Steam Deck Review Roundup: It’s Pretty Great

Tsing

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Image: Valve



Valve’s Steam Deck officially launched today, opening the floodgates to the many lucky reviewers out there who have been itching to tell us whether the heavily hyped handheld, which nobody has been able to shut up about, is truly worth the $399–$649 price tag that’s attached to it.



The simple and overwhelming answer to that seems to be a simple “yes.” As echoed in the review roundup below, many early users have agreed that Valve has managed to hit many of the Steam Deck’s promised bullet points, which include the ability to jump right into an incredible library of games on day one with generally admirable performance depending on settings and tweaks such as FPS caps. Users have also pointed out the Steam Deck’s impressive display, surprisingly decent speakers, and the temperature of the handheld–apparently, it’s unlikely that users will ever feel the...
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Hearing it still has a lot of software holes, but has great promise. Hopefully they keep working on the software and get it all patched up - the hardware seems to have nothing but praise.
 
I think I would want this in a 10" tablet size. I probably would still need my reading glasses.

This is a 7" screen... my Vita was 5" and I could barely see the thing. Most text was unreadable to me. Some games will work better than others, sure.

I would like to see one of these in person before making final judgement though. But $500+ for something I would have to use thick readers to use.... eh, I dunno.
 
The viewing is a concern for me as well, but it will eventually have a dock. Plus don't rule out Steam Link
 
Dogsofjune said:
Plus don't rule out Steam Link
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Yeah this is the biggest reason I'm interested. So I can sit on the couch or lay in bed and play low-key cheesy casual games and other various non-intensive things (Bravely Default II, which I haven't finished yet). My PC can handle the heavy lifting, and running Steam Link it should get pretty darn good battery life since that will run on a potato pretty well.
 
Dogsofjune said:
The viewing is a concern for me as well, but it will eventually have a dock.
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I'm hearing you can use a USB-C to HDMI adapter now and it works, although it is a bit glitchy - it defaults to second screen rather than screen mirroring, and has some issues unless you monkey with the resolution. Another of those software things that should get fixed pretty soon - the hardware is already there it just needs supporting.
 
Review I saw said steam link is the best so far on these devices. So that Is a plus too. I really just want a "docking station" then if I can run my office apps and have a bigger monitor with a keyboard and mouse.. why would I need a laptop? Especially if the docking station were laptop like.
 
Docking station supposedly looks almost identical to the one for the switch, and just plugs into a USB c port and supplies a few handy outputs (“Aside from a handy cradle, you also get a USB Type-A Gen3.1 port, two Type-A Gen2.0 ports, an ethernet port, one DisplayPort 1.4, and one HDMI 2.0 output.”)

It isn’t exactly anything that the super awesome 85-port all-in-one USB C dock that was linked around here earlier couldn’t beat.

www.pcgamer.com

Here's the official Steam Deck Dock in all its rendered finery

Delayed until "late spring", and we still don't know how much it's going to cost, or how many Valve is making, but this is at least how it will look.
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com
 
Burticus said:
I think I would want this in a 10" tablet size. I probably would still need my reading glasses.

This is a 7" screen... my Vita was 5" and I could barely see the thing. Most text was unreadable to me. Some games will work better than others, sure.

I would like to see one of these in person before making final judgement though. But $500+ for something I would have to use thick readers to use.... eh, I dunno.
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I might have to buy a sizeable microSD card when I get mine, to see how Windows runs without overwriting SteamOS.
 
I'm not so confident on the software side.

Software problems are not really deck related, but SteamOS related. Even after what seems an eternity, steam still hasn't made most games in its library work flawlessly on the SteamOS. Lots of bugs and glitches not to mention hundreds of just incompatible games, mainly because of anti-cheat or piracy protection that just won't work on SteamOS.

Still that's a bigger library than any other console or even consoles combined, so nothing to sneeze at.

What's weird is that switching to windows would alleviate pretty much all software concerns, but surprisingly windows drivers for the deck are still a WIP.

But even if its not perfect (far from it IMO) it seems like the best option for a portable gaming PC, much better than the NEOpro or OneXplayer, specially considering the price.

BTW how is everyone cutting slack on the Deck and promoting 30 freaking fps gaming????


What I'd like for a Deck2

At least 8" full HD zero bezel screen with variable refresh rate support.
a GPU at least twice as fast, and also energy efficient.
Windows support.
Get rid of the trackpads, they are useless.
A docked desktop mode with better performance.
a next gen FSR that doesn't look like sh** @ 1080p
 
hubaduba said:
I might have to buy a sizeable microSD card when I get mine, to see how Windows runs without overwriting SteamOS.
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Win 10/11 running on a SD card? That sounds painfully slow. But yeah you're going to end up buying a huge SD card anyway, give it a shot and report back.
 
hubaduba said:
I might have to buy a sizeable microSD card when I get mine, to see how Windows runs without overwriting SteamOS.
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You want a REALLY quality microSD card to do that. I have pulled this stunt in other devices and installing to and running from a microSD card can be less than optimal if the device will even allow you to do it.
 
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