How good is the Steam Deck really? (Not a gamer)
Curious how people view the steam deck and if most/all their games are supported?
The only things I've found that just straight up don't work on the deck are things with draconian anti-cheat (which don't work on Linux in general, not just the deck), and very old titles that have weirdly restrictive resolutions or control schemes or whathaveyou. Some games require some tweaking (mostly around controls, occasionally changing the Proton version, which is very easy to do within Steam), but generally that's been minor. The things that don't work well are typically things you wouldn't expect to work anyway.
It's worth noting that it makes it very easy to remap controls, even for games that don't natively support controllers or don't let you remap the controls at all normally. You can also invoke an onscreen keyboard as needed (for e.g. typing names). The controller mapping is very strong; it's not limited only to single buttons; you can create custom contextual radial menus, for instance, so even games that need many more unique controls than the Deck has buttons work fine with some tweaking. You can also view / download / rate other users' control mappings for any game that has them, so you don't even need to do the work yourself.
It's a fantastic piece of hardware for gaming. Looks great, feels great. It's a bit large (won't fit in a pocket, obviously), but that shouldn't be a problem for anyone who would reasonably want a handheld gaming PC. It's not a phone or a Gameboy.
I was without a desktop PC for a week or so due to a hardware failure, and was able to do everything I needed to do on the Steam Deck (with a USB mouse/keyboard, plugged into a monitor via a dock). So it's a great piece of hardware even for that.
and very old titles that have weirdly restrictive resolutions or control schemes or whathaveyou.
This is correct, but as an addendum, for a lot of very old games (that don't fall into that previous category), it's usually easier to get them working under Linux than it is under Windows. Go figure.
I'll just add that another, albeit smaller, category of games that don't work are really new, demanding titles. There's not a lot of them for now, but naturally the deck wasn't the most powerful device to begin with and over time less titles will work well.
Starfield was pointed out to me as an example of one that can't run on the deck for performance reasons (not that Bethesda is known for their optimization) and BG3 was only barely playable at the lowest settings in the more demanding areas of the game (i.e. Act 3).
That said, for its price point, and considering most games are using the proton compatibility later, I was actually very impressed with its performance.
The funny thing is that we started buying MORE games after getting it and filtering steam for the ones that work best.
It completely replaced the Nintendo Switch as our party platform, we have been adding piles of local multi player games to it and using multiple Xbox controllers with it docked around the main TV most of the time.
I think when it comes to how many titles work it is going to depend on your gaming preferences. If you play a lot of EA games or Ubisoft games it is clunky to get their store loaders going sometimes or at a min you get prompted to sign in via onscreen keyboard which is a PITA sometimes and there is lower support.
Steam native games however are great.
I bought my OLED deck a few months ago, and whatever the opposite of buyer's remorse is, that's what I have. I love it more every day and I think the ideal Personal Media Device. I travel a lot and I have tons of games, movies, and even ebooks on the device which completely changes the complexion of long flights for me.
It's so customizable and versatile.
I love mine, but if you're not a gamer it probably won't be a good device for you.
The biggest advantages of the Deck (in my opinion) are it's portability, and the ability to suspend mid game. I used to play games primarily on my computer, but as a father I had to mostly drop playing games. I can't afford to lock myself away from my wife/kids for long periods of time, and there are frequently interruptions (kids crying, someone's hungry, wife needs help, etc) that makes it hard to know how long I have to play before I need to be able to stop playing. Due to this, I had stopped playing PC games almost completely. I still played phone and Nintendo Switch games some, but these both have downsides (most phone games suck and the controls limit what games are viable, nintendo switch games are overpriced and I have to compete with the kids for it).
The steam deck solved my game issues, and really let me play games freely again. I can play for short bursts, and if I need to stop I can just suspend and pick up in the same place later. It's been a great device for me, but I was someone who wanted to be playing games and lacked time/freedom to do it.
In comparison though, when I upgraded to an OLED deck I sold my LCD deck, and I know that the person I sold it to hasn't gotten very much use out of it. He's generally less into games than I am, and when he wants to play he can play on his PC without issues. He didn't have much of a use-case for the Steam Deck outside of trips.
So in summary, the deck is a fantastic piece of hardware, but it's really dependent on what you want out of a device that will determine if it's something that will be good for you personally.
I use mine to play some Steam games and to run emulators. I haven't had any compatibility issues, but I also tend to stick to games that are Steam Deck verified.
As far as how good it is, it's the only handheld pc I've used personally, but from reviews and discussions I've seen, despite other handhelds being more powerful, Steam Deck is a solid contender because of its price point and SteamOS being purpose-built for a handheld, whereas Windows is not.
I love mine. I bought one as soon as they went on sale and it has completely replaced my gaming laptop when I travel. What I like most of all is that it makes it easy for me to play games in my backlog that I would not otherwise have plaid. I have almost 900 games in my library and it's opened up my playtime in platformers, casual story games, puzzle games, racing, space sims, and more. The fact that I can do that on a plane or wherever on holiday is awesome. I have no doubt that there are games in my library it can't play, but I've not actually tried to play a game on it that just didn't work.
If you aren't a gamer I don't know how much value there is for you. If you want to become a gamer it's a well balanced device with a solid store behind it and your library will be accessible by any PC you buy in the future. If you are considering it as a gift for a gamer, just keep in mind if they aren't primarily a PC gamer (that is to say they play on a console) they will have to rebuy some games if they want to play on the deck.
As far as being a full laptop replacement, I wouldn't bother.
I have a gaming PC with an R7 5800X and an RTX 3080 hooked up to a 38” Ultrawide monitor
Since I got my Steam Deck, the PC setup mostly collects dust. Being able to lay on the couch and play games while watching TV shows with my SO became a lot more appealing than going into another room to sit upright at a desk. Games in bed while watching Saturday morning cartoons? Yes please!
As far as games are concerned, the majority of things run at acceptable framerates. For the exceptions, you can always stream from a PC over the network and the battery life is incredible when you play that way. This also applies to games with restrictive anti-cheat.
Amazing. One of the best purchases I've ever made.
It's rare for me to see games in my library that are not supported, although there are a few. But there is a difference between running and running well. Demanding games will get maybe an hour of battery life and the fans will be pretty loud the whole time. Some games (especially strategy games) really work better with a full keyboard and a higher resolution screen. Some games I just would not want to play on a handheld. But most of the time the games that I want to play work well.
One trick I use to get better battery life and performance is streaming. I use Chiaki to stream from my PS4, and Steam Link (as a non-steam app lol) to stream from my desktop. It's often worth it for the fan noise reduction alone.
It's even better at emulation. It's a great machine for PS2 and GameCube games- I have the back buttons and track pads mapped to speed up, pause, slow, and rewind gameplay and to control save states. I have not dialed it in yet, but I think with some tweaking you could probably use the gyro and/or track pads to do some good Wii emulation. 3DS and DS are great too, mostly because of the track pads. Anything older emulates fine, but isn't as impressive.
I have gotten PS3 and Switch emulation to work, but the fans go on and the battery life goes down, so I don't really use it for that. Plus storage is a bit tight and PS3 games are huge.
It does feel like Valve was just a little too early. I wish the screen was 1080p.
The 2230 SSD's that it uses were kind of uncommon when it released. The weird size made them more expensive and they had lower capacities. I managed to get a 512GB one, but I wish I could have gotten like 2TB. It seems like that's changing now though. Similarly, I wish microSD cards came in larger capacities. Storage just seems to get used up so fast these days.
It's a decent piece of hardware designed for ease of use similar to consoles while also allowing people as much control as a normal PC. How well it works depends completely on what kind of games one wants to play.
I tend to play mostly indie and older titles, both PC and console ones, and Deck works great for that. The few AAA games I tried worked without issues but your experience might vary based on when they were released, whether they use third party launchers, DRM etc.
Deck was a bit of an impulse buy for me but I can't say I regret it. It's a neat device and a great way to get into PC gaming, well worth the asking price in my opinion.
I bought the 512 GB OLED back in May with no regrets. I’m surprised how quick I am to turn in the Steam Deck now instead of booting up my gaming PC. I wouldn’t say it’s changed how I play, since I already tend to game with a controller, but it’s great fun, and so far I don’t think I’ve encountered a single game in my Steam Library that wouldn’t run. Plus, I love handhelds and portable devices in general.
A few games have needed minor tweaks (proton version, a fix that would also be needed in Windows), but everything has worked. As a disclaimer though, I don’t play online competitive games, just single player and co-op stuff with my wife, so YMMV.
On the other hand, I’ve found some games work that I couldn’t even run decently in Windows. Like Rainbow Six: Vegas. On Windows it would never properly work with a controller but on the Deck it was no problem. And Silent Storm ram out of the box, no tweaks at all. Linux is awesome like that for older titles.
It’s also been great for emulation, at least through PS2 and GameCube, I don’t emulate much above those. Emudeck is nice, and I was already familiar with EmulationStation since I use that on a Powkiddy X55, so that was nice.
One thing I will say is a game changer is the suspend function. Being able to tap the power button and sleep it at any time and then pick up where you left off later is amazing. Reminds me of the old Nintendo DS, just shut the lid and get back to it.
All told, I’m really happy with it.
I travel quite a bit for work, so for me it's a life saver.
I play some pretty demanding games such as Cyberpunk, Elden Ring and Horizon: Zero Dawn, and while it's no PS5, they run beautifully for such a small device.
The battery is not going to run me any of those games for more than an hour or so, but for that there are always those oldeis but goodies I emulate from NES all the way to PS2.
If like you say you're not a gamer, which makes me assume you'll play some games just to pass some time and kill some stress, I don't think you can find a better device to spend a couple of hundreds on and feel like it was a gift.
It's great for offline, singleplayer games. Unfortunately some multiplayer games just refuse to work on Linux, because of the anti-cheat. But I mostly use my Steam Deck when I'm traveling and have a very poor or no internet connection, so I can only play singleplayer games anyway.
Honestly it’s become my gaming PC. It’s weird to say but the piece of kit has held its own and at this point if I want to okay a pc game in the living room I turn to the steamdeck more than anything else.
I got the steam deck to play older games and games that aren’t on my console of choice.
None of the games I play have given me any trouble, but I find myself starting each new game with a ritual of performance optimization tweaks. It could be anything from adjusting graphical settings to capping frame rates to changing the default resolution scaling, and sometimes I’ll revisit these during my playthrough. It doesn’t bother me all that much, but playing on a proper console is less hassle.
I love mine. I have a pc i havnt used for gaming in years because its in another room. Bought a steam deck, now i get to play all my pc games on the couch
Excellent. Simply excellent. Don't expect it to run AAA games at 60fps, but it'll run most very well. Doom and Doom Eternal can hit 60fps easily. Even Baldurs Gate does a decent 30fps. For the portability and convenience you can't lose. Don't forget it hooks up to a TV, Bluetooth controller, or a keyboard and mouse! I've gamed at work in lunch break using a USB-C adaptor for screen, mouse and keyboard and it works great.
There has been 1 game I've tried to play that hasn't worked, people say it does, but there are 2 versions of the game (square enix, final fantasy 8) and I have the older version, for some reason no control input is sent to it no matter what I do. I'm sure if I bought the new version it would work fine, but I'm done with that company after they bricked my phone copy of ff6 (even though the phone didn't change at all) and told me "if I want to continue playing you need to buy the new version". I'm sad they seem to be doing the same thing with all their old games.
That rant out of the way.
I have 1400 games in my steam library, the above is the only one I've wanted to play but haven't been able to get working.
I highly suggest a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard for first person style games (I'm too old to get used to the "gyro control fine aiming", but the younger people say it works great.) and 4x games.
I play a lot more 2d platformers and rogue-lite games on the deck than I ever did on a PC/laptop. The controls are fantastic and there's no input lag like I used to have with a wireless control to my PC.
I'm about to buy a 3rd because my household, and the company we bring over, sometimes use mine when I want to be using it.
Some of the games I've played on it: red dead redemption 2, Witcher 3, elder scrolls Skyrim, rim world, dead cells, path of exile, Warhammer total war 2, sid Meier's civ 5 and 6, subnautica, factorio, satisfactory, monster Hunter frostborn wrath, baldurs gate 3.
It's actually amazingly good at running the ported PS2/4 and xbox360 games, I was amazed to see 5-6 hours predicted battery life while playing dynasty warriors 8 and Disgaea 4.
I was thinking about getting a new gaming laptop to replace my 5 year old 15" dell, but the deck filled that need perfectly, and at a fraction of the price a new computer would've cost.
When I originally bought it (pre ordered the 512 gig) I bought a "leather skin" and screen protector, I'm glad that I did, but I think the skin was going overboard.
If you aren't a gamer I'm not very sure how much desktop function there is, I've only done it once or twice, but I was able to YouTube and Amazon through the browser.
If you get one (and I highly recommend it) I suggest getting a kick stand, a Bluetooth mouse and a Bluetooth keyboard.
My next investment is going to be a "dock" and a pair of a.r. glasses so I can charge it and use the glasses as a monitor and lay in bed and game until mold grows over me.
Edit to add: I've actually found a couple newer games that developers have decided my laptop is "too out of date" to run, but will run just fine on the deck, so there's that!
Please feel free to ask my any specific questions, I will answer them as unbiasedly as possible.
I jumped on ordering mine working 30 minutes of its announcement, I waited 7 months to get it, and I've used it probably 60% of the days since I've had it. I still use the laptop some times (especially when my wife has it for some games, and I bought my mom one of her own so she wouldn't be using mine constantly when she came to visit)
The weird part of this post is I've spent a couple of days trying to get Disgaea 4 to work on my Deck and it really, really doesn't. I know I'm not alone because the game's forums have several threads of people complaining about it.
Slightly embarassingly, I also tested it on a Windows ARM device and it ran fine.
Look, compatibility on the Deck is... good for what it is, but it's certainly nowhere near universal. Especially if you have a big library of games outside Steam, which I do. I'd still say it's the easy go-to for a casual gamer mostly interested in older single player stuff or indie games, particularly for the price.
Use the latest proton GE and set the following launch options:
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%
My library is plenty large enough and it's 80%+ gold verified on protondb, and I've found success in running titles that were unverified (but not borked, I've never tried any of the dozen or so borked games in my library).
Disgaea 4 runs flawlessly without any modification on my deck, it does take a moment to start, I believe that is when it's trying to connect to the online servers which I have entirely disabled through the in game options menu.
I won't attest to anything outside of steam, because I didn't buy a laptop or a console, I bought a steam deck. And I have more than a thousand games ready to go on it.
Edit to add: not sure where you pulled "universal compatability" from, I never mentioned that at all. Contrary to that statement all of the games I mentioned, and everything I've ever tried playing, are titles activated through steam.
I mean, I pulled it from reality. I'm just assessing the way it works for the OP, not representing what you said.
As for Disgaea 4, I do believe that it works for you, the threads on the Steam forums also include people who say it runs for them, along with several who can get it to run by fiddling with Proton versions or doing some combination of launch options, multiple retries and settings changes. But it does have problems. It won't run at all for me and others report frequent crashes, endless loading screens and other issues. It should definitely not have a Verified rating.
That's the exception, not the rule, I just mentioned it because you pointed it out and it happens to be one of the games that don't run universally for everybody.
I love mine so much that I didn't bother replacing my old laptop after it died, I just bought a dock, pulled an old Bluetooth mouse and keyboard out of storage, and the Deck is my daily driver now.
I have fantastic experiences playing mine. I recently upgraded to the OLED and gave the old LCD to a friend, and now he's addicted to PC gaming as well. We play stuff every weekend, opening Steam voice calls is built right into the UI and it's a fantastic experience. If you are thinking about getting into gaming, or gifting one to a gamer, I can't recommend it enough.
A lot work, but some of those are with an asterisk.
E.g., dyson sphere program, a factory game, is listed as playable. But, there's no steam cross-play - so you can't have the same save file on your PC and deck. And that game is computation heavy so I doubt if it would work well. Or Fez: I tried launching a few different ways, but it hard crashed. I'm sure there's some way to fix it, but I didn't bother to find out.
All that being said, I haven't touched my gaming PC in months because the pause / resume feature is so convenient for getting gaming in, 15 minutes at a time.
Dyson Sphere doesn’t support cloud saves, not an issue with the Steam Deck.
I’ve also had some issues with Fez but find it works better now
It's fantastic, especially for non-gamers.
There's a huge library of cozy games, and arcade games, and retro games, and adventure RPGs, exploration games, puzzle games that all run terrific on a SteamDeck.
The average randomly selected game from my Steam Library has run fine for me, on my SteamDeck.
If they ever make a smaller model with a clam shell to protect the screen, it'll be the perfect game system.