Steam Deck Impressions thread (With Pics!)

Hey! I'm 5 days into steam deck ownership. I recieved my authorization from valve on April 4th which I believe was the first notifications for Q2 pre orders.

I payed and my deck came on April 11th. Since then I've been taking an hour or so each day to set up and play with my 256gb deck.

I'm making this thread for impressions from current owners to share with community how they're faring with their new handheld. The good, the bad, the glorious and maybe the ugly too if you've found it...

For me, this device negates my desire for a ps5 or XS. Never one to chase graphic whoring, I find value in accessibility far more than weighting performance specs so I believe this device was made for "me style" gamers.

Set up was silly smooth. Took me all of 5 minutes to have a working, updated deck after unpacking. I've downloaded 5 games...

Elden Ring

L4D2

Portal2

God of War

Valheim

At this point I've had time to dig into elden ring by 4 hours and I've played some rounds of L4d2...

Pros - this thing feels premium.

Everything is customizable

Glorious performance of some great AAA games so far. (elden ring runs on high, L4d2 was buttery smooth as well during online play.)

Steam is free.... And has better deals than everyone else.

A multiplat port on this will likely run better and cost less than switch handheld experience.

Great speakers!

Steam OS is a great overlay....

Emula.....err forget it. 😇

Cons - took me a bit to get comfortable with the layout. bumpers specifically are flush on the system so it's easy to second guess if you are pushing in the right spot.... that feeling has lessened significantly since day 1. (see pic below... Bumpers and triggers are very accessible to the hand. Close proximity. Bumpers glide with the shape of the body which takes a little getting used to)

downloading software seems to take longer than it should.

battery life isn't superb, but not super limiting either. I travel a lot and I can't say I'm ever away from an outlet on a plane/car etc for very long. can easily see myself playing this on a plane and landing at 100 percent battery because of charge and play. easy peasy. still, bigger games Will munch battery.

id say one last con is that depending on your needs you should spend time with the deck customizing it to maximize battery life.... its pick up and play, but really would augment the experience by spending time tweaking the system to give you more time.

do YOU have your steam deck yet? tell us about it! have questions? ask! I'll also post some pics of my model when I get home!

How are the triggers? Is there much travel in them? I found the trigger travel to be a bit too short on the steam controller for racing games (great for shooters though). I'm a sucker for racing games on portable devices.

Great to see you are enjoying it :). I do plan to get one eventually (PC upgrade first).

Damn, I didn't think it was possible, but the Steam Deck actually makes the Series S look good in comparison. Dose frame rates and dat blur...

I am not getting one, but I love reading impressions. I assume you installed Windows?

@osan0: triggers feel great! To me anyway. They're firm and have good resistance. The bumpers are a little more tricky as they don't really rise off the device in any noticeable way. It has an element of "feel" to them to be accurate.

Also the back bumpers on the back are very accessible.... Almost too much. I've accidentally triggered estus flasks in elden ring by bumping them. Still, in a racing game that's a really great feature to be right on your gear shifting like that.

Oh shit, oh shit, it's happening!

@x_hedon: nope not yet anyway. I'm gonna wait a bit on that. I don't know that I'd get the most out of it at this point. I'll wait to have a good reason to install windows then go from there.

@xantufrog: Omg yaaasssssss! I had the same reaction. Lol congrats!! It'll be here within a few days!

I'm excited about mine. Will be getting it q3 hopefully. I'm just worried that the email will end up in my junk mail and I'll never receive it.

Oh, ok. I guess I assumed you had Windows installed because I never knew the games you listed ran on anything other than Windows. Specifically Elden Ring and God of War. Then again, I don't game on Steam, so I never paid much attention :)

BTW, congrats on your purchase!

Very nice impressions. In line with what I was expecting.

Can I ask who the email came from? Was it Steam or Valve or someone else.

Will sell mine and let you know how much i get for it🤭

@BassMan: its funny how you come to every series S thread to bash it and now to every steam deck thread. Funny enough you haven't been bashing the nintendo switch.

Oh, and Halo hasn't been mentioned yet. Are you gonna put Halo Infinite on your Steam Deck @TheEroica

Oh, and thread needs PICS!!!!

@x_hedon: thanks! Im pretty new to pc gaming myself and don't really get how it all works but from my understanding the deck runs proton which is a layer that allows windows based games to run on Linux.

Do I have this right?

I always shit on the Switch. I don't discriminate. Like I said, I judge purely on quality. I will even shit on PC products like the 6500 XT GPU. I do not care who makes a product. If it is shit, I will tell you straight up without bias.

I don't know, but I am learning as we go here! :)

@BassMan: the 6500xt was a fantastic deal in the days of $3000 gpus. It was giving people a way to play games at 1080 and 60fps for a cheap price.

It's a terrible GPU that is even worse than the 5500XT which it replaces. It was universally shit on by reviewers and is an embarrassment for AMD.

@x_hedon: no halo for me.... Yet! I've never been a big halo fan so it's admittedly not on my priority list.

I really want to dig into Splinter Cell chaos theory for some reason though.

Nice impressions. Glad you’re enjoying it. I have other priorities right now but I do think it’s a pretty cool piece of hardware. Look forward to reading more impressions though.

@BassMan: It is like you have no comprehension of hardware.

@Pedro said:

@BassMan: It is like you have no comprehension of hardware.

What don't I comprehend? Explain....

@BassMan: its funny how the reviewers all jumped on the hate train bashing AMD for releasing such a "crappy" $250 card and let nvidia largely off the hook for selling 3080ti, 3090 and 3090ti for $3000. Who is scamming again?? The 6500xt fit a need for a segment of gamers playing at 1080p and 60fps. That's all it was. It was barebones, featureless, barely any memory. But it was cheap and remained in stock. This at a time when the crypto crazies were going wild.

It was in stock because nobody wanted it. It also performed worse than its predecessor and cost more. That is an all around fail. The RTX 3050 is also substantially better than it.

The ultra simple concept of hardware and application. You would be one of those folks who would recommend 16core cpu,32gb ram and 3080TI to someone who just browse the net.😂🤣

I would recommend them a device that was capable of browsing the net well. Just like I would recommend a gamer a device that runs games well. The Steam Deck is not that device. LOL

😂😂😂

Prob pick one up one got dosh.

I really hope not many dumbasses are giving those scalpers money.

That's correct. I use it on my Linux based PC too. Glad to see you are not experiencing any major issues with it with the games you are running.

Compatibility is spotty and anti cheat systems are currently a big weakness area for it. Still, sticking to the Deck Verified games should offer a smooth experience. More games will get up and running over time.

Yep... Not gonna be going crazy, gobbling up thousands of games over the next year. Just gonna let the wizards at Valve build infrastructure and quality experiences into the deck and ride the wave with it. Gonna be a blast.

Just curious, which distro do you use.

@BassMan: It does run games well. Note that the word well is subjective but that conept may also escape you.🤣

@theeroica have you loaded any games on a sd stick and see how they run?

@kuu2: That would be good to know.

Great question! OK, so again I'm a self admitting pc noob so don't judge too harshly. I purchased a 512gb SanDisk Extreme for 80 bucks. I read in several places that the extreme was a great card for the deck.

I loaded anf formatted the card before downloading any games on the deck.

So then I started downloading a few games and a day or so passed... It dawned on me that I didn't actually know if the deck downloaded the games to the internal memory or the card so I went into the settings to look.

Every game I downloaded went to the SD card and NOT the internal memory. (I don't know why it defaulted that way, but it did)

All my impressions are based off SD card performance thus far. I have no complaints about loading time on elden ring or anything like that. Seems at least thus far to be a seemless experience.

*I will make a note that the caravan of troops and the two giants towing the carriage on the road to weeping peninsula was an aggressive scene at high settings. Some enemies didn't appear, only their torches.... And Torrent (my horse) didn't appear either. Just me riding around an invisible steed!

@TheEroica: Ok here is a question:

Whenever I've picked up a controller with them or the Hori split pad pro, I get annoyed by the backpedals. I like a smooth grip. Something like a Dualsense, dualshock or a Xbox controller.

How are the backpedals on the Steam Deck? Are they noticable, do they get pressed easily? Do you use them for anything. What's your experience with them?

Have you tried playing a game, maybe like God of War on battery only and seeing how long it lasts?

I feel like if it's only like 2 hours it will be a big turn off for people. I know you don't care and are ok with plugging into outlets, but I don't really like being tied down to power outlets when I travel

Im Q2 for the 512gb Steam Deck. Still no email… I check my email like 30 times a day… I can’t wait to join in on the fun. I’m not gonna be playing new AAA at first though. Ive been dreaming of playing the Unreal Tournament games in bed ever since this thing was announced.

Holy crap congrats! Can't wait to get this gem myself, I am genuinely surprised at how well games run on this thing. The Deck is a dream come true to me in many respects.

@x_hedon: I use a distro called Solus. It's a rolling release distro. However the maintainers tend to be more cautious about when to update stuff. It's on the edge but not on the bleeding edge. I have had it installed for 5 years now with no major issues over that time (no need to reinstall or anything).

Ideal for gaming on Linux: especially with an AMD or Intel GPU since those use the open source drivers.

The current install media is pretty old though so if you have a PC with very modern hardware then getting it installed may be tricky.

wow looking nice. The thumb pad placement really looks unconventional, and not sure how you would use that. Though I guess most games don't require a thumbpad anyway...maybe just the 2d side scrollers at best.

have you tried connecting the deck to a monitor and seeing how it runs as a PC?

checked my email 30 times a day too.... It came to my regular inbox no issues. I definitely checked junk and spam too though. Didn't want to take any chances.

My old school game I'm itching to play on deck is Splinter Cell chaos theory

Yeah I jump at every email I get since April 1st. Can I ask who did the email come from... Steam or valve or something else?

I think the 2 hour mark is probably accurate if you're just running a big game like Gow with no consessions to power consumption. If you were to spend time with the settings you could squeeze more.

If you are a marathon gamer (I am not any longer) you will undoubtedly need to be cozy with an outlet nearby.... That said if we're talking about practical application of travel, being on the go and generally remote, a two hour span of time BETWEEN outlets/battery bank isn't a bad trade off. Its manageable, but yeah preferences matter too.

I have not tried that as of yet! I need to get an HDMI to USBC cable!

The backpedals are present yes... I have accidentally pressed them many times. In elden ring they default to estus flask, roll and jump. I'd say the pedals are aggressively placed compared to what I was expecting.

As of right now I have not taken a mome t to customize or shut off the pedals, I've just allowed the game to run at its default control. They haven't hurt the experience, but my experience with them is that they a definitely not a place you'll have to reach hard for them.

Mine is still not available until Q3, but it now says between July and September.