Welcome nerds to this month’s Critical Brit where, after finally getting my Wotsit greased fingers on one for a while, I’ll be covering the Steam Deck from Valve.
“What even is that?” I hear (in Angie’s voice).
Well, in simplest terms, it’s a Nintendo Switch but it’s a PC. A handheld gaming machine using the PC gaming behemoth online store called Steam.
Now, there has been a few attempts at such a thing before, from various companies, and they were a mixed bag. But this is a big boy entering the market, with enough to spend to make a quality product and produce it in volume, at a reasonable price (£350), and now that all the preorder units have been sent you can get one to your door in 5-7 days.
So what do you get?
In the delivery box is a 20w usb-c charger, a simple quickstart sheet, and, sealed in a sturdy carrying case, the handset itself.
Setting up was as simple as inserting an SD card and scanning a QR code with the Steam app on my phone. And it was set to my account with access to all my games. (If you haven’t used Steam before you’ll need to set up an account).
As it’s been out for a few months now, the Steam store/library is set up well and has a great “on deck” section that has all the games confirmed to work well without any issues.
As its an open PC platform it’s not as controlled as say the PS store or Xbox live, so some games might not have had a steam deck patch to add controller options etc, but most work OK or can be quickly fixed to thanks to the decks controller options where you can change any input to match any game as you want. A good example is GTA-V on PC, you can use a controller no problems but the EULA you have to OK the first time has to be clicked with a mouse, no buttons worked. So I hit the options, set trackpad to “mouse”, and, hey presto, the game worked perfectly.
Deck button used to set power use/battery life.
So that brings me onto performance.
It’s got a lot more under the hood than a switch and is probably approaching PS4 levels of power but at 1280×800 rather than 1920×1080.
A quick rummage in the graphics settings gets GTA-V & DOOM running on medium settings at a fairly solid 60 FPS and things like Witcher 3 & Hellblade running medium settings at a stable 30 FPS. Not top settings but they are much higher detail than the same games could ever dream of on Switch.
The sound is notably good with two strong speakers giving clear crisp audio or there’s Bluetooth/ 3.5mm headphone options if you prefer.
Running high end games does draw a chunk of power (as can be monitored & adjusted with the other deck button) that could see the battery drain in as little as 2.5 to 3 hours, if you are more of an indie dahhhling then simpler games can be tweaked to give 6-7 hours of game time. Charging from flat takes around two hours and, as it’s a PC, you can’t put it in sleep mode to charge (like a switch) it does have to be on the whole time.
Deck/Switch size comparison
How does it feel?
The steam deck looks comparatively huge when placed next to a switch and this definitely discounts any idea of it being a “pocket” console unless you’re MC Hammer.
Top down comparison
But if you look closer the thumbsticks are only a tiny bit further apart in comparison. Most of the bulk is in the grip ends where the D-pad & ABXY buttons are. Weight is a bit more than a switch too but while playing I haven’t found either size or weight an issue and the grips feel more comfortable over time than a switch to my adult hands, my ten year old has played on it for 3-4 hours and doesn’t have any comfort issues either.
GTA-V
Hellblade
Witcher 3
DOOM
One of the only issues I’ve heard of is some online pvp games such as COD etc can be a problem as they don’t understand what Steam OS is and might trigger hacking protection kicking you from sessions, but you’d have to look in to specifics if that could be a deal breaker for you.
How many games can it hold?
Out of the box the base model has about 30GB of free space for games which isn’t much (and just as a heads up you don’t want to fill that completely or it goes wierd), they do models with 256 & 512 GB SSDs, but the large step in price VS performance means base model and a quality SD card are the way to go in my opinion. You can get a 512 SD card for £60 (compared to the £200 extra for the SSD model) and the difference in load times is at worst literally a second but I’d suggest going for a 1TB card if you want to have several “triple A” games ready to go as they can often require 60-120GB each.
The buttons and triggers feel really good and responsive with quality action and return, thumbsticks are firmer than a switch and more in line with a PS4 or Xbox controller. They might feel a little slippy for some, but you can add any standard caps or extenders if you feel the need.
The trackpads are good if a little sensitive and the touchscreen is as good as any phone.
Power saving = battery life.
So this thing is a PC can I watch YouTube on it?
Out of the box it uses Steam OS which only uses the steam store and library but if you want you can install Windows (several good tutorials are on YouTube) and use it as a desktop PC to do a bunch of other things such as emulation, using several other game stores, or even browsing over to NerdBlitz.com, but that’s a little more involved and I haven’t personally done it yet, so will leave it for now and stick to the base unit.
Aperture desk job is a fun free thing to show you the controls.
Overall, the steam deck is a solid bit of kit, it runs high end games better than I was expecting but they do devour battery life if your not playing plugged in. Tweaking controller settings is simple enough should you need to and only needs to be done once if at all.
If you already game on PC then a deck is a great idea as you’ll have your entire (steam) library of games just a download away. There’s a little more work than a traditional console but nothing major and as devs add patches to older games and include Steam Decks into new standard settings it will only become even easier going forward.
Special thanks to our resident Critical Brit @Steboost
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