I’ve been considering purchasing a steam deck. My pc is in my office, which limits interaction with the rest of the family if I want to play anything. I’ve tried playing mobile games, but just can’t get use to the controls. Think it’s worth getting one?
I love my Steam Deck. I do a lot of gaming on my regular PC. But I appreciate my Deck when I’m on the go. It’s a great portable gaming device and all the games I’m interested in have worked fine.
What might be beneficial to know in your face, since you have your family and want to be close is the “suspend” feature. In the middle of a PC game, you can simple click the power button to Suspend the game and when you’re done, just turn it back on and you’ll be right where you left it.
This, definitely this! The suspend feature is a lifesaver and really makes it so much more likely for me to stick with and finish a game that I truly enjoy.
Steam lets you streamplay games from your computer to another computer.
Your phone is a computer.
You don't like the built in controls for a phone.
You can pair xbox and ps5 controllers to androids phones with little to no effort. Not sure about other phone OS's, and quite frankly, not my bag baby.
So now you have a controller hooked up to your phone, and it's channeling games from your computer over wifi.
Never had a cause to try it personally, but I might just do that and come back to confirm it works.
Might save you a couple bucks for your kids college fund.
Edit: I hooked it up and it worked on my android phone. I had to download Valve's "Steam Link" app, the regular Steam app didn't want to do it. Hooking up a PS5 controller was pretty straightforward, just holding the ps button and the screenshot button until it flashes and scanning for a bluetooth device. I used wired headphones for the sound, not sure if wireless headphones would have issues with a phone pairing to multiple bluetooth devices at the same time, I know that's sometimes a problem for phones.
About the controller I can say I bought a ps4 controller a couple weeks ago. It works out of the box with my iPhone and with steam running on Linux. I had read it was compatible but it was so painless that it took me by surprise.
And proton is also fantastic. Most windows games work as well as natively, so you should be able to play most of them on the deck
Definitely something to try before buying a deck, however in my experience the in-home streaming is a pretty poor gaming experience and kills any enjoyment I would have had otherwise. The internet in my house is pretty good. My house isn't huge and I've a got a good quality router, with an additional WAP (not wet-ass pussy, the other WAP) on the floor above the router. most of my stuff is on Ethernet so there's not a lot of traffic. Even with all that, the connection was incredibly laggy and artifacty at best and, at worst, disconnected constantly. This was a couple years ago so maybe they've streamlined it, but hopefully your experience is much better than mine.
You're posting on a steamdeck group and you expect any different? Steamdeck can do so much. You can work through your shelf of shame (we all have that right?), emulate older games. It's a little bulky imo for long sessions compared to the switch lite but it's functionality overweighs the ergonomics issues. I just treat it as a built in hey-you're-playing-too-long mechanism
I bought it last year, and I could not have been happier. It is awesome. Although I also have a gaming laptop, I reach for Steam Deck more often - it’s because of it being a hand held.
The moment that there will be a next version of Steam Deck, I am ordering it.
It's actually so great. It isn't the most powerful system but you can play most of the top games from the past decade at 60 fps and the more recent unoptimized games could potentially get a patch via proton to make them enjoyable before official updates (elden ring was an example of this).
The basic user can enjoy most of games that don't suck on steam without any effort or issues. Couch and bed gaming friendly, fairly easy to pack with included carry case, decent battery life, and will work as a desktop in a pinch with a usbc dock/hub.
With willingness to use the Linux desktop mode you can do a bunch of extra stuff:
protonup via built in app store (discover) to get proton-ge for largely increased game compatibility and performance, ymmv by game. It also has steam tinker launcher which enables much more tweaking to the benefit of modding and cheat/trainers among other things. (As a working adult I totally support cheats in single player games since ain't nobody got time for grinding)
cryotools for more performance improvements
heroic, lutris, bottles, probably others. stores other than steam, games not from stores, programs that aren't even games, etc.
emudeck for basically every emulator mostly preconfigured. BYOB, that means bring your own baby bios. Yuzu pineapple etc will require further intervention.
steam deck refresh rate unlock for what it says. under and overclock. mine flickers at 30fps/30hz but my brother's doesn't. 70fps/70hz works for me too on games the system has enough power for.
steamos btrfs for more game storage via compression. I recommend only on the microsd. The odd game that has mods that mysteriously bug out usually works by making the correctly located and named folder for it on the ext4 system drive and toggling case folding before installing normally (can only toggle empty folders). I actually just delete and redownload because I have a steam cache server. btrfs doesn't have case folding.
If you aren't scared of opening it up, or drive reimaging, and can get an authentic and reasonably priced 2230 nvme, I recommend getting the base model and putting in the larger nvme. Just slide the wrapper off the old one and put it on the new one. Also get the gulikit hall effect sticks off AliExpress. It's basically necessary for jank ass minigame inputs like FF7R darts... They just released the new version that supports both stick types. My brother has the 512 and the screen difference is negligible, and nonexistent if you put a tempered glass screen protector which I can see no reason not to do.
tl;dr: great as is, so much extra great stuff if you are a Linux nut or willing to follow guides.
The Deck has become my main pc since months now. When I want to play, it’s just perfect as it has been designed for that (and yes, I do agree with the many comments about playing on the couch or bed).
But when I need to do something non-gaming related I boot from a dedicated SD card with WinasapOS where I have a full and unlocked linux OS on which I can install and run everything I need. I even occasionally run a Windows 10 VM from there when I needed to flash some peripheral’s firmware.
The Steam Deck is a quite decently powerful machine for its price, so why don’t use all its potential?
Absolutely. That's the exact reason I got mine. After a couple of days, my wife started wanting to play some. Now, she has her own deck, and we play LAN coop and LAN PvP games as well as remote play together. It's awesome!
I like it but I have only been playing cyberpunk and harry potter. The hardware is pretty good for the price. I got the top one for more drive space since I want to play around with it as a sorta laptop replacement. If I ever get my lazy but in gear on it. If your just using games I don't see the need to have more than a few on it at any particular time (at least large main ones) so I would think the base woudl be fine.
My Steam Deck experience has been very positive, it’s a great way to play games away from the desk. For me the controls are great, and game compatibility continues to surprise me.
I would say the only problem with the Deck is the size - it’s big. When I got mine it seemed a lot bigger than I realised, and that was after watching/reading a lot of reviews. Depending on your hands the size might be an issue. If you know anyone else with a Steam Deck I would recommend trying it out for size before buying.
I got used to it being huge pretty quick but it's basically the wiiu gamepad as a standalone gaming computer and without the naming/marketing confusion. I actually 3d printed a bracket to hold a small vesa mount monitor to play wiiu games. It was way too heavy though...
What you’re describing is almost exactly my main use for the Steam Deck. I do some travelling for work and that was my excuse for getting one - and it’s absolutely wonderful for that. What I wasn’t expecting was how much time I would play it on the sofa, so I could spend some time with my wife while she play Sims or watches TV.
I really like my steam deck. But if you have problems with your eyes, they get tired very soon (especially after a long day at work). My most played games are No Man’s Sky and Dead Cells. No Man’s Sky has sometimes much text, which isn’t really comfortable on the deck for me. The best advice is to consider which games you’re gonna play on the deck. I can’t recommend it for games with much text.
Easily the smartest purchase I've made in a decade. Primarily a console player, but I love modding, so this thing seemed like a slam dunk. I've had mine for almost a year and it is an absolute champion, I'm seriously thinking about abandoning my main PC even for normal PC functions and just going deeper down the Linux rabbit hole, because the Deck has been such a treat.
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