Steam Deck One Year Later... Was It Worth It?! 🤔

I've had my steam deck since June 2022 and in a year of use it's been simultaneously fantastic and also a bit frustrating I mean I absolutely love the capabilities of this thing and it's made long-haul flights quite literally fly by and yet there are still some things about this that are just plain weird and absolutely need to be talked about so let's discuss absolutely everything you need to know after a year of use of the steam deck right after a short word from this video sponsor Intel gamer days is back in the UK for 2023 bringing over a week of PC gaming deals right to your doorstep they're a fabulous flash sales on laptops PC components and systems all powered with Intel Core CPUs or art Graphics deals include up to 300 pounds off products from Asus MSI Lenovo Acer and more so what are you waiting for grab your Intel gamer days deal today with a link down below let's start at the beginning and my first impressions of the deck were mixed I actually did create a full video about this but it's currently unlisted I will leave it linked in the description down below as honestly I made loads of mistakes working my way around the deck when I was doing the unboxing process but then this is exactly the problem that you're likely to run into yourself when you're going through the deck for the first time as it is a complicated Beast this is a machine that can play a ginormous library of PC titles and ones that are designed for use with a mouse and keyboards but without a mouse and keyboard This of course means that depending on the game that you're actually going to play your mileage will vary a lot and some games will suit the deck more than others it's interesting just how well a game like Civilization 6 can run on the deck as you essentially lose your hotkeys but then can continue to dominate Rome as normal while with something like BeamNG drive with a lot more Reliance on the mouse and keyboards well things just aren't quite so simple but I do want to be really strong here and say that personally speaking the fact that the steam deck can't play every game really doesn't matter to me this is a portable machine I need something to play not literally everything the clue is probably in the name of course but a reminder that the steam deck runs on Steam OS and works predominantly with Steam games you can install other launchers and you can even install Windows but for me what is a secondary portable gaming machine frankly I just don't find it particularly necessary the user interface is actually surprisingly good with large tiles and icons making it easy to navigate around your library around to the store and access numerous settings and options for any PC Gamer with their sort will certainly appreciate for example you can create per game and Global control profiles you can set and customize a performance overlay to monitor stats and you can set a frame rate cap and lower the refresh rate to save your battery life but forget all the nerdy stuff let's talk about the thing that matters more than anything else actual gaming on the deck what is it like and is it worth it well when everything's working properly it is apps are freaking lutely amazing that sounded better on my script can we print 10 that bit didn't happen seriously though Jokes Aside this is a serious piece of Hardware when everything is working properly and case in point my recent holiday to the Caribbean which from the UK is of course two long-haul flights and plenty of downtime when you get there frankly enough time to get Eleanor aquatane from a tribal leader discovering iron to a giant death robot wielding Empire sprawling an entire civilization map and for those of you that aren't civilization Maniacs like me that essentially means I poured about 15 to 20 hours in this thing over the course of around about 10 days the experience all starts with the controls and the way that the deck feels in the hand compared to the much smaller Nintendo switch the deck is rather bulky by comparison having a much larger footprint and weighing in at around about 50 more than the switch to say that it's noticeable would be a huge understatement and especially when compared to the newer RNG alloy the shade comes across as unnecessarily bulbous despite this I've learned to accept the steam deck for what it is it's not uncomfortable it's just not as good as it could be where the excels however is with the inputs or the controls themselves as frankly it puts the origi Ally to shame not only do you get two thumbsticks but crucially you also get two touch pads that are about as responsive as the very best out there and are quite literally what makes this machine function as a PC replacement in your hand it's these touch pads that act as the mouse allowing you to operate menus user interfaces in addition to working as an alternate control method for something like an FPS and when you use them the first thing you'll notice is just how low the latency is and just how responsive they are not only that but the weird large size of the deck suddenly starts to make sense as your thumbs are now exactly in the right place to use them naturally it makes playing games a real joy as realistically moving around and actually operating all of the menus and civilization is probably about as good as you could realistically get on a screen size that obviously is a lot smaller than a PC monitor the rest of the controls don't disappoint either with robust feeling thumbsticks tactile buttons for the top slides and undercarriage and special Steam and options buttons that are used for inter console navigation my only complaint is that it does feel a tiny bit cramped especially at the back as well because you can accidentally hit these buttons fairly easily obviously you can customize them so if you hit them they don't do anything but the fact of the matter is you have quite a lot of button in a very short space and where you are sort of stretching a little bit with your thumbs to get to the thumbsticks it's not that it's uncomfortable it's just not necessarily as comfortable with something like the RG Ally was in the hand but if the trade-off means to not have the touch pads then I'd much rather play on the steam deck oh and there's also this little fan in the back that does wear up it does make a little bit of noise it can get worse depending on the game that you're playing and you do also get a little bit of hot air chucked out the back nothing to be a big problem but you're probably not used to it if you've come from like a it's going to say Game Boy how old am I a Nintendo switch my game of choice was traveling between London and Chester last year was an oldie but a Goldie Tomb Raider Anniversary certainly not optimized for the deck in any shape or form but it works like a charm with the thumbsticks getting through each Challenge and tune without any hassle whatsoever because of the size and the weight of this thing though I would highly recommend that we're possible you have somewhere to actually rest your elbows so on the train using something like a tray table is a good idea because this is a very big and heavy device and long term I was Finding I was getting quite a lot of cramp if I wasn't resting my hands or elbows it's still not perfect even if you are able to rest them but just do be aware that again compared to some smaller devices that you might have used in the past this is definitely something that is going to get uncomfortable if you're going to sit there for hours online end the touchscreen itself is both big and bold I have the premium anti-glare display here that I would say Works quite well on both public transport and indoors but I wouldn't really fancy sitting in the sun using this to be honest it's also only 1280 by 800 resolution and frankly it does have oversized bezels but it's easily sharp enough for its size and bear in mind that the battery life isn't great anyway more on that in a minute High resolutions probably wouldn't be worth using on the go anyway it's also a shame that this device doesn't have any form of variable refresh rate as you'd think this is exactly the sort of thing where you'd want it games that you aren't going to be running at a constant 60 FPS necessarily and being able to run that in between would certainly be nice now you can do it with a fixed refresh rate which is cool I've currently got this locked to 45 frames a second there are different resolutions with different refresh rates as well that you can use if you want to run at a low resolution or of course run at a lower frame rate but it's still not I would describe as optimal as for the performance of the machine I'd say on the whole it is very impressive but you should be aware that this certainly isn't the best out there anymore as both the RG Ally and the legion go have this beat but you'd be surprised just how many games you can get to run and unlike those machines you don't need a clunky copy of Windows running in the background I think everyone will be happy as long as you keep your expectations in check remember this is not an RTX 4090 it is a handheld battery-powered gaming rig as for which games you can actually play I have to confess that I'm actually very impressed with a steam verification system because it's very easy to understand what all the numbers and what the different colors mean I mean it's a traffic light system green means it can play very well no issues at all Amber is in the middle and red is don't bother for context I currently have 257 games in my steam library and 55 of them are rated as green gray on deck and 102 of them are Amber so roughly half of my library is currently playable and this is absolutely fine for me as I'm not picky but if you're someone that specifically wants to play the games that just don't work it would get pretty frustrating rating so that is the gaming experience but what about the question I'm actually living with the deck this is something that I purchased myself this is not a review sample do I actually use it do I enjoy using it and is it worth the money and for me I'd say somewhat yes and yes the biggest praise that I can sing for the deck is that it fits into any PC Gamer's life with ease as you don't need to buy any new games and you can install plenty of them to use on the go in addition to the saves actually carrying over to your PC at home if you're willing to do some transfers or of course rely on cloud saves as I exclusively use this while traveling I also don't have to deal with the bad things very often as I say I'm not picky about what I play I just want something from the go and if you're like me and this is what you're going to use this device for then you are going to love the deck but please do be aware there are some flaws that you are gonna have to deal with and you know what perhaps unsurprisingly I'd say the biggest one with this is actually the battery life it's not that it's bad it's just no matter MacBook Air older titles were run for several hours without issue whilst newer ones especially those running at 60 FPS will barely get past an hour and a half fine for a train journey not so great for a flight now I've done a Jensen and hiding in plain sights this whole time is of course the solution to this problem which is to use a battery bank and a cable but please do be aware that's not quite as simple as this because this does require 45 watts of power in order to have it as if it was on AC power so this is a higher end one it wasn't cheap but it is worth it because it can keep this going not necessarily for a whole flight but for a lot longer on a flight but do be aware that if you want to play whilst using like a lower end battery bank it's still going to drain very quickly and if you're dead if your steam deck is dead then you won't be able to use a lower power battery Bank to actually get this to run in the first place it needs to be 45 Watts or above if you're dead you're definitely not going to be using the steam deck I would also strongly advise specking an SSD for your deck as most modern games don't run very well off the SD cards now you can do this yourself but be aware it's not as easy as it would be with a PlayStation 5 or a gaming PC and requires a little bit of prizing moreover though to this very day there are still plenty of bugs that do just frustrate the heck out of me not on a daily basis but more frequent than I'd like most recent one being that when I was away and I was playing civilization if I wanted to have the game in the suspended mode you'd press the button and you'd leave it fantastic but then you come back you turn it on and then none of the buttons would actually work in the game even if you close the game down and relaunched it still wouldn't work or just make like Steam OS noises and I had to restart the deck to actually get around this problem if you know a solution to this bug please do let me know down in the comments section below but I that really frustrated me but then moreover than that the more frequent thing that really does drive me up the wall is that the battery just seems to disappear once you've plugged it into charge you take the cable out and it just seems to go dead way too quickly like I don't use this all of the time so maybe this is normal for a device like this but I don't see why it should be like if I unplug this and then like leave it to do an update or something like that it's far too easy for this thing to actually drain its battery entirely if you have it in suspended mode I understand the battery life is going to drain but why it does this when it's just in the menus really does baffle me and frankly it needs to do better but right let's not make this a moan Fest let's calm down for a second and wrap this up the steam deck tries to do everything and frankly I think it can be forgiven that it just can't would I want this as my only gaming device absolutely not but as a pick up and play Hardware piece for use on the go I think it's freaking amazing I'm sure when we get the inevitable steam deck 2 it's going to iron out a lot of the problems that I have with this and the main asks really would be just to have something that's lighter longer battery more comfortable in the hands less fatiguing to use and less bugs but the steam deck even though it does have quite a lot of competition now the fact that it does run on Steam OS and doesn't rely on Windows I think is huge do not discount the steam deck even though there's now a lot of competition because I think this is probably the most well-rounded package this is not going to be completely seamless for you but if you are a PC Gamer like me you already have loads of titles and you want something for portable gaming I think it is a no-brainer it is absolutely worth the money and the steam deck does come highly recommended but of course that's just my opinion let me know your thoughts on the steam Deck Down in the comments below how long have you had yours would you be in the market to get one if you don't have one are you worried about some things would you rather go for the RG Ally or the legion go I'd love to hear from you so let me know down in the comment section below so smash this like button if you've enjoyed it get yourself subscribed if you do want to check out current pricing on the steam deck I'll leave my Amazon affiliate links listed down below and while you're down there why not bag yourself a deal with Intel gamer days get two free accessories with selected ASA notebooks up to 250 pounds off selected Lenovo laptops up to 300 pounds of selected Asus notebooks and motherboards and plenty of deals from MSI with so many deals to choose from the hardest thing will be picking a favorite grab yours today with that link down below thank you so much for watching this video we'll catch you in the next one [Music]

Channel: PC Centric

Views: 290,054

Keywords: pccentric, gaming, pc gaming, gaming computer, pc centric, gaming pc, steam deck, steam deck review, steam deck unboxing, steam deck games, steam deck worth it, rog ally, legion go, lenovo legion go, asus rog ally, steam, pc centric steam deck

Id: mIBfoNIYBVs

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 27 2023