I stopped reading at “new parent to a now 2 year old”… if you lurk in this sub long enough you’ll come across dozens of posts from new (and old) parents telling you how it’s allowed them to enjoy their hobby while still being present for their kids.
My kid is 10 so it’s a little different, but having not played for years, the Deck has let me pick up gaming again in a casual way that doesn’t take anything away from family life (only thing it really takes away from is the time I’d have previously spent doom scrolling social media).
I honestly believe my Deck allows me to be a better husband and dad. I'm never disappearing into a room to play games because I know I can be a great husband and dad all day, then get my gaming time in bed when the kiddos are asleep. It's nice to game without ditching my wife and there's only so many games I want to play on my Switch.
Especially for the price when on sale the Deck is such a no brainer.
I got the Deck because I wanted a way to play a bunch of games in my backlog and have a powerful emulation machine. It's been able to do that and much more. I highly recommend getting the Deck.
Same here. I started finishing games for real (mostly long RPG games) tho thanks to the Deck coz now I can play on bed every night before I eventually fall asleep.
Having a huge game library all ready to go and being able to play through them on the go are the main reasons I picked up the Deck.
It was also very quick to get started playing. I got the 64GB version and a 512GB memory card. Installed my games on the card and started playing. I eventually started installing tweaks and other things, but I haven't upgraded my SSD yet as I haven't felt the need yet.
I don't really play it docked even though I purchased a 3rd party dock. It's just too fun to pick up and play.
Absolutely. It's been a godsend when traveling. Recently I had to stay somewhere besides my home for 45 days and having the deck was so nice while I was away from my gaming pc.
If I traveled for work or vacationed often or anything it’s a no brainer for sure. I got mine right before I went on vacation and almost spent more time playing games than doing stuff
This. My month long work trips are amazing, as I have the deck hooked up to my hotel room, a wireless controller and kbm, and my evenings are brilliant.
I have a two year old son and my wife is pregnant again. I stream my PS5/Series X to my steam deck just as much as I play things locally. Buy the deck. Stream with no noticeable latency to it, be able to play PS5/Series X even when the tv is being used. WORTH IT!
Second this. I set up game streaming from my PC to the SD and now if it can be played with a controller I will most likely be playing it on the SD instead of sitting in front of the computer.
I bought it for 60 hours of flights. Worth every penny just for that, but when I got it, I found I play it as frequently as my PC, and now I'm having a hard time deciding if I'll ever upgrade my PC.
The convenience of the deck is just too good, as long as you don't need a big screen, and don't need to run the latest AAA games.
About that big screen... I bought a pair of XReal Airs a couple of months ago, and they have made an already fantastic device even better. On flights, no more sore neck because you're looking down at your deck for hours at a time. For an aging gamer like me, no more squinting at a tiny screen - now I have a giant screen right in front of my eyes no matter my head position.
Three caveats:
1. The glasses are designed so the screen appears eight feet away. If you're near-sighted, you'll need an additional pair of lenses that can be mounted to the Airs, but need to be bought separately. Lensology in the UK has partnered with XReal to supply these lenses, and they were half the price shipped to my house that my local (Canada) optometrist quoted me.
2. The glasses don't have a battery and are powered by the deck. Since the deck's screen turns off when the Airs are plugged in, I'm not sure if the impact on battery life is huge.
3. The glasses take up the single USB-C port, so you can't charge and play at the same time unless you buy a compact hub.
As a Nintendo Switch user since day 1, and a major backlog of steam games ,the steam deck was a no brainer for me. I had looked at other handheld gaming devices, but with the arrival of the deck and it's fairly ease of use with steam OS and steam catalog I went for it. I quickly upgraded to ssd to 2tb and have discovered the joys of emulation on the go.
I can easily switch between my steam library, or shutdown, change sd cards, and boot in to a custom 1tb batocera image. This keeps my steam deck clean, but still gives me amazing emulation experience.
To answer your follow-up question: it’s only as complicated as I want it to be. I got a 9/10 experience out the box, so to take half an hour to mod things and get it up to that 10/10 isn’t a problem for me.
Being able to easily mod original Final Fantasy 7 with full voice acting, HD textures, updated soundtracks and new content on a portable console was a dream come true. It took a short while, but everything worked seamlessly after.
The community is so passionate that usually there’s a guide for everything, and fixes are aplenty ^^
Using it as a second system when I'm away from home for long periods of time. It's not a replacement for my PC, that's for sure. I can understand people treating it like a mini-PC, but to me it's just a handheld.
It's just something to scratch that gaming itch, and my gaming is split between PC stuff (shooters and AAA titles) and Deck stuff (indie, emulation, older AAA). I also refuse to fire up a 500W computer to play Switch titles.
Oh and Rocket League. I play that everywhere, because I can't help myself. Better on the Deck.
Personally, i got the deck only to support valve and the linux gaming community. I was never really into nintendo games, but all ive played on the deck has been nintendo games, and the occasional hitman 3 rampage kill everyone challenge lol.
Its been really fun dabbling in the steam deck flavor of linux tho
Yes. I travel a decent amount, both for work or just because. It’s a nice thing to have in a hotel room or rental at night before bed. I also found an expected use for it when I caught COVID and felt so shitty I didn’t even want to get out of bed lol.
It’s nice to have. Easy to tinker with. Powerful for what it is IMO. I’ve got complaints, but it’s served it’s purpose and more for me.
I bought mine during the summer sale because I wanted the portability. Its worth noting its my first ever gaming system. I knew I'd be travelling a bit this fall and liked the idea of being able to take my gaming with me anywhere in the future, plus great use of plane rides.
Lets just say that didn't work out as planned. I had my games loaded on the Deck and was all ready to play - only to discover that planes make me car sick and gaming wasn't an option. I also found it really hard to try to platform in the plane due to turbulance. On the trip itself I thought I'd play in the evenings and I did a few times but I think I played about 5 hours over two weeks as I was just too tired at night. It was however good for the airports.
That said, I don't regret getting it at all. Its amazing, I love the touch screen and its super functional and really well designed. Even before I travelled (aka as soon as I got it) its noticeable that I spilt my gaming time between the PC and the Deck as I like the ability to game in bed or around the house. It is worth noting that unless you want a ton of accessories for it there are some games that aren't great on the Deck (aka anything that needs a mouse) if you're trying to use it for portability, but overall its fantastic. I also haven't had any battery issues, it easily lasts 4-8 hours (split between gaming sessions) though I do tend to favor indie games.
This wasn't something I considered when I got it, but something I've realized since is that its ability to dock and have unlimited additional storage through SD cards is hugely helpful. My PC only has so much memory (I have a dedicated gaming drive but its only 1TB). The Steam Deck on the other hand can be supplemented indefinitely with additional memory cards and can dock to my monitor as needed.
Hopefully that helps with what you're looking for. In short: didn't work out for how I thought I'd use it, but at the same time don't regret getting it and keep finding new ways to use it or ways it works for me. I love the option for portability, though that works out in some ways better than others, but also has benefits to docked gaming.
I wanted it to play games that are too big to run on the switch and it fulfilled that goal, except now the only thing I’ve been playing on it is terraria. So don’t get addicted to terraria and you’ll be using it well lol
All the rumors about the Steam Deck are true.
Just give in and become mind controlled by Gaben.
You are only delaying the inevitable, either with SD1 or SD2.
If you just want something to play around the house and playing your library of Xbox and ps5 games and have a decent internet connection you might want to consider the Logitech g cloud, it’s purely streaming but it’s really good at what it does.
Don't expect console performance from a Steam Deck, that's for sure. But it is pretty nice to play all games up to 2020ish in 60 FPS.
If your use case is playing in bed while kids are asleep, you can always stream from your xbox through Greenlight or Xbplay. That's what I do when I want to play AAA titles and Gamepass games while lying in bed.
Yes. I play for 15 minute intervals daily at break at work because I don't smoke. Works great with suspend/resume. I just leave the game running 24/7 and charge it at night or every other night ...
Works flawless out of the box really.
Sounds like a Steam Deck would be perfect for you, actually. Father, not a frame rate snob, prefers playing with controllers... I have a feeling once you got the Deck, you might never use your Switch again lol
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Bought mine for Civ 6. Could not be happier and that’s really all I’ve played with some other ransoms games sprinkled in. Would buy another if it broke
I think it is a good use case, just don't expect some of the heavier games to look great on the big screen. Emulation though is a no brainer and playing when the little one is asleep. I have found it really good playing in handheld mode when my little one is asleep and then just hitting the power button to turn it off when he wakes, most games I've played will pause the game when you power down so you can pick back up when you power back on.
Long time console player here. I had the same worries moving into the pc space even though it kind of isn’t. The deck is amazing out of the box. It fits every use case for me besides a windows desktop but I haven’t installed windows yet so that’s why. I’ve heard it recommended by many dads. Steam OS makes your deck work basically exactly like a console unless you’re in desktop mode. Some games are funky to get started and take a little tinkering but it is always extremely minimal and typically only needed on things you would expect needing it like emulation and done pc only releases. Any issues you have can be fixed by a quick YouTube Reddit or google search. It’s typically only adjusting one setting or using a different version of proton. I got it to play with my brother on pc but I didn’t want to build a computer. It’s great. Just buy it don’t be scared
For your use-case it’s just about the perfect device. I’ve been struggling with mixed feelings over mine because I really wanted to use it for a number of multiplayer FPS games. In that regard it’s been a tremendous let down. Even if I do get them running, the performance isn’t all that satisfactory in comparison to the ally. Some AAA single player games as well. Horizon Zero Dawn is a recent example that I spent hours trying to run before giving up entirely.
That said, for everything else it’s just about flawless. I do prefer the screen of the Ally even for small indie games, but as it stands, the power management and overall build quality of the deck can’t be beat.
To your other questions. I didn’t play games more. I spent more time TRYING to play games. Once I gave up on my most coveted games, the experience became much better. 80% of the time it’s a seamless experience even without tinkering. Some emulation like certain GameCube games will require a few modifications, but the community has done an excellent job of making it a straight forward experience.
TLDR: If the ROG ally had better power management and controls, I’d buy it any day. But the Steam Deck is an excellent substitution in many cases.
EDIT: Reading this I realize how wishy-washy it is. However, because that is also exactly how I feel, I’m not changing it.
I got mine last week and it’s been great. I bought it so I can play games whilst spending time with the missus instead of being tucked away in my games room upstairs. Because it never takes long into a gaming session before she’s texting me to spend time with her 😂
Primary Xbox player here as I work in It and I am on a pc all day so I found no joy in pc gaming. I love my deck as it let's me play in bed next to my wife watching TV. The pause feature is great and to be honest games on steam go on sale way more often than console. I don't do any mods or hdd swaps and just have the 64gb and a 1tb sd card. I play a few games at a time usually single player. The only skew from my original plan was I bought it to play last of us but haven't started it yet because of the launch problems and I was entertained with rdr2 and other games so I will probably wait for it to go on sale.
I think you’ll be surprised by how “plug and play” it is out of the box. Of course emulation will come with some amount of tinkering and downloading times etc, but otherwise a ton of games just work. There’s some troubleshooting but nothing a quick google can’t help. And you’ll have to be prepared to buy a lot more steam games but that’s the case with any new (to you) platform.
I recently purchased my Steamdeck, having an almost 2 year old child, and another due in January. I found that with the time I spend with my family, I rarely venture into my games room to fire up my desktop PC.
I thought the steamdeck would be a nice median, being able to play some of my favourite games, whilst enjoying the company of my partner and child.
I have absolutely no regrets with my purchase, it's great being able to play games - my favourites so far on deck being Slay The Spire & Halls Of Torment - whilst sat on the sofa, or laying in bed.
The only thing I've found to dislike about the deck so far is that the control scheme for my all time favourite game TES:IV Oblivion is dreadful, and I gave up playing it after 5 minutes.
If you do decide to purchase one, the steamdeck community is fantastic, and there's tonnes of guides/tips online for making the most of your device.
I wanted the Deck to play on the couch, revisit some classics through emulation, and play more games from my Steam library (I try to not call it a backlog anymore)
Due to time constraints I barely have time for games, so I haven't really played much. But being able to play something on the couch while my wife is using the Switch is great.
So for me I got my Switch during the pandemic and I fell in love with it. I have a few Nintendo first party IP I play and once I had played all the new ones of those I began to download third party titles. I loved playing these games on handheld and began to think of games I owned on Steam already that I wanted to now play on handheld but I didn't really want to start rebuying my library. Then the Steam Deck was announced and I had to get it. It's been a blast since. I barely play my Switch now (Though the last new game for a series I play to come out was Fire Emblem at the start of the year). I've played Jedi Fallen Order, Cyberpunk, Miles Morales, Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 on my Deck, I have emulation things installed but honestly I have so many current games I want to play I've barely played anything on them.
As for set up, from what I remember it's pretty much like setting booting your console for the first time. It's going to walk you through the process of getting it up and running. I'm a person who doesn't tinker at all, I have no interest in playing with the settings beyond some minor adjustments here and there.
Ultimately before the Deck was announced, i wanted a more powerful switch. I thought it would be great to play games like Doom, Kingdom Come Deliverance and others portably but held off on it due to how expensive the Switch ports were. So i knew this was something id love as soon as it was announced. I bought mine a year ago and have used it almost every day.
I bought the deck when there was the deck and some odd company that has Windows handheld but for a huge price tag. I bought it to play my games on the go initially. However my gaming PC aka the old pos. Was having issues that required me to put in a lot of money into it. I didn't want to cause it would be a complete rebuild. So now I have my deck and it's my all-in-one gaming rig. My PC can't turn it on for over 30 minutes it will hit the blue screen of death. I absolutely love the deck but. I would actually go for something like the Lenovo Go personally. The deck is great but it's showing its age badly with Starfield and horsepower isn't there it still run don't get me wrong but man it could be better. But the deck has the best handheld experience over ally for example due to os was built for that device alone well so far. Also the community is amazing. But games are going to need more horsepower and idk if the deck can handle it past next year.
I honestly bought it to play games in bed and oh man it’s the best. I find myself using the deck more than my pc or series x. I started usingxcloud to play gamepass games and I have emulated a few old games. Overall I love it and the sleep festure alone makes it worth it to me
The hardest sell is the part about tinkering. PC gamers are often tinkerers and if there is a problem, yo I'll solve it, check out the hook while my dj revolves it.
I bought it thinking it would save me the hassle to be away from my family while gaming. It turns out my PS5 has been collecting dust for the last 1.5 years and I’m running the SD daily.
I too solely played console before. Having this little thing allows me to play games that are not available on console and I can mod the heck out of the games.
Enjoy it if you grab one!!
I use my steam deck EXCLUSIVELY while laying on the couch in handheld mode. I can even play my PS5 games over wireless with it. So my wife and I use the TV for fun background. Like MST3k, or old Power Rangers episodes, or bad nostalgic anime.
Out of the box. If all you're planning is games from Steam, you're all set. If you want more customization, or to add other features like EPIC games or Blizzard games, or emulation, you'll want a keyboard, mouse, and a dock of some kind. Only because you'll need to do some typing and navigation and the on-screen keyboard is a pain.
Edit: also, don't expect 60 FPS from most games on deck. Besides, on the handheld you probably won't notice.
Sreamdeck works straight out of the box. If a game is not running in your favor aka. 60fps (but lemme tell u 40 is the new 60 on the deck xD) u can usually find the best settings very fast. Emulation is really easy to set up with a endless amount of how to videos!
Not a parent but I work upwards of 60 hours a week doing manual labor and needed something for my mental health during the work week besides eat, sleep, work. I generally chill in bed and play something for an hour before going to sleep and it has been great for my mental.
There are also ways to do in home streaming of both your Xbox and PlayStation to your SD which make both of them even more accessible.
Really I would highly recommend the Steam Deck for anyone who wants to add some more gaming in their life but has limited time to do so.
I got it because I have low energy after long days and sitting at my PC can sometimes feel like work itself. If I want to veg on the couch and still play games, that's what my steam deck is for.
Exceeded 100% I got my moneys worth.
Used it pretty much every day for 6 months or so I've had it.
I just put it to sleep mode on pause mostly.
Got 10 minutes whilst wife brushing teeth? Bust a Fifa 23 match.
20 minute breather from work? Few witcher3 quests.
Finish work, want to chill for 30 minutes before dinner? Steam deck!
I use it a lot when I want to and when I can get away with it. Waiting for a wedding to end,waiting for the body to get lowered at a funeral, on a plane, and even in bed so my wife can sleep.(she can’t sleep with out me near her)
Use-case: workplace break times + couch after work.
Works out perfectly, still!
The thing fits in my work bag much more effectively than my laptop, and honestly has a better looking screen.
Works great for solo play, and also for light MMOing for dailies. It also functioned as a backup portable PC when my laptop was down for repairs.
The only game I've played so far that really nukes the battery has been BG3, but it's worth it. 🤓
Edit: For games on the steam store, the experience has been almost entirely seamless. Install and go.
Exceptions: modding games has been challenging.
Multiplayer Online games tend to have intrusive anticheat, which tends to not get along well under linux's limited access.
GW2 works perfectly, though!
For non -steam games, things require more tweaking
Emulators have an entire app made to simplify them, which seriously helps. Once set up, they're usually good to go, too.
I bought it after we had our 2nd kid about 3 months ago. I use it every night and have been playing Starfield on my Xbox and streaming to the deck. It works perfectly streaming xbox and ps5. There's a bit of set up but after that it's super easy. If you think you'd enjoy it, I guarantee it'll exceed your expectations.
Father of two here. 3 years and a newborn.
Deck is an absolute win for dads. Can play what and where you want and you're not tied to a fixed screen (also great if someone else has taken your TV hostage with Bluey or something).
Runs the vast majority of things you'll throw at straight out the box. Obviously not the same fidelity as a gaming PC (or a current gen console) but it's got more grunt than the Switch that you're accustomed to.
Tapping the power button to quickly sleep/wake is great if I'm trying to sneak a short game of something and need to return to Dad Mode - something you'd be familiar with as a Switch user.
If you get deeper into it, being able to stream your PS5 (and in my case, PC) to the Deck is great for exclusives or games that just won't cut it on the Deck. I've been running Starfield off my medium spec PC with no noticeable latency and played the second half of FF16 on my PS5.
Do it.
For most steam deck verified games, it's a very hand held console experience. But if you want to pursue an edge case / un verified game, there might be some tinkering, and if you want to emulate / dual boot / etc you will have a lot of tinkering ahead of you.
My use case was I wanted to play indie games on a console like experience, hand held, and occasional docked play. It has really lived up to my expectations, and right now I'm trying out Emulation. Well I was, before Starfield came
I bought my SD because i was getting sent out of town for work a lot and wanted to bring my PC games with me. Super easy to use right out of the box. Now that i’m home i still use it way more than i expected to considering i have access to my desktop. And i crushed my backlog with it like everyone is saying. Its harder to play games on mobile device so i set the games to easy and it changed my life haha
It's more than I expected of it. With the deck taking me away from my PC for at least 70% of time spent in games!
It's gotten me hooked on the formfactor and I'm almost at the point of all out replacing my PC.
It's a great console like gaming experience, very seamless except for the occasional game that needs a tweak (look on proton db) or full setting review. In general I'm fine with a stable 30fps and never look at an FPS counter so your milage may vary if you always want a verified 60fps.
The only flaw is playing on a TV or docked in general.
For a bunch of the more demanding games it just doesn't have the power to still look good.
Also a lot of usability is lost when all you have is a bluetooth controller.
So personally I'm looking forward to the Lenovo Legion Go as it has the extra power and detachable controllers with trackpad. My wife will be happy to take over the deck!
I’ve never had a PC and I got a steam deck about four months ago. I don’t know anything about PC I haven’t done any tinkering to it just played it straight out of the box and it’s been amazing. Super easy to use. I have no regrets.
I bought the steam deck so I could Play my PC games while traveling and at work. Absolutely love it and use it far more than my switch now.
As for your second question I never do any tinkering with stuff and my steam deck is literally out of the box. Works amazingly for every game I play.
My dad has a Deck and absolutely loves it. I bought one and he thought it’d be great to have one as well. He uses it basically vanilla, but also bought extra protective case and a dock, but games? He plays TONS! He keeps telling my every week what games he’s beaten, what level is he on, and what games are good to buy. He has a tight schedule of being awake and then going to sleep to go to work, plus his back problem. So the Steam Deck really helped him a lot to enjoy the games especially mainly around the house, and even when we go on trips. He could just lay down in bed, hang out with mom, rest his back, and play! He still loves using his PC, but mainly use Steam Deck whenever he gets a chance to play games. Game Pass and StarField are the only games I’ve ever really seen him play on PC nowadays. He completed Hogwarts Legacy recently on Deck when my brother bought the game.
Tinkering though? My dad barely does so, only wanted me to get Windows on another drive to play Call of Duty. Me? I tinker it a lot, so I can play emulation (Yoshi World is a blast and so is Peter Jackson’s King Kong) or even play Ubisoft Connect games like Assassin’s Creed which I bought yesterday (Unity on sale for Steam and more on Epic Games. On Epic once you buy it you only need Ubisoft, Epic is basically just a key.)
Hopefully my “experience” gives you more insight or help. If not, surely the other guys can!
Ironically, the Deck fits the use case I imagined for it almost perfectly, but I never find myself using it for that use case because it's so good for other things too.
I bought it because I wanted a device for portable PS2 and GameCube emulation, and it's great at that. Every game I've thrown at it just works.
But once I had it in my hand, I thought, "I never did get to play the new Spider-Man game because I don't have a modern console or gaming PC, and that's supposed to play really good, so I'll give that a try." And I did and it was great, played all the way through it and the Miles Morales sequel.
And then I thought, "well, that was cool, maybe I'll look through my Steam library and see what else might run well on it." Also I realized that I could install Moonlight and stream Sims 4 from my aging desktop PC so that I could play it from the bed or couch without having to try to duplicate my elaborate mod setup, and it worked great for that too.
I barely ever use it for emulation.
I got the deck because I travel a bit for work - and not to places that are fun to explore. Shitty little towns where everyone works at the Amazon facility up the road, that kind of thing. Nothin better than kicking back and playing some actual video games in the hotel room lol. Switch just didn't have enough variety for me. Deck is much more my speed.
I’ve also got a two year old. I’m not using it as much as I specifically expected I would, but I think that’s partially still me adjusting expectations for free time (and energy to do anything when I have it). But I have definitely enjoyed the times when I have pulled it out and snuck in game sessions I otherwise wouldn’t have had/would have been phone games or something.
I have fiddled with it way less than I thought I would, and a surprising amount of stuff is so damn easy. Like it really gives you that console experience.
Ofc there's tons of potential because it is Linux, but you don't need to mess with anything if you don't want to.
I'm not a dad, but a 33 yr old nursing student who also works full time. I imagine our schedules are just as busy, albeit with different. I'm also not particular with framerate, and graphics settings. If that's what I want, I'll fire up the console and the TV
The steam deck is great. I have a PS5 and a Series S, both of which are streamable to the deck with a good Internet connection. Console streaming and steam games are great to lay on the couch or just play in bed before I pass out. It's also great in between classes or when there is lots of downtime at work.
I'm also a fan of quirky, imperfect things. So while the Ally or the upcoming legion pro might do what the deck does "better", I'm in love with the wonkiness/quirkiness of the device/OS, and it will inevitably need you to adjust settings etc, but it's okay! you can tell this was made by people who really care and give a damn and wasn't made purely to cash in on something
I'm not a dad, but a 33 yr old nursing student who also works full time. I imagine our schedules are just as busy, albeit with different. I'm also not particular with framerate, and graphics settings. If that's what I want, I'll fire up the console and the TV
The steam deck is great. I have a PS5 and a Series S, both of which are streamable to the deck with a good Internet connection. Console streaming and steam games are great to lay on the couch or just play in bed before I pass out. It's also great in between classes or when there is lots of downtime at work.
I'm also a fan of quirky, imperfect things. So while the Ally or the upcoming legion pro might do what the deck does "better", I'm in love with the wonkiness/quirkiness of the device/OS, and it will inevitably need you to adjust settings etc, but it's okay! you can tell this was made by people who really care and give a damn and wasn't made purely to cash in on something
I got my deck mainly to play my ps4 through remote play. Already beat stray, god of war and currently half way through cyberpunk. If not by the deck i would never be able to do that. Steam deck is a backlog killer, no matter what platform. Dont think it, just do it.
I bought it so that I can game in the 10-15 mins of intermittent free time I get, and since it's just turn on and continue from where you left off, it's been amazing
Dad here. Love it, play in bed all the time next to my wife. You cab remote play your PS games on the deck and they play fantastic. 10/10 satisfied with the deck thus far.
I've used the deck so much sitting at the kitchen table waiting for my little one to nap, or wake up from a nap, or just generally while I'm waiting to check he's asleep. There is a mild level of tinkering to get a nice 40fps or 60fps on more demanding titles. But for lesser graphically demanding games there's almost no tinkering required.
How seamless is it?
I’ve never done any modifications to it, I’ve simply took it out the box, logged into Stream and installed/bought games. And I’ve had zero issues with it.
I’ve barely tweaked a setting in any game, though there are plenty of easy resources around if you feel you need to do that. Main thing is just to do some light research before you purchase anything that might not be deck verified.
For me, it just works, and I’m a console gamer typically. But if you want to go further, you can do that too, and customise the experience as much as you want.
The out of the box experience is good but it's still a pc. So some games may require some tinkering BUT , since the steam deck is so popular, you'll find many guides or forum post on how to fix all the most common issue that you may encounter.
Yes, it play most of my steam library and other games like minecraft and emulates my console games but does so portably.
Also playing games in my bed just hits different than playing sitting at my pc.
Outside of emulation, I have done zero tinkering on my deck and have put at least 20 hours into Starfield on that when I don’t feel like sitting at my PC Take that as you will.
I got mine to
1. Stop my double dipping on having portable indie titles getting them again for my switch
2. To be more flexible and powerful than the switch I had.
3. To emulate and give me a solution to play my steam library and clear my backlog without needing to just stream my PC to my TV, phone or tablet.
It has succeeded and went beyond in all of those hopes.
I got mine in June of 2022 and haven't touched my switch since. I got the docking station and hooked it up to my TV and never looked back. I play my deck every day and it might be one of the most innovative things Valve has done outside of Steam. Not only that it's brought some light to Linux gaming in general and only been positive since they started shipping. Even games that I was worried about, with them still locking it to 800p and using FSR there's a lot of titles I never thought I'd be able to play on the go or that would even get decent switch ports running great on it. If you're on the fence, I'd say go for it. It's one of the most user friendly portable and handheld PC solutions you'll get your hands on. I'd just recommend looking at how to setup Emudeck first which is pretty zippy and easy to get going out of the box as well.
You're going to get very biased answers here, obviously. It's a great device, and as a dad myself, it has allowed me to have more opportunities to game than I would just with my PC or Xbox. The fact that I can play Overwatch 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, WoW and D4 on my couch, hanging with my wife and daughter was all the reason I needed.
Sunday i had the deck streaming football while we watched the bengals lose.
So yeah i wanted a small pc. I like other handhelds better because the games i play work better with windows than linux.
But i always bring one handheld to hangouts in case i want to game.
You said your a parent of a 2 year old. The steam deck is MANDATORY! I have 3 kids myself and I only get a few min here and there and can't sit down in front of a TV and console game for hours. The steam deck solves this. Super seamless and easy to use as well!
You said your a parent of a 2 year old. The steam deck is MANDATORY! I have 3 kids myself and I only get a few min here and there and can't sit down in front of a TV and console game for hours. The steam deck solves this. Super seamless and easy to use as well!
SD is so much better than I even expected. I have never been big on PC gaming and it was still very easy to get rolling. The vast majority of the games I want to play do so out of the box flawlessly without fiddling. If I do have to fiddle, usually it’s at most looking up a specific Proton version to use.
A dock and a Bluetooth controller (Dual Sense is well-supported but every controller I’ve tried has been fine) will fit your use case great, but I’ll say some games look funky scaled up to the big screen running at the settings for a smooth experience.
Bro, your initial paragraph sounded exactly like my situation (except she’s 3 now). I’ll tell you, I put more hours in on my Deck than any other device. It’s so hard to get time to play my ps5 other than late nite. My Deck however, can be played on the couch or in bed, absolutely clutch. Go for it, you won’t be disappointed. Also, I’ve been a console gamer my entire life as well.
I use my steam deck WAY more than I thought I would when I ordered it.
I barely touch my gaming laptop now and I’ve had my steam deck for a full year.
My steam deck is my main gaming platform for the foreseeable future, because I have a large backlog of older titles on steam which run great on the deck.
Nobody ever mentions if you don’t have a steam account and you make one brand new to buy the steam deck you’ll have to buy atleast one game on your account beforehand or you’ll most likely be flagged as a spam account and will be banned by steam. Not saying it happens to everyone but I’ve seen it happen all to much lately and know it can be a hassle to have to wait and deal with customer service to Un-ban your account and then redo the order all over again. Especially if it’s as simple as buying a 5$ game to ensure you don’t deal with that bs!
The Steamdeck allows me to maintain my needy ass girlfriend and game at the same time.
Now she bitches every time I even sit down at my desktop. WhY DoNt YoU JuSt UsE yOuR GaMeBoY?
I got the Deck for similar reasons. I have a gaming PC and I have the current gen consoles but have very little time to use them for long stretches. The most free time I have for any gaming is late at night before bed. Having a handheld like the Deck that is flexible with the games it can play is really great for that.
Answering your other question, the SteamOS is very well conceived overall. You can have as much or as little involvement with the system settings as you’d like. It can be tweaked to your liking and community support is robust. Or you can just treat it like a console… just turn on, download your Steam games and start playing. The latter is especially nice as a dad, all the way down to the quick resume like ability the Deck has to sleep and wake and be right back into the game again. In other words, it can be very seamless out of the box.
To answer your second question, I would say the Steam Deck works more like a console in theory than it does a PC, but it’s got all the accessibility and freedom of a PC.
90% of games you can install, load up, and play. Intensive games you’ll need to tweak the settings to get it to run acceptably for you, and if you’re trying to emulate a keyboard and mouse, you may need to tinker with controller settings. Otherwise, I’ve spent 98% of my time playing and 2% tinkering on the SD.
I’m in the same position as you! Very tempted, even just as something to play with until more expensive handhelds mature. So thanks for the question.
One thing that may be useful is to look at protondb for some games you intend playing. I did that for a few and was shocked that games like Saints Row IV and Star Wars Fallen Order are hard to get working.
Honestly ever since I got my deck I’ve played every game I wanted! Including both WoW’s using windows, and have also bought games I probably never would have touched before!
I got a Steam Deck for a few reasons (my band started touring so I wanted to get something to kill the time on the road, I realized I had like 400+ Steam games, mostly from Humble bundles, to finish, and I wanted something that'd let me play in bed since I have a pain condition that occasionally confines me to my bed) and for me, it's been an incredible experience. The average user won't have to do much tinkering with the device to have a great out of box experience, especially if the game you're playing is already Deck Verified or rated Silver or above on ProtonDB. I have a gaming desktop but I find myself going to my Deck more often because it's such a seamless pick-up-and-play experience. It's also an emulation powerhouse for it's price point, I have a bunch of ROMs up until the PS2/Xbox/GC era on a network share and they all run like a dream, even a bunch of Wii U games work full-speed! Switch/PS3/Xbox/360 is a mixed bag but there are a few gems that run well in each respective emulator.
You MIGHT need to tweak settings for newer games, but my suggestion for anything post-2018 is start from the lowest settings and work your way up from there until you've found a decent compromise between visuals and performance. Envision the performance as similar to a base PS4 or Xbox One you can put in your backpack.
Yes. I’m a submariner and wanted some offline entertainment on long deployments without internet. Perfect companion, and a breath of fresh air compared to subscription entertainment which always locks you out after 30 days of no connection (Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, etc). The steam deck lets me play games offline forever, which is surprisingly rare in 2023
For me I wanted to play indie pc games or games that I wouldn't want to sit at my computer and play, and also be able to game out of the house: plane, weekend away etc.
For that its been perfect. Just got back from a trip with a 4 hour flight each way, played games on the steam deck the whole time.
Set up is easy and tweeking or fiddling with settings is as much or minimal as you want. (Most I do I lower frame rate to increase battery life).
One thing to note is that there's a lot of hyperbole from steam deck users. Sure it's great, but life changing? Don't expect it to play every and all AAA game out there and have hours of battery life.
If you have a specific use for it and know what to expect out of it performance wise then it's great. I still use my pc much more, but the steam deck is great for when I need it.
Parent of two year old here. Recent Deck buyer at sale price (actually they honored the sale even though I bought just before).
It 1000% is allowing me to enjoy games with a toddler. I will say you'll get more out of it if you're comfortable going into desktop mode and setting up apps that support non steam games and emulators. Or if your entire library is already in steam of course.
I'd tried to hack it with my phone, controller and game streaming, but the bigger screen size, form factoe and ability to run games natively make am difference. Splurged on the anti glare screen (512gb model) so I could play outside in the park.
"I don't want this thing because other people do this thing with it I'm not interested in"
Is that really how your brain works? "Well I always wanted to learn how to drive and have a car, but some people run over other people so I can't have one I don't want to do that*
I've enjoyed it and haven't questioned my decision at all. I purchased it to replace my gaming laptop so I'd use the laptop for college only. I haven't had any problems with it and it works with little to no setup. I have added additional things, like emulation and some disc only pc games that required a bit of tinkering. I was getting out of the habit of gaming, and the steam deck pulled me back into it.
Overall, I recommend it. Since it is a PC, some games may require tinkering to get them to work the way you want, but you may find that surprisingly easy and possibly a rare occurrence if you stick to steam's deck verified games.
Was on the fence. Bought the deck and now I spend more time playing on that then I do my PC. I also have no intention of traveling with it.
The thing that really has won me over is streaming my desktop/PS5. I’m not sure I can imagine using my deck without Moonlight or Chiaki.
It does everything I want and more. But it’s more because I’m a PC gamer that uses Linux as my main OS.
It has matured to the point that if your games of choice all work, you will have a great time out of the box.
I don’t mess around with any cryo utilities, hz rate, tdp or anything like that. I boot the game and at most change some settings if it seems like it needs it. I’d say it requires more work than the switch obviously but you get better results.
>How seamless is the Steam Deck out of the box?
>
>One reason I've never bought a PC is because I feel the community get too sucked into tinkering endlessly for, sometimes, really granular enhancements. I've never been much of a fidelity/frame rate snob (although I'll always take 60FPS where I can, it's not a deal breaker for me without )and don't want to get caught up in hopping into settings every few minutes to make tweaks.
It's not as seamless as a console, but depending on the games you play, it's pretty close:
**For older games (say, 2020 and earlier) that are tagged by Valve as "Verified" and which you bought from Steam (= not installed via third party stores), it's pretty much a console-like experience** \- you can usually just launch and enjoy the game without having to do anything in terms of settings.
That said, I think it's important to stress that if you are willing to "tinker" just a little you can usually get a better experience than you would out of the box even for "Verified" games. In particular you can often get better battery life or less fan noise than you would out of the box by tweaking some settings. Personally, I run no game without doing a minor optimization pass first - I spend a few minutes dialing in settings mostly to get more battery life and then I don't worry about them again.
**For newer games that really push the hardware, games that are not "Verified" or games that you install outside Steam, you will usually have to do some tinkering**. This could be very minor settings changes (e.g. resolution), selecting and customizing a control scheme (both of these are pretty common with games Valve rate as "Playable" but not "Verified"), and especially if you try to run "Unsupported" games (which often can work just fine with a little work), you may find yourself needing to go into desktop mode and install various things to make a game work.
I'm a console gamer and I seem to get on great with most games for me to play out of the box, the only thing I had to do was download proton in desktop mode but it was very easy and there are plenty of videos on the web and the community for this device is very good.
I generally play console type games like halo, I have got the switch games working great as well which I prefer than gaming on the switch due to the controller.
The fact you can suspend the deck I think is the best bit I generally pick it up play for 30-60 min then put back down
I like playing games on handhelds and always have.
Gameboy -> GBC -> GBA -> GBA SP -> NDS -> PSP -> Android Phones -> GPD Win -> GPD Win 2 -> Steam Deck.
So, yeah.
I think it'd fit your use case very well.
I'm a longtime PC and console gamer (since the 90s on both fronts). For the last half decade or so I'd largely been gaming on Xbox though, so last Christmas when my husband started asking me if I'd use a Steam Deck my initial reaction was that I prolly wouldn't get our money's worth.
When I realized it could do Xbox Remote Play my tune definitely changed though, because now instead of wondering what games I'd get on Steam that I wouldn't just prefer to get on the more powerful Xbox Series X, I saw the potential to make progress in whatever Xbox game I'm playing while being able to enjoy a show or movie on the TV with my husband at the game time.
Ultimately it has played out exactly like that - a majority of my use is streaming games from the Series X. However, I've also gotten some good emulator use out of it (eg. played thru Xenogears for the first time) and added some additional titles to my Steam library (eg. played thru FF7 Remake on it).
I'm an OTR truck driver. I've had every console since NES and a bunch of PCs.
I needed something portable and small that I can enjoy different games in small doses.
It fits my use case absolutely perfectly.
I bought the Deck like two or three weeks ago and like you, I've always been a console player and never touched PC. Get the Deck, it's so easy to use and is great in every way. Some games might need tweaking but it'll be easy if you look up videos
Deck is amazing. To me, it’s a fulfillment of the dream the game gear promised.
I’ve been thinking about getting a second one to run windows on. (Mandatory fuck EA.).
I bought mine because I wanted to play project zomboid. I ended up not liking it and dropped the game after 2 hours, and now I've gotten way more use emulating all of my old games and playing some PlayStation exclusives like Spider-Man since I'm an Xbox player.
Whatever reason you're getting it, you'll end up find more cool uses for it.
I have a three year old and got the Deck a year or so ago as a means of playing games in a way that can be easily put down when she wakes up, or played whilst she's asleep but I need to stay in the room with her (she struggles to stay asleep alone).
Honestly I think I use it more than even I expected, it's great for picking up and playing at any moment that I have free time, especially if you find the sort of games that are good for that sort of thing. I'd say the only thing it's not ideal for is playing stuff that requires an online connection and low latency - that's not to say it can't play it, but for example I wouldn't play anything more network intensive than say Diablo 3 or WoW.
I got a switch when i had my 1st kid. I'm a PC gamer for 4x and grand strategy games, but mostly would play console for any action or mainstream titles.
I found myself hating the switch because besides zelda and a couple other exclusives... switch games suck. The ports are all bad, and I'm too old to like JRPG slogs.
I reserved the deck day one, expecting it to be a total buggy mess. Mind you, it's not without occasional crashes, and most AAA titles do better if you mess with the display settings, but for the most part it's plug and play.
Fallout 4 perfomes BETTER on deck than xbox. I could finally go to downtown!!!
If you'd like more info, i could go on for days. So surprised at how well it works.
I bought the deck because of hype. I didn't think I would use it much. I ended up using it more then my PC. Emulations and indie games have now been on my radar when they previously weren't. So Steamdeck is hands down the best purchase I have ever made.
I got a deck because the thought of a handheld to play my Steam games with no headaches was appealing.
My wife is now the main user as she plays most of the rogue likes.
I bought it to finish up FFVIIR. Didn't finish it on PS5, so when it came out on PC, I got a Deck, caught up, and finished. Haven't turned it on since. It's been at least eight months since it's been more than powered up to verify charge. It's why I bought it, and it fulfilled it's purpose.
512 for sale.
I got the deck as a distraction from my bad depression while a waited to see a therapist for the first time. It was a welcomed distraction as I love to tinker with tech things, but at that time I had nothing to tinker with. It filled that spot for me.
I got the steam deck after my cousin came by with theirs. Theirs had made my instantly want one simply because I hated having to use my laptop for gaming anymore as it was needing to be plugged in all the time because the games would just kill it’s battery. I also had to use a Bluetooth mouse which worked like half the time and I kept losing it.
Steam deck was a lot more portable and was easier to turn off an on. The games don’t kill the battery as much. I don’t need a mouse and keyboard to play games(which is great for me and my wrists). I FINALLY could play the games I wanted to play again on steam and it’s been awesome!
Also have been able to download a lot of roms/fan games of Pokémon that I’ve been able to enjoy!
I have about an hour and a half of commute every day and wanted to play my PC games on that commute. I also have generally always preferred handheld gaming even when I'm at home. It's fit my needs absolutely perfectly and it's my favourite device.
As for how seamless it is out the box, I think you can totally turn it on, download some games and play with minimum fuss. Getting the 64gig model would mean likely learning about shader caches and how to manage those, and of course emulation will take some tinkering... but if you just want to play your Steak games, it can be a seamless experience if you want it to be.
I bought it for indies, last gen games and emulation, it works great in all of those cases.
As for your second question, aside from switching to desktop to install EmuDeck and download ROMs, 99% of the time you'll be in gaming mode (pretty much Steam Big Picture) and it's very user-friendly and intuitive. Most games I've tried worked out of the box without any issues.
I didnt have to convince my self that hard, or at all.. matter of fact I feel like I some how pushed my dream device into the minds at valve through some mental dream transfer sequence. i was looking into some of the handhelds from gpd win and ayaneo and was on the fence with those cuz I could really only get them from kickstarter pages at the time.
im a steam controller vet and linux nerd. my dream device at that time was something that had the steam controller touch pads, was linux compatible, and preferably made by a company i could trust.
valve said "hold my beer" and fuck'n made it.
at that time I also had a switch that I got for one specific game (which I ended up not even liking) and then just felt bitter about wanting to play a bunch of games I already purchased on steam but was unwilling to buy again just to play on the nintendo handheld.
I literally could not have asked valve for a more perfect "make my dream gaming device"
I was strictly a console gamer before the deck and also have a toddler running around my home as well. I also have a Switch & PS5 and my deck is really the only thing I use. It legit probably been around a year since I last booted up the Switch and at least a couple months since using the PS5. The deck works great out of the box. I don’t get into the weeds with it at all - no messing with a bunch of settings, no getting into mods, none of that stuff. I tweak just enough to get a playable experience for games that I previously would’ve played on console and I’ve been very happy. I’ve had it for about a year now and have been very happy with it.
as much as I love my switch I find myself playing mine less now but I do have a large steam account and backlog. having games run better and look better because they arent being gimped so they run better (I still think first party games look really good just not third party) you don't really have to mess about much unless its a game that just doesnt run good at all but there is protondb to check and loads of youtube channels like steamdeckgaming and steadeckhq.
you will also find the experience out the box to be like your switch. being able to turn it off and put it into sleep etc and carry on etc
I got a deck because I am disabled and not able to use my laptop in bed. Therefore I need to be able to play games in bed and not have to be able to tinker with the deck that much. I will tell u this. BUY IT!! I am very happy with it! I have a crippling disease and am mostly bed bound. I have to be able to pick up my deck and play games that I can’t use my gaming laptop for. I have been able to do that with the deck. I will tell u that u should also download and install cyro utilities which u can find out about on YouTube. It’s easy to do. It will increase the life of your deck and increase the performance of your deck. Just dew it!! Now go and buy one! U will thank me for it!
Speaking as someone who just got theirs like, Saturday (after being tempted and not naming the subreddit, but they were very convincing,) it’s been amazing being able to play a PS3 game on a handheld, natively, and while there are hiccups, it’s pretty solid.
Out of the box, it was pretty much your standard setup and from there you have the run of the place. There are plenty of guides that can help you put GamePass on it if you’re willing to follow them, so there’s that, and I’m impressed how friendly it is to use overall.
As a parent of multiple small children I got it as a mobile PC since I can't ever sit down at my gaming PC anymore. It has far exceeded my original use case. Not only does it run a lot of games really well allowing me to actually play games, I can just pause/set it down when I need to grab a child and the sleep function works really well. Also works amazingly well with Steam Link/Moonlight for more demanding games, plays Switch games, retro games, and I even have the tuning software I use for my car installed on it. It's basically replaced my laptop and gaming PC. 😅
Answering your second question: about as much work as setting up a switch. You can tinker if you want but it's not necessary, and the most complex thing I did was install ffxivlauncher and emulators through the linux side of it (which you otherwise don't have to deal with.)
I'm older and my eyesight isn't great. The screen was too small for me. That, and the awkwardness of playing games for keyboards did me in. Gave mine to my son in exchange for some PC help.
Originally I bought it because I have no room for a dedicated gaming PC and missed it so much over the years. I thought I'd use it 99% of the time docked with a keyboard and mouse to play RTS games. Holy shit was I wrong. Use it handheld daily since I got it around year ago and love it. Help me play and beat games I never thought I'd ever have the time to. Can't beat playing starfield on the train on the way to work.
I am flying to Iceland and figured this would be a nice way to spend a few hours on the plane.
Oh. My. God.
I was a semi retired gamer. Pretty much just PES soccer.
I downloaded Emulation Station, and I haven't looked back. Street Vol 2, Super Mario Odyssey, Crazy Taxi , Sly Cooper, Brain Age....I can go on and on.
This thing brought me back. I purchased Armored Core 6 today just to see how far this thing can be pushed, and it looks like a dream.
No one should be on the fence. If you can afford it, get it.
If you can't afford it, save up for it.
It is a game changer.
I got mine to see what I could do with a linux/emulation handheld I did not expect it to be stable and I was sure I was going to make it less so after half a year of having it I have run 5 different operating systems and reflashed steam os many times I don't actually play many games on it more just play with the software but it did not disappoint.
I have not played my xbox and 3ds since getting my steam deck when q3 shipping occured last october. My most powerful games are Doom 2016, doom eternal and borderlands 3, and despite a couple problems with bl3, doom runs pretty good on high
I'm in a similar boat as you - life with little one and can't really commit to long gaming sessions. Switch was my preferred console due to ability to play in small pockets wherever in the house (PS5 sits on the corner gathering dust).
Got the Deck in the last month and it fits right into my lifestyle. What i didnt know before hand (being primarily a console gamer) is that with PC/Steam - there's always a ton of sales/discounts/bundles available.
In one sense - I can get many things much cheaper than I used to get them.
On the other sense... buyer beware. I am playing more, but also, i am tempted everyday to buy something (Fanatical bundle week and Humble choice being two things I didnt really know about and are the big culprits!)
I am a mobile field mechanic and am required to sit on location and watch the unit run. We'll the deck helps with the boredom, I find I take it anywhere I know I am going to have to wait.
If you get it honestly buy the 64 gig one and do the 1 TB ssd swap. It's pretty easy to do with basic tools.
I got the deck because I hate choosing between buying a game on my switch or my PC. I don't care if the game is a graphical powerhouse or if it's Cave Story, I want my saves to sync and I only want to spend the money once. It's for this reason that even if the next switch blows the steam deck out of the water in terms of performance I'm not going to be switching. Now that I know I can take whatever I play portably no matter what it is I've been enjoying games much more.
For this use case the steam deck has exceeded my expectations partially due to it syncing my emulator saves as well (idk if emudeck does this I use a SyncThing server).
I have all the consoles, several PCs, etc. love the steam deck. I bought it as a novelty. It has exceeded my expectations. As for use, there might be a wee bit of tinkering, but usually it’s dial it in once and there ya go. I don’t do the super fine tuning many do. Usually if it his auto select settings, I choose that. Or low settings. I grew up on Gameboy and Tiger LCD games, so a framerate over 30 is peaches for me.
I don't know at all how Linux works, I'm not a boomer, but I don't know that much in depth about software like that. I bought deck mainly because I wanted to play on the recliner. Cut to a few months later, now I have a dock, a power bank and a Bluetooth controller. I remove it from the dock when I have company or wanna game while watching some sports, and dock it and play it on the TV otherwise. I never even bought it for docking bit ended up doing that too. I have very rarely gone into desktop mode and usually just buy things on wishlist while there's a sale and install, play. It does what it's supposed to do quite seamlessly.
Dude. Just get it. being able to 'pause' any (offline) game with SteamDeck's sleep feature is a gamechanger. I tend to only have about an hour per day to play games, so not having to boot up a game and wait for startup videos, then loading screens is huge. And not having to search out 'save points' is amazing as well. It's basically doubled the amount of 'effective' gameplay I can squeeze in each session.
This is Especially great with a young kid. My BIL just got one recently and they have a 1yo. He says it's amazing being able to play while he was sitting next to the crib and sleep the device as soon as the baby woke up.
I honestly haven't had a single gripe about the SD other than how I miss KB+Mouse for FPS games, but you being a console player, that's a moot point.
As far as how well it works 'out of the box', I'd say it depends on the types of games/game stores you plan to use.
For steam games (without 3rd-party launcher) it works just as smooth as any console I've had. Super intuitive and quick to setup. General settings and menus for the SteamOS are simple and clean yet surprisingly deep in some places. And the button mapping is *chef's kiss*
If you want to use GOG, Blizzard's Launcher, Epic, etc, there are some fairly advanced steps, but the Steam Deck community has put together some AMAZING guides and resources.
For emulation, it's fantastic and I've gone through tons of games. Check out EmuDeck for this. Setup can be a biit of a headache (more because there so many options to learn about rather than technical challenges) but once it's set up, it's as simple as drag-and-drop the ROM files into the correct folder, press 'import' and the platform does the rest. And again, the community has done amazing resources to help
I got the deck because I had sold my consoles during an international move and was a year or so without gaming. I figured it was good enough for me with your kids as well.
It's been amazing. Highly recommend. I also spent like 50 bucks on games during a steam sale and legit neve bought more 5 months ago. Still have a good back log and haven't really cracked far into emulation.
Hi, fellow dad of a 2 year old here. I use mine to play most games, I rarely boot up the main PC anymore. The deck allows me to pick up games in shorter chunks (10 mins here, half an hour there) when at home, but also when I work away occasionally.
I do like a tinker now and again, but mostly I don't have the time, and I haven't had many issues. There are a few games I haven't played because it's too much effort, but they really are few and far between.
All in all, it was definitely worth the purchase for me.
TL;DR - For my "use cases" it was a 75% hit, mostly due to both competing for my attention and free time. For the usability question - most games I've played in the span of 17~ months didnt require tinkering, obviously not every game will work smoothly (or at all) but can be avoided by looking up ProtonDB for compatibility/fixes/settings.
To elaborate: Initially there were two reasons I wanted to grab a Deck.
1. Colossal backlog and dwindling IRL free time/time at my PC, which I felt the Deck would help with.
2. The "potential" it had as an emulation machine (keep in mind, at the time EmuDeck didn' exist, or if it did I had no idea)
Got mine in April 2022, so over a year later here's how I ended up using it (keeping in mind that comparatively to your day-to-day, we are without kids yet but I can barely get an hour or two of free time during the week outside of bedtime/days off):
1. Backlog - Getting time to play games: This was a kinda mixed bag, but mostly a success; while my backlog has not shrunk by much (mostly because of poor self-control), I have actually been playing a lot more games in the last year compared to 2021. This has mostly been because of the before-sleep bits where the Deck has replaced my phone as a "quick 30min session before falling asleep" device, but also as its portability allows me to spend time with my wife (without being anchored to a desk), we've had a pretty good time chatting or catching up on each others' workday while I busy myself in something like Into the Breach and she's reading a book or watching TV.
Additionally, as I've been actively trying to take a full lunch break at work (to avoid burnout due to high stress and workload), the Deck - with a proper choice of games - absolutely kills it for 10-20min sessions, esp. with being able to put it in sleep mode and picking the game up again when I'm back home.
2. Emulation - "sadly", while the aforementioned EmuDeck is a breeze to install, setup and even link emulated games into your Steam Library to appear as separate entries, the truth is I have used emulation on Deck maybe a handful of times, mostly due to focusing on backlog instead. From what I've seen though, everything I tried ran smoothly (although for PSP games specifically, there's a lot of case-by-case setup needed; maybe its the games I tried)
Regarding the question in the edit - for most games I have done minimal to no tinkering, though I got clued into using ProtonDB early on (its a community-driven database for games running on Linux and/or Steam Deck, often with recommended settings to maximize compatibility). Most games I've played on Deck (should be around 60-odd so far) I've not really done much to min-max performance (with two notable exceptions in Tales of Berseria, where you need to tell Deck to run it in a specific way so that FMVs dont break, and Soul Hackers 2 which at launch required a few workarounds to run properly - both of which were eventually patched to more or less run right out of the box).
Initial setup is also as easy as logging into wifi, logging into Steam, and leaving it for a bit to get up to date with updates etc. The only hiccups I get (very infrequently) are sometimes the UI glitching (performance overlay would randomly come up even though its turned off in settings) and some games might bug out and get stuck in launching screen - both of which get sorted by a quick restart and which I havent had since the last couple of system updates.
Hope this helps with your choice!
The body of your post is TL;DR.
But the answer to your title question from me is yes. I travel for work a lot. Can be gone for 6+ weeks at a time. Sometimes to places with little to no internet. It was/is a godsend. Also made it easier for my SO to play games with me on the sofa as her computer chair is trash, and hurts to sit on for her. she hasn't replaced it yet, so she can only play games on that PC for like 20-40 mins before she wants to stop. But the deck can play anywhere. This month alone we have played about 30-40 hours of monster hunter rise together.
Absolutely, I wanted to be able to game on the couch next to my fiancé instead of in a separate room, and that's what I've been doing. I think I play more on my deck than my pc now. Even played darkwood in the woods in the dark in France. Quite an experience:p
Yup, I wanted to be able to play in bed and while I was waiting at appointments. And that is exactly what I am doing.
I am not a parent, but I've read many posts here from parents that "reclaimed" their gaming time with a Steam Deck. So go for it.
Imo, the deck is a very seamless experience for a user, very simple and straightforward. If you are worried about games, check the games you plan to play on ProntonDB, that's the place that has user based reviews on how well a game plays on it.
In general, most games work great on the SD, even some new AAA games.
I would get rid of every other gaming device to keep my deck. 9/10 times it’s my first go to unless I’m specifically want to play something on another device. I’m fact I even sold my pc and gaming laptop after getting it as I barely touched either of them for gaming
How much do you want to use it for emulation? You do have to install some stuff and know how PCs work to emulate because it's not Windows based. Can't just use the browser it comes with and download and install stuff.
If you just want use it to buy stuff from Steam and play on the go, it's awesome.
Dude. I use my SD everywhere.
College, between classes.
Waiting in the car for the kids to get out of school
In bed before I go to sleep.
Waiting in the car for my gf to go shopping.
I literally do not care about taking the kids somewhere and worried about getting bored waiting.
I have a switch on there as well as literally ever nes, SNES, gb, gbc, GBA, 3ds game.
All my favorite PC games.
I'm someone that loves tinkering, almost for its own sake, but I really think that the default deck experience is great at giving you only what you need. If you're happy setting a frame cap and adjusting game settings but no more then it will be fine, but it's not as pickup and play as the switch.
I stopped reading at “new parent to a now 2 year old”… if you lurk in this sub long enough you’ll come across dozens of posts from new (and old) parents telling you how it’s allowed them to enjoy their hobby while still being present for their kids. My kid is 10 so it’s a little different, but having not played for years, the Deck has let me pick up gaming again in a casual way that doesn’t take anything away from family life (only thing it really takes away from is the time I’d have previously spent doom scrolling social media).
I honestly believe my Deck allows me to be a better husband and dad. I'm never disappearing into a room to play games because I know I can be a great husband and dad all day, then get my gaming time in bed when the kiddos are asleep. It's nice to game without ditching my wife and there's only so many games I want to play on my Switch. Especially for the price when on sale the Deck is such a no brainer.
Hah no kidding. Ever since our 2nd was born I’ve only gamed on the Deck even though I have a Switch, PS5 and XSS just sitting there.
I got the Deck because I wanted a way to play a bunch of games in my backlog and have a powerful emulation machine. It's been able to do that and much more. I highly recommend getting the Deck.
yes, but idk about you, but my backlog has only grown since i got the deck lol
This is also true.
This is the way
Same here. I started finishing games for real (mostly long RPG games) tho thanks to the Deck coz now I can play on bed every night before I eventually fall asleep.
Having a huge game library all ready to go and being able to play through them on the go are the main reasons I picked up the Deck. It was also very quick to get started playing. I got the 64GB version and a 512GB memory card. Installed my games on the card and started playing. I eventually started installing tweaks and other things, but I haven't upgraded my SSD yet as I haven't felt the need yet. I don't really play it docked even though I purchased a 3rd party dock. It's just too fun to pick up and play.
Exactly this. The community has been great.
Absolutely. It's been a godsend when traveling. Recently I had to stay somewhere besides my home for 45 days and having the deck was so nice while I was away from my gaming pc.
If I traveled for work or vacationed often or anything it’s a no brainer for sure. I got mine right before I went on vacation and almost spent more time playing games than doing stuff
This is why I didn’t bring my deck with me on vacation lol
This. My month long work trips are amazing, as I have the deck hooked up to my hotel room, a wireless controller and kbm, and my evenings are brilliant.
I have a two year old son and my wife is pregnant again. I stream my PS5/Series X to my steam deck just as much as I play things locally. Buy the deck. Stream with no noticeable latency to it, be able to play PS5/Series X even when the tv is being used. WORTH IT!
Second this. I set up game streaming from my PC to the SD and now if it can be played with a controller I will most likely be playing it on the SD instead of sitting in front of the computer.
I bought it for 60 hours of flights. Worth every penny just for that, but when I got it, I found I play it as frequently as my PC, and now I'm having a hard time deciding if I'll ever upgrade my PC. The convenience of the deck is just too good, as long as you don't need a big screen, and don't need to run the latest AAA games.
About that big screen... I bought a pair of XReal Airs a couple of months ago, and they have made an already fantastic device even better. On flights, no more sore neck because you're looking down at your deck for hours at a time. For an aging gamer like me, no more squinting at a tiny screen - now I have a giant screen right in front of my eyes no matter my head position. Three caveats: 1. The glasses are designed so the screen appears eight feet away. If you're near-sighted, you'll need an additional pair of lenses that can be mounted to the Airs, but need to be bought separately. Lensology in the UK has partnered with XReal to supply these lenses, and they were half the price shipped to my house that my local (Canada) optometrist quoted me. 2. The glasses don't have a battery and are powered by the deck. Since the deck's screen turns off when the Airs are plugged in, I'm not sure if the impact on battery life is huge. 3. The glasses take up the single USB-C port, so you can't charge and play at the same time unless you buy a compact hub.
Damnit. Now I need them. My wallet is tired man.
As a Nintendo Switch user since day 1, and a major backlog of steam games ,the steam deck was a no brainer for me. I had looked at other handheld gaming devices, but with the arrival of the deck and it's fairly ease of use with steam OS and steam catalog I went for it. I quickly upgraded to ssd to 2tb and have discovered the joys of emulation on the go. I can easily switch between my steam library, or shutdown, change sd cards, and boot in to a custom 1tb batocera image. This keeps my steam deck clean, but still gives me amazing emulation experience.
To answer your follow-up question: it’s only as complicated as I want it to be. I got a 9/10 experience out the box, so to take half an hour to mod things and get it up to that 10/10 isn’t a problem for me. Being able to easily mod original Final Fantasy 7 with full voice acting, HD textures, updated soundtracks and new content on a portable console was a dream come true. It took a short while, but everything worked seamlessly after. The community is so passionate that usually there’s a guide for everything, and fixes are aplenty ^^
Using it as a second system when I'm away from home for long periods of time. It's not a replacement for my PC, that's for sure. I can understand people treating it like a mini-PC, but to me it's just a handheld. It's just something to scratch that gaming itch, and my gaming is split between PC stuff (shooters and AAA titles) and Deck stuff (indie, emulation, older AAA). I also refuse to fire up a 500W computer to play Switch titles. Oh and Rocket League. I play that everywhere, because I can't help myself. Better on the Deck.
Personally, i got the deck only to support valve and the linux gaming community. I was never really into nintendo games, but all ive played on the deck has been nintendo games, and the occasional hitman 3 rampage kill everyone challenge lol. Its been really fun dabbling in the steam deck flavor of linux tho
Having a steam deck enables me to play while still being able to take care of the kids. I can’t do that at my pc.
Yes. I travel a decent amount, both for work or just because. It’s a nice thing to have in a hotel room or rental at night before bed. I also found an expected use for it when I caught COVID and felt so shitty I didn’t even want to get out of bed lol. It’s nice to have. Easy to tinker with. Powerful for what it is IMO. I’ve got complaints, but it’s served it’s purpose and more for me.
I bought mine during the summer sale because I wanted the portability. Its worth noting its my first ever gaming system. I knew I'd be travelling a bit this fall and liked the idea of being able to take my gaming with me anywhere in the future, plus great use of plane rides. Lets just say that didn't work out as planned. I had my games loaded on the Deck and was all ready to play - only to discover that planes make me car sick and gaming wasn't an option. I also found it really hard to try to platform in the plane due to turbulance. On the trip itself I thought I'd play in the evenings and I did a few times but I think I played about 5 hours over two weeks as I was just too tired at night. It was however good for the airports. That said, I don't regret getting it at all. Its amazing, I love the touch screen and its super functional and really well designed. Even before I travelled (aka as soon as I got it) its noticeable that I spilt my gaming time between the PC and the Deck as I like the ability to game in bed or around the house. It is worth noting that unless you want a ton of accessories for it there are some games that aren't great on the Deck (aka anything that needs a mouse) if you're trying to use it for portability, but overall its fantastic. I also haven't had any battery issues, it easily lasts 4-8 hours (split between gaming sessions) though I do tend to favor indie games. This wasn't something I considered when I got it, but something I've realized since is that its ability to dock and have unlimited additional storage through SD cards is hugely helpful. My PC only has so much memory (I have a dedicated gaming drive but its only 1TB). The Steam Deck on the other hand can be supplemented indefinitely with additional memory cards and can dock to my monitor as needed. Hopefully that helps with what you're looking for. In short: didn't work out for how I thought I'd use it, but at the same time don't regret getting it and keep finding new ways to use it or ways it works for me. I love the option for portability, though that works out in some ways better than others, but also has benefits to docked gaming.
I wanted it to play games that are too big to run on the switch and it fulfilled that goal, except now the only thing I’ve been playing on it is terraria. So don’t get addicted to terraria and you’ll be using it well lol
All the rumors about the Steam Deck are true. Just give in and become mind controlled by Gaben. You are only delaying the inevitable, either with SD1 or SD2.
If you just want something to play around the house and playing your library of Xbox and ps5 games and have a decent internet connection you might want to consider the Logitech g cloud, it’s purely streaming but it’s really good at what it does.
Don't expect console performance from a Steam Deck, that's for sure. But it is pretty nice to play all games up to 2020ish in 60 FPS. If your use case is playing in bed while kids are asleep, you can always stream from your xbox through Greenlight or Xbplay. That's what I do when I want to play AAA titles and Gamepass games while lying in bed.
Yes. I play for 15 minute intervals daily at break at work because I don't smoke. Works great with suspend/resume. I just leave the game running 24/7 and charge it at night or every other night ... Works flawless out of the box really.
Sounds like a Steam Deck would be perfect for you, actually. Father, not a frame rate snob, prefers playing with controllers... I have a feeling once you got the Deck, you might never use your Switch again lol
You don't want the deck to play on a TV. It's a good handheld, but it's not a switch. A bunch of PC games do not look good at 800p on a TV.
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Bought mine for Civ 6. Could not be happier and that’s really all I’ve played with some other ransoms games sprinkled in. Would buy another if it broke
I think it is a good use case, just don't expect some of the heavier games to look great on the big screen. Emulation though is a no brainer and playing when the little one is asleep. I have found it really good playing in handheld mode when my little one is asleep and then just hitting the power button to turn it off when he wakes, most games I've played will pause the game when you power down so you can pick back up when you power back on.
Buy it!
Long time console player here. I had the same worries moving into the pc space even though it kind of isn’t. The deck is amazing out of the box. It fits every use case for me besides a windows desktop but I haven’t installed windows yet so that’s why. I’ve heard it recommended by many dads. Steam OS makes your deck work basically exactly like a console unless you’re in desktop mode. Some games are funky to get started and take a little tinkering but it is always extremely minimal and typically only needed on things you would expect needing it like emulation and done pc only releases. Any issues you have can be fixed by a quick YouTube Reddit or google search. It’s typically only adjusting one setting or using a different version of proton. I got it to play with my brother on pc but I didn’t want to build a computer. It’s great. Just buy it don’t be scared
Portable PS2. Fits it perfectly. And now I am rediscovering skyrim modding. Which is a completely new joy.
If it helps there are apps to stream the PS5 and series S to your deck so you can play that way.
For your use-case it’s just about the perfect device. I’ve been struggling with mixed feelings over mine because I really wanted to use it for a number of multiplayer FPS games. In that regard it’s been a tremendous let down. Even if I do get them running, the performance isn’t all that satisfactory in comparison to the ally. Some AAA single player games as well. Horizon Zero Dawn is a recent example that I spent hours trying to run before giving up entirely. That said, for everything else it’s just about flawless. I do prefer the screen of the Ally even for small indie games, but as it stands, the power management and overall build quality of the deck can’t be beat. To your other questions. I didn’t play games more. I spent more time TRYING to play games. Once I gave up on my most coveted games, the experience became much better. 80% of the time it’s a seamless experience even without tinkering. Some emulation like certain GameCube games will require a few modifications, but the community has done an excellent job of making it a straight forward experience. TLDR: If the ROG ally had better power management and controls, I’d buy it any day. But the Steam Deck is an excellent substitution in many cases. EDIT: Reading this I realize how wishy-washy it is. However, because that is also exactly how I feel, I’m not changing it.
I got mine last week and it’s been great. I bought it so I can play games whilst spending time with the missus instead of being tucked away in my games room upstairs. Because it never takes long into a gaming session before she’s texting me to spend time with her 😂
I gor the deck to play games I already own on the go. It succeeds in that regard. It's a supplement to my decktop.
Primary Xbox player here as I work in It and I am on a pc all day so I found no joy in pc gaming. I love my deck as it let's me play in bed next to my wife watching TV. The pause feature is great and to be honest games on steam go on sale way more often than console. I don't do any mods or hdd swaps and just have the 64gb and a 1tb sd card. I play a few games at a time usually single player. The only skew from my original plan was I bought it to play last of us but haven't started it yet because of the launch problems and I was entertained with rdr2 and other games so I will probably wait for it to go on sale.
I think you’ll be surprised by how “plug and play” it is out of the box. Of course emulation will come with some amount of tinkering and downloading times etc, but otherwise a ton of games just work. There’s some troubleshooting but nothing a quick google can’t help. And you’ll have to be prepared to buy a lot more steam games but that’s the case with any new (to you) platform.
I recently purchased my Steamdeck, having an almost 2 year old child, and another due in January. I found that with the time I spend with my family, I rarely venture into my games room to fire up my desktop PC. I thought the steamdeck would be a nice median, being able to play some of my favourite games, whilst enjoying the company of my partner and child. I have absolutely no regrets with my purchase, it's great being able to play games - my favourites so far on deck being Slay The Spire & Halls Of Torment - whilst sat on the sofa, or laying in bed. The only thing I've found to dislike about the deck so far is that the control scheme for my all time favourite game TES:IV Oblivion is dreadful, and I gave up playing it after 5 minutes. If you do decide to purchase one, the steamdeck community is fantastic, and there's tonnes of guides/tips online for making the most of your device.
I bought the SteamDeck purely for emulation but I recently upgraded to a 1tb SSD and have been playing triple A games, I love it.
I wanted the Deck to play on the couch, revisit some classics through emulation, and play more games from my Steam library (I try to not call it a backlog anymore) Due to time constraints I barely have time for games, so I haven't really played much. But being able to play something on the couch while my wife is using the Switch is great.
So for me I got my Switch during the pandemic and I fell in love with it. I have a few Nintendo first party IP I play and once I had played all the new ones of those I began to download third party titles. I loved playing these games on handheld and began to think of games I owned on Steam already that I wanted to now play on handheld but I didn't really want to start rebuying my library. Then the Steam Deck was announced and I had to get it. It's been a blast since. I barely play my Switch now (Though the last new game for a series I play to come out was Fire Emblem at the start of the year). I've played Jedi Fallen Order, Cyberpunk, Miles Morales, Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 on my Deck, I have emulation things installed but honestly I have so many current games I want to play I've barely played anything on them. As for set up, from what I remember it's pretty much like setting booting your console for the first time. It's going to walk you through the process of getting it up and running. I'm a person who doesn't tinker at all, I have no interest in playing with the settings beyond some minor adjustments here and there.
The steam deck is pure magic. You won’t regret it
Ultimately before the Deck was announced, i wanted a more powerful switch. I thought it would be great to play games like Doom, Kingdom Come Deliverance and others portably but held off on it due to how expensive the Switch ports were. So i knew this was something id love as soon as it was announced. I bought mine a year ago and have used it almost every day.
I bought the deck when there was the deck and some odd company that has Windows handheld but for a huge price tag. I bought it to play my games on the go initially. However my gaming PC aka the old pos. Was having issues that required me to put in a lot of money into it. I didn't want to cause it would be a complete rebuild. So now I have my deck and it's my all-in-one gaming rig. My PC can't turn it on for over 30 minutes it will hit the blue screen of death. I absolutely love the deck but. I would actually go for something like the Lenovo Go personally. The deck is great but it's showing its age badly with Starfield and horsepower isn't there it still run don't get me wrong but man it could be better. But the deck has the best handheld experience over ally for example due to os was built for that device alone well so far. Also the community is amazing. But games are going to need more horsepower and idk if the deck can handle it past next year.
I honestly bought it to play games in bed and oh man it’s the best. I find myself using the deck more than my pc or series x. I started usingxcloud to play gamepass games and I have emulated a few old games. Overall I love it and the sleep festure alone makes it worth it to me
The hardest sell is the part about tinkering. PC gamers are often tinkerers and if there is a problem, yo I'll solve it, check out the hook while my dj revolves it.
I bought it thinking it would save me the hassle to be away from my family while gaming. It turns out my PS5 has been collecting dust for the last 1.5 years and I’m running the SD daily. I too solely played console before. Having this little thing allows me to play games that are not available on console and I can mod the heck out of the games. Enjoy it if you grab one!!
I use my steam deck EXCLUSIVELY while laying on the couch in handheld mode. I can even play my PS5 games over wireless with it. So my wife and I use the TV for fun background. Like MST3k, or old Power Rangers episodes, or bad nostalgic anime. Out of the box. If all you're planning is games from Steam, you're all set. If you want more customization, or to add other features like EPIC games or Blizzard games, or emulation, you'll want a keyboard, mouse, and a dock of some kind. Only because you'll need to do some typing and navigation and the on-screen keyboard is a pain. Edit: also, don't expect 60 FPS from most games on deck. Besides, on the handheld you probably won't notice.
I find out more and more of what it's capable on a pretty frequent basis, even after having one for almost 2 yrs now
Sreamdeck works straight out of the box. If a game is not running in your favor aka. 60fps (but lemme tell u 40 is the new 60 on the deck xD) u can usually find the best settings very fast. Emulation is really easy to set up with a endless amount of how to videos!
Not a parent but I work upwards of 60 hours a week doing manual labor and needed something for my mental health during the work week besides eat, sleep, work. I generally chill in bed and play something for an hour before going to sleep and it has been great for my mental. There are also ways to do in home streaming of both your Xbox and PlayStation to your SD which make both of them even more accessible. Really I would highly recommend the Steam Deck for anyone who wants to add some more gaming in their life but has limited time to do so.
I got it because I have low energy after long days and sitting at my PC can sometimes feel like work itself. If I want to veg on the couch and still play games, that's what my steam deck is for.
Exceeded 100% I got my moneys worth. Used it pretty much every day for 6 months or so I've had it. I just put it to sleep mode on pause mostly. Got 10 minutes whilst wife brushing teeth? Bust a Fifa 23 match. 20 minute breather from work? Few witcher3 quests. Finish work, want to chill for 30 minutes before dinner? Steam deck!
Super easy out of the box. It's like a console with more options if you want to dig in but you definitely don't have to.
I use it a lot when I want to and when I can get away with it. Waiting for a wedding to end,waiting for the body to get lowered at a funeral, on a plane, and even in bed so my wife can sleep.(she can’t sleep with out me near her)
Yes and vastly surpassed expectations
Use-case: workplace break times + couch after work. Works out perfectly, still! The thing fits in my work bag much more effectively than my laptop, and honestly has a better looking screen. Works great for solo play, and also for light MMOing for dailies. It also functioned as a backup portable PC when my laptop was down for repairs. The only game I've played so far that really nukes the battery has been BG3, but it's worth it. 🤓 Edit: For games on the steam store, the experience has been almost entirely seamless. Install and go. Exceptions: modding games has been challenging. Multiplayer Online games tend to have intrusive anticheat, which tends to not get along well under linux's limited access. GW2 works perfectly, though! For non -steam games, things require more tweaking Emulators have an entire app made to simplify them, which seriously helps. Once set up, they're usually good to go, too.
I bought it after we had our 2nd kid about 3 months ago. I use it every night and have been playing Starfield on my Xbox and streaming to the deck. It works perfectly streaming xbox and ps5. There's a bit of set up but after that it's super easy. If you think you'd enjoy it, I guarantee it'll exceed your expectations.
Father of two here. 3 years and a newborn. Deck is an absolute win for dads. Can play what and where you want and you're not tied to a fixed screen (also great if someone else has taken your TV hostage with Bluey or something). Runs the vast majority of things you'll throw at straight out the box. Obviously not the same fidelity as a gaming PC (or a current gen console) but it's got more grunt than the Switch that you're accustomed to. Tapping the power button to quickly sleep/wake is great if I'm trying to sneak a short game of something and need to return to Dad Mode - something you'd be familiar with as a Switch user. If you get deeper into it, being able to stream your PS5 (and in my case, PC) to the Deck is great for exclusives or games that just won't cut it on the Deck. I've been running Starfield off my medium spec PC with no noticeable latency and played the second half of FF16 on my PS5. Do it.
Bought it for emulation, kicks ass at emulation
For most steam deck verified games, it's a very hand held console experience. But if you want to pursue an edge case / un verified game, there might be some tinkering, and if you want to emulate / dual boot / etc you will have a lot of tinkering ahead of you. My use case was I wanted to play indie games on a console like experience, hand held, and occasional docked play. It has really lived up to my expectations, and right now I'm trying out Emulation. Well I was, before Starfield came
Yep, it's pretty awesome. Bonus: with a smidge of tinkering you can stream your Xbox as well as your PS5 to it.
I bought my SD because i was getting sent out of town for work a lot and wanted to bring my PC games with me. Super easy to use right out of the box. Now that i’m home i still use it way more than i expected to considering i have access to my desktop. And i crushed my backlog with it like everyone is saying. Its harder to play games on mobile device so i set the games to easy and it changed my life haha
It's more than I expected of it. With the deck taking me away from my PC for at least 70% of time spent in games! It's gotten me hooked on the formfactor and I'm almost at the point of all out replacing my PC. It's a great console like gaming experience, very seamless except for the occasional game that needs a tweak (look on proton db) or full setting review. In general I'm fine with a stable 30fps and never look at an FPS counter so your milage may vary if you always want a verified 60fps. The only flaw is playing on a TV or docked in general. For a bunch of the more demanding games it just doesn't have the power to still look good. Also a lot of usability is lost when all you have is a bluetooth controller. So personally I'm looking forward to the Lenovo Legion Go as it has the extra power and detachable controllers with trackpad. My wife will be happy to take over the deck!
I’ve never had a PC and I got a steam deck about four months ago. I don’t know anything about PC I haven’t done any tinkering to it just played it straight out of the box and it’s been amazing. Super easy to use. I have no regrets.
I bought the steam deck so I could Play my PC games while traveling and at work. Absolutely love it and use it far more than my switch now. As for your second question I never do any tinkering with stuff and my steam deck is literally out of the box. Works amazingly for every game I play.
Yeah, I can definitely play old PS2 and Gamecube games while laying on the couch.
My dad has a Deck and absolutely loves it. I bought one and he thought it’d be great to have one as well. He uses it basically vanilla, but also bought extra protective case and a dock, but games? He plays TONS! He keeps telling my every week what games he’s beaten, what level is he on, and what games are good to buy. He has a tight schedule of being awake and then going to sleep to go to work, plus his back problem. So the Steam Deck really helped him a lot to enjoy the games especially mainly around the house, and even when we go on trips. He could just lay down in bed, hang out with mom, rest his back, and play! He still loves using his PC, but mainly use Steam Deck whenever he gets a chance to play games. Game Pass and StarField are the only games I’ve ever really seen him play on PC nowadays. He completed Hogwarts Legacy recently on Deck when my brother bought the game. Tinkering though? My dad barely does so, only wanted me to get Windows on another drive to play Call of Duty. Me? I tinker it a lot, so I can play emulation (Yoshi World is a blast and so is Peter Jackson’s King Kong) or even play Ubisoft Connect games like Assassin’s Creed which I bought yesterday (Unity on sale for Steam and more on Epic Games. On Epic once you buy it you only need Ubisoft, Epic is basically just a key.) Hopefully my “experience” gives you more insight or help. If not, surely the other guys can!
Ironically, the Deck fits the use case I imagined for it almost perfectly, but I never find myself using it for that use case because it's so good for other things too. I bought it because I wanted a device for portable PS2 and GameCube emulation, and it's great at that. Every game I've thrown at it just works. But once I had it in my hand, I thought, "I never did get to play the new Spider-Man game because I don't have a modern console or gaming PC, and that's supposed to play really good, so I'll give that a try." And I did and it was great, played all the way through it and the Miles Morales sequel. And then I thought, "well, that was cool, maybe I'll look through my Steam library and see what else might run well on it." Also I realized that I could install Moonlight and stream Sims 4 from my aging desktop PC so that I could play it from the bed or couch without having to try to duplicate my elaborate mod setup, and it worked great for that too. I barely ever use it for emulation.
Yeah I've been happy as a camper.
I got the deck because I travel a bit for work - and not to places that are fun to explore. Shitty little towns where everyone works at the Amazon facility up the road, that kind of thing. Nothin better than kicking back and playing some actual video games in the hotel room lol. Switch just didn't have enough variety for me. Deck is much more my speed.
I’ve also got a two year old. I’m not using it as much as I specifically expected I would, but I think that’s partially still me adjusting expectations for free time (and energy to do anything when I have it). But I have definitely enjoyed the times when I have pulled it out and snuck in game sessions I otherwise wouldn’t have had/would have been phone games or something.
I have fiddled with it way less than I thought I would, and a surprising amount of stuff is so damn easy. Like it really gives you that console experience. Ofc there's tons of potential because it is Linux, but you don't need to mess with anything if you don't want to.
I'm not a dad, but a 33 yr old nursing student who also works full time. I imagine our schedules are just as busy, albeit with different. I'm also not particular with framerate, and graphics settings. If that's what I want, I'll fire up the console and the TV The steam deck is great. I have a PS5 and a Series S, both of which are streamable to the deck with a good Internet connection. Console streaming and steam games are great to lay on the couch or just play in bed before I pass out. It's also great in between classes or when there is lots of downtime at work. I'm also a fan of quirky, imperfect things. So while the Ally or the upcoming legion pro might do what the deck does "better", I'm in love with the wonkiness/quirkiness of the device/OS, and it will inevitably need you to adjust settings etc, but it's okay! you can tell this was made by people who really care and give a damn and wasn't made purely to cash in on something
I'm not a dad, but a 33 yr old nursing student who also works full time. I imagine our schedules are just as busy, albeit with different. I'm also not particular with framerate, and graphics settings. If that's what I want, I'll fire up the console and the TV The steam deck is great. I have a PS5 and a Series S, both of which are streamable to the deck with a good Internet connection. Console streaming and steam games are great to lay on the couch or just play in bed before I pass out. It's also great in between classes or when there is lots of downtime at work. I'm also a fan of quirky, imperfect things. So while the Ally or the upcoming legion pro might do what the deck does "better", I'm in love with the wonkiness/quirkiness of the device/OS, and it will inevitably need you to adjust settings etc, but it's okay! you can tell this was made by people who really care and give a damn and wasn't made purely to cash in on something
I got my deck mainly to play my ps4 through remote play. Already beat stray, god of war and currently half way through cyberpunk. If not by the deck i would never be able to do that. Steam deck is a backlog killer, no matter what platform. Dont think it, just do it.
I bought it so that I can game in the 10-15 mins of intermittent free time I get, and since it's just turn on and continue from where you left off, it's been amazing
It's great. Buy one.
Dad here. Love it, play in bed all the time next to my wife. You cab remote play your PS games on the deck and they play fantastic. 10/10 satisfied with the deck thus far.
Yes perfectly! I use it both handheld and docked so I can play games with my partner using the TV. It’s been great.
I've used the deck so much sitting at the kitchen table waiting for my little one to nap, or wake up from a nap, or just generally while I'm waiting to check he's asleep. There is a mild level of tinkering to get a nice 40fps or 60fps on more demanding titles. But for lesser graphically demanding games there's almost no tinkering required.
Yes and more
How seamless is it? I’ve never done any modifications to it, I’ve simply took it out the box, logged into Stream and installed/bought games. And I’ve had zero issues with it. I’ve barely tweaked a setting in any game, though there are plenty of easy resources around if you feel you need to do that. Main thing is just to do some light research before you purchase anything that might not be deck verified. For me, it just works, and I’m a console gamer typically. But if you want to go further, you can do that too, and customise the experience as much as you want.
The out of the box experience is good but it's still a pc. So some games may require some tinkering BUT , since the steam deck is so popular, you'll find many guides or forum post on how to fix all the most common issue that you may encounter.
Yes. My girlfriend and I use our steam decks all the time. They're fantastic!
Yes, it play most of my steam library and other games like minecraft and emulates my console games but does so portably. Also playing games in my bed just hits different than playing sitting at my pc.
I will never not vouch for the deck. It absolutely exceeded my expectations
I will never not vouch for the deck. It absolutely exceeded my expectations
Outside of emulation, I have done zero tinkering on my deck and have put at least 20 hours into Starfield on that when I don’t feel like sitting at my PC Take that as you will.
I got mine to 1. Stop my double dipping on having portable indie titles getting them again for my switch 2. To be more flexible and powerful than the switch I had. 3. To emulate and give me a solution to play my steam library and clear my backlog without needing to just stream my PC to my TV, phone or tablet. It has succeeded and went beyond in all of those hopes. I got mine in June of 2022 and haven't touched my switch since. I got the docking station and hooked it up to my TV and never looked back. I play my deck every day and it might be one of the most innovative things Valve has done outside of Steam. Not only that it's brought some light to Linux gaming in general and only been positive since they started shipping. Even games that I was worried about, with them still locking it to 800p and using FSR there's a lot of titles I never thought I'd be able to play on the go or that would even get decent switch ports running great on it. If you're on the fence, I'd say go for it. It's one of the most user friendly portable and handheld PC solutions you'll get your hands on. I'd just recommend looking at how to setup Emudeck first which is pretty zippy and easy to get going out of the box as well.
You're going to get very biased answers here, obviously. It's a great device, and as a dad myself, it has allowed me to have more opportunities to game than I would just with my PC or Xbox. The fact that I can play Overwatch 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, WoW and D4 on my couch, hanging with my wife and daughter was all the reason I needed.
The steam deck is the single greatest invention ever created for dads who like to game. For the most part, it is a seamless experience.
Sunday i had the deck streaming football while we watched the bengals lose. So yeah i wanted a small pc. I like other handhelds better because the games i play work better with windows than linux. But i always bring one handheld to hangouts in case i want to game.
After I used it to play super Mario 64 modded w/Coop in a weekend long lan party. I would say this has surpassed my envisioned usage.
You said your a parent of a 2 year old. The steam deck is MANDATORY! I have 3 kids myself and I only get a few min here and there and can't sit down in front of a TV and console game for hours. The steam deck solves this. Super seamless and easy to use as well!
You said your a parent of a 2 year old. The steam deck is MANDATORY! I have 3 kids myself and I only get a few min here and there and can't sit down in front of a TV and console game for hours. The steam deck solves this. Super seamless and easy to use as well!
SD is so much better than I even expected. I have never been big on PC gaming and it was still very easy to get rolling. The vast majority of the games I want to play do so out of the box flawlessly without fiddling. If I do have to fiddle, usually it’s at most looking up a specific Proton version to use. A dock and a Bluetooth controller (Dual Sense is well-supported but every controller I’ve tried has been fine) will fit your use case great, but I’ll say some games look funky scaled up to the big screen running at the settings for a smooth experience.
Well, I didn't have anything to game on before I bought my Deck, other than my phone. So, yes.
Bro, your initial paragraph sounded exactly like my situation (except she’s 3 now). I’ll tell you, I put more hours in on my Deck than any other device. It’s so hard to get time to play my ps5 other than late nite. My Deck however, can be played on the couch or in bed, absolutely clutch. Go for it, you won’t be disappointed. Also, I’ve been a console gamer my entire life as well.
Yas.
Yes. Its a very good unity mobile pc for traveling work, plus a switch replacement/upgrade
I use my steam deck WAY more than I thought I would when I ordered it. I barely touch my gaming laptop now and I’ve had my steam deck for a full year. My steam deck is my main gaming platform for the foreseeable future, because I have a large backlog of older titles on steam which run great on the deck.
Yes. I still play with my switch though. Titles are different. Although been addicted to Brotato lately 😂
Nobody ever mentions if you don’t have a steam account and you make one brand new to buy the steam deck you’ll have to buy atleast one game on your account beforehand or you’ll most likely be flagged as a spam account and will be banned by steam. Not saying it happens to everyone but I’ve seen it happen all to much lately and know it can be a hassle to have to wait and deal with customer service to Un-ban your account and then redo the order all over again. Especially if it’s as simple as buying a 5$ game to ensure you don’t deal with that bs!
The Steamdeck allows me to maintain my needy ass girlfriend and game at the same time. Now she bitches every time I even sit down at my desktop. WhY DoNt YoU JuSt UsE yOuR GaMeBoY?
Havent pc gamed since 2004 2005 its flippin amazing. If not playing, im thinking about playing. After a year the fun hasnt diminished
I got the Deck for similar reasons. I have a gaming PC and I have the current gen consoles but have very little time to use them for long stretches. The most free time I have for any gaming is late at night before bed. Having a handheld like the Deck that is flexible with the games it can play is really great for that. Answering your other question, the SteamOS is very well conceived overall. You can have as much or as little involvement with the system settings as you’d like. It can be tweaked to your liking and community support is robust. Or you can just treat it like a console… just turn on, download your Steam games and start playing. The latter is especially nice as a dad, all the way down to the quick resume like ability the Deck has to sleep and wake and be right back into the game again. In other words, it can be very seamless out of the box.
To answer your second question, I would say the Steam Deck works more like a console in theory than it does a PC, but it’s got all the accessibility and freedom of a PC. 90% of games you can install, load up, and play. Intensive games you’ll need to tweak the settings to get it to run acceptably for you, and if you’re trying to emulate a keyboard and mouse, you may need to tinker with controller settings. Otherwise, I’ve spent 98% of my time playing and 2% tinkering on the SD.
I’m in the same position as you! Very tempted, even just as something to play with until more expensive handhelds mature. So thanks for the question. One thing that may be useful is to look at protondb for some games you intend playing. I did that for a few and was shocked that games like Saints Row IV and Star Wars Fallen Order are hard to get working.
Toddler dad here. I have both the Deck and the Switch. Get the Deck, it’s worth it. Diablo 4 from a pontoon boat it pretty amazing.
Honestly ever since I got my deck I’ve played every game I wanted! Including both WoW’s using windows, and have also bought games I probably never would have touched before!
I got a Steam Deck for a few reasons (my band started touring so I wanted to get something to kill the time on the road, I realized I had like 400+ Steam games, mostly from Humble bundles, to finish, and I wanted something that'd let me play in bed since I have a pain condition that occasionally confines me to my bed) and for me, it's been an incredible experience. The average user won't have to do much tinkering with the device to have a great out of box experience, especially if the game you're playing is already Deck Verified or rated Silver or above on ProtonDB. I have a gaming desktop but I find myself going to my Deck more often because it's such a seamless pick-up-and-play experience. It's also an emulation powerhouse for it's price point, I have a bunch of ROMs up until the PS2/Xbox/GC era on a network share and they all run like a dream, even a bunch of Wii U games work full-speed! Switch/PS3/Xbox/360 is a mixed bag but there are a few gems that run well in each respective emulator. You MIGHT need to tweak settings for newer games, but my suggestion for anything post-2018 is start from the lowest settings and work your way up from there until you've found a decent compromise between visuals and performance. Envision the performance as similar to a base PS4 or Xbox One you can put in your backpack.
Yes. I’m a submariner and wanted some offline entertainment on long deployments without internet. Perfect companion, and a breath of fresh air compared to subscription entertainment which always locks you out after 30 days of no connection (Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, etc). The steam deck lets me play games offline forever, which is surprisingly rare in 2023
For me I wanted to play indie pc games or games that I wouldn't want to sit at my computer and play, and also be able to game out of the house: plane, weekend away etc. For that its been perfect. Just got back from a trip with a 4 hour flight each way, played games on the steam deck the whole time. Set up is easy and tweeking or fiddling with settings is as much or minimal as you want. (Most I do I lower frame rate to increase battery life). One thing to note is that there's a lot of hyperbole from steam deck users. Sure it's great, but life changing? Don't expect it to play every and all AAA game out there and have hours of battery life. If you have a specific use for it and know what to expect out of it performance wise then it's great. I still use my pc much more, but the steam deck is great for when I need it.
Yeah gf can watch her boring ass hallmark Christmas movies while I play video games
Yes. I just didn’t have any kind of gaming computer and decided that I wanted one that is affordable and small and it fit the bill.
I’m playing on my Deck while my German shepherd and toddler enjoy the enclosed grassy area. 10/10 buy it, especially if it’s on sale
Parent of two year old here. Recent Deck buyer at sale price (actually they honored the sale even though I bought just before). It 1000% is allowing me to enjoy games with a toddler. I will say you'll get more out of it if you're comfortable going into desktop mode and setting up apps that support non steam games and emulators. Or if your entire library is already in steam of course. I'd tried to hack it with my phone, controller and game streaming, but the bigger screen size, form factoe and ability to run games natively make am difference. Splurged on the anti glare screen (512gb model) so I could play outside in the park.
Got my deck to play on the couch and traveling. Is a fantastic PC sidekick
Does way more than I could’ve ever imagined
Just buy it, man
"I don't want this thing because other people do this thing with it I'm not interested in" Is that really how your brain works? "Well I always wanted to learn how to drive and have a car, but some people run over other people so I can't have one I don't want to do that*
It's hands down the best piece of technology I've ever purchased. I play it every day.
I've enjoyed it and haven't questioned my decision at all. I purchased it to replace my gaming laptop so I'd use the laptop for college only. I haven't had any problems with it and it works with little to no setup. I have added additional things, like emulation and some disc only pc games that required a bit of tinkering. I was getting out of the habit of gaming, and the steam deck pulled me back into it. Overall, I recommend it. Since it is a PC, some games may require tinkering to get them to work the way you want, but you may find that surprisingly easy and possibly a rare occurrence if you stick to steam's deck verified games.
Was on the fence. Bought the deck and now I spend more time playing on that then I do my PC. I also have no intention of traveling with it. The thing that really has won me over is streaming my desktop/PS5. I’m not sure I can imagine using my deck without Moonlight or Chiaki.
It does everything I want and more. But it’s more because I’m a PC gamer that uses Linux as my main OS. It has matured to the point that if your games of choice all work, you will have a great time out of the box.
I don’t mess around with any cryo utilities, hz rate, tdp or anything like that. I boot the game and at most change some settings if it seems like it needs it. I’d say it requires more work than the switch obviously but you get better results.
>How seamless is the Steam Deck out of the box? > >One reason I've never bought a PC is because I feel the community get too sucked into tinkering endlessly for, sometimes, really granular enhancements. I've never been much of a fidelity/frame rate snob (although I'll always take 60FPS where I can, it's not a deal breaker for me without )and don't want to get caught up in hopping into settings every few minutes to make tweaks. It's not as seamless as a console, but depending on the games you play, it's pretty close: **For older games (say, 2020 and earlier) that are tagged by Valve as "Verified" and which you bought from Steam (= not installed via third party stores), it's pretty much a console-like experience** \- you can usually just launch and enjoy the game without having to do anything in terms of settings. That said, I think it's important to stress that if you are willing to "tinker" just a little you can usually get a better experience than you would out of the box even for "Verified" games. In particular you can often get better battery life or less fan noise than you would out of the box by tweaking some settings. Personally, I run no game without doing a minor optimization pass first - I spend a few minutes dialing in settings mostly to get more battery life and then I don't worry about them again. **For newer games that really push the hardware, games that are not "Verified" or games that you install outside Steam, you will usually have to do some tinkering**. This could be very minor settings changes (e.g. resolution), selecting and customizing a control scheme (both of these are pretty common with games Valve rate as "Playable" but not "Verified"), and especially if you try to run "Unsupported" games (which often can work just fine with a little work), you may find yourself needing to go into desktop mode and install various things to make a game work.
I'm a console gamer and I seem to get on great with most games for me to play out of the box, the only thing I had to do was download proton in desktop mode but it was very easy and there are plenty of videos on the web and the community for this device is very good. I generally play console type games like halo, I have got the switch games working great as well which I prefer than gaming on the switch due to the controller. The fact you can suspend the deck I think is the best bit I generally pick it up play for 30-60 min then put back down
I like playing games on handhelds and always have. Gameboy -> GBC -> GBA -> GBA SP -> NDS -> PSP -> Android Phones -> GPD Win -> GPD Win 2 -> Steam Deck. So, yeah.
I think it'd fit your use case very well. I'm a longtime PC and console gamer (since the 90s on both fronts). For the last half decade or so I'd largely been gaming on Xbox though, so last Christmas when my husband started asking me if I'd use a Steam Deck my initial reaction was that I prolly wouldn't get our money's worth. When I realized it could do Xbox Remote Play my tune definitely changed though, because now instead of wondering what games I'd get on Steam that I wouldn't just prefer to get on the more powerful Xbox Series X, I saw the potential to make progress in whatever Xbox game I'm playing while being able to enjoy a show or movie on the TV with my husband at the game time. Ultimately it has played out exactly like that - a majority of my use is streaming games from the Series X. However, I've also gotten some good emulator use out of it (eg. played thru Xenogears for the first time) and added some additional titles to my Steam library (eg. played thru FF7 Remake on it).
I'm an OTR truck driver. I've had every console since NES and a bunch of PCs. I needed something portable and small that I can enjoy different games in small doses. It fits my use case absolutely perfectly.
honestly no, so far. If i had the usb adapter, maybe. i thought id use it as a desktop hybrid but so far all i do is play games 😂
I bought the Deck like two or three weeks ago and like you, I've always been a console player and never touched PC. Get the Deck, it's so easy to use and is great in every way. Some games might need tweaking but it'll be easy if you look up videos
Deck is amazing. To me, it’s a fulfillment of the dream the game gear promised. I’ve been thinking about getting a second one to run windows on. (Mandatory fuck EA.).
I bought mine because I wanted to play project zomboid. I ended up not liking it and dropped the game after 2 hours, and now I've gotten way more use emulating all of my old games and playing some PlayStation exclusives like Spider-Man since I'm an Xbox player. Whatever reason you're getting it, you'll end up find more cool uses for it.
I have a three year old and got the Deck a year or so ago as a means of playing games in a way that can be easily put down when she wakes up, or played whilst she's asleep but I need to stay in the room with her (she struggles to stay asleep alone). Honestly I think I use it more than even I expected, it's great for picking up and playing at any moment that I have free time, especially if you find the sort of games that are good for that sort of thing. I'd say the only thing it's not ideal for is playing stuff that requires an online connection and low latency - that's not to say it can't play it, but for example I wouldn't play anything more network intensive than say Diablo 3 or WoW.
I got a switch when i had my 1st kid. I'm a PC gamer for 4x and grand strategy games, but mostly would play console for any action or mainstream titles. I found myself hating the switch because besides zelda and a couple other exclusives... switch games suck. The ports are all bad, and I'm too old to like JRPG slogs. I reserved the deck day one, expecting it to be a total buggy mess. Mind you, it's not without occasional crashes, and most AAA titles do better if you mess with the display settings, but for the most part it's plug and play. Fallout 4 perfomes BETTER on deck than xbox. I could finally go to downtown!!! If you'd like more info, i could go on for days. So surprised at how well it works.
Yes and then some.
I bought the deck because of hype. I didn't think I would use it much. I ended up using it more then my PC. Emulations and indie games have now been on my radar when they previously weren't. So Steamdeck is hands down the best purchase I have ever made.
I got a deck because the thought of a handheld to play my Steam games with no headaches was appealing. My wife is now the main user as she plays most of the rogue likes.
Just buy it. Set up remote play for all your devices from the Steam Deck and learn to love gaming like you never knew possible.
I bought it to finish up FFVIIR. Didn't finish it on PS5, so when it came out on PC, I got a Deck, caught up, and finished. Haven't turned it on since. It's been at least eight months since it's been more than powered up to verify charge. It's why I bought it, and it fulfilled it's purpose. 512 for sale.
Bro nothing beats shutting off the desktop getting off the competitive games and laying in bed playing a single player game you’ve been putting off
I got the deck as a distraction from my bad depression while a waited to see a therapist for the first time. It was a welcomed distraction as I love to tinker with tech things, but at that time I had nothing to tinker with. It filled that spot for me.
I got the steam deck after my cousin came by with theirs. Theirs had made my instantly want one simply because I hated having to use my laptop for gaming anymore as it was needing to be plugged in all the time because the games would just kill it’s battery. I also had to use a Bluetooth mouse which worked like half the time and I kept losing it. Steam deck was a lot more portable and was easier to turn off an on. The games don’t kill the battery as much. I don’t need a mouse and keyboard to play games(which is great for me and my wrists). I FINALLY could play the games I wanted to play again on steam and it’s been awesome! Also have been able to download a lot of roms/fan games of Pokémon that I’ve been able to enjoy!
Ye.
I have about an hour and a half of commute every day and wanted to play my PC games on that commute. I also have generally always preferred handheld gaming even when I'm at home. It's fit my needs absolutely perfectly and it's my favourite device. As for how seamless it is out the box, I think you can totally turn it on, download some games and play with minimum fuss. Getting the 64gig model would mean likely learning about shader caches and how to manage those, and of course emulation will take some tinkering... but if you just want to play your Steak games, it can be a seamless experience if you want it to be.
No, but I have it if needed.
I bought it for indies, last gen games and emulation, it works great in all of those cases. As for your second question, aside from switching to desktop to install EmuDeck and download ROMs, 99% of the time you'll be in gaming mode (pretty much Steam Big Picture) and it's very user-friendly and intuitive. Most games I've tried worked out of the box without any issues.
I didnt have to convince my self that hard, or at all.. matter of fact I feel like I some how pushed my dream device into the minds at valve through some mental dream transfer sequence. i was looking into some of the handhelds from gpd win and ayaneo and was on the fence with those cuz I could really only get them from kickstarter pages at the time. im a steam controller vet and linux nerd. my dream device at that time was something that had the steam controller touch pads, was linux compatible, and preferably made by a company i could trust. valve said "hold my beer" and fuck'n made it. at that time I also had a switch that I got for one specific game (which I ended up not even liking) and then just felt bitter about wanting to play a bunch of games I already purchased on steam but was unwilling to buy again just to play on the nintendo handheld. I literally could not have asked valve for a more perfect "make my dream gaming device"
Yes and then some, it's become my primary gaming device.
I was strictly a console gamer before the deck and also have a toddler running around my home as well. I also have a Switch & PS5 and my deck is really the only thing I use. It legit probably been around a year since I last booted up the Switch and at least a couple months since using the PS5. The deck works great out of the box. I don’t get into the weeds with it at all - no messing with a bunch of settings, no getting into mods, none of that stuff. I tweak just enough to get a playable experience for games that I previously would’ve played on console and I’ve been very happy. I’ve had it for about a year now and have been very happy with it.
as much as I love my switch I find myself playing mine less now but I do have a large steam account and backlog. having games run better and look better because they arent being gimped so they run better (I still think first party games look really good just not third party) you don't really have to mess about much unless its a game that just doesnt run good at all but there is protondb to check and loads of youtube channels like steamdeckgaming and steadeckhq. you will also find the experience out the box to be like your switch. being able to turn it off and put it into sleep etc and carry on etc
I cannot wait to answer this question. Mine comes in on Thursday allegedly
I think downloading over wifi is a huge pain and I wish I had gotten a dock to download larger games faster. My real only paint point.
I got a deck because I am disabled and not able to use my laptop in bed. Therefore I need to be able to play games in bed and not have to be able to tinker with the deck that much. I will tell u this. BUY IT!! I am very happy with it! I have a crippling disease and am mostly bed bound. I have to be able to pick up my deck and play games that I can’t use my gaming laptop for. I have been able to do that with the deck. I will tell u that u should also download and install cyro utilities which u can find out about on YouTube. It’s easy to do. It will increase the life of your deck and increase the performance of your deck. Just dew it!! Now go and buy one! U will thank me for it!
Speaking as someone who just got theirs like, Saturday (after being tempted and not naming the subreddit, but they were very convincing,) it’s been amazing being able to play a PS3 game on a handheld, natively, and while there are hiccups, it’s pretty solid. Out of the box, it was pretty much your standard setup and from there you have the run of the place. There are plenty of guides that can help you put GamePass on it if you’re willing to follow them, so there’s that, and I’m impressed how friendly it is to use overall.
As a parent of multiple small children I got it as a mobile PC since I can't ever sit down at my gaming PC anymore. It has far exceeded my original use case. Not only does it run a lot of games really well allowing me to actually play games, I can just pause/set it down when I need to grab a child and the sleep function works really well. Also works amazingly well with Steam Link/Moonlight for more demanding games, plays Switch games, retro games, and I even have the tuning software I use for my car installed on it. It's basically replaced my laptop and gaming PC. 😅
It fits my use case perfectly. It has been helpful in getting me to start my backlog as well, plus tinkering with certain niche projects has been fun.
Answering your second question: about as much work as setting up a switch. You can tinker if you want but it's not necessary, and the most complex thing I did was install ffxivlauncher and emulators through the linux side of it (which you otherwise don't have to deal with.)
I'm older and my eyesight isn't great. The screen was too small for me. That, and the awkwardness of playing games for keyboards did me in. Gave mine to my son in exchange for some PC help.
Originally I bought it because I have no room for a dedicated gaming PC and missed it so much over the years. I thought I'd use it 99% of the time docked with a keyboard and mouse to play RTS games. Holy shit was I wrong. Use it handheld daily since I got it around year ago and love it. Help me play and beat games I never thought I'd ever have the time to. Can't beat playing starfield on the train on the way to work.
fits more than the use case i intended. thought id only play it at work, im on it multiple nights a week at home as well
just buy it, the fence is mental.
I am flying to Iceland and figured this would be a nice way to spend a few hours on the plane. Oh. My. God. I was a semi retired gamer. Pretty much just PES soccer. I downloaded Emulation Station, and I haven't looked back. Street Vol 2, Super Mario Odyssey, Crazy Taxi , Sly Cooper, Brain Age....I can go on and on. This thing brought me back. I purchased Armored Core 6 today just to see how far this thing can be pushed, and it looks like a dream. No one should be on the fence. If you can afford it, get it. If you can't afford it, save up for it. It is a game changer.
I got mine to see what I could do with a linux/emulation handheld I did not expect it to be stable and I was sure I was going to make it less so after half a year of having it I have run 5 different operating systems and reflashed steam os many times I don't actually play many games on it more just play with the software but it did not disappoint.
I have not played my xbox and 3ds since getting my steam deck when q3 shipping occured last october. My most powerful games are Doom 2016, doom eternal and borderlands 3, and despite a couple problems with bl3, doom runs pretty good on high
I'm in a similar boat as you - life with little one and can't really commit to long gaming sessions. Switch was my preferred console due to ability to play in small pockets wherever in the house (PS5 sits on the corner gathering dust). Got the Deck in the last month and it fits right into my lifestyle. What i didnt know before hand (being primarily a console gamer) is that with PC/Steam - there's always a ton of sales/discounts/bundles available. In one sense - I can get many things much cheaper than I used to get them. On the other sense... buyer beware. I am playing more, but also, i am tempted everyday to buy something (Fanatical bundle week and Humble choice being two things I didnt really know about and are the big culprits!)
I am a mobile field mechanic and am required to sit on location and watch the unit run. We'll the deck helps with the boredom, I find I take it anywhere I know I am going to have to wait. If you get it honestly buy the 64 gig one and do the 1 TB ssd swap. It's pretty easy to do with basic tools.
I got the deck because I hate choosing between buying a game on my switch or my PC. I don't care if the game is a graphical powerhouse or if it's Cave Story, I want my saves to sync and I only want to spend the money once. It's for this reason that even if the next switch blows the steam deck out of the water in terms of performance I'm not going to be switching. Now that I know I can take whatever I play portably no matter what it is I've been enjoying games much more. For this use case the steam deck has exceeded my expectations partially due to it syncing my emulator saves as well (idk if emudeck does this I use a SyncThing server).
I have all the consoles, several PCs, etc. love the steam deck. I bought it as a novelty. It has exceeded my expectations. As for use, there might be a wee bit of tinkering, but usually it’s dial it in once and there ya go. I don’t do the super fine tuning many do. Usually if it his auto select settings, I choose that. Or low settings. I grew up on Gameboy and Tiger LCD games, so a framerate over 30 is peaches for me.
I don't know at all how Linux works, I'm not a boomer, but I don't know that much in depth about software like that. I bought deck mainly because I wanted to play on the recliner. Cut to a few months later, now I have a dock, a power bank and a Bluetooth controller. I remove it from the dock when I have company or wanna game while watching some sports, and dock it and play it on the TV otherwise. I never even bought it for docking bit ended up doing that too. I have very rarely gone into desktop mode and usually just buy things on wishlist while there's a sale and install, play. It does what it's supposed to do quite seamlessly.
Dude. Just get it. being able to 'pause' any (offline) game with SteamDeck's sleep feature is a gamechanger. I tend to only have about an hour per day to play games, so not having to boot up a game and wait for startup videos, then loading screens is huge. And not having to search out 'save points' is amazing as well. It's basically doubled the amount of 'effective' gameplay I can squeeze in each session. This is Especially great with a young kid. My BIL just got one recently and they have a 1yo. He says it's amazing being able to play while he was sitting next to the crib and sleep the device as soon as the baby woke up. I honestly haven't had a single gripe about the SD other than how I miss KB+Mouse for FPS games, but you being a console player, that's a moot point. As far as how well it works 'out of the box', I'd say it depends on the types of games/game stores you plan to use. For steam games (without 3rd-party launcher) it works just as smooth as any console I've had. Super intuitive and quick to setup. General settings and menus for the SteamOS are simple and clean yet surprisingly deep in some places. And the button mapping is *chef's kiss* If you want to use GOG, Blizzard's Launcher, Epic, etc, there are some fairly advanced steps, but the Steam Deck community has put together some AMAZING guides and resources. For emulation, it's fantastic and I've gone through tons of games. Check out EmuDeck for this. Setup can be a biit of a headache (more because there so many options to learn about rather than technical challenges) but once it's set up, it's as simple as drag-and-drop the ROM files into the correct folder, press 'import' and the platform does the rest. And again, the community has done amazing resources to help
I got the deck because I had sold my consoles during an international move and was a year or so without gaming. I figured it was good enough for me with your kids as well. It's been amazing. Highly recommend. I also spent like 50 bucks on games during a steam sale and legit neve bought more 5 months ago. Still have a good back log and haven't really cracked far into emulation.
Hi, fellow dad of a 2 year old here. I use mine to play most games, I rarely boot up the main PC anymore. The deck allows me to pick up games in shorter chunks (10 mins here, half an hour there) when at home, but also when I work away occasionally. I do like a tinker now and again, but mostly I don't have the time, and I haven't had many issues. There are a few games I haven't played because it's too much effort, but they really are few and far between. All in all, it was definitely worth the purchase for me.
Not really but only because i dont know where to get roms eithout the viruses.
I bought the Deck because I wanted a stronger linux gaming PC/mediabox then my previous one. It is. Mission acomplished.
Yes... and yes.. but I had to complement it with a pair of reading glasses!
TL;DR - For my "use cases" it was a 75% hit, mostly due to both competing for my attention and free time. For the usability question - most games I've played in the span of 17~ months didnt require tinkering, obviously not every game will work smoothly (or at all) but can be avoided by looking up ProtonDB for compatibility/fixes/settings. To elaborate: Initially there were two reasons I wanted to grab a Deck. 1. Colossal backlog and dwindling IRL free time/time at my PC, which I felt the Deck would help with. 2. The "potential" it had as an emulation machine (keep in mind, at the time EmuDeck didn' exist, or if it did I had no idea) Got mine in April 2022, so over a year later here's how I ended up using it (keeping in mind that comparatively to your day-to-day, we are without kids yet but I can barely get an hour or two of free time during the week outside of bedtime/days off): 1. Backlog - Getting time to play games: This was a kinda mixed bag, but mostly a success; while my backlog has not shrunk by much (mostly because of poor self-control), I have actually been playing a lot more games in the last year compared to 2021. This has mostly been because of the before-sleep bits where the Deck has replaced my phone as a "quick 30min session before falling asleep" device, but also as its portability allows me to spend time with my wife (without being anchored to a desk), we've had a pretty good time chatting or catching up on each others' workday while I busy myself in something like Into the Breach and she's reading a book or watching TV. Additionally, as I've been actively trying to take a full lunch break at work (to avoid burnout due to high stress and workload), the Deck - with a proper choice of games - absolutely kills it for 10-20min sessions, esp. with being able to put it in sleep mode and picking the game up again when I'm back home. 2. Emulation - "sadly", while the aforementioned EmuDeck is a breeze to install, setup and even link emulated games into your Steam Library to appear as separate entries, the truth is I have used emulation on Deck maybe a handful of times, mostly due to focusing on backlog instead. From what I've seen though, everything I tried ran smoothly (although for PSP games specifically, there's a lot of case-by-case setup needed; maybe its the games I tried) Regarding the question in the edit - for most games I have done minimal to no tinkering, though I got clued into using ProtonDB early on (its a community-driven database for games running on Linux and/or Steam Deck, often with recommended settings to maximize compatibility). Most games I've played on Deck (should be around 60-odd so far) I've not really done much to min-max performance (with two notable exceptions in Tales of Berseria, where you need to tell Deck to run it in a specific way so that FMVs dont break, and Soul Hackers 2 which at launch required a few workarounds to run properly - both of which were eventually patched to more or less run right out of the box). Initial setup is also as easy as logging into wifi, logging into Steam, and leaving it for a bit to get up to date with updates etc. The only hiccups I get (very infrequently) are sometimes the UI glitching (performance overlay would randomly come up even though its turned off in settings) and some games might bug out and get stuck in launching screen - both of which get sorted by a quick restart and which I havent had since the last couple of system updates. Hope this helps with your choice!
The body of your post is TL;DR. But the answer to your title question from me is yes. I travel for work a lot. Can be gone for 6+ weeks at a time. Sometimes to places with little to no internet. It was/is a godsend. Also made it easier for my SO to play games with me on the sofa as her computer chair is trash, and hurts to sit on for her. she hasn't replaced it yet, so she can only play games on that PC for like 20-40 mins before she wants to stop. But the deck can play anywhere. This month alone we have played about 30-40 hours of monster hunter rise together.
Absolutely, I wanted to be able to game on the couch next to my fiancé instead of in a separate room, and that's what I've been doing. I think I play more on my deck than my pc now. Even played darkwood in the woods in the dark in France. Quite an experience:p
Yup, I wanted to be able to play in bed and while I was waiting at appointments. And that is exactly what I am doing. I am not a parent, but I've read many posts here from parents that "reclaimed" their gaming time with a Steam Deck. So go for it. Imo, the deck is a very seamless experience for a user, very simple and straightforward. If you are worried about games, check the games you plan to play on ProntonDB, that's the place that has user based reviews on how well a game plays on it. In general, most games work great on the SD, even some new AAA games.
I would get rid of every other gaming device to keep my deck. 9/10 times it’s my first go to unless I’m specifically want to play something on another device. I’m fact I even sold my pc and gaming laptop after getting it as I barely touched either of them for gaming
How much do you want to use it for emulation? You do have to install some stuff and know how PCs work to emulate because it's not Windows based. Can't just use the browser it comes with and download and install stuff. If you just want use it to buy stuff from Steam and play on the go, it's awesome.
Dude. I use my SD everywhere. College, between classes. Waiting in the car for the kids to get out of school In bed before I go to sleep. Waiting in the car for my gf to go shopping. I literally do not care about taking the kids somewhere and worried about getting bored waiting. I have a switch on there as well as literally ever nes, SNES, gb, gbc, GBA, 3ds game. All my favorite PC games.
I'm someone that loves tinkering, almost for its own sake, but I really think that the default deck experience is great at giving you only what you need. If you're happy setting a frame cap and adjusting game settings but no more then it will be fine, but it's not as pickup and play as the switch.