Should you buy a Steam Deck?

Ohh boy, I’ve been waiting for this for quite some time.

This is the steam deck by valve. You might have played games on your PC via steam. The steam deck does the same but portably. I can’t wait to check it out, so let’s get unboxing.

This is the steam deck, a portable game console by valve. It’s being sold at a premium in India as it’s still not officially released here. This is a game console, but it’s also a Linux pc, which is capable of running other operating systems.

Here we are, opening it up and,

nice we have a case containing the stream deck. I’ve purchased the lowest tier steam deck which itself is pricey in India.

These are the prices in the US.

It’s being sold at a loss actually as steam would recover its costs from us users purchasing games off their portal.

Your games are going places, yeah now that we can take our steam library anywhere.

It comes with a 45-watt power adapter.

I’m glad that even the 64-gig model has a case provided.

Nice quality, the logo is screen printed. The 512 gb version has a rubber embossed colour logo and the case is a bit better.

Oh,ok there’s a valve tag on the zippers. Need to cut that before I can open it.

Unzip and whoa. It’s big, I kind of expected it to be, but still in person it’s quite big.

The inside has these indents which keeps the analog sticks safe.

The Steam Deck is of course made of plastic, but it feels solid. We have the 7 inch screen here,

It has a D-pad, two thumbsticks (with capacitive touchpads on top), two touchpads, four A/B/X/Y buttons, four shoulder triggers, a big Steam button,

a three-dot button for additional Steam OS options in-game,

and four remappable paddles on the back. The two touchpads also double up as buttons, and in supported applications.

The screen is also a touch screen. The 512gb version has a non-reflective coating which I don’t like much as they generally reduce the brightness. Would have liked an OLED panel instead, which would have given me the incentive to purchase the 512 Gb model.

On top we have the volume buttons, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a vent to blow out the heat, a usb-c port for charging and also attaching usb accessories, a led, and a power button.

Here’s the air intake, and also the valve branding on the back.

The steam deck is quite thin, at its thinnest.

Oh, and here’s the micro-sd card slot. I will be adding a 512 gb memory card as this is the base 64 Gb model.

The device is a bit heavy, not in a bad way, it feels well centered and is comfortable enough. Weight of the device is 669 grams. Long gaming sessions will make your wrists hurt. Playing for short durations on the couch, while traveling is not uncomfortable. But add in a couple of hours you’re going to feel it.

We need to plug it in before we can turn it on for the first time and there, we see the steam deck logo and the device is initializing.

This is the first boot, so the device needs to set itself up.

Now we need to login into your steam account. If you have one, just login, else create a new account. We need a steam account to purchase games.

There, once logged in we can see my game library. I have a few games on steam.

In order to have enough space to install games onto the device, we need this micro-sd card.

Newer games would make a snack of the 64 gb storage within, which you don’t get the whole 64 Gb off, but only 43 Gb as system files take part of the space. Also the base 64 GB model uses eMMC (PCIe Gen 2 x1) memory and the 256,512 gb versions use nvme ssd’s. All models use socketed 2230 m.2 modules, so they can be upgraded in future when 2230 nvme get cheaper, which I’m planning to.

I’ve inserted the memory card and it pops up under the storage options, 468.1 available out of the 512 gb card installed. You don’t get the whole space here either.

Steam has this legend of which games are supported. Green check mark games work without a hitch, yellow, has some compatibility issues, but still works, gray, not compatible or not tested with the steam deck.

I like the UI, similar to Steam’s big picture mode. Scroll around the library using the thumbsticks and select a game using the A button. You could also navigate and interact with the library via the touchscreen.

Let’s start installing games now, when we tap on install the steam deck is smart enough to automatically select the micro SD card as there’s not enough space on the internal storage.

The steam deck supports dual band Wi-Fi, so at 5ghz you can get faster download speeds and if you play online a more stable connection.

We can also switch to desktop mode, as the steam deck is a full-fledged Linux pc. Hold down the power button and we get the “switch to desktop” option.

The steam deck runs steam os, which is based on Arch linux with KDE plasma 5 desktop. This is full-fledged linux running on the device. You can install most apps like you would, as on windows.

We have web browsers, libre office, obs and discord. Quite a capable machine. We can install emulators too, which if you guys want a video on, make sure to comment below. The touchpads act like mouse cursor, and it does take getting used to, especially clicking.

There’s a store available, search and download what you need. The keyboard doesn’t popup by itself, so you will need to use the steam button + X combo to make it pop-up.

When I switched to desktop mode the games stopped downloading. Let’s initiate downloading again.

It took some time to install these games, I have one racing game, a shoot em up and an RPG. and a cute little game called stray.

I’m playing stray first as it’s the only one that completed downloading. Basically, you are playing as a stray cat, and it needs to travel around the game world solving puzzles and evading danger. It seems to be set in the future as no humans seem to be visible.

It’s fun, something different from the standard hack and slash or adventure games.

The fan on the back is already active. Not that loud, but it’s audible.

The game plays really smoothly. The AMD custom APU with 4 cores and 8 threads is quite powerful. With 8 RDNA 2 compute units it delivers more than enough performance to run the latest AAA games, with a caveat that they run at 800p.

Which is understandable as the screen resolution is only 1280×800 at 60 hz. But at this screen size it has a pixel density of 206 ppi which is higher than a 27″ 2560×1440 monitor at 108 PPI.

It’s quite clear, the camera doesn’t do justice to how good the screen is. Yeah, I’ve heard others complaining that it’s not as good as the OLED Switch etc, but at this price it’s not bad.

Sound is also clear, and crisp. The two front firing speakers do their job well.

The inbuilt microphone is also quite good, this is how it sounds.

We can also connect Bluetooth headphones and other Bluetooth peripherals as it supports Bluetooth 5.0.

Bluetooth wireless controllers can be paired to the console, now you can wirelessly control the steam deck and also play games.

RAM is 16 Gb LPDDR5 which is a minimum requirement for newer games.

Let’s check out Forza 4.

This game brings even gaming pc’s to its knees, but it runs quite smoothly on the steam deck.

The controls work just like how it would with a Xbox controller.

You can turn on the performance monitor with options to enable overlays to see how much your CPU and GPU are being used. It even displays the power draw, temperatures etc.

Here are the frame rates and the gpu/cpu load and the temperatures they’re running at.

It’s locked to 60 fps max, that would be to save battery.

I have it at full brightness, it would drain the battery quite fast.

The device seems to be running reasonably cool. The heat is exhausted from the top vents which keeps it away from your hands.

I get around 2 hours of battery life at max brightness and playing a AAA game. 2–8 hours battery life is estimated, which depends on what you play.

If you play simple adventure games, you might even hit the 8 hour mark, but if you’re playing AAA titles or emulating, the battery will drain quite fast. Max brightness is at 400 nits which is in budget gaming laptop territory.

Tap on the power button to set it to sleep mode, when you want to continue playing just tap it again and you’re back. If you had a game open, it would return to it.

Here’s Witcher 3, it’s running quite smoothly too. I need to check the key bindings as I’ve forgotten them.

Games loaded pretty fast, as I’m used to games loading on a PS4, these were in tune to those speeds, and that too they loaded off a micro-sd card. The 256 gb and 512 gb models use nvme storage which is much faster than the emmc storage on the 64 gb model.

Let’s check out loading times, this is how long forza takes to load up. Note that all my games load off a micro sd card.

Let’s check witcher 3, and it loaded up decently fast, not bad considering it’s not a nvme drive. The save games have synced from the steam cloud, so we can continue the game from where we left off.

Here’s doom eternal, quick enough as I’m coming from a PS4 pro these load times are not bad.

Doom eternal also ran smoothly. I’ve forgotten all the controls, been a long time since I played it.

The steam deck has some cool retro games from Sega and capcom. If you don’t want to run emulators these should pacify the standard gamer. But I’m not a regular gamer and I like to hack and modify my devices. The process of installing emulators is pretty straightforward and I’m quite surprised how easy it really is.

You want a portable NES, SNES, PSP, PS2, PS3, Nintendo switch, almost anything is possible. The processing power of the steam deck is enough to run these games at a smooth framerate.

Even the rumble effects work.

It’s truly the one handheld to rule them all.

Windows can also be loaded onto either the micro-sd card or an external drive which opens up the possibilities of what games you can play.

The steam deck can also be connected to a television, I would recommend getting yourself a dongle like this one, or a steam dock.

This makes it easy to connect to an external display and also connect USB peripherals. My dongle also has an ethernet port, which significantly improves my internet speeds. I would have liked two usb-c ports on the device so that you could have the display cable and a charger connected at the same time. The need for the dongle is due to the single usb-c port.

When connected to a TV or display, the processor can handle older games at a higher resolution, but newer AAA games might work best when set to low or medium.

Connect an external controller or a keyboard and mouse. Both work like a charm.

FSR support is available, and some games support it allowing for better framerates.

Brightness is max 400 nits which is low but is still visible outdoors.

The steam deck is big, and once in the carrying case is bigger. When packing for a simple flight, the case would take up almost half of your bag. So, if you are carrying your laptop, headphones etc your bag would fill up quite fast.

The steam deck is nothing new as we have had other companies such as Ayaneo and gpd releasing gaming handhelds for years now. But where the steam deck differs is the price. Devices from the likes of Gpd win and Ayaneo have better hardware, but they also cost double as they don’t have the incentives that steam has, as we purchase games off, of steam, valve makes a cut. But Ayaneo and gpd has only one chance to make their money off you, hence the higher prices.

I love the steam deck, it’s a good investment in my books as I wanted a portable gaming console and this one even though at a premium in India is still more affordable than the devices by other manufacturers. It’s quite easy to mod, and install other software, even operating systems. Drivers are provided by steam on their website to support windows, which is great.

If you are a tinkerer and love gaming, you will not go wrong with the Steam deck. I’m not sure if Valve will release the steam deck officially in India, hence going with the imported option at a premium. Also, a point to note, the imported version does not provide any warranty so keep it safe.