Steam Deck review: Meet my new favorite console

Steam Deck will allow you to enjoy the majority of your video game history wherever and whenever you like, while also enjoying all the benefits of console gaming, as well the flexibility of a gaming computer.

As with the Nintendo Switch, you can connect the Steam Deck to a TV, throwing the game onto a large high-def screen, or you can play on the go with the device’s built-in 7-inch 1280×800 screen. With a starting price of $399, you can get the Deck for as low as $399. It is amazingCheaper than the majority of brand-name gaming laptops. Also, it is competitive with new consoles. You can snag one for $50 more than Nintendo’s OLED Switch or the same price as the digital edition of the PlayStation 5.

On paper, it’s perfect.

Nonetheless, a healthy skepticism of Valve’s surprise entry into portable gaming has been justified ahead of its debut. Even if the company can procure enough chips during an unprecedented shortage amid a pandemic, it will have to enter and survive one of the most competitive corners of the video game industry — one with NumerousLosers: Sega, Nokia Nokia, Atari, Sony, Sega. Only one winner is Nintendo.

When the Steam Deck arrived at my door a few weeks back, I was faced with a question: How could a company, which has not released any game consoles or computers before, compete against the best hardware manufacturer in the world and its most popular device, the Xbox One? Do the Steam Deck stand a chance at the Age of Switch Is it possible?

The Steam Deck boasts the best launch lineup of any platform

Steam Deck comes out of the box and connects directly to Steam. This includes any games you have bought in the last decade. (How well all of those games run is something we’ll unpack in a moment.) Anyone who is willing to play around with the Windows operating system can install it. This will give them access to stores like itch.io and subscription services such as Game Pass.

This is easily the most successful launch lineup for a game console in history. I understand how hyperbolic that sounds, but I can’t overstate the scope of video games immediately available on Steam Deck on day one. The Gen X Set’s classic point-and click adventure games! A forgotten mid-2000s indie gem! Elden Ring! In my first hours with the portable, I opened my Steam library and loaded a trio of games I’d most wanted to play on a handheld: Half-Life 2, Nier: Automata, The most recent Vampire Survivors. Everything played without a fuss, just as I’d expect from any traditional portable game console.

But the Steam Deck isn’t quite a portable game console — it’s a portable gaming PC. Even though I enjoy PC gaming, it is a constant source of small frustrations. So for the past two weeks, I’ve put the Steam Deck through a gauntlet of games spanning the past three decades. While I’m confident that big-budget titles, such as those published by Valve will run well, what about the rest?

I thought it was impossible. EverythingIt would be great.

Steam Deck is an excellent PC for both good and bad reasons.

Yes, for a moment, the Steam Deck appeared to be everything I’d dreamt of. But as you’ve probably guessed, the more I test the Steam Deck, the more games I find that don’t quite work. How and why a game doesn’t work can be unpredictable and unclear.

Some games are completely unplayable, like 2009’s Arkanoid-inspired ShatterFailure to load the game or stuck at title screens. Others games, most notably Persona 4 GoldThese () can be played but sometimes have audiovisual issues. Valve representatives have told me that most of the issues pertain to Proton, the company’s tool that allows Windows games to run on the Steam Deck’s Linux-based operating system. Valve has to ensure Proton and a game can work together. After a game has been checked it is added to the Steam Deck approved titles.

Valve representatives tell me that proton flaws are possible to fix and can be tailored for specific games. Individual game fixes have been and will continue to be prioritized for repair by a variety of factors — most notably, how much time a game has been played by Steam users who’ve pre-ordered the Steam Deck. You can also say that popular games are often given a FastPass.

Some games work fine, but I need to map the controls for others. Everyday shooterThis arcade shooter is a hidden treasure from 2006: The game loaded instantly, but I couldn’t get past its title screen with the default gamepad controls. The Steam overlay had the default controls, so I tried remapping them. After about five minutes of adjustments, it ran smoothly on my Deck. I have the option to upload my customized control profile onto Steam for other players to download, just as I’ve downloaded user-made profiles for other games. I expect to see lots of user-made profiles for cult games like this, the kind of titles that won’t be prioritized by Valve for Steam Deck compatibility.

You can also map your controller by yourself. Let me be very clear: I have already remapped the controls using an emulator OneTime before that. Remapping on console starts and ends with the inversion of the y-axis. I’m no expert — and yet, I found the process a minor inconvenience at worst.

The Steam Deck, with its unique design decisions and hardware is a reminder that it’s an entire gaming computer packed into a small handheld device. These fans are more quiet than most gaming computers and they rev up whenever I open a game. Two trackpads were placed prominently where joysticks are normally located to allow compatibility with mouse and keyboard games. Then there’s the battery life.

Razer Blade 15 Gaming Laptop: This is my work laptop. I can use it to run modern video games, but without having to plug into an electrical outlet. The Steam Deck can miraculously maintain three hours or more of battery while playing a game, but that requires tinkering with frame rate, resolution, and FidelityFX Super Resolution settings — the sort of stuff that a Switch owner has never had to worry about. While playing, however, I still managed to squeeze in two hours of playability from my full battery. Elden RingWith no modifications. Although not the best, it’s better than my gaming laptop.

All of which is to say, Valve has consciously chosen to keep one foot in the world of PC gaming at the expense of some creature comforts expected from a traditional gaming portable — sometimes for the worse, but just as often for the better.

The quest for the ‘do-it-all’ video game machine

Photo by Chris Plante/Polygon

I haven’t had the opportunity to test one of the Steam Deck’s most powerful features: dual-booting Windows. Valve was still waiting on a GPU driver at the time of this review. So consider the following an informational detour on what the Steam Deck ostensibly can do, but I’ve yet to actually see.

Dual-booting Windows has the advantage of allowing you to run natively on Windows and have access to many other games, storesfronts and subscription services beyond Steam. The theory is that I can access hundreds of thousands of games using Windows. This includes Epic Games Store, Game Pass and Indie shops such as itch.io. The emulator RetroArch can also be downloaded from Steam. However, you’ll need to import your own ROMs.)

You will likely see videos from YouTubers explaining the options and helping users install the Steam Deck. These features will require more effort to set up than Steam games.

Tinkerers have both easy and difficult choices. If you’re familiar with Linux, you can enter Steam Deck’s Desktop mode and install apps via Flatpak. If you accidentally break something, you can re-image and recover the Steam Deck, but if you’re at all familiar with any of these terms, I strongly encourage you to hold off for now. The easier route to games outside of Steam will be cloud gaming via Chrome, the Steam Deck’s browser of choice. Unfortunately, Steam Deck controls won’t work until Google releases a patch. It’s ready, but just waiting to go live.

“Ready but waiting to go live” is sort of the theme of the Steam Deck beyond Steam itself. It has incredible potential to offer portable gaming. The platform combines the most disparate worlds: cloud subscription services, portable consoles, emulator handhelds, and cloud subscription services for smartphones into one device. The potential for the future is still just that, potential.

This may make it worthwhile to put off a purchase for retro-game enthusiasts and tinkerers. For everyone else though, this was always the cherry on top. While nice and all, it’s not necessary.

Photo by Chris Plante/Polygon

Steam Deck excels as a super-powerful Switch

Steam Deck is a great tool for creating a virtual world.

These tests were done in handheld mode. I enjoyed a few hours of in-hand testing, however. Elden RingThe Deck is connected to my television. Unlike the Switch, it doesn’t require a special dock, but you will want a USB-C dongle with an HDMI converter and another USB-C port for power. An official Steam Deck dock will be available later this spring, though Valve hasn’t announced a price and the dock won’t provide any additional benefits to the hardware.

The Deck is comparable in capabilities to a midrange video game console — much more powerful than the Switch, though short of the frustrating-to-find PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The deck’s high power can be used to launch new games with medium-low settings or higher.Elden Ring, Dying Light 2This is a lot more impressive than playing older games or those with less demands. The Deck was capable of running 1080p resolution games when it was connected with a TV. The Deck can output 4K video, though it’s not nearly powerful enough to render most modern games at that resolution.

But as I said, I’ve most enjoyed the opportunity to play PC games at my leisure on the couch or before bed. I recently returned to an abandoned save file from last year’s brilliant Japanese role-playing game Stories of AriseI found it looked just as amazing on Steam Deck as on my 4K TV. Dragon Quest 11Ran on the top settings Red Faction: GuerrillaAttained a constant 60 frames-per-second frame speed Half-Life 2’s wonky, old-school load times flashed by thanks to my Steam Deck’s NVMe SSD (available in the 256 GB and 512 GB models, which cost $529 and $649, respectively).

Unlike the Switch, which has required me to subscribe to Nintendo’s online service to access classic games that I’ve bought many times already, my Steam Deck can access my entire PC back catalog. And Steam’s seasonal sales offer much greater and more regular discounts than any on console storefronts.

Although they might not seem like the flashiest bullet points in the back of a box, they merit that focus.

• cheaper games
• better visuals
• Faster load times
• a comprehensive, legacy gaming library

There have been other manufacturers of gaming laptops and handhelds, which offered similar advantages, but they fell to Nintendo.

The success of Nintendo controlling the portable game market for over a decade is a great example of success. Nintendo understands how to create a portable console holistically. The portable console can look a lot like Voltron. It contains complex software, multiple hardware pieces and other components that are all combined in a tiny space. For example, the Switch contains all the necessary console components, as well as the screen, power source and controller. All of these parts must be compatible while competing for priority. Nintendo has learned how to coordinate these disparate parts from every handheld it makes.

Valve’s main focus is on selling and distributing online video games, rather than making hardware that can be used by consumers. The Steam Link, Steam Controller, and the exceptionally pricey Valve Index VR Kit have their die-hard fans, but Valve’s hardware has been little more than a mosquito bite on the console business: barely noticeable, sort of annoying.

The Steam Deck has the feel of a well-crafted portable console. The Steam Deck is the closest Nintendo has come to being a genuine threat to its PlayStation Vita. It doesn’t look the part — not at first. It is surprisingly large and heavy when pulled out of the case. Initial impressions were that the joysticks felt too high for comfort, while the haptic feedback was, in a simple word, quirky. After an hour spent actually using the contraption, these quirks are gone. It’s amazing.

Photo by Chris Plante/Polygon

All the design flaws can now be seen as justified. The high joysticks, for example, aren’t inconvenient, because the ergonomics of the handgrips allow my thumbs to comfortably rest wherever they need to be. And this may surprise you, but I don’t make a lot of time to lift weights these days. Even though, I do spend a few hours lifting weights. Elden Ring caused zero muscle fatigue. What’s more, the bulky size means more room for the screen, along with buttons that feel like a legit controller, not a portable compromise. Two of the joysticks actually worked well enough that I beat them both. Elden Ring’s big bads While you are playing on Steam Deck.() Although the haptic feedback feels weaker, Valve says it will get better with future software upgrades. Considering how many of my assumptions have been proven wrong, I won’t be surprised if the company somehow fixes the rumble with a patch.

It reminds me of Xbox Elite Controllers. It’s a higher-cost but higher-quality update to what’s already available. The Switch feels just like it, only better. The joysticks far surpass those of the Switch and even the ones on Hori’s improved Switch Joy-Cons. The four buttons located on the back allow you to customize the experience by simply pressing the Steam button. The speakers sound amazing and can easily be paired with Bluetooth controllers or headsets, without the need for a dongle.

On the hardware level, Valve has delivered an exceptional gizmo, though in hindsight, this shouldn’t be a total surprise. This company is more experienced than I thought. Experiments and side projects like the Steam Controller, the Big Picture Mode user interface, and the Steam Link — while not breakout hits — have afforded Valve opportunities to learn how to adapt PC gaming to a handheld controller, simplify its user interface, and work with manufacturing partners to convert its designs into honest-to-goodness products.

The Steam Deck isn’t an overnight success; it’s the culmination of years of experimentation, incremental updates, and failures. It isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty damn great.

Steam Deck: The freedom to make the best of your time

Steam Deck is a great portable console that delivers even in its early stages.

Because the Nintendo Switch makes video gaming accessible to more people than ever, it allows them to play at their own pace and without needing to spend extra time or space. No TV required — hell, no living room required. And I still believe that for newcomers, and people unfamiliar with PC gaming, Nintendo’s device remains the best starting point for this hobby.

For those with a Steam library and are looking to try out PC gaming for the first time, the Steam Deck feels legitimate. It builds on the Switch’s pitch of playing anywhere and everywhere, because now my games and save files aren’t tied to a console. They live in the cloud, following me wherever I can access Steam — from my Steam Deck, to my gaming PC, to my work laptop, and wherever else I might want them in the future.

Steam Deck has become my preferred gaming platform. Fortunately, I won’t have to say, “This game’s great, but I’ll wait until it’s on Steam Deck.” Because if it’s available on Steam, then it’s probably already there.

The Steam Deck The device was officially released February 25, 2019. Valve supplied a 512GB NVMe SSD model for review. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. Although these partnerships do not impact editorial content, Vox Media could earn commissions for products bought via affiliate links. Find out more. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.