Some pieces of tech make you feel special the moment they’re announced, long before anyone gets a chance to use them. Valve’s announcement of the Steam Deck was one of those moments. These portable gaming devices were already available, but they cost far more than most people would want to invest in.
The Steam Deck is a portable gaming device that changed the future for the better. It inspired others to create devices like the ROG Ally in this sector. These amazing gaming laptops even made us wonder if they could kill mobile gaming or not. Two years later, is the Steam Deck still worth your money?
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The Steam Deck revolutionized portable gaming and caught the attention of all the usual OEMs. Now that a powerful portable device is available, it’s affordable, and as a result, the rest of the industry will need to step up its game.
- Extensive library of games
- Powerful performance
- Intuitive user interface
- Input Options
- Battery life
- Weight
- Heat generation
Price and availability
The Steam Deck is available directly from Valve in the US, Canada, EU, and UK, and starts at $400. It can also be purchased in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong via KOMODO. For $400, you’ll get the 256GB LCD model I’m reviewing today. Spend $550 to get the new OLED model with 512GB of storage, or $650 for the 1TB OLED model.
Valve is still selling remaining stock of the old 64GB and 512GB LCD versions for $350 and $450 respectively, but that’s only while supplies last.
What’s good about Steam Deck?
The Steam Deck is a powerhouse. It runs the Arch-based SteamOS 3 operating system with the Plasma desktop environment, while most other portable devices of this type run Windows. Both have their pros and cons, but the pros of SteamOS far outweigh the cons. Valve has had to work against game compatibility. Most games don’t get native Linux ports, so Valve had to figure out a way to get them to work.
In 2018, Valve released Proton, a compatibility layer that allows Windows software to run on Linux. The Steam Deck has significantly upgraded Proton, and now almost every game I’ve encountered runs fine on it. Occasionally, a game needs to be updated to add support, but most popular games have done that.
The advantage of this approach is ease of use. The Steam Deck doesn’t run in a desktop environment designed for a keyboard and mouse. Instead, it runs in Steam using a user interface specifically designed for controllers and touch input. Windows devices like the ROG Ally run in the Windows desktop, which is cumbersome on a device like this. While it can use the Steam Deck UI as soon as you open Steam, you’ll have to activate it every time it boots up.
The Steam Deck is compatible with a lot of games, but how well does it run them? AMD’s custom 7nm APU, with 16GB of RAM and RDNA 2 graphics, does a great job. Titles like Rocket League and Apex Legends can run at high frame rates on medium settings, while less demanding titles like Stardew Valley or The Sims 4 run like a dream without any issues.
Demanding games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and Marvel’s Miles Morales run surprisingly well. Zero Dawn manages a solid 45-50 FPS on medium to high settings, which is higher than the PlayStation 4 has ever managed. Both Spider-Man games, when run on low to medium settings, manage 35-45 FPS.
I haven’t been able to try Horizon: Forbidden West on the Steam Deck yet, but early results seen online suggest that the Deck is having trouble getting it to boot right now, but patches may improve the situation. Another advantage of sharing your Deck library on Steam is managing your Steam Workshop mods and save games. These are synced across the cloud so you can switch between your Deck and PC at will.
The display is pretty good, as long as you get OLED. My LCD model is fine; there’s nothing wrong with it. But the OLED model is fantastic. It bumps the refresh rate up to 90Hz, which makes a huge difference in titles that can handle that kind of FPS, but the real winner is the brightness. This HDR panel can hit 1,000 nits of peak brightness, beating even direct sunlight.
The Steam Deck’s expandability is another strong point. There’s a MicroSD slot, which is more than enough to run games like Stardew Valley, Sims 4, and even Subnautica. The Steam Deck’s internals are also upgradable, if you’re brave enough.
Valve has made replacement parts readily available and has published detailed instructions for making certain repairs. Installing a larger SSD shouldn’t be a problem if you have the tools and know-how. You can also buy docks that plug into the USB-C port to add HDMI, DisplayPort, USB, Ethernet, and even M.2 expansion.
My favorite part of the Steam Deck is the controls. You get the usual buttons you’d expect, but you also get two touchpads that can act as a trackpad for your mouse. This makes navigating Sims 4 or Star Wars Empire At War a lot easier than using a joystick as a mouse input. All of the inputs can be remapped for each game, and you can even import control schemes made by other players.
So what kind of experience does all this add up to? A great one. Due to the health issues my family and I have, I spend a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms for hours at a time, often without even noticing it. For this reason, I always keep a charged Steam Deck in my bag along with an extra set of earbuds and a battery pack. Once I’m settled into the waiting room and logged on to Wi-Fi, all of my games, complete with save data, are in the palm of my hand.
In the past, I would spend my time playing boring mobile games or whatever I played on the Switch. But the Steam Deck removes those restrictions, and distracts me with more exciting games. Horizon: Zero Dawn has been my comfort game since its launch, and having it there during the tough times has been invaluable.
What’s bad about Steam Deck?
The Steam Deck is by no means perfect, and there are downsides you should be aware of before buying. The biggest issue is battery life. The Steam Deck uses a 5,200mAh cell, which is comparable to the 5,000mAh battery in my Galaxy S24 Ultra. While that’s more than enough to get the smartphone through a full day of heavy use, the Steam Deck uses a lot more power, and that battery doesn’t last as long. Heavy games like Spider-Man will kill the device in under two hours, with lighter games like Stardew Valley only getting eight hours. The OLED display gets better numbers, but not by much.
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The Steam Deck also heats up pretty quickly. Performance is solid, but the back of the Deck will feel warm to the touch, and a lot of hot air is vented out the top. The fan is also a bit noisy. You won’t hear it with headphones on, and the built-in speakers drown out the noise as well, but if you’re gaming in bed, the person next to you might not appreciate the whining sound.
The Steam Deck is big and heavy. That’s inevitable. I have no problem using it for long periods of time while sitting, but using it in bed quickly causes stiff arms.
My wife finds that playing on the console’s surface causes joint pain in any position where the console isn’t stable on a table. Unfortunately, that’s the case for full-size portable gaming consoles like this. The Nintendo Switch can only overcome the weight issue with Nvidia’s decade-old tablets.
Performance is also starting to become an issue. I know I was being optimistic about performance just now, but newer games are already putting a strain on the Steam Deck, and it’s only going to get worse with newer, more demanding games. The display, at least on my LCD Deck, is suffering. While OLED can reach 1,000 nits of brightness, LCDs are at 350 nits, so direct sunlight is a problem.
The software is a bit of a letdown, despite the high praise I lavished on it in the last section. All of these positives are true, but they are far from perfect. Launchers like the Epic Games Store or EA Launcher do not have Linux versions. They must be run through Proton and set up and installed in a desktop environment.
If you’re familiar with Linux, everything should be fine, but I found it tedious, and the average user will likely want to avoid this kind of work. The Xbox launcher doesn’t work at all, which means you can’t access Game Pass unless you have an Ultimate subscription with streaming access.
Should you buy a Steam Deck?
Yes, you should, provided you know what it can and can’t do. The Steam Deck is my favorite gaming device besides my gaming PC, and I’m even more inclined toward it than the PS5. The ability to play almost my entire Steam library on the go is something I never imagined I’d see.
But this is my Steam library. Before you buy a Steam Deck, make sure the games you play a lot will run well on it, and go into the experience knowing that many upcoming games may not be available to you.
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The Steam Deck isn’t perfect, but if it meets your requirements and your Steam library is compatible, this could be the perfect portable gaming device for you.
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