This review was written on 27th July 2022 so information/opinions may be outdated.

Valve’s Steam Deck is an interesting piece of technology that showcases something familiar, yet unique all at the same time.

At first glance, it’s almost unavoidable to draw comparisons against the Nintendo Switch, but the Steam Deck carefully endorses itself to be a ‘handheld PC’ rather than a competing portable console. Even so, what does this really mean for casual gamers? and will its release disrupt the current line-up of dominating hardware developers?

The power of a tower, in the palm(s) of my hand(s):

Although we’re not even remotely close to being technical experts, there are a few features that made the Steam Deck stand out to us. For starters, it runs with an AMD APU, which houses both a Zen2 based CPU and an RDNA2 based GPU. While this might not sound meaningful to the casual gamer, these belong in the same line of processors currently powering the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S (but weaker of course).   

Aside from that, it also features 16GB of LPDDR5 Memory, a 7-inch touchscreen LCD with 60hz refresh rate, and a selection of storage capacity ranging from 64 to 512GB. It also runs off a new and improved version of SteamOS, which has been redesigned to perfectly fit the system’s handheld persona.

Gaming Performance:

The Steam Deck performs just as it is officially described, a ‘handheld gaming PC’. Depending on what exactly it is you’re looking for, there are several advantages and caveats that we have encountered that can ultimately affect your decision to purchase one.

Having your entire Steam library on the go is certainly one positive you can’t overlook. Access to triple-A titles like Elden Ring, God of War, and The Witcher 3 is quite frankly, a surprising and delightful experience.

Despite the screen running at a much lower resolution than your standard monitor, the clarity for each game you play is hardly compromised. It also gives you the opportunity to modify your graphics settings like any other PC, and with some of the games we have tested, can even run up to 60 fps with a few tweaks to quality and effects.

We ended up spending half our time playing Elden Ring on the device. While it did run at a much lower frame rate and quality than our RTX 2070-powered PC, the experience was still comfortable and enjoyable.

Unfortunately, being able to access your Steam library doesn’t necessarily mean you get to play everything you have on it. At present, Valve has implemented a category of games considered to be ‘Deck Verified’. These are titles confirmed to be fully compatible with the Steam Deck and can run well with little to no issues. Aside from that, other notable titles have been marked down as either playable (with some manual tweaking), unsupported, or unknown.

Many major multiplayer titles like Halo Infinite and Destiny 2 are currently unsupported on the Steam Deck, and these are mostly due to their respective anti-cheat systems and compatibility with SteamOS. Interestingly, Valve gives you the option to install these games onto the system but launching them may run you the risk of being banned.

Fortunately, as support for the Steam Deck continues to grow, so does its verified library. We also tried some games marked as ‘unknown’ and were quite impressed with how well they performed. Personally, it was quite pleasing to revisit older titles like Fallout: New Vegas and Dishonoured in handheld form.

The Steam Deck’s nature as a gaming PC also extends to its ability to emulate titles from older consoles. While we haven’t managed to try this out ourselves, other users have made substantial reports based on their experimentations, many of which have been very positive with their experience.

But there’s a catch…

Excellent performance of course comes at some hefty costs. The Steam Deck has an advertised battery life of somewhere between 2 to 8 hours, which can heavily fluctuate depending on your usage.

Playing Elden Ring on the system with the best settings for portability (30fps cap, lower settings, and brightness) left us with 2 hours’ worth of gameplay before needing to recharge. Meanwhile playing simpler and easy-to-run titles such as Valkyria Chronicles placed us at the higher end of the spectrum despite maxing out all possible settings. These issues can of course be mitigated using a power bank, just make sure you don’t forget it during those long-haul flights.

The biggest challenge to the Steam Deck’s success is its availability. This could be chalked up under two probable reasons; First – the ongoing chip shortage, and second – its exclusive distribution under Valve. While consoles such as the Switch and PS5 continue to endure under the same conditions, stock can occasionally appear from different outlets which gives consumers a range of opportunities. 

On the other hand, you can only purchase a Steam Deck by pre-ordering it through Steam. At the moment, the wait time is long and unpredictable, with some pre-orders being pushed back to later in the year. We managed to reserve ours within the first three minutes of the pre-order window but did not get a hold of the system until a month after its official release date.

Overall, the Steam Deck is a worthwhile system that succeeds in what it tries to do, but it’s certainly not for everyone. If you’re looking for a system that’s unique, fun, and relatively affordable to play your games on, then by all means pre-order one. However, if you are a more serious type who spends most of their time on multiplayer and e-sports focused titles, or even looking for something more powerful, then perhaps a laptop or desktop is better for you. It’s hard to see Valve’s device failing to gather a dedicated audience, but it is also equally hard to see it joining the major line-up of hardware in the near future.