s fantastic! There’s always games I want to play but I also want to spend time away from my PC. Being able to play through my steam library chunks at a time is amazing
As a dude who loves playing around with Linux, I happy for the success of Steam Deck even if I don't own one. Thanks for Valve's funding, Wine, DXVK, VKD3D, etc. are getting more and more powerful and as of now I can play everything I personally want to play without needing a Windows install!
I haven't felt like that little kid on christmas morning opening up my Nintendo 64 till I got my Steam Deck. I still love the Deck and it is a back log killer!
As a Q1 Deck owner this thing has basically become a part of my life, as much as my cellphone. I love it. However, I got to use a new Deck and let's just say that recent hardware feels better. Sticks were smoother, buttons weren't as likely to get stuck pressed in, fan was marginally quieter, and the Steam/QAM buttons had a nice tactile click instead of the mush that mine has.
The Steam Deck has been on my wishlist for a hot minute, a few of my friends and coworkers have one and I hear nothing but great things on it. I've been doing a lot of research on it as well, and the things that you can do with it is just crazy. Especially in regards to emulation. I have so many games on Steam that I have yet to play, because I just don't feel like loading up my laptop and hooking it up to my TV to play them. It'd be nice to be able to have one just solely for games, as I use my laptop for a bunch of other stuff (video/photo editing, music production, etc. I hope I can get one in the next few months!
Im really happy how desktop mode has been upgraded. When i first tried it docked it was really slow. But right now, im using it as my main pc because the performance has surpassed my laptop(granted its a pretty old laptop). I never expected to use it as my main pc when i got the deck.
I didn't use mine at first, now that I've gotten to know it and the type of games that work great on it, I couldn't live without it now. If you're an indie/roguelike/lite and older game fan, this device is epic IMO.
It was a superb decision I made to purchase the steam deck. As a pc gamer with a decent size steam library I'd recommend 100% if you fall into those 2 categories. I travel for work so I can now bring my handheld pc with me. Battery life is definitely a con but there are ways to deal with it. I'm looking forward to add dual booting (windows) for some games that I can't play just haven't had the time. Also an endless emulation monster
It's been awesome since I got mine back in July. I work a 14 hour rotation and my job is absolutely dead on the night shift so having this has been amazing. Especially for going back and playing that massive backlog of games I bought on steam but never even downloaded before. I did have the battery completely die and didn't feel like sending it off and waiting on repairs so I ordered the overpriced ifixit kit. Battery swap takes extreme caution and patience and took about 15 minutes start to finish but not recommended unless you have experience repairing things like smart phones. But aside from that, no issues with stick drift or anything else yet!
Love mine, had it a couple of months now. Use it for indie games on my steam library and to emulate psp games. Also the fact I can play Sims 2 on it better than I can on my PC is awesome. I use the deck more than my ps5.
Although I don't own a Steam Deck, I am a Linux user, and I'm SO happy to see it being so successful. Because of its success, it's pushing Linux gaming forward very quickly, so more and more games are getting officially supported on Linux and people don't have to jump through as many hoops or apply dodgy hacks in order to get games to work, and hopefully we'll see a time where developers are making a Linux version a priority as much as Windows.
Had it since April. Had been a PC gamer and then overtime I got more and more into consoles. My last one was a 360 that got rrod. Been a parent in between sitting in a corner somewhere or taking over the main TV was harder and harder. Steam Deck definitely rescued my gaming
I've had the Steam Deck for about 6 months now (got it right before my birthday!) and it has been what I use EVERY night before bed. Being able to listen to youtube and play games in my bed like I can on my desktop is KILLER. Wish I could do that with any other console without using a capture card, haha
As someone who works remote and sits at a desk 8-9 hours of the day, i rarely touched my gaming PC. since I've bought a steam deck, its been a great gaming experience.
I used to love taking my PSP with me everywhere back in the day, and the Steam Deck has basically been an adult replacement. I love whipping this thing out at work to try and beat a difficult boss on Elden ring or playing a quick song on Guitar Hero. It’s basically a perfect system for me and I will definitely buy any new iteration they come up with.
I'm a console player. I'm thinking about getting the basic steam deck for playing old games. GH is one of my favorite games. How did you manage to play GH?
I've been using it as a laptop replacement, hardly use it handheld. Been great, it's really powerful and the built-in screen means it's a portal dual monitor setup.
I love my Steam Deck! Not my first handheld, but it’s my first gaming PC. I played Fallout 4 on Steamdeck for hours every morning for weeks when I couldn’t sleep and was recovering from surgery. Smooth experience, and I got decent battery life with a few tweaks. Love the continued updates and customer support from Valve. There are some games I want to play that I can’t, like Dragon Age 2 and Scars Above, but some of them are supposed to be playable soon. LOVE the Deck.
@@littlechocolateoxox it’s been a while since I played, TBH - been playing Forbidden West on PS5, so the Deck is ignored right now - but I lowered the frame rate and turned some other settings off, like motion blur. I didn’t get crazy battery life, but it was a lot better. And there’s only so much the Steam Deck can do without recharging, or being on a power brick. The great thing about the Deck is the community - there are tutorials out there for how to set up almost every game for the Deck. Have fun! It’s a great machine.
I have a gaming PC with a 6900XT, yet I find myself mostly playing on my steam deck. I have a few select titles (mostly multiplayer shooters and Forza) that I will play exclusively on my PC for various reasons, but I also picked up a few older titles during the steam sale to play primarily on my deck. The Yakuza series has been excellent on it so far, as well as Metro the Spyro trilogy.
Single best piece of tech I've bought in years. I was really sick when I got mine and couldn't use my PC much. My deck allowed me to have a PC in bed without the difficulty or lack of ergonomics of a laptop. I have 1TB storage and over 50 games on it. Used it nearly every day, even 6 months later. It's been a struggle learning Linux quirks for a complete novice, but also incredibly rewarding figuring out that stuff. My only true issue is battery life. Running at full power can get you as low as 90 minutes, but if you avoid the most demanding titles, getting between 2-5 hours is enough for me.
OLED uses 4x power as led so valve will prob never put it in one since they value battery life over a slight increase in image quality. Maybe micro led screens will be in the next one
@@AntonioRivera28 Mini LED screens would still be a step up. Also, where did you learn that OLED uses 4x more power than normal LED? I'm almost certain that's not true
@@Nedlius it was some breakdown video of the differences. it's why I avoided an oled screen for my laptop. But I've heard it multiple times from multiple sources
@@AntonioRivera28 I'm basing most of my skepticism on the fact that the switch OLED and normal switch both use the same internals (the OLED switch even has a slightly bigger screen), yet they have the same battery life (the OLED being better in some cases)
I love my Steam Deck, and it completely took over the job of my Switch. It's great for when I go visit my wife's family, 1/3rd around the world. I play all sorts of games on it, and since they fixed most of the docking issues I also use it as the media PC plugged into my TV. I ordered the version with the biggest storage from the get-go so I usually don't have to fiddle around with storage too much either. The one problem I have is that the battery indicator is being stupid and drops from 100% to 3% in a matter of minutes, and then I can keep playing for hours.
I've been really enjoying remote play. The latency is really low, and it's great to be able to crank up the settings on the PC, then just lay back and have the battery last hours.
I got my steam deck back in August of last year. I mainly use it as a supplement to my gaming laptop, a GTX 1060 with a core i7 8750, not bad, but starting to get a bit long in the tooth. I travel a lot for work, I house sit/pet sit and usually bring my steam deck, switch and laptop. Now, I can game on the deck or switch while watching CZcams on my laptop. The battery life isn't too bad for me as I usually use it in short bursts, and now that I have the official dock, I play it on my TV with a dualshock 4. Works great!
I love it for allowing me to PC game in other rooms in the house via the docks. I am not always down in the office with my desktop but instead can game in the living room and then bedroom on the TV - awesome product!
For me, the Steam Deck has been so nice while traveling for work. Being in my hotel and playing on it is nice, I could bring my gaming laptop, but then I have to bring my work laptop + my gaming laptop, that's just annoying. Plane trips when paired with a high watt external battery removes any fears I had of battery life. It is a good experience overall.
@@jponz85 haha, trust me, I tried using my personal device for work stuff when I was first officially hired on (was a freelancer at first), I can get away with it for a little while, but then they ask, "why aren't you using your company computer?" then I get a lecture on their security policies.
Love it man, finally found a Borderlands game that doesn't crash the Deck, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands works great, 8000 games is more than enough although I won't say no to more. I've enjoyed the Steam Deck for the last 12 months, games that crash are upsetting but you quickly learn that 'playable' titles may present issues, overall Valve have created a worthy, portable games machine.
I think SteamOS has the potential to reshape the entire PC landscape once it's out for desktops. It's like a Trojan horse for Linux. People are gonna download it on their Desktop PCs for a smooth couch PC gaming experience, then realize how usable it is for everything else non-gaming related. I bet within 10 years time, you'll be able to buy gaming PCs with SteamOS pre-intalled.
Been playing on it since March 2022, upgraded to a 1Tb SSD on July. I use it alot... I even stopped using my main PC that is top of the line, just for the ease of use of the Deck. I just sit at the couch and have fun with lots of games I have. I even got old game like NFS Underground, Underground2, and Most Wanted (2005) running on it. Im having a blast, and I love it. It revolutionized how I play :)
Its a great little device but when I got it I thought, I can play in the living room, I can play on public transport, on the plane, I can play everywhere, but then the question came - Do I really need to be gaming all the time? And if I do game, surely there's a time and place to make it the best possible rather than the mindset of no matter where, the quality, or anything, I must be able to game. I sold mine after 4 months, I'd rather have the best setup for games rather than the ability to play them anywhere at a sacrifice of quality and size. I tried bigger title on steam deck and thought it was pretty poor compared to a good PC or even a console. You've got to ask yourself if you already have a console or a PC rig, should all my spare time be invested in gaming? I only got to that question once I bought the steam deck.
Just got a steam deck a few weeks ago and love the shit out of it. There are obviously some flaws, but the good stuff definitely outweighs the bad. I haven't even emulated anything yet, which is one of the main reasons I bought it, because I've been enjoying going through my steam library as is. It's extremely close to taking the cake as my favorite console of all time from the Switch. I look forward to whatever revisions Valve makes in the future.
I just got my deck like 2 weeks ago and so far i really love it. It's a great device. As a Linux user i am already familiar with most of the desktop side of things and therefore got no issues i wasn't able to resolve.
It's just nice to see a company try, instead of making a thing and not fixing issues when they happen. Also my battery has been fine, but I usually try to pay attention to performance. I try to use the per game performance settings when I can.
The massive success and the amazing results brought by the steam deck gives me hopes Sony might try coming back to the portable market. I love my steam deck, I’m in Australia and it was hard to get one but I’d love to see if Sony can match it. I love trophy hunting and would love to do it on the go again like with the Vita
Bro i feel you, i really wish Sony would make a new handheld, i never had the Vita but the PSP was my childhood! i loved that device so much and i would play on it everyday and bring it with me everywhere! I have it since i was probably around 11 years, im now 24 and i still use the same old psp and ive been having lots of fun playing recently since i discovered i can play emulated games on it.
I m not sure if the principles of Sony and Steam are on par, especially on the financial sector in order to gamble again with something like a portable device. Sony was always greedy af (no judging there), whereas Steam is more on the side of customers/developers.
I miss the Vita...😢 I sold mine a few years ago after owning it for so many years. I loved it, and I'm sad that it had this level of potential, but Sony didn't go through with it
The steam deck people are saying is better than the switch when it comes to optimization, especially if you are a pc gamer the portability with the steam deck is amazing
There's one huge thing still missing is the ease of installing mods. I finally got to install the fully voiced mod for FF7 and Trails in the Sky. I had to learn new Linux commands and it took me couple of tries. Some of the instructions were still unclear so it didn't work but I figured it out. Needless to say, it was an ordeal. I just hope that workshop for steam gets a bigger update so that we can do these things without messing with too much in the desktop mode.
I love my steam deck! My wife’s father passed in March 22. We found ourselves on a plane traveling back and forth frequently. I really missed my ps4, specifically elden ring, so I got a deck off of eBay. Didn’t really over pay and it was new. Slapped a high capacity card and it’s been awesome! I even use it on the dock and ps4 controller. Currently playing elden ringing+2, final fantasy crisis core, etc. I love this thing!
@@sutnack7537 12fps? You can adjust wattage, frame rate and performance. I always get max frames on minimum wattage but if the frame rate goes down 10 frames, I just up the wattage by two and it's fine
With the dock the steam deck is great. I don't really like sitting at the pc to play games so being able to play steam games (and do lots of emulation!) On the tv or on handheld is amazing!
Another thing about the deck people dont bring up but is a HUGE quality of life is Steam Input!!! Customize your controls, with or without gyro, radial menus (for MMOs), multi-staged button presses and even double button presses. I would have never thought of playing an MMO like wow, FF, or SWTOR on a handheld. Having 20+ keybinds easily without a radial menu is stunning
It's just an amazing system. With all the updates it's become just a great pick up and play system like the switch. It's definitely in my top 5 for favorite systems of all time.
I bought a used gaming laptop a few years ago (1050m, 16gb, i7 can’t remember generation but it was again) and I could play almost any game on at least a mix of low/medium and I was running Linux (first experience) and it was pretty great but I didn’t play it a whole lot because I don’t have a dedicated desk area. When the Steam Deck released I sold the laptop and bought the Deck (did have to pay a little more but not much) and it was the best decision for me. Handheld gaming has always been my preference and between this and the switch I am extremely happy.
The steam deck stores shaders for the games on internal so 64gb is really only an option if you plan on upgrading it to 1-2tbs I have a 512gb model and 300gb of it are nothing but shaders for games on my sd cards. So I cant recommend the 512 enough if you dont want to take it apart. Some games have 4gb of shaders or more so I cant see a 64gb non upgraded model being viable if you plan on having more than 1 sd card of games
Chose the middle option. The small 64 option has no storage, so you'd probably have to upgrade immediately. The most expensive option has an ugly anti glare screen. 512 was the logical option. Don't need to upgrade immediately, have space, no ugly screen.
@@XboxxxGuy the anti glare is actually really nice. It's definitely nice to have when playing during the day. Other than that there is no visual difference between the 2
I really hope they put the thing in stores soon. I want to see the device to go semi more main stream I’ve been loving the thing lately for Elden Ring and Dolphin mainly. Just yesterday I managed to get Metroid Prime Trilogy running well with the Primehack version of Dolphin and it’s been an absolute blast. The docked play is also awesome. I loved the Switch’s hybrid nature and this thing captures that extremely well. The official dock is great btw. Battery life is crazy good for emulation, and even on one of the roughest games: Elden Ring - it’s still alright. A battery pack is a necessity for more intense games, even just for convenience if you aren’t on the go a lot. 100% my favorite way to play games right now, by a large margin. It’s currently my primary device
I got mine Dec. 30th 2022 and it's been phenomenal, I don't own a gaming pc and the only consoles I have are an OLED Switch and a PS4, I loved the games on the PS4 that I would play but I hated sitting still in front of a tv and I loved my switch a LOT but I felt like I was really missing out on a lot of games I wanted to play. The Deck has genuinely been amasing, I have an hour long commute normally to get to work and just having the ability to play like Jedi Fallen Order (you have to start the game while connected to wifi to make it work on the go which is stupid but meh), Uncharted 4, We Happy Few on the go has been absolutely wonderful. Can't wait to see what else they decide to do moving forward bc this thing is awesome
Got my deck in August. Had to do 2 RMAs, but I still love the thing. First RMA was for GPU issues and the second was dead screen pixels. Yeah, that sucked, but the Deck kind of refreshed my love of gaming. It has me legitimately tearing through my backlog, which I'm notoriously bad at.
Got my steam deck at the beginning of the year, and I have some minor gripes with stability and multi locale support (I like to play Japanese rpgs and things which sometimes require Japanese locale. Yes I am aware of the scripts but, I have no idea what I am doing and it seems like a weird thing to lock, especially as it releases in other locales.) Other than that though, I freaking love this thing. Just about anything I have thrown at it has run awesomely. Somethings require a bit of extra work to get running, but its satisfying if and when you finally get it.
I believe they added some settings a while back now in Desktop mode to make changing your locale easier. Expand your system tray (arrow bottom left corner in desktop mode) then click the little settings icon in the top right corner of that window that pops up, then click the "entries" tab. You can find options for what is displayed on your bottom bar. I believe there is a toggle for locale in there that you can set to "always show".
@@sirdinkus6537 sadly doesn't help as the only locales available are one called C (which does nothing) and American English. I can't access other locales. From what I read I need to run this script which will unlock the locale I want but it requires what I assume is root or something that requires a password. I tried setting up a password and it asks for an authenticator password thing, which is where I am stumped. I have authentication apps on my phone, none of which provide a password as far as I know. At this point, though, i have to stop and ask why? Why can't we add/download other locales? Why does it require all this messing around with sudo, passwords, and authentication apps just to allow a game/program to use another locale? If i can download other languages for a keyboard no problem and change Steam's language, why can't I change locale? What truly bugs me isn't so much that it takes work to do, but that you have to mess with root for something that feels artificially restricted and is only temporary. Though, maybe this is just me being afraid to mess stuff up combined with the fact that I grew up using windows. 🤷♂️ Thanks for the help though ^.^
Update: i got stuff figured out. forget what i said about authentication apps. im a noob. it was asking me for the previous password which i thought failed to go in. i also was not aware that when the terminal asks for your password, it does not give you any feedback.😮💨
It’s a neat device, but my use case involves a lot of switching back and forth between handheld and TV play during a game and it’s not so great at that. It’s pretty common to need to do a lot of manual tweaking for each switch (reorder controllers, change UI scaling, change resolution) and I really wish Valve could bake in some magic to make that transition seamless like Nintendo does.
Ordered my deck 2 weeks ago, took 3 days to get to my door. Couldn't be happier with it! I was finally playing on my couch the other day, streaming Jedi Fallen Order from my PC via steam link to my deck, that was connected to the TV. Seamlessly, with very little artifacts. I finally now have a console I guess (last one I ever had was Megadrive back when I was a kid). The only problem - it pushed me into a shopping frenzy on Steam, I bought so many games in the past 2 weeks. I guess Valve's plan is working :)
7 months with mine. I was already a PC gamer, since the days of the 286. I had also been using Linux as my main OS for well over a decade. I was disappointed with the Steam Box offerings, but was cautiously optimistic with Valves next attempt. Proton was already revolutionizing what was playable on Linux, so unlike Google, they learned, buckled down, and improved. The $5 pre-order was easy then. Then I waited. Didn't really get on the hype train, but when the hardware previews started showing, I was looking good. Than the early units started shipping, and it looked pretty decent! Meanwhile, Valve was doing the work on Proton and SteamOS in the background. Damned if it wasn't getting better every week! By the time mine arrived, there was even the boot video utility, so the community was tweaking and improving the whole experience. Another thing I've noticed, lots of these benefits are flowing to the upstream Linux community. I love it when I run into another Steam Decker user out in the world. Should start a Steam Deck Local User's group.
I've found that locking the frames to 40 gives me more battery life than I usually have time to commit to playing. I like that I have the option to crank everything up to the max if I want, or I can scale back and play for longer.
I’ve definitely enjoyed my Steam deck. I bought a Nexdock 360 for it and have played some older games like the Sierra adventure games. I have also got World of Warcraft working on it and do enjoy using it for that as well.
i completed cyberpunk exclusively on the steam deck last year, playing each day on my way to work and back. couldn't run it on my pc. this little thing is a monster
Nice
I legit just beat cyberpunk over again on my deck. It worked pretty damn good.
@@nc1901 what settings did you use? Every time I loaded it up it was a laggy mess. I want to give it another chance, but Id like something to base my tweaks on yk?
@@firefoxx903 Hmm I don't think I didn't anything crazy. But I do remember looking on google and searching for the best settings for cyberpunk on steam deck. Mine works good and looks pretty great. Definitely give it another shot if you can. It's a game that is absolutely worth it to experience in terms of the story, characters and music.
@@firefoxx903 I use Medium 800p FSR 2 Quality
Best gaming purchase I’ve made in years.. that extra hour or 2 I can play before bed without sitting at my desk has allowed me to play games I never thought I’d have a chance to play. Not to mention the nostalgic classics I can emulate
Agree 100% it’s changed my life for the positive I’m in bed earlier and able to play my back catalogue now.
That’s Awesome what size did you go with ? Looking to buy a 64gb tonight and pop a 1tb in there
@@gooeypanther That 64GB is going to be your boot drive, which is ok with me but its quite slow eMMC storage. For an SD card, 512GB is enough - if you need more, replace your 64GB eMMC with a 512GB SSD and it will still be cheaper than a single 1TB.
@@gooeypanther picked up the 64gb added external SD storage for now !!
@@hariskhan01 that’s good to know then, I saw a Samsung 512gb at best buy for $59
I decided to take the plunge and go all out and buy the 512gb version. I drive 18 wheelers for a living and i work about 8-11 hours a day depending on how fast warehouses are operating and there are days where i wait around for hours and hours. I bought a verified to work car charger and i'm going to be firing this thing up on slow days and connecting it to my hotspot and just gaming while i wait. Glad to see the deck is such a great value.
I'm also a truck driver how's it doing you man before I get one
@@juanrobledo5317 still runs great. I played the most during waiting time hasn't failed me
Kudos im also an truck driver im gonna buy this too😊
I’m a trucker too, thinking about getting one because the Nintendo switch is beneath me
@@davebloomfield8468yeah the switch kinda feels like a kids toy compared to this. Don’t forget screen protectors everyone! Anyone taking this thing outside should consider dust caps for all the electrical ports, a protective case & a carry case. It’s not built outta bricks.
As someone who doesn’t have a gaming pc, this has been incredible. Being able to dock it to a monitor allows me to play the city builder style games with all the little details, whilst still being able to go handheld for the simpler stuff. Great console!
Just curious, what city building games have you been playing?
@@Lvl69Dad I've been playing Cities Skylines, it's pretty dope
@@DreamerByDay95Damn that works on the deck? Surprised
I can't believe it's been out for a year already! It's been a solid gaming/pc device. Emulation has been amazing also!
Lol, Mr. Baldino, like me, u are a careful klutz.
kina virus released to fk up the elections...millions dead, billion+ with heart/organ issues...evil know no bounds, 100% intentionally released...just to get one man out of office, one man they could not buy/control....Godless people will always create hell !!!
Just buy a laptop if you want a portable pc lmao
@@Jactional this thing is definitely bulky but it's definitely easier to carry around than a laptop. Cheaper too.
Is it good for anything BUT emulation?
The steam deck has been great for me as someone who has disabilities. I can't sit at a computer some days, but having the steam deck lets me play my games anyway 😊 I prefer the switch for travel because it's lighter but you can't really beat that extensive steam library.
Wow
Oh hugs dear, glad you are happy with it. ❤ can relate to what you say. 🥲🍀
This broad out here pretending like ADHD a fuckin traumatic disease lol.
I just ordered my steam deck I'm pretty excited
What is your disability? Being gorgeous? :D
Steam Deck is one of the greatest consoles I have ever owned. This is what I always wanted the vita to be. It’s super convenient if you have had steam for years, then you already have games ready to play on there. I find myself playing on here more than my PC mainly for the comfortability of laying in bed and playing my games. Absolutely love this device.
its gabage all mine does freeze 10 min in to a game freeze up ive tried lower all setting 5 min in to game fan kicks on the 5 min later crash
@@richardgray7159 did you get a faulty device? mayne return it ... i really want to know because im considering buying it
@@SuicidalSummerSnowWoman well mine has frozen like 2 times since ive owned it all year.
@@SuicidalSummerSnowWoman so one person moaning about his freezing all the time has put you off from the the hundreds of comments here praising it? Get a sense of proportion.
Had my Deck for a little over 3 months , And I am still being impressed by how well it runs both modern and old games and with AMD FSR getting better and better I am sure the current iteration of the device will have plenty of life in it before most people actually NEED an upgrade. I have a full size PC with a 3070 but keep going back to my deck for all but the most demanding games or stuff that is better on a proper PC like Flight Simulator.
Have a 3060 Ti FTW, agree with you. Just streaming the demanding games to it.
it literally does not run AAA games lol what are you playing hello kitty island adventure lmao show me one AAA game that can get more than 25 fps ill wait.....
@@fullsend_ny7948 "One of the first video games to be produced at a blockbuster or AAA scale was Squaresoft's Final Fantasy VII (1997)"
It runs that at 300+ fps.
Easy, next...
God of war elden ring both 35 to 45 fps at high settings
It is still such an amazing device. It allowed me to game again, despite my busy schedule.
@@tomsmith5642factory reset your device and reinstall everything
@@tomsmith5642 So you're playing a Bugthesda game that doesn't seem to be Steam Deck Verified. How is it shocking. Especially considering the developers.
Would it be worth getting faster storage to emulate BotW on the Switch?
@Alan Carlino bro a potatoe can run skyrim it shouldn't have crashing issues in 2023 if every, including a switch can run it without crashing.
@@pulseofme6884 Hes saying its not specifically modified to run on the steam deck like it was to run on the switch. you can play hella old games on the deck fine, its because Bethesda games are notoriously glitchy and crash alot.
Its actually interesting to see this be such a success. Their Steam Machines thing didn't go so well for them but they persevered and seem to have found the sweet spot for what people actually want from a Valve produced gaming machine.
I forgot that the Valve Machine existed.
The Valve Index was pretty successful, just super expensive
I don't think it was too much of a surprise that steam deck has been a success back when the steam machine first released games which actually supported controllers was alittle lacking compared to what there is now and performance seems great for the price & form factor
@@Videogamer96_ Plus it index was a VR headset rather than a fully independent gaming system, you needed a pretty good PC as well. The price is the reason I have a Quest 2 and not an Index, though Id love the money for one,.
with the new big picture mode I do believe steam machines could be a success in the future. that being said big picture does need a LOT more stability updates before it would be ready for that
been loving my deck since i got it in late August. im still using it regularly as a time-killer at work, usually Vampire Survivors. i've moved away from modern AAA games on the deck cause i have a beefier PC, but it's great to know the deck can do it if asked to. it's easily the most important piece of gaming hardware in the past 5 years or so, it's really changed and expanded what "pc gaming" can be, and it's made every pre-built under $600 or so obsolete (for gaming)
Got one in January and I’ve loved it so far. The build quality is great, interface is convenient and it’s so easy to set up emulation. My dad also loves it to play his retro games.
One of the best purchases I've made when it comes to gaming.
👌
Can you mod using the device? Like fallout 4 for instance using nexus?
@@WHITExTRASH101 Yes anything you can do on any pc is possible on steam deck. Now graphically intensive mods might tank your performance. Someone would have to identify steam deck friendly mods.
@@starscream6629 Oh cool, I just wanted gun mods from nexus.
@@starscream6629 sorry for asking but I am really thinking about getting a steam deck especially for my vacation coming up. What search engine does the steam deck have as the default?
In the spirit of community support, it's also awesome that not only are devs starting to mention how their games will run on the Deck when promoting them, but I've noticed a few CZcams reviewers now explicitly having a "How does it run on Steam Deck?" section on their reviews of games now, even sometimes highlighting the steps they need to take if it's not officially verified by Steam, or if it's a silver/gold ProtonDB title. That's really awesome, and is only going to encourage even more exploration and tinkering with the device.
@Jack Smith don't really understand the need to compare it to the Switch. They have different use-cases. I own both a Steam Deck and a Switch (multiple Switches actually: original, OLED, and Lite), and consistently use my OLED Switch and Steam Deck for different games and reasons.
@Jack Smith I didn't know the switch doubled as a home computer.
1 year later still one of my best purchases. The new fun feeling for me still hasn't worn off. It's just way too convenient of a device and knowing future iterations will be even better and more powerful makes it all the more interesting.
Nice
@@thomasjameson9011 500$ every 2 years is nothing lol
@@Austen688 Lol ikr
How long is your battery life? Does it still hold 90 minutes when playing triple a games?
The one reason I'm going to get one is that steam is the only platform that doesn't make you repurchase old games every generation.
Have been using it stream a lot of games using it as a primary controller as of late, I really enjoy the feel of its layout, also this thing is literally S tier device for flights, you will have to run some smaller indies to manage a long lasting battery, but it definitely works without hassle
I literally got mine today! We ordered it about Wednesday last week and so far I’m loving it. Bit of a learning curve and some fiddling with key binds, but so far so good!
I think the tinkering does wear off but it is nice going through that phase and becoming well versed in your options and how to execute them. So when you do run into something that doesn't work quite the way you want it to, you have a lot of first hand knowledge to solve it.
I think the only reason tinkering has cooled off for me is that most of the tweaks and mods an average user/gamer would be interested in are already available and streamlined. Decky Loader and EmuDeck have made it so easy to set themselves up, there's hardly any tinkering left to do.
@@sirdinkus6537 Decky is amazing.
Except when you go to Linus Tech tips, Linus is always making some kind of improvement on the design of the steam deck in order to improve performance heat exchange, and Power usability.
And I'm super glad that he keeps uploading new and interesting changes and other people doing the same thing on their channels, because ultimately what's going to come of this is valve will just keep improving on it and using the information they have researched from these CZcamsrs and create something just like that for the deck in the future, I think the future is very bright for the steam deck.
It actually kind of reminds me of Android when they first came out, people had iPhones laughed at it, thinking that it would never become as great as iphone, well in more ways than one the Android has rivaled over in many cases, maybe not all, but most people typically go towards Android anyway for various other reasons, but that's because they kept on that same Improvement Route and just kept improving upon the technology.
And funny enough, when the crypto Market was taking all the gpus and CPU technology and making it really expensive, that market actually sped up the process of making better cards, yes they were expensive, but I believe that is coming down and we get the fruits of that labor in better Hardware, which is another reason why the steam deck exists funny enough.
Steam needed good enough Hardware to run most of their games, and here we are, and I only see improvements on this technology into the future.
well yeah duh
My PSP 1000 and PSP vita were my favorites growing up, but this steam deck is beautiful. The device has only been with me for seven months and I love it. I have a decent PC built , but lately I was feeling overwhelmed by sitting in a chair and booting up my computer. With my steam deck, I've been playing more than I do with my pc. It comes in handy on trips , little stuff around the house etc. I haven't even scratched the surface of the emulation yet, but valve created an awesome machine. Definitely one of my best purchases last year, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.
I just got one. It looks pretty cool but what I'm most happy is that it's pushing a lot of improvements to Linux, specially Linux gaming!
Also liked that it's repairable and not a black box that if you change anything it's instantly bricked
I recently got my deck about 2 months ago and I love it. Helped play some old games I loved. New ones. Etc. It works amazingly. So many tutorials online too to mod it and put emulators. It's great
Really one of the best things to happen to gaming in years. I think the value is crazy with the $400 version and a cheap sd card.
Do you own a Steamdeck?
@@lexbeltran1354 i do ?
IMO the only real true "next Gen" experience. Everything else just feels more of the same of Gen 8.
The sales numbers given by the KDE developer are perhaps some of the most accurate. Because the linux OS on the steamdeck uses the KDE desktop - the KDE devs can see some variation on how many unique devices are pulling in the KDE software updates.
Thanks a lot for this update! You touched on some of the reservations I still have (mainly battery life and compatibility with newer, more demanding games).
I'm still in two ways about it. On the one hand, it looks like a fun thing to mess around with but on the other hand, it seems like a lot of money (from my personal point of view) for something which I'm not yet sure I'll use very often as I spend most of my time behind my computer screen anyways. I do enjoy watching these kind of updated review video's. I'm happy to see that the reception for the Steam Deck is still positive
I'm in front of my pc all day for work and the deck is amazing. Can easily move around the house with it. Battery life is no big deal, I get about 3.5 hrs on red dead 2. If I'm not near an outlet I just play a less demanding game if I want to save on battery. I could play Hogwarts at max settings on my pc but I prefer playing it on the deck just because it's the kind of game that is perfect to play in bed. Its def worth grabbing one.
And if you are home you can just stream from your pc to the deck and get like 8 hrs
It is a lot of money. And they need to be releasing a new one every 2 years cause it's gonna get outdated fast
@@thomasjameson9011 they said the next one will have the exact same specs but be more compact. ayaneo next 2 is the ultra powerful new one people will be getting if they care about more graphical power. but valve wants it to be uniform so developers can easily optimize it for the deck without having to optimize it for multiple decks
@AntonioRivera28 well I mean you have to get the new one to keep up with modern games. If not than you have an emulation machine anyone can get for 100 bucks
@@thomasjameson9011 no emulation machine for $100 can let you emulate 0s3 and xbox 360
Finally got mine last week and I’ve made more progress in my games than I did with my laptop in the last year (hadn’t purchased any games since nov 21) and I got mine within 5 days so supply seems really good
👍🏼
Same. I spent 18 hours straight on the thing (with an hour or so break to charge in between) when I got it 😅
Same, and I got the docking station and enjoy how all I had to do was plug to TV and pair my PS5 controller and Steam automatically sets all the settings so it's just plug'n'play. Not having an Xbox, being able to play Vampire Survivors on a TV with PS5 controller is too great.
@@tomsmith5642 Skyrim crashes on every device I play it on
@@tomsmith5642 really? That’s the first game I installed when I got mine with no changes and it worked flawlessly, haven’t finished it or even gone to bleakfalls battle yet but I’ve done some missions from the companions, maybe try reinstalling the game and then maybe a fresh install of steam? Might be something didn’t get updated?
Still loving this device because of Valve's bravery to use Linux instead of Windows. Also, you can use it as a normal desktop PC when you hook it up to an external monitor or a lapdock.
Best thing since sliced bread! I'm an adult with a 10y old child, a job and (because I hate Windows since I studied Computer Science;) without a windows PC in my home. So I can't really play much since around 10 years. And now, boom, I play with my daughter retro games and Nintendo games, and when she goes to bed, I can play my huge backlog on the couch :). A life changer!!
I took my steam deck on a 10 hour road trip and it never died. I occasionally had to play it while it was hooked up to the usb charger in the car, but it still managed to play No Man's Sky without issue across multiple states.
👌👌
I’m thinking of buying no man sky for the deck, does it run well?
@@dionysus3774 I picked up No Man's Sky a few days ago on steam deck (Steam sale was too good to pass up). Imo it runs great! I have it on standard settings capped at 40fps and for the most part it holds that pretty well. The only time I get heavy dips is when exiting/entering a planet's atmosphere, but it's very brief and imo doesn't impact playability.
It didn't die because you didn't play it
Wow it didnt die because you were charging it 😂
the queue went back up around christmas, said it'd take till march, then round january the queue was gone, and i managed to get mine in by the end of january. loving it so far.
My first experience with PC gaming and I love it, I got a lot more to learn but I’m amazed how good the steam deck is
I freaking love my steam deck. I'm going to have to have an overnight stay at the hospital after surgery here soon and the fact that I can have my deck to fight the boredom makes it was less of a big deal for me
In short, I’m three months into having my bb & I’ve had a great experience with my Steam Deck; as Jake mentioned in the video as well, I found myself having a blast getting familiarized with the tweaks & different specs (none of which I knew) to custom fit each game. From someone who’s never much batted an eye to the PC gaming scene, my whole experience, I feel like has also made me lil more tech-savvy
most notably in the emulation scenes, lol from now paying attention to optimization features, VRAM, CPUs, & other specs, things I would’ve never paid attention to as a console gamer, etc
My experience from 16 Gen up until WiiU, I’ve had a blast.
Maybe in a few years, we’ll see Valve drop a Deck 2 with OLED but overall ..
Thank you, Valve ❤️
Probably sooner
Hi bb
Yo, I just wanted to ask how hard it was to figure out how to emulate or the difficulty in doing that? I'm not particularly tech-savvy but I'm thinking about getting a Steam Deck. Do you mind sharing what I should expect if I get one? Or how big and long the learning curve would be? Thanks in advance ^^
@@questionsayer honestly not too bad at all,
I’d say from NES up until PS2/GameCube era, you shouldn’t have too much difficulty (once you watch a good guide for better understanding), but it’s as simple as finding a good Emulator(software used to run emulated games) & a trusty “Rom” site, to download your game, and dumping the games into the correct folders corresponding to the system.
In hindsight, it may look daunting, but overall it’s a positive bettering experience.
What version u get
Absolutely love mine. From playing Indies/ random cravings like Overlord 2 to solid emulation and recently getting WoW running on it so that I can keep up while away from home this little thing is a dream
whats it like with wow when i go away i often play wow on a laptop which i hate lol
@@alaskanmalamute101 I've thrown a small keyboard and a mouse in my bag along with a USBC hub so that I can play mostly as I would when home but if you tinker with mods and such you can get it to feel okay as a gamepad
Got one for my birthday a few weeks ago and it’s fantastic! There’s always games I want to play but I also want to spend time away from my PC. Being able to play through my steam library chunks at a time is amazing
Thanks for update! I missed out last year. Saving up for the Steam Deck 2 when it comes out..
As a dude who loves playing around with Linux, I happy for the success of Steam Deck even if I don't own one. Thanks for Valve's funding, Wine, DXVK, VKD3D, etc. are getting more and more powerful and as of now I can play everything I personally want to play without needing a Windows install!
I haven't felt like that little kid on christmas morning opening up my Nintendo 64 till I got my Steam Deck. I still love the Deck and it is a back log killer!
As a Q1 Deck owner this thing has basically become a part of my life, as much as my cellphone. I love it. However, I got to use a new Deck and let's just say that recent hardware feels better. Sticks were smoother, buttons weren't as likely to get stuck pressed in, fan was marginally quieter, and the Steam/QAM buttons had a nice tactile click instead of the mush that mine has.
Proper comprehensive video! Enjoyed it thoroughly, you've hit all of the questions for this stage. I salute you sir! 🥰🙏🐻
The Steam Deck has been on my wishlist for a hot minute, a few of my friends and coworkers have one and I hear nothing but great things on it. I've been doing a lot of research on it as well, and the things that you can do with it is just crazy. Especially in regards to emulation. I have so many games on Steam that I have yet to play, because I just don't feel like loading up my laptop and hooking it up to my TV to play them. It'd be nice to be able to have one just solely for games, as I use my laptop for a bunch of other stuff (video/photo editing, music production, etc. I hope I can get one in the next few months!
Loving my steam deck and you can't beat the price vs performance. Bravo to Valve!
Im really happy how desktop mode has been upgraded. When i first tried it docked it was really slow. But right now, im using it as my main pc because the performance has surpassed my laptop(granted its a pretty old laptop). I never expected to use it as my main pc when i got the deck.
I didn't use mine at first, now that I've gotten to know it and the type of games that work great on it, I couldn't live without it now. If you're an indie/roguelike/lite and older game fan, this device is epic IMO.
How long does your battery lasts while playing indie games?
It was a superb decision I made to purchase the steam deck. As a pc gamer with a decent size steam library I'd recommend 100% if you fall into those 2 categories. I travel for work so I can now bring my handheld pc with me. Battery life is definitely a con but there are ways to deal with it. I'm looking forward to add dual booting (windows) for some games that I can't play just haven't had the time. Also an endless emulation monster
It's been awesome since I got mine back in July. I work a 14 hour rotation and my job is absolutely dead on the night shift so having this has been amazing. Especially for going back and playing that massive backlog of games I bought on steam but never even downloaded before.
I did have the battery completely die and didn't feel like sending it off and waiting on repairs so I ordered the overpriced ifixit kit. Battery swap takes extreme caution and patience and took about 15 minutes start to finish but not recommended unless you have experience repairing things like smart phones. But aside from that, no issues with stick drift or anything else yet!
I play when it's slow too. It's very convenient. I can just pause and suspend it when I'm busy.
Love mine, had it a couple of months now. Use it for indie games on my steam library and to emulate psp games. Also the fact I can play Sims 2 on it better than I can on my PC is awesome. I use the deck more than my ps5.
Although I don't own a Steam Deck, I am a Linux user, and I'm SO happy to see it being so successful. Because of its success, it's pushing Linux gaming forward very quickly, so more and more games are getting officially supported on Linux and people don't have to jump through as many hoops or apply dodgy hacks in order to get games to work, and hopefully we'll see a time where developers are making a Linux version a priority as much as Windows.
Had it since April. Had been a PC gamer and then overtime I got more and more into consoles. My last one was a 360 that got rrod. Been a parent in between sitting in a corner somewhere or taking over the main TV was harder and harder. Steam Deck definitely rescued my gaming
I've had the Steam Deck for about 6 months now (got it right before my birthday!) and it has been what I use EVERY night before bed. Being able to listen to youtube and play games in my bed like I can on my desktop is KILLER. Wish I could do that with any other console without using a capture card, haha
Definitely a must have follow up video about steamdeck. thanks and keep it up!
I was actually watching your last review on the steam deck again.
Thanks for this.
As someone who works remote and sits at a desk 8-9 hours of the day, i rarely touched my gaming PC. since I've bought a steam deck, its been a great gaming experience.
Is desktop mode good like can u play games good or it’s bad
@@ErReal6663 yes, it's not ideal but with the right plugins, windows 10 and Linux work 👍
I used to love taking my PSP with me everywhere back in the day, and the Steam Deck has basically been an adult replacement. I love whipping this thing out at work to try and beat a difficult boss on Elden ring or playing a quick song on Guitar Hero. It’s basically a perfect system for me and I will definitely buy any new iteration they come up with.
Playing a quick song on guitar hero? Carry the guitar around? Lol
@@alexjones1802 maybe he is headbanging in the pantry or in front of the executives. 🤣🤣
I'm a console player. I'm thinking about getting the basic steam deck for playing old games. GH is one of my favorite games. How did you manage to play GH?
You really carry this huge handheld around at work 😂
I loved my PSP. I'm about to get the steam deck I think I don't even want a ps5 or new Xbox, I'd rather have this.
I've been using it as a laptop replacement, hardly use it handheld.
Been great, it's really powerful and the built-in screen means it's a portal dual monitor setup.
Great editing, thanks for the review
I love my Steam Deck! Not my first handheld, but it’s my first gaming PC. I played Fallout 4 on Steamdeck for hours every morning for weeks when I couldn’t sleep and was recovering from surgery. Smooth experience, and I got decent battery life with a few tweaks. Love the continued updates and customer support from Valve. There are some games I want to play that I can’t, like Dragon Age 2 and Scars Above, but some of them are supposed to be playable soon. LOVE the Deck.
👌👍🏼
What did you tweak
@@littlechocolateoxox it’s been a while since I played, TBH - been playing Forbidden West on PS5, so the Deck is ignored right now - but I lowered the frame rate and turned some other settings off, like motion blur. I didn’t get crazy battery life, but it was a lot better. And there’s only so much the Steam Deck can do without recharging, or being on a power brick. The great thing about the Deck is the community - there are tutorials out there for how to set up almost every game for the Deck. Have fun! It’s a great machine.
Its been a solid system, ive been using it like a pc with mouse and keyboard along with a dual monitor setup
Because it is a PC.. 😂
Does the steam deck output it’s game at 60-120fps at 4K in docked mode? (Never had a pc and dunno how it works or if possible) thanks!
@@IvanRubin NO
@@IvanRubin no, it does 60 fps in 1080, no 4k
I have a gaming PC with a 6900XT, yet I find myself mostly playing on my steam deck. I have a few select titles (mostly multiplayer shooters and Forza) that I will play exclusively on my PC for various reasons, but I also picked up a few older titles during the steam sale to play primarily on my deck. The Yakuza series has been excellent on it so far, as well as Metro the Spyro trilogy.
Single best piece of tech I've bought in years. I was really sick when I got mine and couldn't use my PC much. My deck allowed me to have a PC in bed without the difficulty or lack of ergonomics of a laptop. I have 1TB storage and over 50 games on it. Used it nearly every day, even 6 months later. It's been a struggle learning Linux quirks for a complete novice, but also incredibly rewarding figuring out that stuff. My only true issue is battery life. Running at full power can get you as low as 90 minutes, but if you avoid the most demanding titles, getting between 2-5 hours is enough for me.
Couldn't come at a better time. Getting one in April. Going big! Thanks Gameranx 😊
👌
@@gameranxTV 🤌
Saaaaame!!!
Why so late
I've been waiting for a compact/OLED steam deck somewhere down the line... super impressed with what I've seen so far though, keep it up Valve
OLED uses 4x power as led so valve will prob never put it in one since they value battery life over a slight increase in image quality. Maybe micro led screens will be in the next one
@@AntonioRivera28 Mini LED screens would still be a step up. Also, where did you learn that OLED uses 4x more power than normal LED? I'm almost certain that's not true
@@Nedlius it was some breakdown video of the differences. it's why I avoided an oled screen for my laptop. But I've heard it multiple times from multiple sources
@@AntonioRivera28 I'm basing most of my skepticism on the fact that the switch OLED and normal switch both use the same internals (the OLED switch even has a slightly bigger screen), yet they have the same battery life (the OLED being better in some cases)
I love my Steam Deck, and it completely took over the job of my Switch. It's great for when I go visit my wife's family, 1/3rd around the world. I play all sorts of games on it, and since they fixed most of the docking issues I also use it as the media PC plugged into my TV. I ordered the version with the biggest storage from the get-go so I usually don't have to fiddle around with storage too much either. The one problem I have is that the battery indicator is being stupid and drops from 100% to 3% in a matter of minutes, and then I can keep playing for hours.
I use my deck almost every day. One of the best things I ever bought! I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for it.
I've been really enjoying remote play. The latency is really low, and it's great to be able to crank up the settings on the PC, then just lay back and have the battery last hours.
The steam deck has been absolutely amazing for my work travel, I've managed to finish a few games that are 100's of hours long.
I got my steam deck back in August of last year. I mainly use it as a supplement to my gaming laptop, a GTX 1060 with a core i7 8750, not bad, but starting to get a bit long in the tooth. I travel a lot for work, I house sit/pet sit and usually bring my steam deck, switch and laptop. Now, I can game on the deck or switch while watching CZcams on my laptop. The battery life isn't too bad for me as I usually use it in short bursts, and now that I have the official dock, I play it on my TV with a dualshock 4. Works great!
I love it for allowing me to PC game in other rooms in the house via the docks. I am not always down in the office with my desktop but instead can game in the living room and then bedroom on the TV - awesome product!
For me, the Steam Deck has been so nice while traveling for work. Being in my hotel and playing on it is nice, I could bring my gaming laptop, but then I have to bring my work laptop + my gaming laptop, that's just annoying. Plane trips when paired with a high watt external battery removes any fears I had of battery life.
It is a good experience overall.
👌
Bro! Yes. I thought about buying a mini gaming pc since those are just becoming bigger and bigger for us travelers but steam deck a great choice 👍🏽
You could make your gaming laptop your work laptop as well lol
@@jponz85 haha, trust me, I tried using my personal device for work stuff when I was first officially hired on (was a freelancer at first), I can get away with it for a little while, but then they ask, "why aren't you using your company computer?" then I get a lecture on their security policies.
Love it man, finally found a Borderlands game that doesn't crash the Deck, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands works great, 8000 games is more than enough although I won't say no to more. I've enjoyed the Steam Deck for the last 12 months, games that crash are upsetting but you quickly learn that 'playable' titles may present issues, overall Valve have created a worthy, portable games machine.
Best investment I’ve made in years, valve has literally reshaped gaming with this one.
I think SteamOS has the potential to reshape the entire PC landscape once it's out for desktops. It's like a Trojan horse for Linux. People are gonna download it on their Desktop PCs for a smooth couch PC gaming experience, then realize how usable it is for everything else non-gaming related. I bet within 10 years time, you'll be able to buy gaming PCs with SteamOS pre-intalled.
@@sirdinkus6537 microsoft is definitely planning to change cancerous windows nt to linux kernel in the future
so, i guess linux will be fine
"literally"? No. It is shaped quite similarly to a Game Gear.
I want to get this to play RTS and city building games, have you tried any of those?
This guy clearly never owned a DS or game boy but yes the deck is cool glad to see they doin that stuff again
Been playing on it since March 2022, upgraded to a 1Tb SSD on July.
I use it alot... I even stopped using my main PC that is top of the line, just for the ease of use of the Deck. I just sit at the couch and have fun with lots of games I have.
I even got old game like NFS Underground, Underground2, and Most Wanted (2005) running on it. Im having a blast, and I love it. It revolutionized how I play :)
I have had mine for a couple of months now. I love it and play it at work whenever I can
Its a great little device but when I got it I thought, I can play in the living room, I can play on public transport, on the plane, I can play everywhere, but then the question came - Do I really need to be gaming all the time? And if I do game, surely there's a time and place to make it the best possible rather than the mindset of no matter where, the quality, or anything, I must be able to game.
I sold mine after 4 months, I'd rather have the best setup for games rather than the ability to play them anywhere at a sacrifice of quality and size. I tried bigger title on steam deck and thought it was pretty poor compared to a good PC or even a console.
You've got to ask yourself if you already have a console or a PC rig, should all my spare time be invested in gaming? I only got to that question once I bought the steam deck.
Just got a steam deck a few weeks ago and love the shit out of it. There are obviously some flaws, but the good stuff definitely outweighs the bad. I haven't even emulated anything yet, which is one of the main reasons I bought it, because I've been enjoying going through my steam library as is. It's extremely close to taking the cake as my favorite console of all time from the Switch. I look forward to whatever revisions Valve makes in the future.
The opposite with me lol. I've been emulating and playing Gamepass nonstop. Haven't even dug into my steam library.
I just got my deck like 2 weeks ago and so far i really love it. It's a great device. As a Linux user i am already familiar with most of the desktop side of things and therefore got no issues i wasn't able to resolve.
It's just nice to see a company try, instead of making a thing and not fixing issues when they happen.
Also my battery has been fine, but I usually try to pay attention to performance. I try to use the per game performance settings when I can.
The massive success and the amazing results brought by the steam deck gives me hopes Sony might try coming back to the portable market. I love my steam deck, I’m in Australia and it was hard to get one but I’d love to see if Sony can match it. I love trophy hunting and would love to do it on the go again like with the Vita
Bro i feel you, i really wish Sony would make a new handheld, i never had the Vita but the PSP was my childhood! i loved that device so much and i would play on it everyday and bring it with me everywhere! I have it since i was probably around 11 years, im now 24 and i still use the same old psp and ive been having lots of fun playing recently since i discovered i can play emulated games on it.
I m not sure if the principles of Sony and Steam are on par, especially on the financial sector in order to gamble again with something like a portable device. Sony was always greedy af (no judging there), whereas Steam is more on the side of customers/developers.
I miss the Vita...😢 I sold mine a few years ago after owning it for so many years. I loved it, and I'm sad that it had this level of potential, but Sony didn't go through with it
Welp hope you haven’t seen that travesty of a ‘portable device’ 😂
@KindaForgot it greatly disappointed me might as well be the playstation wii u
The steam deck people are saying is better than the switch when it comes to optimization, especially if you are a pc gamer the portability with the steam deck is amazing
Well also that you can play switch games on the deck lol. What do you mean about optimization?
There's one huge thing still missing is the ease of installing mods. I finally got to install the fully voiced mod for FF7 and Trails in the Sky. I had to learn new Linux commands and it took me couple of tries. Some of the instructions were still unclear so it didn't work but I figured it out. Needless to say, it was an ordeal. I just hope that workshop for steam gets a bigger update so that we can do these things without messing with too much in the desktop mode.
I just ordered mine, previously I had made a reservation for one but decided to hold off. Really glad I waited a year to get one.
I love my steam deck! My wife’s father passed in March 22. We found ourselves on a plane traveling back and forth frequently. I really missed my ps4, specifically elden ring, so I got a deck off of eBay. Didn’t really over pay and it was new. Slapped a high capacity card and it’s been awesome! I even use it on the dock and ps4 controller. Currently playing elden ringing+2, final fantasy crisis core, etc. I love this thing!
Can’t imagine elden ring at 12 fps that must be a whole ass experience
@@sutnack7537 12fps? You can adjust wattage, frame rate and performance. I always get max frames on minimum wattage but if the frame rate goes down 10 frames, I just up the wattage by two and it's fine
With the dock the steam deck is great. I don't really like sitting at the pc to play games so being able to play steam games (and do lots of emulation!) On the tv or on handheld is amazing!
👌
Another thing about the deck people dont bring up but is a HUGE quality of life is Steam Input!!! Customize your controls, with or without gyro, radial menus (for MMOs), multi-staged button presses and even double button presses.
I would have never thought of playing an MMO like wow, FF, or SWTOR on a handheld. Having 20+ keybinds easily without a radial menu is stunning
It's just an amazing system. With all the updates it's become just a great pick up and play system like the switch. It's definitely in my top 5 for favorite systems of all time.
This thing is just unbelievable. Ultimate emulator, portable powerhouse, cloud gaming, remote play, pc. Amazing device
I can't go back to life without my steam deck. Steam deck is love, steam deck is life.
Sad
Like was the ps vita
@@DiabloSlayer823 can't wait to play some steam deck with jeebus
not just for Christmas then?
I bought a used gaming laptop a few years ago (1050m, 16gb, i7 can’t remember generation but it was again) and I could play almost any game on at least a mix of low/medium and I was running Linux (first experience) and it was pretty great but I didn’t play it a whole lot because I don’t have a dedicated desk area. When the Steam Deck released I sold the laptop and bought the Deck (did have to pay a little more but not much) and it was the best decision for me. Handheld gaming has always been my preference and between this and the switch I am extremely happy.
Getting mine delivered tomorow and pretty excited.with my 250+ steam library abf emulation deck looks pretty lit
Hey Jake. What model Steam Deck are you using, and what experience do you have with it, and do you recommend it over the other models?
The steam deck stores shaders for the games on internal so 64gb is really only an option if you plan on upgrading it to 1-2tbs
I have a 512gb model and 300gb of it are nothing but shaders for games on my sd cards. So I cant recommend the 512 enough if you dont want to take it apart.
Some games have 4gb of shaders or more so I cant see a 64gb non upgraded model being viable if you plan on having more than 1 sd card of games
Chose the middle option. The small 64 option has no storage, so you'd probably have to upgrade immediately. The most expensive option has an ugly anti glare screen.
512 was the logical option. Don't need to upgrade immediately, have space, no ugly screen.
@@XboxxxGuy the anti glare is actually really nice. It's definitely nice to have when playing during the day. Other than that there is no visual difference between the 2
I really hope they put the thing in stores soon. I want to see the device to go semi more main stream
I’ve been loving the thing lately for Elden Ring and Dolphin mainly. Just yesterday I managed to get Metroid Prime Trilogy running well with the Primehack version of Dolphin and it’s been an absolute blast.
The docked play is also awesome. I loved the Switch’s hybrid nature and this thing captures that extremely well. The official dock is great btw.
Battery life is crazy good for emulation, and even on one of the roughest games: Elden Ring - it’s still alright. A battery pack is a necessity for more intense games, even just for convenience if you aren’t on the go a lot.
100% my favorite way to play games right now, by a large margin. It’s currently my primary device
thx for the info, wish u good luck n good health, peace ✌🏽
I got mine Dec. 30th 2022 and it's been phenomenal, I don't own a gaming pc and the only consoles I have are an OLED Switch and a PS4, I loved the games on the PS4 that I would play but I hated sitting still in front of a tv and I loved my switch a LOT but I felt like I was really missing out on a lot of games I wanted to play. The Deck has genuinely been amasing, I have an hour long commute normally to get to work and just having the ability to play like Jedi Fallen Order (you have to start the game while connected to wifi to make it work on the go which is stupid but meh), Uncharted 4, We Happy Few on the go has been absolutely wonderful. Can't wait to see what else they decide to do moving forward bc this thing is awesome
Got my deck in August. Had to do 2 RMAs, but I still love the thing. First RMA was for GPU issues and the second was dead screen pixels.
Yeah, that sucked, but the Deck kind of refreshed my love of gaming. It has me legitimately tearing through my backlog, which I'm notoriously bad at.
Got my steam deck at the beginning of the year, and I have some minor gripes with stability and multi locale support (I like to play Japanese rpgs and things which sometimes require Japanese locale. Yes I am aware of the scripts but, I have no idea what I am doing and it seems like a weird thing to lock, especially as it releases in other locales.) Other than that though, I freaking love this thing. Just about anything I have thrown at it has run awesomely. Somethings require a bit of extra work to get running, but its satisfying if and when you finally get it.
I believe they added some settings a while back now in Desktop mode to make changing your locale easier. Expand your system tray (arrow bottom left corner in desktop mode) then click the little settings icon in the top right corner of that window that pops up, then click the "entries" tab. You can find options for what is displayed on your bottom bar. I believe there is a toggle for locale in there that you can set to "always show".
@@sirdinkus6537 sadly doesn't help as the only locales available are one called C (which does nothing) and American English. I can't access other locales. From what I read I need to run this script which will unlock the locale I want but it requires what I assume is root or something that requires a password. I tried setting up a password and it asks for an authenticator password thing, which is where I am stumped. I have authentication apps on my phone, none of which provide a password as far as I know. At this point, though, i have to stop and ask why? Why can't we add/download other locales? Why does it require all this messing around with sudo, passwords, and authentication apps just to allow a game/program to use another locale? If i can download other languages for a keyboard no problem and change Steam's language, why can't I change locale? What truly bugs me isn't so much that it takes work to do, but that you have to mess with root for something that feels artificially restricted and is only temporary.
Though, maybe this is just me being afraid to mess stuff up combined with the fact that I grew up using windows. 🤷♂️
Thanks for the help though ^.^
Update: i got stuff figured out. forget what i said about authentication apps. im a noob. it was asking me for the previous password which i thought failed to go in. i also was not aware that when the terminal asks for your password, it does not give you any feedback.😮💨
It’s a neat device, but my use case involves a lot of switching back and forth between handheld and TV play during a game and it’s not so great at that. It’s pretty common to need to do a lot of manual tweaking for each switch (reorder controllers, change UI scaling, change resolution) and I really wish Valve could bake in some magic to make that transition seamless like Nintendo does.
Ordered my deck 2 weeks ago, took 3 days to get to my door. Couldn't be happier with it! I was finally playing on my couch the other day, streaming Jedi Fallen Order from my PC via steam link to my deck, that was connected to the TV. Seamlessly, with very little artifacts. I finally now have a console I guess (last one I ever had was Megadrive back when I was a kid). The only problem - it pushed me into a shopping frenzy on Steam, I bought so many games in the past 2 weeks. I guess Valve's plan is working :)
Achievement unlocked: Posting up next to a porta potty to do some gaming 😂
7 months with mine. I was already a PC gamer, since the days of the 286. I had also been using Linux as my main OS for well over a decade. I was disappointed with the Steam Box offerings, but was cautiously optimistic with Valves next attempt. Proton was already revolutionizing what was playable on Linux, so unlike Google, they learned, buckled down, and improved. The $5 pre-order was easy then.
Then I waited. Didn't really get on the hype train, but when the hardware previews started showing, I was looking good. Than the early units started shipping, and it looked pretty decent! Meanwhile, Valve was doing the work on Proton and SteamOS in the background. Damned if it wasn't getting better every week!
By the time mine arrived, there was even the boot video utility, so the community was tweaking and improving the whole experience. Another thing I've noticed, lots of these benefits are flowing to the upstream Linux community.
I love it when I run into another Steam Decker user out in the world. Should start a Steam Deck Local User's group.
I've found that locking the frames to 40 gives me more battery life than I usually have time to commit to playing. I like that I have the option to crank everything up to the max if I want, or I can scale back and play for longer.
I’ve definitely enjoyed my Steam deck. I bought a Nexdock 360 for it and have played some older games like the Sierra adventure games. I have also got World of Warcraft working on it and do enjoy using it for that as well.