Its a great piece of kit. Being a linux based system and you can replace the drive makes it a monster in terms of posibility.
I've split my mini review up:
Cool FeaturesSo you can either run the Steam OS, which basically just looks like the Steam desktop app but with more too it, but you can also run it in Desktop Mode which is literally just linux meaning you can do anything you want (within the limitations of Linux naturally).
Personally I have it setup to dual boot so I can emulate anything Nintendo, Ps2/Ps3 etc. whilst also having the Steam OS installed to run whatever games I want. I will say that the controls depending on what games you play can feel a little janky, but for FPS games I recommend just using aim assist as you would with a console game. Makes it much more playable.
For example I tried running Assassins Creed 2 on it but when free running I would run up the wrong walls etc. as the controller support for the PC version is ass. HOWEVER! One cool thing is not only can you remap buttons yourself (even on older emulated games), there are button mappings that people upload to the Steam Workshop. So chances are if you download a game, someone has already done it for you!
PerformancePerformance is fantastic. I haven't really needed to turn any games down to keep it locked at 60fps. Although, I will say that I am only playing slightly older single player games on it. If I wanted to play Elden Ring for example, I'd just do it on my PC. Speaking of Elden Ring, it had some slight performance issues when it first released, but turn some settings down to medium and it runs flawlessly. In the example picture I am playing Bioshock and it literally never drops below 60fps even during a boss fight with tons of explosions on highest graphics.
Even when running quite intensive loads I barely hear the fan on the latest updates.
Main Issues
My main 3 gripes with it at the moment are:
1. Game support is a little slow, although thats not entirely Steams fault. A lot of games you can play and will work on Steam Deck, but there will be very small issues that are frustrating. Like maybe a UI element won't scale properly etc. Also games require decent controller support which is a pain in the ass. Although this isn't a problem with running an emulator like Ryujinx as it just shows up as a normal controller. One other issue is it depends on developers how good the support is going to be. For example 2k Games literally broke Bioshock on the Switch because it now requires a dumbass 2k Games launcher (with a cash shop obviously) to launch. But you can work around it.
2. Battery life DRAAAAAINS quite fast when you are not even using it. Like I haven't used it in 2 days and I just tried to power it on and it was dead. AFAIK it had like 50% battery when I put it down lol. When it completely drains it takes like 30 minutes just to get enough power in it to turn it on. I was going to take a picture or two of it in action and its completely dead right now.
3. Games can take AAAGES to launch. Steam is essentially running them in an emulator and it just takes forever sometimes. I've been playing Bioshock infinite on it and it takes literally 5 minutes to get the main menu. Not a huge deal, but sometimes you can't even tell if the games going to launch or not lol
The Dock from Steam literally only released a few days ago so I haven't bought it yet. I imagine the whole battery draining issue would be less aids once you can leave it in the dock to charge when not using it. Although Steam have said that docking station support is universal, so you could buy a cheap one from Amazon and still get functionality out of it.
EDIT: Finally got enough juice in her to show a little
Infront of my full sized keyboard for comparison
Running Bioshock Infinite, everything on Ultra except Shadows and Ambient Occlusion (Screen isn't big enough for higher settings to make a difference, you could get away with lowering Anti Aliasing as well)
My conclusionI bought it literally just to replace the need to take my big old Dell laptop (which has a dedicated GPU etc.) with me when I travel. When I travel for work I kind of had to choose between my own laptop for longer trips and my work laptop. It could do anything my work laptop does, but it wasn't ideal. With the Steam deck I can take it WITH my work laptop and if I know its going to be a longer trip, I can take a controller and the dock to plug it into a TV at whichever Hotel/Airbnb I am staying it. Thats where I think the Steam Deck is great, it can replace a laptop and be good at it. All while fitting everything inside one case which goes into my engineering backpack.
Its a chonker, its not light. So its not something I would be playing while laying in bed. I already have a habit of dropping my phone on my face when I'm tired. This thing would literally break my nose lmao.
I'm not worried about the game support going forwards as Valve is slowly updating and developers know that all games released on steam will be made available on the deck, so its worth spending a little extra dev time to improve the support. My issues with the game support and controller support is something that will get fixed with time.
A lot of games on Steam even if they aren't labelled as "Great on Deck" which is full support, a lot of them like Bioshock Infinite are just "Playable". Which really doesn't mean that its not fully supported, you can view the details on the store:
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.