Steam Deck Review: Console Quality Handheld Gaming - Believe It!

We expected Steam Deck to deliver some good quality handheld gaming based on earlier press. What we didn't expect to see was console-quality gaming (or better). Think of it as a mini-PlayStation 4 but with access to the vast Steam library. Just how powerful is it? What is actually going on with screen quality and battery life? Rich tells all.

[Nick]

I'm most interested in playing 90s and 2000s pc games on this device. Portable splinter cell chaos theory and a better version of Bioshock than the switch release will be nice

[JazerMedia]

The fact that you can jump into a desktop environment gives this device insane value.

[jason]

Overlay with TDP limit, fps cap, and gpu clock speed settings, thank you. Valve is the one company that doesn't treat it customers like little babies seriously

[TheLastLineLive]

30 fps limiter actually makes a lot of sense, it will ensure more stable performance and also will slightly improve battery life.

[Henk]

Regarding stutter, what is most likely happening is that a lot of these games do not have proper shader caches yet which drastically reduces reliability and induces stutter. Valve has systems in place to automatically generate them but it requires a bunch of users to play them on the exact hardware first. So its probably going to improve as more decks are out there.

[soulsmith]

Valve may be trying to encourage developers to target this hardware and Linux environment. If the Steam Deck is successful, it would prolong the use of older graphics cards and improve the experience of Linux gaming.

[roccociccone]

Personally I’m really happy that valve didn’t base their handheld on windows. Linux just gave them more control over the whole experience. And with this, Linux may become a more viable desktop platform in general.

[KnightMD]

Wow. You guys won the review award compared to everyone else. Same award you won for the Analogue Pocket. Who knew you'd do so well with hardware reviews. Thank you for this beautiful watch.

[tabletaccountforyoutube]

Something that I think would be fascinating to see is to come back in a year and test the same exact games to find out if over time a combination of Proton updates, GPU Driver / OS updates would have improved performance. I think it's likely that Valve will continue to tweak things and squeeze slightly more performance from the device after launch.

[RonsarLo]

Valve keeping it open, unlocked is a winner to me. Even going as far as sharing CAD files. This level of transparency is a breath of fresh air. Sounds like a well earned and well deserved win for Valve.

[Frisket]

People keep talking about modern AAA games on this thing. But given how vast and historic the Steam library is. This thing is worth the price alone for being able to play decades worth of classics with little to no hassle.

[allenqueen]

that comparison with the discrete graphics cards was awesome. It may not be apples to apples, but it does give a real world use comparison. Having the knowledge that the Steam Deck at 800p performs like a 1050ti at 1080p is so convenient to know and just slot in my brain.

[axayd]

The perfomance and the suspend functions were the biggests caveats for me, great to see it deliver on both. Hopefully there's a revision next year with an OLED screen.

[blazingsaddle]

What amazes me is how incredibly well everything is is running right out of the box. Can you imagine what it will be like, even after 6-12 months with improved software, thousands of community tested games & the modding capabilities?
If the future steam support isn't enough to get excited about, there's the emulation capabilities I am most hyped about. Literally everything in existence will be running on this thing in the very near future. It's just unbelievable.
I'm a dedicated PC gamer, who skipped the PS5 and gave the Switch a very wide berth. Never bothered with it due to Nintendo's bullshit marketing strategy and money grabbing business practices, so this is absolutely perfect for my personal needs.
Valve - I salute you for being absolutely transparent about your product & providing the PC gaming community with a perfect handheld device with the power to allow me to play my ENTIRE steam catalogue without having to purchase the games again. You want a handheld that can do it all? Look no further than the Steam Deck.This is a game changer.

[GlenMerlin]

I love that they went Linux on the deck instead of Windows

Especially Arch since it means the OS will take up far less system resources in the background

and it prevents the PC gaming market from being ultimately at the whim of Microsoft's good will. They could decide at any moment to make running games outside their store a huge pain and having Linux as a viable competitor to windows for gaming only serves to benefit the consumer. Microsoft has been king of the PC for far too long and it's about time we broke up their monopoly and allowed more market freedom

[rafadono]

I hope Steam deck has good sales, maybe in the future, they'll launch an Oled model or a VRR one.

[jakemee]

I'd be very interested in a video just covering how this handles emulation for something like the gamecube or PS2

[Alorand]

A heartfelt thank you to every early adopter who is dealing with growing pain style issues but enabling an awesome product to take shape. I am so excited to see how this niche of the tech sector grows and matures.

[keldwikchaldain]

Proton generally has comparable performance to windows usage. Some things are slightly less optimized but the lack of background services usually makes up for it, and sometimes results in higher performance via proton than natively on windows. I honestly expect windows to mostly be useful for gamepass and playing games proton flat out doesn't support (and every game it doesn't support is considered a bug, so that number should shrink over time), as well as stubborn anticheat games.

The experience using windows will be a lot less integrated (like bad ui experience ootb), won't support suspend/resume to the level steamos does, won't support the 'resume on another device' that some games will be getting, etc.

Honestly for anybody who feels they really need windows, just boot it off an sd card and only install the games you really need onto that card.

[thephantom]

Adding steam deck optimized 30fps/60fps settings with Alex’s amazing pc optimized settings in his pc videos coverage would be extremely helpful to anyone who buys a deck 😊❤️