Steam Deck

[Lazybones]

So my daughter cashed in her saved allowance to get a Steam Deck last week while it was on summer sale.

I have been following it for a while with some interest but since I don't game that often and have a full blown gaming PC I never pulled the trigger.

I have to admit I am very impressed with it. It has a further refined steam experience on top of a full "desktop" mode which lets you basically use it like a linux desktop PC and allows for a whole community of mode tools you can just browse to and load from there.

If you have used emulation station on a Pi or PC EMU DECK takes it to a whole new level with full GUI setup of all common features and it will load your rom launching directly into Steam OS with artwork as if each game is a steam game, it even will load correct controller profiles. What I am most impressed with is how well it can emulate a switch.. We already have a switch and switch lite in the house. While the steam deck is HUGE in comparison it will play a lot of switch games VERY well (but not all). My kids are not really interested in older games emulated but apparently anything up to a PS1 is nearly perfect in EMU DECK / Emulation station now.

There are good filters in the steam library now for showing which games have been tested on the platform and are known to work (you can do this on your current steam interface as well to check in advance). So far the "majority" of our home libraries do work on the steam deck, I should note profile switching and family sharing both work on the steam deck well. With the only issue being some games run as common games (common saves) not as separate under each users profile. This mostly impacts emulated games or older games not built for steam cloud save to begin with.

Hardware wise I was very pleased with I plugged in a USB-C network/HDMI/USB dongle and it all JUST WORKED with the steam deck including the network part (way cheaper than the official dock). While the steam deck supports 5Ghz WiFi AC it is nice to just plug in a gigabit wired adaptor, open the native Dolphin Network browser in Desktop mode and just transfer files from my NAS over SMB (for some reason many guides don't point this out and show more complicated transfer methods).

I have also been able to to use keyboard and mouse (USB / bluetooth), Xbox one wireless controllers (bluetooth) and Switch joy cons (bluetooth) making docked play or PC / emulated games super easy to control with native controllers. Emudeck takes care of mapping default profiles for every platform that work really well out of the box.

We have only had it for a few days but all around I have to say I am very impressed. The size of it really being the only negative, it is BIG and probably uncomfortable for those with smaller hands.

[Mr. Analog]

Dude that's awesome!

[Lazybones]

Dude that's awesome!

It isn't going to replace more exact emulation platforms but it takes the RetroPie type experience to a new level due to the systems performance (able to pull off newer consoles) and portability.

You can technically duel boot it to windows (valve offers FULL driver support) but I am not sure that is necessary unless you have an unsupported game or want to use it as a full PC replacement which, when docked I think it could pull off fairly well.

Sort of makes me want to go back to some of my Xbox 360 favorites like the Burnout Series

[Mr. Analog]

Oh man that'd be so cool. I have RetroPie on a Pi 3 B+ and it runs classic arcade games and consoles pretty well but I don't think I'd try anything past PS1

[Melbosa]

I have owned a Steam Deck since launch. I can tell you that now, there is NO reason to install Windows on the system, not ONE reason. The proton/emu support allows everything under the sun to run on it, every PC client (like Epic, Ubiconect, Battle.net, etc) and yeah so many emus just work so well. While the other game clients can be tricky to get working, once you get them working, most of the time they even just update like any Windows version.  I have also gotten Geforce Now and Xbox Mobile working on it, so even games that won't run on the SteamD due to hardware limitations can still be run from it using cloud services.

For emus, I know people playing Zelda Tears of the Kingdom at higher framerates and better graphics than the Switch ever could put out with the emus. No need for the berry emus, for the relaunches of the old consoles, etc systems. All you may need is more than one large SD card to change out on the SteamD as running all the emus + PC Client/Steam games could eat up storage fast.

I use mine with a Dock to connect to my home theatre with ethernet support. I also use an Xbox controller (once fully upgraded with my Xbox/PC first - sometimes the firmware is too old and the SteamD has problems with them fresh out of the box), its like I'm just there using the SteamD's interface contoller but from my comfy couch.

I'd recommend it to anyone... for any reason. It's the ultimate consoles+PC combo unit around. And I've tried out the Razer and Asus units... and the SteamD, just from community and Valve support, is way better!

This facebook group has been very helpful: https://www.facebook.com/groups/steamdeckgamers/. This site as well has been great: https://steamdeckhq.com/.

With over 8000 steam games fully verified, the list of games that "just" run is crazy. Then there are more that are just not fully vetted but only have a minor flaw. If you only use your SteamD for Steam games library, you still have so many games to play!

[Lazybones]

Thanks for the links.

I think the wonkiest thing I have had happen so far is family / library sharing just turning it self off for no reason.

Interesting to see how fast this has advances as a Linux based gaming platform.

[Melbosa]

Interesting to see how fast this has advances as a Linux based gaming platform.

I credit the SteamD release as the single most influential push to Linux gaming ever. I've never seen linux game adaption at this rate ever!

[Lazybones]

It is interesting that Linux is getting close to matching or overtaking MacOS in the Steam hardware survey.

Finding the steam deck is a little hard but it appears as "AMD VanGogh" under graphics and as of June 0.57% of steam users. Even with how popular the steam deck is there just haven't been that many produced vs how MASSIVE the steam user base is.