Steam deck portable handheld gaming PC from Valve

Deck just showed up. After spending a few minutes with it my excitement level is about a 0 for it. That video linked a few pages back it pretty spot on - "Look! I can play some of my games on a small screen with the occasional compatibility issue!"

I know there are other considerations besides cost, but Valve should have ponied up the $20/deck fee for Windows. That's more than worth it for complete Steam Library compatibility. I know there are Steam Deck Windows drivers but I am not sure if they are feature complete yet. Server/console Linux is great, but desktop Linux and gaming on Linux both suck (I daily drive Linux and have more issues/crashes on it that any Windows machine). I also overlooked the lack of a USB A port, which would have been nice to plug in a wireless keyboard/mouse to toy around with desktop mode on the deck with. I do not have a USB-C dock and will likely get one, but who knows when the official Valve dock will be available which means buy one now and buy the (presumably) better Valve one later.

I will say it looks and feels nice, but it has some flaws. It is fairly wide. It doesn't seem uncomfortable for me to use and hold but it could be for smaller people. The D-pad and the left stick are too close together, so I hit the stick when pushing the D-pad right. The cases seems nice, but it seems to have a recessed area on the outside bottom of the case to hold the charger (or maybe wired earbuds or both), but it is not deep enough (or the charger is too fat). It sticks out and stops the case from laying flat (not my pic, and shows some sort of charger holder, but illustrates the point). Just bad design. That area is mostly covered by an elastic strap - a full velcro flap would be better to prevent anything from slipping out the sides. Or move that space to the inside of the case and the problem goes away. The included charger has the cable attached. This is the kind of charger needed to store it flat. It would also be nice to have an appropiately located access hole to charge while the Deck is in the closed case.

Valve definitely cheaped out on the packaging for shipping. It ships in its case (with a paper sleeve and a plastic bag - not my pic) and inside a fitted brown cardboard box, but there is no shelf/store box and no padding or protection between the shipping box and the Deck case. The end of my shipping box was crushed a bit, and I could look inside and see the Deck case. It did arrive undamaged, but I think there should be more than just the case to deflect any shipping force/damage.

PC games just aren't meant for the Deck form factor and control scheme. Same reason why the Steam controller failed. And Steam Machines/Steam Link. Unless you just want to run emulators, buy a real handheld console. To the shelf it goes. I must be getting old.

My 512gb is ready. On the wall. If nothing else my uniquely good use case of doing nothing at work has changed somewhat. Some days yes but not others.


Resale market string at all still? Might try locally in tulsa, not sure i have courage to try scam fest ebay

Yea my 512 reserve came in today as well....I dont think im going to do it. I dont have any game that im itching to play while on the road or something. Maybe at some point there will be, but even then I can just bring my laptop. Maybe Ill grab one for Christmas.

Paid but now I'm like where is my shipping info...

Still a bit torn on play with it and try to love it vs straight to sell locally for a small upcharge on my time.

SHocked how light it is (512 chad version not sure if the better glass is also lighter)

Havn't gotten to playing yet, but I like it a lot so far. Now to rewind a few pages for some of those guides on shit to do w/ this thing/accessories. Downloading games now is perfect as I have 12 hour shifts for next few weeks where my phone reception is very spotty.


Can I sync my bluetooth earbuds to this thing? Or wired only.

Depends on where you live, I paid on a saturday at like 11pm, got it tuesday, but I live like an hour from where it ships.

However long it would take a fedex package to go from Chicago to you, that's how long it would take, maybe 1 extra day for processing.

spronk said:

yeah ive had it for about a month i really like it but as i expect i don't really play it much. spent ~5 hours setting up windows 11 on a microSD card and another 3-4 hous setting up emudeck on another 512gb card with 1000+ ROMs (i posted the links a few posts back) and it runs ~20k ROMs from every console ever up to 2015, pretty awesome.

end of the day though i still prefer playing games on my ps5/series X on OLED TV, but i've taken it a few times to the car dealer or doctor and fucked around with games like Monkey Island, Tumbleweed Park, and Simpsons Hit and Run and it all ran great. I do have a jsaux dock with hdmi port i could hook up to my TV but i haven't done it yet.

no regrets, fun and really cool device just to fuck around with at a technical level. Its an absolute emulation BEAST, i ran xenoblade 2 at 30 fps (switch game) zero problems but then I was thinking and I'd probably rather play on a beefy PC/monitor at 60 fps with a controller. deck does link perfectly fine to bluetooth kbm, headset, and controller.

Click to expand...

I saw someone running tarkov at 30fps which was amazing though I think just offline mode. Might be nice to log in and at least do some like out of game base building type stuff.

Was looking at the jsaux stuff mainly the cover and screen protector but not sure it will fit with the deckmate mount I already ordered.