The time has finally arrived and I can hardly believe it—our Steam Deck unit was delivered earlier this week! What makes the Deck unique has also shown to be its greatest weakness, at least for now, but it’s still early days.
The Out of Box Experience
It’s been shown by every other reviewer, but the packaging of the Steam Deck is very simple. In fact, I do believe it’s a bit too simple. The sleeve covering the carrying case that houses the Deck is cool and the companion cube printed on the charger box is a fun touch. As far as initial setup is concerned, I found it to be a breeze. I simply picked my language, connected to wifi, grabbed the latest software update, and signed into my Steam account and—wala—all my games were there waiting for me to download. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at what a valve has done to bring the feature set of Steam to a handheld UI. The organization of settings and features makes sense, it all looks good, and the interface has been snappy without issue for me.
What I Love
The main thing I love about the Steam Deck is the promise it shows and Valve’s vision for a device that delivers the ease of use we expect from a game console while also offering the platform openness of a PC. The first thing I instantly noticed when I picked up the Deck was how surprisingly good it feels to hold. I really didn’t know what to make of the images of other people holding it, but in my hands, the console feels incredibly well balanced thanks to Valve’s engineers ensuring the weight is evenly distributed throughout the system’s admittedly large footprint. A feature that really struck me was sleep mode. It works well and it’s fast, something I expect from a dedicated game console like the 3DS or Switch, but on a hybrid device with games that’d aren’t made to support such a feature, it’s even more impressive. Being able to play games on the go I couldn’t previously such as God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Tales of Arise, Tunic, and more sealed the deal for me. Most of the games I want to play work just fine on Deck. I’ve personally found the sweet spot to be 540p 60/fps with ADM FSR enabled which strikes a balance between battery life and performance/graphical fidelity. Turning on system the 30 fps system level cap nets me 1/3 additional battery life on average but since I’m not really going anywhere at the moment, I prefer to keep it at 540p 60. Oh—and desktop mode is pretty killer too! Having one device that plays games like a console while just as easily offering a full PC experience is quite unique.
What Needs Work
Interestingly enough, that last feature is one that also breaks the experience when it doesn’t work. For example, I got stuck in the same boot loop a few others here on Reddit experienced. Fortunately, the open nature of deck meant fixing my issue was actually relatively easy. I created a recovery drive, booted into it, reinstalled SteamOS, and was up and running without losing my games or data in about 15-20 mins. Sure, it sucks I had this issue seemingly pop up out of nowhere, but I’m happy it was easy enough to fix. Another thing I’m not the biggest fan of is actually the thumb sticks. They generally feel great, but I much prefer the grippier coating of the DualSense or Xbox controller over the Deck’s. The edges of the analogue sticks feel fine with their bumpy texture, but I’d love if the top of the sticks weren’t quite so slippery. To be honest, it’s a minor gripe. Another thing I wish I could change is the chime when waking the device from sleep, but that may very well be remedied in a software update. The most annoying thing I noticed when booting up my unit and firing up Tales of Arise (or any game for that matter) was the high pitch of the fan which I’m not a fan (lol) of. Apparently I’ve read Valve thinks they can fix this via a software update and I’ll be interested to see if they can. With third parties like iFixit eventually carrying parts for this device, I may be able to install a different fan later now down the road—supposedly the one used in the dev kits was a lower pitch. Valve’s insistence on making the console an open hardware and software platform means manufacturers could potentially make quieter replacement fans if the install base and demand are there.
Week One Final Thoughts
Would I recommend the Steam Deck after my first week? Absolutely. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it’s still an incredibly exciting combination of hardware and software either way and a journey I’m more than willing to take this early on. Hell, at the rate Valve is pumping out meaningful updates every few days and by the time it’s easier for everyone to get their hands on, many or al of these quibbles I have may very well be fixed. I’ve seen a lot of improvements already since launch and I expect more to follow.
