The Steam Deck is easily one of the most anticipated pieces of PC gaming tech since… well, maybe ever? The promise of carrying the entirety of your Steam library wherever you go on this bulky but well-designed and relatively powerful handheld gaming device is massively alluring, especially to those of us who continuously fatten our backlog with each passing Steam sale. And after a couple of weeks of gaming on Valve’s ambitious handheld PC I can say that a lot of the time it does live up to that hype, but right now, trying to review the Steam Deck is like hitting a moving target. For one thing, whether or not specific games work at a level you'll find acceptable, or at all, is a case-by-case basis. Additionally, I’ve found myself confronted with technical dead ends far too often for a device that starts at $400 and only goes up from there, but it’s already showing signs of improvement as Valve and various games roll out rapid-fire patches leading up to launch. In other words, the Steam Deck experience I had when I first booted it up a few weeks back is not the same as the constantly improving one I have in front of me today, and it’ll likely get significantly better soon.
That brings us to the main reason this review is still in progress: AMD hasn’t yet delivered the Windows graphics driver for the Steam Deck’s GPU, which means that while I can install Windows 11, I’ve been unable to run games or the suite of benchmarks we use to test out gaming PCs. And that’s a big issue. Just about every problem I’ve had comes down to the fact that by default, Steam Deck runs on Valve’s SteamOS – a custom version of Linux that can run a lot of Windows games using software called Proton. It’s actually really cool when it works, but a lot of popular games, including Fortnite, Halo Infinite, Destiny 2, and Lost Ark use anti-cheat systems that aren’t compatible with Proton. On paper, there’s a workaround for that: just install Windows 11 and you should be able to play anything you can on a typical PC. But so far I’ve only been able to use it with SteamOS and all of its limitations, so there are still a lot of unanswered questions to address before I can give you a final recommendation on what this hardware can do. But if you’re only interested in running SteamOS, this should give you a pretty good idea of what it’s like to use a Steam Deck.
As you've already seen from the memes, the Steam Deck is pretty massive. It’s 11.7 inches from end to end, which is more than two inches longer than a Switch, and at 1.5 pounds it’s quite a bit heavier. The size difference is enough that going back to my Switch after using the Steam Deck exclusively for a few days makes the Switch feel like a microconsole. There’s no way it’s going to fit in a pocket. Still, the Steam Deck isn’t uncomfortable to hold, and it’s not like my arms got tired from holding it for a couple of hours.
I wouldn't call it a particularly attractive piece of tech, but it has a futuristic industrial look that fits in well with the overall Steam aesthetic. There are only two colors: black, and touches of light-gray. The case is a matte black with a subtle texture to it, somewhat rougher than an Xbox controller, and it feels good to the touch. The grips on either side bulge out at the edges, making it much more comfortable to hold in my adult-sized hands than a Nintendo Switch. It's nice to feel safe holding onto something so expensive, and you probably wouldn’t want to have a young kid play with it very much anyway.
Using the Steam Deck exclusively for a few days makes the Switch feel like a microconsole.
The Steam Deck’s LCD screen runs at 1200x800 at 60Hz, and it looks really good. I have no complaints about the resolution – at this screen size there’s a diminishing return on packing in extra pixels. I have to say, though, that the OLED screen on the latest model of the Nintendo Switch has spoiled me on handheld screens, and the Steam Deck doesn't live up to the vibrance and clarity afforded by Nintendo's latest update. But it's still lovely, especially if you aren’t jumping back and forth between this and an OLED screen. Similar to the Switch, the screen is touch-enabled, so you can easily navigate through menus and even control some games with a quick tap here and a drag there.
Near the top are the face buttons and control surfaces. The D-pad is solid but just a little mushier than I like and – this is a minor complaint – I don't like that it's positioned to the left of the thumbstick because that means games that use the D-pad for quick menu options feel awkward. The healing gourd in Sekiro is a good example of this; it just feels off, but it’s nothing I couldn’t get used to.
The input buttons, which are marked with the same ABXY letters and configuration as an Xbox controller, are lovely. They feel like little pieces of flawlessly smooth hard candy, with a nice travel and just enough resistance. And while early photos had me worried that the buttons might be spaced too close together, that's not the case in practice; they're exactly where I’d expect them to be.
The thumbsticks, though? They rule.
The thumbsticks, though? They rule. They're perfectly smooth without feeling loose or sloppy, and they revert back to center with a satisfying snappiness. The surface is a matte plastic, and it’s touch-sensitive so the Steam Deck knows when you've got a thumb on one without you needing to depress anything. After some time with them, I did notice a slight drop in the smoothness of their action in certain positions, but that’s the same sort of "grittiness" all thumbsticks seem to acquire after a few hours of continuous use. Fortunately, if the problem persists or if new ones pop up, Valve has made it possible to open up the Steam Deck to replace the thumbsticks – although it's not exactly modular and does require you to disassemble your very expensive and difficult-to-find piece of tech. Still, that helps me sleep easier because the sticks are built right into the Steam Deck, so while on the Switch you could detach and replace a defective Joy-con that wouldn’t be an option here.
Directly below each thumbstick is a trackpad with a subtle haptic feature you can toggle on or off in the menus. I like the haptics – dragging my finger across the surface feels like moving a mouse across my desk. It even simulates the momentum of a trackball, meaning if you swipe quickly across the trackpad and take your finger off, the cursor glides along in the same way it would if you spun a trackball. It feels good for desktop applications and navigating in the Steam menus – and it’ll feel very familiar to anyone who’s used a Steam Controller. My one problem with the trackpads is a result of their placement: while playing games with thumbsticks I found my thumb would sometimes hit the trackpad and I'd get some unexpected input or camera angle shift. Thankfully, it is possible to turn them off in the menus on a per-game basis.
The trackpads will feel very familiar to anyone who’s used a Steam Controller.
As for using the trackpad as a mouse replacement in first-person shooters, well, good luck with that. I was able to make it work playing Half-Life 2 once I dialed in a sensitivity I could live with, but for the same reasons the Steam Controller (which attempted to completely replace the sticks with touchpads) never took off, I found myself defaulting to the controller or thinking about connecting a Bluetooth mouse. I had hoped it would bridge the gap between a mouse-and-keyboard setup and playing with a controller, but it feels like the lesser of three possible control schemes.
Shoulder buttons also feel good, although the L2 and R2 triggers are much better than the L1 and R1 bumpers. The bumpers feel alright once you actuate them, and in fact have a lovely little "click," but to get to that point feels a little softer than I would like. The triggers, on the other hand, are perfect. They're not quite DualSense-levels of good, but they travel very smoothly and have just the right amount of tension. The way they spring back almost reminds me of the triggers on the GameCube controller, but not quite.
On the back of the Steam Deck are four programmable buttons, similar to the button placement you find on the Xbox Elite and other high-end controllers. Sadly, they're probably my least-favorite inputs of the bunch. The placement is difficult for me to grasp with my larger-than-normal hands and I have to contort my fingers into an uncomfortable claw-shape to press them. On top of placement, they just feel bad: the response is soft and the clickiness is weak. Even if the placement were improved, the tactile feel is off-putting. Because of these limitations I didn't want to use them for anything in games, which is fine since they're entirely optional.
You’ll probably want a USB-C hub.
On the topic of other controllers, the Steam Deck does have Bluetooth controller support, but thus far I’ve found myself striking out. I'm sure it's something that will be fixed with a future update, but every time I paired an Xbox controller, everything would be going great until whatever game I was playing got to its first loading screen. At this point, the controller's vibration would turn on, at full blast, until I pulled the batteries. Until that’s resolved, I wouldn’t expect to treat the Steam Deck like a Switch you can dock and play like a console – though it may in the future and supports USB C-to-HDMI hubs and dongles for that purpose. Valve will be offering an official docking station (sold separately) but it won’t be available until late Spring at an as-yet-to-be-revealed price.
Speaking of dongles, if you're going to use any wired peripherals, you're probably going to need one because there’s just one USB-C port on the Steam Deck. Specifically, you’ll want a USB-C hub (and while not required, I'd recommend a powered hub so that you can charge your Steam Deck while you’re using peripherals). If you don't trust your WiFi, you'll need to add an Ethernet port to the list of your dongle's requirements. So that’s kind of a hassle and an extra expense you’ll need to factor in.
That USB-C port is located at the top of the Steam Deck, near the power button. The volume up and down buttons are on the left side, and sitting between them is the Steam Deck's primary cooling vent. It pumps out a continuous stream of heat, as the fans seem never to turn off while the Steam Deck is in use. In fact, most of the time the fans are running at their highest setting – we measured it to be about 49 decibels, which is louder than a PS5. It certainly makes sense – you can't cram all that power into such a small space and expect it won't need a fan. It's not so loud you can't hear over it, but it's impossible to ignore the high-pitched whine.
We measured it at about 49 decibels, which is louder than a PS5.
There's a performance overlay built right into the Steam Deck software, so you can monitor CPU and GPU usage, frame rate, core usage, memory and temperature. On more intensive games the GPU runs at 99-100% the entire time, while the CPU lives around 70-80% usage continuously. Temperatures for both are in the upper 70s.
The user interface is a modified version of the Steam desktop app you're used to. Navigation is fairly easy, although I was a bit lost at first until I figured out you have to push the physical Steam button to access your library. Where things get tricky is when you're in a game, because there are so many menus it’s difficult to figure out where a given setting might be located.
The Steam button on the left and the menu button on the right both bring up overlays, with the menu button having notifications, performance options, and quick settings. The Steam button brings up a more detailed list of sub-menus, including Home, Library, power options and other settings. This is on top of the in-game menus brought up with the pause and select buttons you're used to using. The confusing part, for me, came when I wanted to turn off the gyro feature in Sekiro. I couldn't remember: is that an in-game setting, or a Steam setting? I went through all the possibilities and it turns out… it's none of the above. The gyro function is turned off from the Steam Library screen after entering the launch page for the individual games.
The Steam Deck comes in three different storage configurations: 64GB, 256GB and 512GB. I was sent the 512GB version, and with no games installed there is 457.9 GB of free space available. The upper two storage tiers are NVMe SSD, while the 64GB model is flash memory. I was sent the 512GB model to test, and as you’d expect, I filled it up fast. I don't actually know – outside of indies – how 64GB is an acceptable level of storage, but thankfully there is a microSD slot on the bottom of the Steam Deck allowing you to pop in up to 2TB of additional storage. Valve also says you can upgrade the SSD inside, but it's not easy (which, for a device aimed at PC gaming enthusiasts, sounds less like a warning and more of a challenge). With the prices on NVMe drives dropping while storage sizes keep growing, it's a tempting road to travel, but even the cheapest 1TB drives are $100, adding to an already sizable investment.
Deathloop took an agonizing two minutes and 30 seconds to load.
However, even with an NVMe SSD on the highest-end Steam Deck, I was disappointed by load times on some of the games I played. For God of War, going from hitting the "Play" button on the SteamOS menu to the menu screen took almost a minute. For Deathloop, it's an agonizing two minutes and 30 seconds, compared to about a minute on desktop using a high-end NVMe SSD. In-game loading isn’t any better. Especially now that the new consoles have spoiled me with near-instant loads, that took some of the joy out of my first few days with the Steam Deck. At least when you get a little less ambitious and play older or less intensive games like Hades, Bayonetta, or Stardew Valley it’s more in the neighborhood of 10 seconds.
Another modern console feature that's missing from Steam Deck is Quick Resume. You can easily navigate to the Home screen from inside a game by selecting the option after pressing the Steam button on the Steam Deck's face. I tried to go from Sekiro to God of War and got a warning screen telling me I'd be facing some performance issues in doing so. Rather than suspend Sekiro automatically, I'd instead have to quit it entirely in order to play God of War at acceptable performance levels. Going back to it is like starting any game from scratch: loading, menus, etc. I've again been spoiled by modern consoles. If you're in the middle of a game and you suspend it with the power button it starts back up again without any problems, but going from one game to another is more like the Switch than the Xbox.
Before we go further, I want to mention again that performance has been a moving target due to the slew of software updates Valve rolled out in the days between when the Steam Deck arrived in my hands and today. For that reason, we’re holding off putting it through our full benchmark suite, which typically consists of Total War: Three Kingdoms, Borderlands 3, Metro Exodus, and Hitman 3, as well as various synthetic benchmarks that we won’t be able to test until the Windows drivers are in place. In the meantime, here’s my anecdotal experience playing – or attempting to play – a variety of games both on and off Steam.
One advantage consoles have always had over PCs is that developers know exactly what hardware and software you’re running on and can tune their games precisely to run well on that, whereas PCs are all over the place. But since every Steam Deck has the same specs except for storage space, Valve has been able to create a new badge for games that work “great on Steam Deck.” That's any game that's been tested by Valve and proven to run well on your device, and while it’s only a few hundred right now, the list is growing every day. There are icons on each game's thumbnail telling you, at a glance, its Steam Deck status. Some games have an exclamation mark on a yellow background, letting you know they'll run but there are known issues (usually small ones). For example, Stellaris runs well but the fonts are tiny on the Steam Deck’s seven-inch screen and it shows keyboard prompts rather than controller buttons. Then there are many, many games that haven't been tested at all. Those are a crapshoot.
As I played a variety of games, both tested and untested, I was surprised – both positively and negatively – by the results. Playing God of War natively on a handheld device is pretty damn amazing. It looks so much better than it has any right to look, hitting a very acceptable 50fps without any major drops or stutters. In fact, I think I've played more God of War on the Steam Deck than I did on the PS4 (I got distracted by Red Dead 2 at the time, okay?). Hitman 3's built-in benchmark tool reported an impressive 48.2 frames per second while running on ultra quality settings. Borderlands 3 (which is on the yellow list due to font issues) didn't perform as well on ultra settings, but when I turned it down to medium it ran consistently in the 42-48fps range, with occasional dips to the low 30s. Deathloop also runs well, with the exception that it crashed so spectacularly during my first time playing it I had to do a hard reboot of the Steam Deck.
It didn't have any issues after that, nor did any of the other "Great on Steam Deck" games I played, including Dark Souls III and Sekiro. I did notice a massive framerate drop on Dark Souls III while I was in the process of downloading another game, but it cleared up as soon as the download was complete. These kinds of hiccups are a reminder that this is a PC playing PC games.
I was also impressed by DOOM (2016), which is currently not certified to run on Steam Deck at all. It's still the fast, ridiculously fun game I love, but in the palms of my hands, running surprisingly well and looking a lot better than it does on Switch. It did hard crash on me once, though.
Now, the bad news: Grand Theft Auto 5 didn't run at all. I'm not sure if it's due to the fact it requires you to install the Rockstar launcher, but every time I tried to boot it up it would load for a minute and then kick me unceremoniously back to the Steam menu. GTA5 is something I really want to play on a handheld, and I'm super curious about its initial load time (which is even a pain on consoles) but for now, it's just not happening.
Skyrim Special Edition, too, was a big disappointment. At its lowest settings it ran at a solid 60fps… until I swung my weapon, at which point all sound would cut out and the framerate would drop to the point that it would freeze altogether. A simple battle with some wolves in a forest was completely unplayable because the problems from swinging weapons were amplified by the inclusion of enemies. When I think of must-play PC games, Skyrim and GTA5 are at the forefront, so for neither of them to work is a huge bummer. Add that to the list of major games that are known not to work, including the aforementioned Halo Infinite, Destiny 2, Lost Ark, and Fortnite, and it gets a little depressing.
It's the massive variation in games that work and games that won't that tears me in two on the Steam Deck. When I was trying to play non-Steam games requiring an installer (like Blizzard’s Battle.net client or the Epic Games Store) I spent a good while messing around inside the SteamOS desktop command line, Googling for answers and getting blocked by inexplicable user permission errors, I found myself massively frustrated and disappointed. So far I've yet to successfully get anything outside of Steam to run. And yet… when I play games that do work, it's sublime. It’s like trying to achieve a comfortable body temperature by submerging one hand in a bucket of ice and the other in a pot of boiling water.
Beyond that limitation, the biggest, most deflating issue I’ve had has been battery life. It’s all over the place and probably the biggest reality check when it comes to realizing the dream of truly untethered PC gaming. For example, because of the performance levels the Steam Deck is capable of hitting, if you download God of War and just start playing on its default graphical settings (which include capping the frame rate at 60 and turning off V-sync) it will absolutely gobble through your battery life: I got around 90 minutes of untethered play before it shut down on me. That is significantly less than the two to eight hours Valve claims. Sure, we’ll be able to tune games to pace themselves a little better than that, such as by limiting them to 30 frames per second rather than 60, but it was surprising how fast it went.
There's also no warning as to when the battery is about to die – it just dies. Since I was watching the battery life meter I was prepared, but if I were away from home and lost my progress without warning I'd be pretty bummed.
One thing that’s sorely missing right now, beyond simply testing each game to verify that it works on Steam Deck, is per-game optimized settings to ensure they look good and run well for a reasonable amount of time. I’m sure that will come with time, but it’s such a massive task and Steam Decks are going to be so hard to come by for a while that you’re going to want to be careful when you fire up a new game away from an outlet.
At the time of writing, it's entirely possible to install Windows 11 on the Steam Deck. In fact, I was kind of in love with how snappy it is compared to my aging desktop. But without the graphics driver for the custom AMD APU I couldn't play any games or run any benchmarks, so it’s not all that useful. Valve and AMD say the driver should be available around launch.
But in either Windows or SteamOS here’s something your console can’t do: you can jump out of the Steam environment and – presto – you’re on a full-fledged PC that can do anything you’d expect a PC to do. If you're like me and you like playing around with Linux, leaving the Steam environment and using SteamOS in desktop mode is instantly recognizable. The most recent version of SteamOS is based on Arch Linux, not Debian, so keep that in mind when you're trying to figure out why 'apt-get' doesn't work. It's running the Plasma desktop environment, which I'd never personally used, but it's very clean and quite responsive on Steam Deck.
As of right now, on-screen keyboard functionality is a little spotty, so if you do want to play around inside the nerdiest of all operating systems you'll need to sync a Bluetooth keyboard or connect one to a USB-C hub. (This will almost certainly be fixed in a later update, as the on-screen keyboard didn't work at all when I first started using the Steam Deck.) The trackpads work as you would expect them to in SteamOS' desktop, so you can go ahead and add your favorite browser and visit all your favorite websites. Better still, you can use it like you'd use any other device running a Linux distro, meaning there’s a whole ecosystem of desktop applications and games out there that will run natively on it. You could write your novel on the Steam Deck or use it to hack the planet. It's your call.
It’s interesting to contemplate that, with just a few accessories, this could be someone’s only PC and that wouldn’t be a terrible setup. When you factor in all of that multi-use capability, the extra cost above a Switch – which to this day still has no web browser or Netflix app – doesn’t seem unreasonable. It's missing a camera, so you can't use it for video conferencing, but aside from that it's a decent little PC that easily handles light, everyday tasks but also plays games at a level you won't find in other hardware around this price.
The Steam Deck is a well-built piece of hardware that feels good to hold and play on. When you’re playing a Valve-approved game it's actually incredible to get this kind of performance out of a device so small and compact, even if the battery can be gone in a flash if you’re not careful. But on the eve of its official launch, it isn't the smooth user experience I had hoped it would be. Aside from the frustrations I've come to expect and accept from PC gaming, the biggest problem I've encountered has been spotty compatibility with SteamOS. The dream of being able to play everything in your library on the go is a long way from being realized, and not being able to use Windows just yet makes a lot of those problems temporarily insurmountable – plus it means I haven’t been able to run our usual PC benchmarking tools. So it’s impossible to land on a judgment right now because I literally don’t know what the Steam Deck will be able to do by the time the first retail unit arrives at a paying customer’s home. But that won’t last for long, so check back soon for the final review and score.
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That brings us to the main reason this review is still in progress: AMD hasn’t yet delivered the Windows graphics driver for the Steam Deck’s GPU, which means that while I can install Windows 11, I’ve been unable to run games or the suite of benchmarks we use to test out gaming PCs. And that’s a big issue. Just about every problem I’ve had comes down to the fact that by default, Steam Deck runs on Valve’s SteamOS – a custom version of Linux that can run a lot of Windows games using software called Proton. It’s actually really cool when it works, but a lot of popular games, including Fortnite, Halo Infinite, Destiny 2, and Lost Ark use anti-cheat systems that aren’t compatible with Proton. On paper, there’s a workaround for that: just install Windows 11 and you should be able to play anything you can on a typical PC. But so far I’ve only been able to use it with SteamOS and all of its limitations, so there are still a lot of unanswered questions to address before I can give you a final recommendation on what this hardware can do. But if you’re only interested in running SteamOS, this should give you a pretty good idea of what it’s like to use a Steam Deck.
Design and Features
As you've already seen from the memes, the Steam Deck is pretty massive. It’s 11.7 inches from end to end, which is more than two inches longer than a Switch, and at 1.5 pounds it’s quite a bit heavier. The size difference is enough that going back to my Switch after using the Steam Deck exclusively for a few days makes the Switch feel like a microconsole. There’s no way it’s going to fit in a pocket. Still, the Steam Deck isn’t uncomfortable to hold, and it’s not like my arms got tired from holding it for a couple of hours.
I wouldn't call it a particularly attractive piece of tech, but it has a futuristic industrial look that fits in well with the overall Steam aesthetic. There are only two colors: black, and touches of light-gray. The case is a matte black with a subtle texture to it, somewhat rougher than an Xbox controller, and it feels good to the touch. The grips on either side bulge out at the edges, making it much more comfortable to hold in my adult-sized hands than a Nintendo Switch. It's nice to feel safe holding onto something so expensive, and you probably wouldn’t want to have a young kid play with it very much anyway.
Using the Steam Deck exclusively for a few days makes the Switch feel like a microconsole.
The Steam Deck’s LCD screen runs at 1200x800 at 60Hz, and it looks really good. I have no complaints about the resolution – at this screen size there’s a diminishing return on packing in extra pixels. I have to say, though, that the OLED screen on the latest model of the Nintendo Switch has spoiled me on handheld screens, and the Steam Deck doesn't live up to the vibrance and clarity afforded by Nintendo's latest update. But it's still lovely, especially if you aren’t jumping back and forth between this and an OLED screen. Similar to the Switch, the screen is touch-enabled, so you can easily navigate through menus and even control some games with a quick tap here and a drag there.
Near the top are the face buttons and control surfaces. The D-pad is solid but just a little mushier than I like and – this is a minor complaint – I don't like that it's positioned to the left of the thumbstick because that means games that use the D-pad for quick menu options feel awkward. The healing gourd in Sekiro is a good example of this; it just feels off, but it’s nothing I couldn’t get used to.
The input buttons, which are marked with the same ABXY letters and configuration as an Xbox controller, are lovely. They feel like little pieces of flawlessly smooth hard candy, with a nice travel and just enough resistance. And while early photos had me worried that the buttons might be spaced too close together, that's not the case in practice; they're exactly where I’d expect them to be.
The thumbsticks, though? They rule.
The thumbsticks, though? They rule. They're perfectly smooth without feeling loose or sloppy, and they revert back to center with a satisfying snappiness. The surface is a matte plastic, and it’s touch-sensitive so the Steam Deck knows when you've got a thumb on one without you needing to depress anything. After some time with them, I did notice a slight drop in the smoothness of their action in certain positions, but that’s the same sort of "grittiness" all thumbsticks seem to acquire after a few hours of continuous use. Fortunately, if the problem persists or if new ones pop up, Valve has made it possible to open up the Steam Deck to replace the thumbsticks – although it's not exactly modular and does require you to disassemble your very expensive and difficult-to-find piece of tech. Still, that helps me sleep easier because the sticks are built right into the Steam Deck, so while on the Switch you could detach and replace a defective Joy-con that wouldn’t be an option here.
Directly below each thumbstick is a trackpad with a subtle haptic feature you can toggle on or off in the menus. I like the haptics – dragging my finger across the surface feels like moving a mouse across my desk. It even simulates the momentum of a trackball, meaning if you swipe quickly across the trackpad and take your finger off, the cursor glides along in the same way it would if you spun a trackball. It feels good for desktop applications and navigating in the Steam menus – and it’ll feel very familiar to anyone who’s used a Steam Controller. My one problem with the trackpads is a result of their placement: while playing games with thumbsticks I found my thumb would sometimes hit the trackpad and I'd get some unexpected input or camera angle shift. Thankfully, it is possible to turn them off in the menus on a per-game basis.
The trackpads will feel very familiar to anyone who’s used a Steam Controller.
As for using the trackpad as a mouse replacement in first-person shooters, well, good luck with that. I was able to make it work playing Half-Life 2 once I dialed in a sensitivity I could live with, but for the same reasons the Steam Controller (which attempted to completely replace the sticks with touchpads) never took off, I found myself defaulting to the controller or thinking about connecting a Bluetooth mouse. I had hoped it would bridge the gap between a mouse-and-keyboard setup and playing with a controller, but it feels like the lesser of three possible control schemes.
Shoulder buttons also feel good, although the L2 and R2 triggers are much better than the L1 and R1 bumpers. The bumpers feel alright once you actuate them, and in fact have a lovely little "click," but to get to that point feels a little softer than I would like. The triggers, on the other hand, are perfect. They're not quite DualSense-levels of good, but they travel very smoothly and have just the right amount of tension. The way they spring back almost reminds me of the triggers on the GameCube controller, but not quite.
On the back of the Steam Deck are four programmable buttons, similar to the button placement you find on the Xbox Elite and other high-end controllers. Sadly, they're probably my least-favorite inputs of the bunch. The placement is difficult for me to grasp with my larger-than-normal hands and I have to contort my fingers into an uncomfortable claw-shape to press them. On top of placement, they just feel bad: the response is soft and the clickiness is weak. Even if the placement were improved, the tactile feel is off-putting. Because of these limitations I didn't want to use them for anything in games, which is fine since they're entirely optional.
You’ll probably want a USB-C hub.
On the topic of other controllers, the Steam Deck does have Bluetooth controller support, but thus far I’ve found myself striking out. I'm sure it's something that will be fixed with a future update, but every time I paired an Xbox controller, everything would be going great until whatever game I was playing got to its first loading screen. At this point, the controller's vibration would turn on, at full blast, until I pulled the batteries. Until that’s resolved, I wouldn’t expect to treat the Steam Deck like a Switch you can dock and play like a console – though it may in the future and supports USB C-to-HDMI hubs and dongles for that purpose. Valve will be offering an official docking station (sold separately) but it won’t be available until late Spring at an as-yet-to-be-revealed price.
Speaking of dongles, if you're going to use any wired peripherals, you're probably going to need one because there’s just one USB-C port on the Steam Deck. Specifically, you’ll want a USB-C hub (and while not required, I'd recommend a powered hub so that you can charge your Steam Deck while you’re using peripherals). If you don't trust your WiFi, you'll need to add an Ethernet port to the list of your dongle's requirements. So that’s kind of a hassle and an extra expense you’ll need to factor in.
That USB-C port is located at the top of the Steam Deck, near the power button. The volume up and down buttons are on the left side, and sitting between them is the Steam Deck's primary cooling vent. It pumps out a continuous stream of heat, as the fans seem never to turn off while the Steam Deck is in use. In fact, most of the time the fans are running at their highest setting – we measured it to be about 49 decibels, which is louder than a PS5. It certainly makes sense – you can't cram all that power into such a small space and expect it won't need a fan. It's not so loud you can't hear over it, but it's impossible to ignore the high-pitched whine.
We measured it at about 49 decibels, which is louder than a PS5.
There's a performance overlay built right into the Steam Deck software, so you can monitor CPU and GPU usage, frame rate, core usage, memory and temperature. On more intensive games the GPU runs at 99-100% the entire time, while the CPU lives around 70-80% usage continuously. Temperatures for both are in the upper 70s.
The Steam Deck User Interface
The user interface is a modified version of the Steam desktop app you're used to. Navigation is fairly easy, although I was a bit lost at first until I figured out you have to push the physical Steam button to access your library. Where things get tricky is when you're in a game, because there are so many menus it’s difficult to figure out where a given setting might be located.
The Steam button on the left and the menu button on the right both bring up overlays, with the menu button having notifications, performance options, and quick settings. The Steam button brings up a more detailed list of sub-menus, including Home, Library, power options and other settings. This is on top of the in-game menus brought up with the pause and select buttons you're used to using. The confusing part, for me, came when I wanted to turn off the gyro feature in Sekiro. I couldn't remember: is that an in-game setting, or a Steam setting? I went through all the possibilities and it turns out… it's none of the above. The gyro function is turned off from the Steam Library screen after entering the launch page for the individual games.
The Steam Deck comes in three different storage configurations: 64GB, 256GB and 512GB. I was sent the 512GB version, and with no games installed there is 457.9 GB of free space available. The upper two storage tiers are NVMe SSD, while the 64GB model is flash memory. I was sent the 512GB model to test, and as you’d expect, I filled it up fast. I don't actually know – outside of indies – how 64GB is an acceptable level of storage, but thankfully there is a microSD slot on the bottom of the Steam Deck allowing you to pop in up to 2TB of additional storage. Valve also says you can upgrade the SSD inside, but it's not easy (which, for a device aimed at PC gaming enthusiasts, sounds less like a warning and more of a challenge). With the prices on NVMe drives dropping while storage sizes keep growing, it's a tempting road to travel, but even the cheapest 1TB drives are $100, adding to an already sizable investment.
Deathloop took an agonizing two minutes and 30 seconds to load.
However, even with an NVMe SSD on the highest-end Steam Deck, I was disappointed by load times on some of the games I played. For God of War, going from hitting the "Play" button on the SteamOS menu to the menu screen took almost a minute. For Deathloop, it's an agonizing two minutes and 30 seconds, compared to about a minute on desktop using a high-end NVMe SSD. In-game loading isn’t any better. Especially now that the new consoles have spoiled me with near-instant loads, that took some of the joy out of my first few days with the Steam Deck. At least when you get a little less ambitious and play older or less intensive games like Hades, Bayonetta, or Stardew Valley it’s more in the neighborhood of 10 seconds.
Another modern console feature that's missing from Steam Deck is Quick Resume. You can easily navigate to the Home screen from inside a game by selecting the option after pressing the Steam button on the Steam Deck's face. I tried to go from Sekiro to God of War and got a warning screen telling me I'd be facing some performance issues in doing so. Rather than suspend Sekiro automatically, I'd instead have to quit it entirely in order to play God of War at acceptable performance levels. Going back to it is like starting any game from scratch: loading, menus, etc. I've again been spoiled by modern consoles. If you're in the middle of a game and you suspend it with the power button it starts back up again without any problems, but going from one game to another is more like the Switch than the Xbox.
Steam Deck Performance and Gaming
Before we go further, I want to mention again that performance has been a moving target due to the slew of software updates Valve rolled out in the days between when the Steam Deck arrived in my hands and today. For that reason, we’re holding off putting it through our full benchmark suite, which typically consists of Total War: Three Kingdoms, Borderlands 3, Metro Exodus, and Hitman 3, as well as various synthetic benchmarks that we won’t be able to test until the Windows drivers are in place. In the meantime, here’s my anecdotal experience playing – or attempting to play – a variety of games both on and off Steam.
One advantage consoles have always had over PCs is that developers know exactly what hardware and software you’re running on and can tune their games precisely to run well on that, whereas PCs are all over the place. But since every Steam Deck has the same specs except for storage space, Valve has been able to create a new badge for games that work “great on Steam Deck.” That's any game that's been tested by Valve and proven to run well on your device, and while it’s only a few hundred right now, the list is growing every day. There are icons on each game's thumbnail telling you, at a glance, its Steam Deck status. Some games have an exclamation mark on a yellow background, letting you know they'll run but there are known issues (usually small ones). For example, Stellaris runs well but the fonts are tiny on the Steam Deck’s seven-inch screen and it shows keyboard prompts rather than controller buttons. Then there are many, many games that haven't been tested at all. Those are a crapshoot.
As I played a variety of games, both tested and untested, I was surprised – both positively and negatively – by the results. Playing God of War natively on a handheld device is pretty damn amazing. It looks so much better than it has any right to look, hitting a very acceptable 50fps without any major drops or stutters. In fact, I think I've played more God of War on the Steam Deck than I did on the PS4 (I got distracted by Red Dead 2 at the time, okay?). Hitman 3's built-in benchmark tool reported an impressive 48.2 frames per second while running on ultra quality settings. Borderlands 3 (which is on the yellow list due to font issues) didn't perform as well on ultra settings, but when I turned it down to medium it ran consistently in the 42-48fps range, with occasional dips to the low 30s. Deathloop also runs well, with the exception that it crashed so spectacularly during my first time playing it I had to do a hard reboot of the Steam Deck.
It didn't have any issues after that, nor did any of the other "Great on Steam Deck" games I played, including Dark Souls III and Sekiro. I did notice a massive framerate drop on Dark Souls III while I was in the process of downloading another game, but it cleared up as soon as the download was complete. These kinds of hiccups are a reminder that this is a PC playing PC games.
I was also impressed by DOOM (2016), which is currently not certified to run on Steam Deck at all. It's still the fast, ridiculously fun game I love, but in the palms of my hands, running surprisingly well and looking a lot better than it does on Switch. It did hard crash on me once, though.
Now, the bad news: Grand Theft Auto 5 didn't run at all. I'm not sure if it's due to the fact it requires you to install the Rockstar launcher, but every time I tried to boot it up it would load for a minute and then kick me unceremoniously back to the Steam menu. GTA5 is something I really want to play on a handheld, and I'm super curious about its initial load time (which is even a pain on consoles) but for now, it's just not happening.
Skyrim Special Edition, too, was a big disappointment. At its lowest settings it ran at a solid 60fps… until I swung my weapon, at which point all sound would cut out and the framerate would drop to the point that it would freeze altogether. A simple battle with some wolves in a forest was completely unplayable because the problems from swinging weapons were amplified by the inclusion of enemies. When I think of must-play PC games, Skyrim and GTA5 are at the forefront, so for neither of them to work is a huge bummer. Add that to the list of major games that are known not to work, including the aforementioned Halo Infinite, Destiny 2, Lost Ark, and Fortnite, and it gets a little depressing.
It's the massive variation in games that work and games that won't that tears me in two on the Steam Deck. When I was trying to play non-Steam games requiring an installer (like Blizzard’s Battle.net client or the Epic Games Store) I spent a good while messing around inside the SteamOS desktop command line, Googling for answers and getting blocked by inexplicable user permission errors, I found myself massively frustrated and disappointed. So far I've yet to successfully get anything outside of Steam to run. And yet… when I play games that do work, it's sublime. It’s like trying to achieve a comfortable body temperature by submerging one hand in a bucket of ice and the other in a pot of boiling water.
Steam Deck Battery Life
Beyond that limitation, the biggest, most deflating issue I’ve had has been battery life. It’s all over the place and probably the biggest reality check when it comes to realizing the dream of truly untethered PC gaming. For example, because of the performance levels the Steam Deck is capable of hitting, if you download God of War and just start playing on its default graphical settings (which include capping the frame rate at 60 and turning off V-sync) it will absolutely gobble through your battery life: I got around 90 minutes of untethered play before it shut down on me. That is significantly less than the two to eight hours Valve claims. Sure, we’ll be able to tune games to pace themselves a little better than that, such as by limiting them to 30 frames per second rather than 60, but it was surprising how fast it went.
There's also no warning as to when the battery is about to die – it just dies. Since I was watching the battery life meter I was prepared, but if I were away from home and lost my progress without warning I'd be pretty bummed.
One thing that’s sorely missing right now, beyond simply testing each game to verify that it works on Steam Deck, is per-game optimized settings to ensure they look good and run well for a reasonable amount of time. I’m sure that will come with time, but it’s such a massive task and Steam Decks are going to be so hard to come by for a while that you’re going to want to be careful when you fire up a new game away from an outlet.
Remember: It's a PC, Too!
At the time of writing, it's entirely possible to install Windows 11 on the Steam Deck. In fact, I was kind of in love with how snappy it is compared to my aging desktop. But without the graphics driver for the custom AMD APU I couldn't play any games or run any benchmarks, so it’s not all that useful. Valve and AMD say the driver should be available around launch.
But in either Windows or SteamOS here’s something your console can’t do: you can jump out of the Steam environment and – presto – you’re on a full-fledged PC that can do anything you’d expect a PC to do. If you're like me and you like playing around with Linux, leaving the Steam environment and using SteamOS in desktop mode is instantly recognizable. The most recent version of SteamOS is based on Arch Linux, not Debian, so keep that in mind when you're trying to figure out why 'apt-get' doesn't work. It's running the Plasma desktop environment, which I'd never personally used, but it's very clean and quite responsive on Steam Deck.
As of right now, on-screen keyboard functionality is a little spotty, so if you do want to play around inside the nerdiest of all operating systems you'll need to sync a Bluetooth keyboard or connect one to a USB-C hub. (This will almost certainly be fixed in a later update, as the on-screen keyboard didn't work at all when I first started using the Steam Deck.) The trackpads work as you would expect them to in SteamOS' desktop, so you can go ahead and add your favorite browser and visit all your favorite websites. Better still, you can use it like you'd use any other device running a Linux distro, meaning there’s a whole ecosystem of desktop applications and games out there that will run natively on it. You could write your novel on the Steam Deck or use it to hack the planet. It's your call.
It’s interesting to contemplate that, with just a few accessories, this could be someone’s only PC and that wouldn’t be a terrible setup. When you factor in all of that multi-use capability, the extra cost above a Switch – which to this day still has no web browser or Netflix app – doesn’t seem unreasonable. It's missing a camera, so you can't use it for video conferencing, but aside from that it's a decent little PC that easily handles light, everyday tasks but also plays games at a level you won't find in other hardware around this price.
Verdict (for now)
The Steam Deck is a well-built piece of hardware that feels good to hold and play on. When you’re playing a Valve-approved game it's actually incredible to get this kind of performance out of a device so small and compact, even if the battery can be gone in a flash if you’re not careful. But on the eve of its official launch, it isn't the smooth user experience I had hoped it would be. Aside from the frustrations I've come to expect and accept from PC gaming, the biggest problem I've encountered has been spotty compatibility with SteamOS. The dream of being able to play everything in your library on the go is a long way from being realized, and not being able to use Windows just yet makes a lot of those problems temporarily insurmountable – plus it means I haven’t been able to run our usual PC benchmarking tools. So it’s impossible to land on a judgment right now because I literally don’t know what the Steam Deck will be able to do by the time the first retail unit arrives at a paying customer’s home. But that won’t last for long, so check back soon for the final review and score.
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