Steam Deck: The First Hands-On With Valve’s Handheld Gaming PC

IGN : Our impressions of the Steam Deck, Valve's new handheld PC gaming device.

[darthv72]

Im sold

[Gaming4Life1981]

Me too but I have bad luck pre ordering things online but im going to try when it goes live tomorrow. Hopefully I can get one before the scalping starts.

[Eonjay]

This really craps all over the Switch for only $50 more. With all the excuses that Nintendo received no one just admitted that the switch OLED is so expensive because Nintendo didn't have competition.

[Profchaos]

I think the preorder rules say you need to prove your a steam customer by having purchases in your steam LIbrary that ore date a specific date

Might help or scalpers may just buy old game accounts

[Vegamyster]

Profchaos

They're giving Steam users that have purchased a game before June the ability to preorder it first for 48 hours to combat scalpers, i hope more companies try this.

[--Onilink--]

@Eonjay

While the internals are certainly much better than the Switch, its not really just $50 more (or $100 compared to the non Oled model). You still need to buy the dock (though thankfully any USB-C will do as well) and if the Switch needed expandable storage, this is on whole other level.
On Switch you can make do with a 128gb card, for this even 512gb might be on the short side.

Still though, I honestly see it more of a PC extension
Or in my case a cheap PC I could get since its been quite a while since I felt like building one, that I can also play on the go and use steam and gamepass combined.

Still though, im expecting to probably end up spending around $600-700 because of storage and the dock, I certainly do not see it as a Switch replacement in terms of games or price

[phoenixwing]

90% sold. The other ten is me doubting if I'll use it much over my desktop but having a portable pc kinda covers the other ten.

[potedude]

I'm buying one for my kid 😉

[4Sh0w]

I want one, never liked the Switch..... now maybe this is what I need to get more gaming time, go mobile, might be able to play some days at lunch.

[Father__Merrin]

It's expensive but looks pretty good I doubt it will be popular nvidia tried similar

[NotoriousWhiz]

What did nvidia try that was similar?

[Skuletor]

NVIDIA shield

[NotoriousWhiz]

https://www.nvidia.com/en-u...

Unless I'm missing something, that's not a portable at all.

[sinspirit]

Pretty big difference though. Shield required a gaming PC setup for casting to play any of those games, or you could play Android games. This is a totally independent and well-priced gaming PC with portability. Enthusiasts would totally be into this product for on the go, and newcomers have a super viable product from a respectable company with a lot of positives to it. I'm very tempted to get this, but I definitely don't need it.

[CDbiggen]

I don't need this. I don't need this. I don't need this.

[0rbital71]

sounds like u do..

[Darkborn]

You need it.

[Mozillayaseen]

I'm not a Pc gamer but i must say this looks good.So people with steam accounts can just log in and all their games are there?Or will this work exactly?

[ocelot07]

It depends if you use th steamos then not all games will work. If you wipe the device and install windows and install steam then yer all your games should work. Just all depends how well they run.

[sinspirit]

Their installation allows support for a lot of Windows games. Linux can be made to run those Windows drivers. I'm definitely curious to see how well this works though. I remember having a bad time with Wine and Linux back in the day.

[ocelot07]

@sinspirit same here wine kind of put me off Linux.

[Bladesfist]

Proton has brought a whole new world to Linux support. You can check what is and isn't supported here: https://www.protondb.com/

[Outlawzz]

Does the ssd matter if you don't care about load times? Does it affect performance ? I rather just get the base $399 but not if it would make a difference in performance while gaming.

[ocelot07]

Right now nope just quicker load times. However, With PS5 and Xbox Series games being built with SSD in mind. Then maybe sooner rather than later future pc games will requier a ssd.

[spdarksky]

There's a number of test runs done by techies (you can find in youtube) that most games will run on SDCards but may not be all. I tested myself before and I experiencing few crashes when loading games via SDCards especially high end games. Expected slight performance hiccup as well comparing to the standard HDD.

I believe SteamDeck supports playing games on extSSD (or extNVME) then getting the base model will do, albeit the extSSD stuck on your SteamDeck when gaming. Not forgetting that battery usage will be higher as well to power up the extSSD.

[ocelot07]

I would really like to get one of these and I think I will. Doubt I'll get one at launch. I'll give it a few months and see how it's performing.

[BiGT85]

Steam deck pc handheld is way better than Nintendo switch oled!!!

I'm sold

[Storm23]

Looks really cool. I might need to pick one up at some point. I wonder if successful (which looks like it will be) how soon there will be a second iteration? Smart to wait for that?

[MadLad]

It's technology.
You'll be waiting forever if you're worried about buying one thing, just because something else might be coming down the road.

Honestly though, this is, essentially, a PC. What makes sense to me is, if this becomes popular, we'll probably see an updated version every 4 or 5 years, to keep up with the constant advancement in PC technology.
They'll want the Deck to at least play modern games decently.

[IanTH]

This is exactly what I was looking for! I'm just about sold on this, though I do wish they would have asked if the screen supported VRR/FreeSync. Useful when you're stuck with a moderate performance envelope that can never be upgraded.

[JTShiny]

PCMasterRace and soon there will be Portable MasterRace.
Never been excited for a portable gaming machine before.

lol at the dislikes on every single positive comment about the deck. Typical pathetic behavior from "that" particular crazy fanbase hahaha.

[JTShiny]

Hahaha.
The salt is real. Dislike all you want, it doesn't change the fact you're one batshit crazy, cult-like fanbase. lol

[Lionsguard]

Funny enough, the thing that sells me here is the fact that it doesn't have an OLED. Don't get me wrong, I love OLED displays but the burn-in is unreal.

[HOLDERofFOOD]

Anyone else concerned that it looks like there’s some pretty apparent input lag???

[RaidenBlack]

This is a prototype unit.

[HOLDERofFOOD]

Aye hoping you’re right and they fix that.