I was very kindly given a Steam Deck as a gift recently. Now that I've spent a good chunk of time with it, and being a lifelong portables enthusiast (I was one of the idiots who bought into the Tiger Game.com at launch, and even owned a Bandai WonderSwan ), I just wanted to share some thoughts and impressions about the hardware. Note that I'm approaching this from the perspective of a portables enthusiast, as this has more-or-less always been my primary way of gaming - your perspective may differ if you have a preference for stationary gaming gear and/or frequent upgrades.

I will say right out of the gate that the Steam Deck has changed how I play video games completely - and that surprised me quite a bit, because I'm already a portables-only person to begin with. However, the experience that it offers is so thoughtfully-designed and mostly very-well-polished that it feels like a genuine evolution of all of the handhelds that I consider to be past greats. In particular, for me, it feels like a much more advanced evolution of what was offered by the Nintendo 3DS, which was my favourite modern-day dedicated gaming handheld before now.

The first thing that hit me is that, in person, the Steam Deck doesn't appear as big as its dimensions and some pictures would suggest, even though it's a bit bigger than, say, the Nintendo Switch was. It's sort of like a TARDIS, it's really weird! I have small hands, but I find the Steam Deck better to hold than the Switch, because the Switch was way too thin to comfortably use for very long. In terms of grip, it's more similar to the GPD Win Max 2021*, which has been my main gaming-PC for the last couple of years. It seems lighter than that machine, though I don't know if it actually is, or if the centre-of-gravity is simply much better-thought-out - regardless, I'd been told that the Steam Deck is heavy, but it's considerably lighter than I'd expected!

*GPD makes some nice hardware, but they showed themselves up a while ago, and now that more affordable options for handheld PC-gaming are available I wouldn't choose them again.


I first truly put the machine through its paces when Super Bomberman R 2 was released on September 13th of this year. It was my most-eagerly-awaited game of many years, and I had a free day at the time, so I played for nine-and-a-half hours, non-stop! There was never once any hint of hand-cramps, eye-strain, or any sort of discomfort, and the controls proved their worth far beyond any of my testing before that point. I play a lot of maze-chase games, and a whole lot of Bomberman, so reliable, precise controls that I can trust are an absolute must for my handhelds.


At the time of writing, I've now put in almost 105 hours, entirely on the Steam Deck, and all without any issues with either the hardware or my hands, wrists, and arms.

The controls are a perfect match for what the machine is capable of. The last time I saw this on a handheld was with the Nintendo 3DS; It has everything that it needs, no more and no less. It's all laid out well, too - even parts that I thought looked too close to the edges to be comfortable in pictures are actually perfectly fine in reality. I've also been pleasantly surprised by the back-buttons - I didn't think that I would use them, but I've found that they're actually quite handy; At the very least, I always map the screenshot function to the L4 button (rather than using the Steam-button + R1 combo), so that I can get good action-shots!

The inclusion of a carrying case is a great touch - with other handhelds, you'll find yourself spending an extra £10 to £20 to get a case of this sort that wouldn't be as nice as this one (it's not cheaply-made and it's very sturdy). The notch in the back for holding small items is a cool use of space, too, and helps to make the case more universal - for some consoles, you'll find that the cases for them often only have a space to fit smaller US power-supplies, rather than larger UK ones, so I really appreciated this design-choice.

The screen is really nice, too, both in terms of its touch-response, and how it looks; I'm not sold on products that are guaranteed to die, like OLED displays, so what Valve has gone with is perfect for me, as I tend to keep my gear for a long time. I have no idea where the claims about the colours being washed-out have come from, as what I'm seeing on my unit is nice and vibrant - I don't know if this is a difference in perception or a change of parts in more recent batches, though! The resolution is the current industry-standard for handheld gaming devices of this size, and it was the right choice.

The fan is nice and quiet (more so than that of the GPD Win Max 2021, which isn't terrible itself), and the way the unit is laid out means that you typically won't feel the heat that it's pushing out. It's also really good to have easy access to all of the power-management niceties of Linux-based portables, wrapped up in a very user-friendly form. Equally nice is seeing sleep and wake (which at this point always work well on Linux laptops) applied flawlessly, console-style, to a gaming PC - the Steam Deck wouldn't be half as good without it.

The rumble is very weak - it doesn't stand up to what the Nintendo Switch offers, here. However, personally, I can take or leave rumble features in a handheld, so I don't really mind that this feature is lacking. None of my other current portables have rumble at all, anyway.

Setting the machine up was far more intuitive than with the leading handheld brand - everything is very clearly explained and labelled on first-boot (and you can repeat this guided-tour at any time if you need to), and the interface is well-thought-out and easy to navigate overall. I sometimes get a bit discombobulated when picking up a new interface if there's too much going on at once, but that didn't happen here.

I did get a couple of "Compatibility tool failed" errors early on, but that was on me - I was trying to launch a game before the Proton download had started, and I think that could be a bit better-displayed or at least warned about, though I'm not sure how one would go about that.

Generally, though, everything is intuitive and well-labelled, and it's a great touch that the Steam Deck pops up compatibility specifics when you go to install games, along with an easy-to-read diagram showing which controls are used when you launch them. Some examples of that can be found below;







The on-screen keyboard works really nicely, and is also helpfully labelled with button-prompts as well. It's also fine for carrying out quick tasks in desktop-mode, though you wouldn't want to use it that way for long stretches of time.


Desktop-mode is exactly what you'd expect - a full KDE desktop, doing all the desktoppy things that desktops do. I prefer Xfce personally, but being a long-time Linux user I'm not the target-market for this mode - that would mainly be folks who aren't familiar with Linux, and I acknowledge that KDE is absolutely the right choice for that audience. Unfortunately I've experienced the machine crashing (or, one time, getting softlocked, with only mouse-input available, but nothing loaded) five or six times when switching modes, though since the update this week it hasn't happened again yet, and with any luck it will stay that way. I'm not quite sure what to make of this feature - due to the issues I've encountered I feel that it's not as polished as the machine's main purpose, though it would easily work as a laptop-replacement in a pinch, which is definitely a nice extra.

I was particularly impressed with how well the Steam Deck Docking Station works! It's not quite as "automagic" as the Nintendo Switch Dock due to needing to be plugged in manually (which gives a satisfying little click when you do so), but it does offer a lot more utility, which I feel is a worthwhile trade-off. It's also not as fussy as my experiences of docking the Switch, where that hardware would be picky about output resolutions and colour-depth and just didn't like some brands of HDMI cables, all of which frequently led to no output and a lot of frustration. I did not experience any of this with the Steam Deck - I hooked up the dock, the Deck immediately told me that it needed to apply an update to it, and once that was done it auto-detected my display, automatically set the correct resolution, and was simply ready to go. As an aside, pairing my Xbox Series X controller (my preferred wireless gamepad at this time) was effortless - it worked right away, and the Deck didn't have any issues with handing over to an external controller. And unlike the Nintendo Switch's provided controllers, you're not stuck with sitting at a particular (fairly short) distance and strange angle relative to the docked system in order to not lose wireless connectivity, which is a much better experience of docked handheld play than I was getting before.

It's utterly incredible that Valve can offer hardware this well-thought-out and capable for the prices that they do, and I can see that they're playing a long game here, as it's cheaper than a lot of laptops that I've encountered (Linux or not, and usually not well-suited for gaming), and, when docked, also a great "stealth" introduction to desktop Linux for those who haven't used it before. On that note, the dock feels like the idea behind the Coleco Adam, Sega SG-1000 with SK-1100 keyboard, and Nintendo Famicom with Family BASIC keyboard, but done right - even with the occasional wrinkles that I've come across with switching to and from desktop-mode, the technology has finally caught up with the concept.

Given the affordability of gaming on Steam alone (never mind all of the other platforms that you can make use of, because at the end of the day it's a PC), especially if you're patient and are willing to wait for sales, key-bundles, or to take a chance on cheap mystery bundles every so often, I can easily see the Steam Deck and dock appealing to those looking to combine gaming and proper (i.e., not tablet-based consumption) computing on a budget, too. Gaming does tend to drive tech-adoption, after all.

I should note, here, that, being British and in my 40s, when I was a youngster home-microcomputers were THE only viable gaming platforms in this country and I got a Commodore 64C when I was eight years old, so I've always appreciated the lifelong transferrable computing skills that I learned back then. Whilst consoles are definitely convenient, with the background that I have I would recommend the Steam Deck over those to others every time. And that's what I'm doing - it's a well-polished device that's mostly consolised and very hassle-free to use, and in my experience there's no other handheld PC out there that offers as good of an experience right now.