Steam Deck REVIEW - It's more important than you think..

foreign deck is unlike any nah all right the steam deck is a super interesting difference I think I need to give a little context here before I get into this alright so when it comes to gaming there's always been a plethora of options to play your games on but if you take a step back and break it down you can essentially split them up into three groups first you have your traditional home consoles this is perhaps your most mainstream option out there they are easy to use and accessible you buy a console buy a game hook it up to a screen and you're ready to go but it comes with the downside that with each console release there's often a drastic shift in architectural form factor meaning there's no guarantee that the games you own on your current system will work on the new hardware not to mention you're only limited to using the surfaces the console manufacturer provides whether it's good or not you don't really have a choice here next you have handhelds when you think about it handhelds essentially just home consoles but smaller you still have your dedicated shops its own online services and its very own library of games so the best parts of a handheld is no doubt the ability to play it wherever you want but they've always been less capable than their contemporary home counterparts and because of that games on hand helps often designed over lower budget and scope in mind rally when you see an original AAA game develop exclusively for handheld in the same scale or budget as something you'll see on the Home console last but not least you have PC here you can have pretty much unlimited combinations with all kinds of specs this is also where you'll find the biggest library of games spanning across multiple generations and the freedom to customize exactly how you want to play game preservation is also not really a problem here where if you own the game on PC it will most likely also work on your next PC so yes having the freedom is great but the amount of options can also be quite overwhelming for Less tech savvy people out there when all they want to do is pick up a controller and start playing so with the release of the switch then you get the benefits of playing high quality AAA games from a traditional console and the ability to play all of that wherever you want like a handheld which most of you probably know by now paid off tremendously well for Nintendo with the switch now already being the second best-selling handheld of all time just below the original DS but it is still a traditional console at heart so unless Nintendo chooses to bring over Legacy titles or design future Hardware with this in mind all your purchases will forever be stuck on the switch so when you combine the lower end trip area and the ability to play on the big screen like a Home console the portability of a handheld with the freedom and the massive back catalog of a PC you get the steam deck but first we need to talk about UMPC um PC Ultra Mobile personal computers handheld computers that were designed to run software built for desktop PCS that sounds awesome so why is this only a thing now the truth is they've actually always been around but with limited Technologies back then they've only really been powerful enough for checking emails or basic word processing fast forward to today we now have sleek and Tiny handouts that can play more than AAA games but the downside of that is these handhelds are often super expensive going upwards of a thousand dollars on top of that with limited customer Supports and sometimes not so great build quality despite the high price they've remained a new choppy for handheld enthusiasts like me in that sense the steam deck is a super interesting device because while not the first to do something like this I'd argue is the first one to get the most right while doing this at a super competitive price with that said join me as we'll take a deep dive with the steam deck we'll look at the hardware in detail look at some games in emulation and we'll go for everything good and maybe not so good about the handheld after owning it for 9 months and ultimately see if it's really worth your money but before we jump in I just want to give a heads up and mention that due to some personal preferences I've opted to use Windows on my steam deck here but the performance between the two is largely the same but I'll still be touching on the experience of Steam OS any negative software experience with windows will not be factored into my review with that out of the way hello and welcome to my review of the steam deck foreign [Music] oh besides Nintendo Sony and Microsoft when you think about it without getting into the hardware business makes a lot of sense compared to the likes of Google and Amazon not only the staff have years of experience in the gaming landscape they've also dabbled in the hardware business themselves with the knowledge fastest accumulated over the years with products like the steam controller and the five headsets the steam that definitely feels like a premium product so when you take a look at the steam deck itself the first thing that should jump out the most is probably the size when I first learned that the steam deck was going to be bigger than the Wii U gamepad I was kind of skeptical but now that I've used it I think the size is what makes the steam deck so good and that is saying a lot coming from someone like me as people who watch my oldest stuff would know I have a pretty unhealthy obsession with smaller handhelds so yes it is less compact than a traditional handheld but right out of the box the deck only offers handheld mode as an option so valve is got to make sure it feels great to use and I think they've done a pretty good job in this aspect one benefits of the steam deck for being so big then means valve can move all the parts that would usually heats up during gameplay away from your hands so even if it does get hot you wouldn't really feel it and it never gets too loud on the load as well I say it's comparable to the switch maybe even a little quieter so for something this big must be pretty heavy right well on paper the deck is heavier than the switch but because the size difference of the two are way more pronounced than the weight difference in practice the deck doesn't really feel that much heavier than the switch and if we take a look at another UMBC on the market right now the GPD win3 yeah this thing looks pretty compact on the surface but it's actually way heavier than it looks where in my opinion the deck while appearing big in size feels lighter than it looks the button placements from the touch pad to the grips just fit perfectly onto my hand when I pick it up I never find myself feeling uncomfortable reaching for anything I'm usually a fan of clicky buttons like on the switch icon then mushy ones found on the switch lights but they're built so solid here on the deck and my even side I feel better than once you get from some full-size controllers as for the touchpad unlike the steam controller which had a round and concave surface the ones on the deck are flat and smooth they also come with haptics and vibrates when you move your finger along the surface which could be pretty handy for games that utilize Mouse control plus you have the ability to use as camera control as well the steam deck also comes included with gyro but unlike a traditional console where game devs have to implement gyro into their games for it to work the steam deck has the option for you to map the gyro to a mouse or an analog stick in any games you want meaning every game will support gyro unlike the switch the steam that uses analog triggers yes the deck might not be the first one to implement analog triggers into a handheld but I'd argue is probably the best implementation I've seen so far with a smooth and deep travel and a concave nature of them just feels great in your hand besides the shoulder buttons the deck also comes with two sets of back buttons which again function as extra hotkeys for more complicated PC games that might require them and these analog sticks to me feel better than some you get on actual controllers let alone handhelds granted they aren't horse sensors So eventually it might start drifting like switch but you also have to keep in mind that valve has been doing an amazing job on user repairability and customer support and they generally feel more well built than the sticks on the switch to icon when it comes to the display then valve went with an 800p LCD panel which is the same as 720p but for 16 by 10. the taller aspect ratio compared to 16x9 means all the games that uses a 4x3 aspect ratio scaled a lot nicer on the display as for the resolution some might say it should have been a 1080P or heck even 4K but personally I think a 720p or 800p screen is still the perfect resolution for handheld gaming having a stretcher 720p image or using Dynamic upscaling will never look anywhere as good as an 800p image running natively on an 800p panel not to mention the battery hit you'll be getting with a 1080p panel perhaps valve could have gone with an OLED but to keep the cost down I think they make the right move going with an LCD in terms of the audio you have the options to use headphones with the standard 3.5 audio jack Bluetooth audio or the built-in stereo speakers which I think should be the most common use case for a lot of us the speakers while not very heavy in bass they are loud enough and still up from the Nintendo switch and with the two speakers placed quite a bit away from each other thanks to the size of the steam deck you can actually get some pretty good stereo effects in some games along the top of the system is where you'll find your power and your volume control your standard 3.5 audio port and your exhaust fan which are spaced out evenly in a symmetrical manner which I very much appreciate the attention to details here here is also where you'll find your single USB ports which functions as your charging ports and video out along the bottom of the device there's a slot for micro SD card and nothing else it would have been nice if there's a second USB port on the bottom but I understand that any additional thing valve as to the deck is going to drive the cost up which brings us into the price there's been a lot of debates on whether the steam deck is just too expensive compared to the switch yes on the surface the steam deck does cost quite a bit more than the switch but once you actually break it down the value of the deck will start to make a whole lot more sense alright so let's say if you were to get the regular switch not the OLED for 2 250 pounds and put it up against the base theme deck for 350 pounds you're looking at 100 pounds difference here but when you're getting a console you're never just getting the console by itself while you are losing the ability to dock the steam deck right out of the box and mix up for it with other aspects that the switch is not doing like the ability to back up your saves locally or to the cloud and play online for free which is 60 pounds a year on the switch in terms of games a lot of first party and sometimes even third-party games on the switch rarely go on sale not to mention they will most likely run better on the deck than with the now dated 2015 chipset on the switch so how do the games run on the deck the performance on the steam deck is so good sometimes it feels more like streaming to me but they are in fact running natively on the hardware yeah more often than not you have to turn the settings to low or maybe run the games at 30 FPS but that's the thing most games will run on the deck at a stable frame rate if you're willing to sacrifice some image quality it might not sound all that impressive as first but if you take a look at the switch where so many games can barely hit 720p at 30 FPS the deck suddenly becomes a lot more appealing while the deck can run pretty much all kinds of PC games old and new I think it shines the most with games from the past couple years stuff that uses more modern engines now everything under the gray on Deck section is pretty much guaranteed to work and steam deck supports for new releases has been growing quite steadily as well but there are some notable emissions here you won't find Minecraft fortnite or pretty much anything that isn't on Steam that also means for people looking into using the steam deck for Xbox game pass your best option is probably to deal boots into windows but I understand it might not be easy for an average user out there for all the games that uses opengl or DirectX 9 like GTA 4 is Infamous for being an unoptimized PC Port but under Steam OS running on the proton which is a Windows translation layer for Linux these games now works so well and I find the deck perfect for these kind of old Titles since they don't take up much space at all as opposed to games coming out nowadays which can easily go over 100 Gig most of the time however I find myself gravitating towards more arcadey stuff or racing games like Grid or Forza which suits the steam decks pickup and play nature while I'm not personally into lpgs I can still see the steam deck being the perfect device to do your level grinding stuff which brings us into the sleep mode some games like Forza or Final Fantasy XV they can take quite a bit of time to get into the game both the game open I sometimes just put the deck into sleep mode instead of turning it off which sounds like a pretty basic feature on the surface especially if you are coming from the switch but with the way a PC work this is not often the case and thanks to that I've completed a lot more games than ever before since it fits into my lifestyle a lot better the lowest end model fast offers only has a 64 gig internal storage with a portion of that taken up by the system and proton wrappers that come with most games you download and those can come in at about one or two gig each that doesn't really leave you much room for games not to mention PC games is so big these days if you are getting the 64 gig model you'll definitely need an SD card to go with it and I might actually suggest you give Windows a shot since you might save some room without having to download any proton wrappers but if you don't want to jump through the Hoops in doing so a Micro SD card should still do just fine but even on the highest end valve only offers a 512 gig model as I've always had the habit of upgrading my windows handheld to 2 terabyte but since the deck uses a slightly unconventional 2230 SSD instead of the most standard 2280 used in other handhelds even for one terabyte it's just way too expensive for me to justify so if you have the technical know-how to upgrade the SSD yourself I suggest getting that 64 gig model however the limited storage actually changed my gaming habit for the better I used to have all my games installed locally on my previous handhelds the Batmans most of the time I had trouble picking out what to play and I just end up not playing much of anything at all but with the lower storage on the deck I only have about five or six games installed at any given time and because of that I finished way more games than I ever did before Doom 2016 and doom Eternal are games I've always wanted to finish but never really got into it playing at my desk or TV so I got the switch Port when that came out wow impressive in its own right the cutbacks made it much less satisfying on the steam deck however I managed to beat both of them back to back at 60 FPS and I can finally cross them out on my backlog now while this isn't Val's main selling point or intention outside of PC games the steam deck is also a pretty good emulation machine most of the more mature emulators will work pretty decently on the deck which means yes you can play Nintendo switch on your steam Deck with the switch and the deck both out on the market right now with the price not even that far from each other it's just crazy to me that you can fully emulate one on another sometimes with even better experience than the original Hardware now obviously emulating the switch on your steam deck is still kind of on enough of this side if you ask me since you'll get a much much better battery playing on the native hotline than emulating it but from a technological standpoint it is still really impressive with Dolphin I find Hit or Miss unfortunately which is a shame since it actually runs better on my previous handhelds some lower end games will run perfectly fine but I ran into some performance issue with Mario Galaxy which by raising this GPU clocks and TDP didn't really help much but apparently if you're on Linux this is something you can fix where disabling smt with power tools will get rid of the performance issue of dolphins but I've also had it comes with its own set of issues so take it off a grain of salt however I do believe this is a software issue rather than a hardware limitation and will eventually get ironed out but if you are looking to get a steam deck for Dolphin I would not recommend you to do that right now PS2 emulation with pcs62 has actually been a pleasant surprise for me since I've always had problems with it I thought the raw horsepower of the deck was what finally made it work but turns out the pcsx2 team has done so much optimizing to the emulator that even on my weaker handhelds it still runs some heavier games pretty well so while the heaviest games like Gran Turismo 4 might not run particularly well games like Burnout Revenge actually runs perfectly fine now at two times internal resolution with the steam deck being quite CPU limited most PS3 games still won't run particularly great here with rpcs3 but if you really want to you can still Run demon cells at a pretty stable 30 FPS Here and Now with Persona 5 out on PC there's no point emulating that on here now the emulator is way better than what it was a couple years ago but I still think that it has a long way to go okay so that's cool and all but none of that really matters if the battery on the steam deck isn't good so how does that fare in current or last gen titles running at a lot 30 FPS you'll be looking at about 9 Watts which is about three to four hours from a single charge this is when running the game at the native 800p with no upscaling enabled a couple of titles can reach 40 or even 60 FPS but you need to bump up the TDP to about 15 watts which equates to about 90 minutes of play time which is pretty bad for some other stuff that comfortably hits 60fps I've actually been playing a couple of those in 40 FPS and it's been such a game changer to me while running a 40 FPS game on a 60hz panel causes inconsistent frame pacing 40 FPS with a 40 Hertz refresh rate feels significantly better than 30 FPS with a 60hz refresh with way less impact of the battery than running it in full 60 FPS it makes so much sense on handheld that I won't even be surprised if Nintendo switch 2 will support 40hz on Steam OS valve lets each individual title have their own performance profile where you can set the refresh rate and TDP which is pretty neat but from a console user standpoint which might not want to care about these things they could perhaps Implement something where other SteamVac users can submit power profiles and the highest rated one will be automatically applied on the initial run sort of like what they are already doing with Community controlled profiles just to make the jump from console to PC even more seamless for casual players in terms of battery with emulations I find myself leaning towards some of the lower end stuff like PSP where I can get a longer play time from a single charge for PSP games I lock my TDP to about 5 volts which will get me about six to seven hours of play time but here's the cool thing I found some of the Wii U games out there I can also lock the TDP to about 5 Watts so with some games like new Super Mario Brothers U or Pikmin 3 I can actually get longer play time on the deck compared to the Wii U ports on switch since fast Israeli marketing the steam deck as a triple A game machine it is a little disappointing that the battery of those games is the one thing that falls shots while it isn't really a big deal for me personally since I mostly use this theme deck at home anyways to some of you it might be a pretty big deal breaker but I do miss the time where we aim for at least 10 hours without BS and game boys and it's pretty funny looking back at the 4 hours play time on the PSP was considered unacceptable [Music] so all things considered what do I think of the steam deck overall then sure it has its flaws but for handheld with this kind of performance and still being sold at this price point I just can't stress enough how much value you're getting with the steam deck if you were to compare the steam tag to any um PCS in the markets right now there's simply no competition since valve is selling the deck at the last it hopes to make a return with software sales so not only do you get what you pay for I think you actually get more than what you pay for which no other um pieces manufacturers can do yes those devices might be slightly faster or more compact than the steam deck but the deck is still going to be the best bang for your buck by a wide margin if you were to compare the switch to the deck however it gets a little bit trickier with the deck you often get much better graphics and performance than the same game on the switch which often cost more than the steam version but on the switch you you have stuff you simply can't get on the deck things like level or ring fits and a much better battery life while being far more compact while some may see more value from the steam deck some might prefer the switch as it simply fits the lifestyle better so all in all I think these two handhelds offer fundamentally very different experiences and they each offer something you can't get on the other one while other umpcs manufacturers are out there pumping out new handhelds left and right I don't see five of themself releasing a revision with a major spec bump anytime soon since they've only just managed to iron out the stock shortage problem with the current steam deck and since they're already selling their deck at a loss right now I personally don't see a price job anytime soon but if the health is indeed looking in the new hardware however instead of the next gen deck I would personally like to see something like what Nintendo's done with the miracle revision of the switch the same performance but more power efficient a better screen like the OLED switch multiple color options or maybe a smaller fun Factor like the switch Light May maybe they could double down the direction of the switch and pack in a dock a new steam controller for dark mode and maybe even start looking into selling retail units in stores instead of just ordering from Steam while I don't think the steam deck will ever reach the heights of its popularity as opposed to something like the switch I think the impact it will have on not only the handheld space but the PC gaming markets really cannot be understated with the steam deck really being the first true mainstream option besides Nintendo suffering in the handheld space since the PS Vita in 2011. it's going to be pretty interesting to see how things go from here and with that concludes my review of the steam deck if you made it all the way to the end I hope you had a good time watching this as much as I had making it otherwise thanks for watching [Music] thank you

Channel: hmr

Views: 141,151

Keywords: GPD, Win, Portable, Nintendo, Switch, Custom, ROM, PC, CITRA, CEMU, EMULATOR, DOLPHIN, 60FPS, 30FPS, full, speed, zelda, botw, mario, galaxy, kirby, smash, yoshi, wii, gamecube, 3ds, wiiu, ps1, ps2, ps3, ps4, xbox, xb1, MOQI, Gaming, Phone, i7s, rpcs3, xenia, pcsx2, umpc, max, Win Max, Handheld game console, hmr, steamdeck, steam, deck, valve, switch2, switch

Id: AOVvuLLeR00

Length: 22min 21sec (1341 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 15 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/zubin50]

Editing in this Video is A1

[u/UnlimitedEgo]

Awesome editing. I wouldn't have stayed for as much as I did if you didn't kill it in that department alone!

[u/Roy-Southman]

Love the review, and love the Deck.

[u/mattrob77]

Gonna give it a go because its fan made!

[u/kicksandshiii]

Just watched it shortly prior to seeing this post! Thought it was extraordinarily well done for how little views it had at the time, wow! Very well done indeed! Keep it up, please!

[u/LeftTip1090]

I will give it a watch fellow steam decker!!

[u/JipsUnknown]

Superb review!

[u/Alasdair91]

Amazing video and editing/graphic skills!

[u/tellomore]

nice review, very clean.