An honest review on the Steam Deck OLED
It's been a little while! I haven't abandoned the website, just taking a break, I promise!
I have finally gotten myself a Steam Deck! Now that I've had it for two weeks, I can share my honest opinion on the device!
What I like
The freedom to carry my games with me.
I can take the Deck anywhere with me. While this is doable with a laptop, you need quite a bit for a laptop to be comfortable.
The Deck, as a handheld, just works anywhere, no exceptions.
I've been able to take it to work with me, it's come to stores, car rides, and I've always been able to jump right in.
SteamOS's suspend feature absolutely carries here, as I can just pause a game, put the thing to sleep, have next to no battery drain, come back hours later, and pick up where I left off. I've been able to get into so many games that I otherwise wouldn't have the time for!
Battery life.
The battery life on the Deck OLED is actually better than I expected.
Now, I'm the type who doesn't mind tuning a bit, and the TDP and clock controls the Deck just gives you... No having to fight with CoreCtrl, or weird radeonsi driver files. It's just set and go, right in SteamOS's quick settings menu, with per-game profiles!
In a lot of games (Mystia's Izakaya, Touhou: Hero of Ice Fairy, Minecraft, Portal 2, etc), I was able to push battery life above 6 hours with relatively little effort. That is longer than the Nintendo Switch Lite gets playing YouTube videos!
And mind you, that's not 6 hours sitting in a menu, minimum brightness, everything off.
That's 6 hours of actual gameplay, reasonable (roughly 50%) brightness, speakers going, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on...
Ergonomics.
It is very clear to me that a lot of thought went into engineering this thing.
The areas that get warm aren't anywhere near your hands, which makes the Deck a lot more comfortable than a lot of other handhelds.
Initially, I found it's large size a bit unwieldy, and I wouldn't fault anyone for thinking it's too big. However, after taking a couple minutes to experiment with how I was holding it, I found a grip that made it feel very natural.
Given the shape of the unit, I believe you're supposed to put the weight of it in the palms of your hand. When I do so, it becomes much easier to hold.
Every button, joystick, and trackpad is very easy to reach from a neutral position, without having to do a lot of extra navigation work, or bend your thumb at very weird angles. It is significantly more comfortable than the Nintendo Switch, which I appreciate.
What I don't like
Honestly, there isn't much... Though if I had to pick anything it'd be
Performance (hear me out)
The Deck comes with a custom APU codenamed "Van Gogh", with four Zen 2 (Ryzen 3000 series) cores, and 8 RDNA2 (Radeon RX 6000 series) cores.
To be perfectly honest, it's more than fine for most games I'd want in a handheld, but it can definitely be limiting for some higher-end titles.
All that said, one very important caveat to this:
More performance would be costly, in more ways than one.
Firstly, it'd make the handheld more expensive, and it's already fairly pricey for a console.
Secondly, a really big issue with having a more powerful APU (CPU with integrated graphics that do more than PowerPoint) would be that it draws a lot more power, which would cripple battery life. The only way around this would be a bigger battery, which complicates internal airflow and ergonomics.
Thirdly, it'd be harder to cool, requiring a larger (and/or louder) fan, a larger heat sink, more airflow, etc. Further contributing to worse ergonomics.
TL;DR: They have a very good reason for it being low-power.
It kind of bites, but for my use case, it's not a big deal. I personally prefer battery life in a portable anyway.
Final thoughts.
The Steam Deck OLED is a great handheld, with more than enough firepower to tackle lighter indie titles, emulation, etc. The power toys it gives to those willing to mess around are great, and can reward more savvy users with excellent battery life and/or improved performance. But even for those who don't want to mess with that, it's still excellent.
- The Deck has a decent balance between performance, ergonomics, and battery life.
- SteamOS is very pleasant to use, especially if you primarily use Steam for games anyway.
- For what it is, and what it delivers, the price is actually pretty decent (As of writing this post, the 512 GB OLED is $549, the 1 TB premium OLED is $649).
- It's not a high-end gaming PC with a RTX 5090 Ti Super & Knuckles, but if you're not expecting that, what it does is pleasantly surprising!
Should you get one?
It depends on your needs.
If you're a person who's at least two of the following: - Constantly moving
- Employed
- Someone with a huge backlog of Steam games, and little time to sit at your desk
- Perfectly fine with demanding AAA titles not running at a constant 60-90 FPS
- Someone with any amount of idle time away from home on a regular basis
The Deck can certainly be an excellent companion.
If you're none of these, or absolutely require that Starfield run at a constant 4K 120 FPS or better to even get out of bed, you should look elsewhere.
Last note
If you do get one of these, you should look at it like a console moreso a portable PC.
While it can be used as a PC (due to SteamOS being Linux-based, as well as the ability to install whatever OS you want on the Deck), thinking about it the wrong way might introduce expectations that won't be met.
The Deck is not competing with high end gaming PCs, not those from today, not those from 8 years ago. It's a low-power device, but one that does it's job very well.
If you expect it to function like your gaming PC on the go, you will be disappointed.
If you expect it to function like a Nintendo Switch or PlayStation Vita that plays PC games, you will enjoy it a lot!