The Steam Deck is the best gaming device ever. Well you know, to me. The truth is the Steam Deck might not be for
everyone. It is extremely flexible and for some people,
that flexibility can lead to a sort of choice paralysis. Today, I’m going to break down that flexibility
as cleanly as I possibly can for people that want to get the most of their Deck. For the folks that are new to Steam Deck - don’t
forget to comment especially if you have a question and for the Decksperts in the house,
make sure to comment if I missed anything - and please help out the new folks since
one of the things I love about the Steam Deck is the community. Alright - now - I'm sure you're wondering
where my Steam Deck is. It's been here the whole time! The reason you can't see my Steam Deck is
because I've got the brand new Camo skins from dbrand. Thanks to dbrand for sponsoring this video
and for sending over their latest set of Camo skins. There's Arctic Camo, Glitch Camo, and my personal
favorite: Navy Camo. That one's my favorite because it matches
my favorite Street Fighter palette swap: Navy Camo Guile. If you want to keep your Steam Deck away from
prying eyes, these Camo skins are the way to go. But dbrand has a whole suite of skins, not
to mention their tempered glass to help protect your Steam Deck. Of course, they also have comprehensive videos
on how to install these so you don’t have to worry about the process. If you're picking one of these up and want
to support the channel, then go ahead and use my link in the description. What's good, Deck Gang? Let’s start with whether or not you should
buy a Steam Deck and even what model to get. You can imagine that I’m a little bit biased
considering that I'm a Steam Deck channel, so of course I think the Steam Deck is worth
the price of entry but there’s actually something that’s changing in this video
l versus my other videos and it’s this - it’s now OK to wait to buy the Steam Deck. Before this, if you got a chance to fulfill
your Steam Deck reservation, there was a pressure to order because you didn’t know when you’d
get another chance to order a Steam Deck. But Valve has been ramping up production so
much that there is no longer a queue and you can just order your Steam Deck whenever you
want. It’s seems unlikely that this will change
even as we head into the holiday season so, you know, only buy the Steam Deck if you think
it’s a good fit for you right now. And how do you know if it’s a good fit for
you? Well, I think most of you already have a good
idea of that. If what you want is something that will get
you amazing visuals on your 4K TV, then yeah that’s not what this is. But if you’re looking for a huge library
of gaming in your hands, then the Steam Deck is easily the best purchase. You’re just not going to find a better bargain
than the Steam Deck and it has a large library, solid customer support and a good level of
convenience. You can’t go wrong with any model. Even the 64GB model can play big AAA games
as long as you install them to an SD card. Most of my games are installed to an SD card
anyway. So if you’re unsure and want to spend the
least amount of money possible, then the 64GB option is not a bad choice at all. You can even upgrade the hard drive yourself
later but do note that it’s a bit of a specialty drive. You can find it on newegg or amazon but usually
through 3rd parties. Of course, the 256GB and the 512GB Steam Decks
also have faster storage for faster loads and installs. The 512GB also comes with the anti-glare screen
which I personally really like, especially for filming. If you can afford one of the higher models,
I don’t think you’ll be disappointed but I don’t think you absolutely have to go
for those either. Basically - pick the one you can afford. You can’t go wrong either way. So now you’re eagerly waiting for your Steam
Deck to arrive and you want to pass the time by watching Steam Deck videos and reading
Steam Deck info, so let me share some of my favorite resources. You can always go to steamdeck.com/news to
get the latest Steam Deck updates straight from Valve. They also share these on their @OnDeck and
@OnDeckUpdates twitter account. The former gives you bigger news and the latter
tweets about software updates. For unofficial resources, check out SteamDeckHQ. This is currently the best place to find written
guides and information about the Steam Deck. Finally, there are so many great YouTube channels
you can watch to learn more about the Steam Deck. First of all, subscribe to my channel if you
haven’t already. But also there’s Gardiner Bryant The Linux
Gamer and Deck Ready. They both do news roundups like I do. There’s also Liam from Gaming on Linux. He publishes a new video virtually every day
and he has a no-nonsense style. NerdNest has a Steam Deck podcast and does
How To Guides and covers Steam Deck news as well. Finally, I’d like to mention Moskeeto who
doesn’t post a ton but he does have some great Steam Input guides for the Steam Deck. Check these folks out and find the channels
that work best for you. When it comes to Steam Deck accessories, I
have a whole video where I cover the best accessories. Check the link in the description for that. I do have some small updates that I'll add
here. Of course I’ve already mentioned our sponsor,
dbrand, who has skins, tempered glass, and the upcoming Project Killswitch. I have the version that had to be discontinued
due to magnets, but it’s an extremely sturdy case and it withstood that time I dropped
it. Since my accessories video, Valve has released
their official docking station and that's important to note. I still prefer the third party JSAUX docks,
mostly because they're more affordable. I'll talk about that in a future video but
I should point out that I've seen several reports of people with sound systems that
have better luck getting it to work with the Valve docking station than with third party
alternatives. Both JSAUX and Valve offer firmware updates
so I expect that to get sorted out over time but it's important to know. Also in my accessories video, I mention the
Baseus power bank which I still think is a great buy if you're in the market for one
of those. But the next item from Baseus that I'm anxious
to tell you about is their GaN power strip. This is an all-in-one charger that I’ve
been using for a few months now and it’s just what I was looking for. It’s a slim 100W brick that can charge up
to 6 devices. It’s got 2 AC outlets, 2 USB-c PD ports,
and 2 USB-A PD ports. I have it set up under my bed and it powers
my side lamp while charging my phone and Steam Deck and that’s only using half of the available
ports. I took it on a trip recently to power all
my accessories. I highly recommend this all-in-one charger
so check it out at my link below. And the last thing I want to provide an update
on is control pads. I've tried virtually every controller and
my highest recommendation still goes to the DualShock 4 and Dual Sense. Compared to Xbox and Switch, these controllers
are the closest thing to having parity with the Steam Deck itself. Xbox controllers don’t have gyro, Switch
controllers don’t have analog shoulders, and of course neither have trackpads. While the PlayStation trackpads are nowhere
near as good as the Steam Deck, they’re still additional inputs that other control
pads just don’t have. So unfortunately even the wonderful 8bitdo
and GuliKit control pads are missing some input features. If you don’t need input parity with the
Steam Deck, I would consider those pads as alternatives since they’re some of the best
pads out there. Anyway, outside of that, check my accessories
video. I cover Micro SD cards, power banks, charging
accessories, docks, a nice travel bag and those alternative pads. When it comes to playing games on the Steam
Deck, you can have two sorts of mindsets. I’m someone that tends to shy away from
tinkering. I just want to play games. I also tend to play lots of indies that don’t
really require any tinkering so there’s that. Still though, I don’t tend to worry about
compatibility. I buy what I want to play and if it doesn’t
work out of the box on the Steam Deck, then I look it up on ProtonDB and see if they have
any tips for running the game on Steam Deck. If I can’t get the game to run at all, then
I go ahead and request a refund from Steam Support. So far, this has not been a problem for me
and virtually every game I play is reasonably compatible. Alternatively, if you’re ok with tinkering,
you might try to squeeze the most performance or battery life out of a given title. In fact, you can get a good head start on
this by looking for the game in question at SteamDeckHQ who often provides their own optimal
game settings. They provide multiple builds: like one that
focuses on Battery, another for Framerate, and another for visual quality. You can try one of these and then tune to
whatever you prefer. If you do want to tune games, you have a few
options. If you press the Quick Access button on the
bottom right, you get a series of menus. Notably, the battery icon contains virtually
everything you need for tuning, starting with a performance overlay. This overlay allows you to see Steam Deck
statistics. If you set it to Level 1, it shows you only
the current framerate. If you set it to Level 2, it shows you the
current utilization of the GPU and CPU. It also shows how much battery life is remaining. In addition to framerate, it is now also displaying
the frametime and a graph of that frametime. In the development of the software around
the Steam Deck, Valve has placed a lot of emphasis on frametime. That’s because an inconsistent frametime
will lead to a less enjoyable experience, even when the framerate is stable. Moving up to level 3, you get more detail
around the GPU and CPU including temps and power draw. You can also now see how much RAM is being
utilized. And finally at Level 4, you get a whole bunch
of information. You now get utilization and clock speed information
for each core in the processor. Fan speeds have also been added. In addition to that Overlay, you can swap
this menu to an “Advanced View” - this gives you the actual tools for turning. You can modify the Refresh Rate - the default
is 60 but you can go as low as 40. This and the framerate limit are tools that
allow you to lower the maximum framerate in an effort to reduce power used, save battery
life, and provide an overall more consistent visual experience. 40 is a solid target for some more demanding
games like Spider-Man Remastered, God of War and even hi spec indies like Kena: Bridge
of Spirits. You can also tune the TDP Limit. This basically specifies the max power draw
and is helpful for saving battery life. You kind of have to use this in tandem with
other settings in order to make sure your framerate isn’t too sluggish in more demanding
games. Similarly you can manually control the GPU
clock. By throttling the GPU clock, you can give
the CPU more room to breathe which is especially helpful when using emulators. Once you’re done, you can save this as a
per-game setting so that it only applies when you’re in this specific game. If you leave this guide with nothing else
but some additional excitement for SteamInput, then I would call this a success. SteamInput is rarely necessary but with some
effort, it’s almost always helpful. For example, did you know you can bind an
input to activate when you’re fully pushing the analog stick to the outer edge, or as
it’s called in SteamInput, the outer ring? This is extremely helpful for shooters where
you don’t want to hold, or even toggle, a Sprint button since you pretty much always
want to sprint when you push the analog the whole way anyway. Or did you know that you could map the shooting
input and the aim down sights input to the same trigger so that you can aim down sights
with a soft pull of the trigger and then you fire with a full pull? And you can configure that further so that
you can easily skip the aim down sights inpu.t when you pull quickly such that it’s simple
for you to hip fire. Or if you’re using the trackpad for anything,
it’s trivial to set up a click of the trackpad to do one thing, like Melee and a double click
to do something else, like reload. The same goes for button. I’ve recently taken to making it so that
when I double tap the reload button, it switches to my last weapon. All of those examples are for shooters because
that’s what I have the most fun configuring, but you can do a lot more than that. You can also use touch menus to set up a custom
virtual keyboard so that you can play typing games. Or you can build a radial menu for weapon
switching. Or you can set inputs that will control the
mouse only on a certain region of the screen so that you can do things like quickly access
on-screen menus. I also configured the trackpad to control
touch input on 3DS emulators and that works for games like Kid Icarus. SteamInput can be overwhelming sometimes but
try one of these tips one day and see if that helps you play a certain game. And there’s a lot more to explore as well,
so I’ll publish some SteamInput video guides as the inspiration continues to strike. I’m going to cover a number of settings
in this video but there are some miscellaneous settings that I won’t cover that you should
be aware of. The Settings menu is accessible when you click
the Steam button on the bottom left, then go to Settings. On the General tab, you can choose to show
the battery percentage. On the System tab, you can check for updates
but also you can decide which updates you want. For most people, I’d recommend the default,
which is Stable channel. This channel gets updates after they’ve
been tested and are now considered stable. The Beta channel gets updated more frequently
and gets features that may still be in testing. This is a fun channel to be on if you want
the latest and greatest. Finally there’s the Preview channel. Consider this more bleeding edge. You’ll get to try updates that are not quite
ready yet and you may encounter some issues. At the bottom of the System tab is a toggle
for fan control. You can disable this to go back to an older
more aggressive fan profile. This will keep your components cooler but
will also be a bit louder and is mostly considered unnecessary. Speaking of Components, if you’re on the
Beta channel, you can also see the manufacturer and model number of all the important components
inside your Steam Deck. This is helpful for looking for replacement
parts but also troubleshooting issues. For example, if your fan sounds high pitches,
you likely have the fan that is made by Delta rather than Huaying. The Delta fan is increasingly rare now but
this view of your components is very helpful nonetheless. Finally, you can do a Factory Reset from this
sub-menu. Under the Security tab you can set a lock
screen with a PIN which is extremely nice. In the Notifications tab, you can choose to
disable any noisy notifications. You can see what mine looks like here. The Display tab has a series of options for
either the native display or an external display if one is plugged in. For the Native Display, you can change the
brightness, toggle adaptive brightness and configure a night mode. For an external display, you can set an alternative
resolution and configure UI scaling. Of course, you can pair and connect Bluetooth
devices in the Bluetooth tab. The Controller tab allows you to test and
calibrate the built-in controls as well as any connected controllers whether wired or
wirelessly. Particularly, you can set the deadzones on
any analog sticks. You can use the Family tab to share your game
library with family members. Technically only one account can play games
from the shared library at one time but a pro-tip is that the owner of the library can
play a game in Offline Mode while a guest plays from the shared library normally. Remote Play has settings for remoting into
your Steam Deck or using your Steam Deck to remote into another PC with Steam on it. Finally, the Storage menu is incredibly helpful
for managing your library. You can see what’s taking up space, move
games from the internal drive to an SD and vice versa. And you can set up which storage should be
the default when downloading games. The Steam Deck actually has two modes. The Gaming Mode and the Desktop Mode. You can own a Steam Deck and just play Steam
Games and almost never enter Desktop Mode if you prefer. But Desktop Mode opens a lot more possibilities
even within Steam. To get to Desktop mode, you can hold the power
button to get Power options and then go to Desktop. In Desktop mode, you can go back to Gaming
Mode by clicking this icon on the desktop - Return to Gaming Mode. Additionally, you can drag this icon down
to the bottom right of the screen so that you can easily exit to Gaming Mode whenever
you want. The square icon on the bottom right is a “Show
Desktop” button so it’s always easy to get here. This desktop is very much like any other. Some of the file system is soft-locked. You can unlock it, but I won’t get into
that here. You can use the trackpads as a mouse cursor
and click the trrackpad inward for a left-click. A push on the left trackpad is a right-click. You can also press Steam button plus X button
to bring up a virtual keyboard. If you close the Steam app, the navigation
controls change quite a bit. Most importantly, the right trigger becomes
your left click and the left trigger becomes your right click; and now there’s no virtual
keyboard. This will resume back to normal once you open
Steam back up. You can also modify your Desktop controls
to do things like can easily scroll up and down or alt+tab or to set a back button. Moskeeto has a great video on how to make
desktop navigation better so I’ll link that below. I highly recommend that if you’re going
to be on the desktop often with no actual mouse and keyboard. If you want an app, the first place you should
look is in the Discover store. Let’s talk about a couple of apps. ProtonUp-Qt is probably the first app to install. This will let you install and use different
versions of Proton. This is helpful in case you have a game that’s
not working and another version of Proton has better compatibility. You can always refer to ProtonDB to see what
version of Proton people are using for better compatibility on any given game. You can also install an app named Chiaki and
that will let you remote play to your PS4 or PS5. I also recommend AnyDesk and Warpinator. AnyDesk is an easy way to remote into the
Steam Deck from another computer. You can use Steam Link if you prefer but I
do like using AnyDesk for remoting. And Warpinator is an easy way to transfer
files between Steam Deck and another computer. And while we’re here, let’s talk about
how to play non-Steam games using launchers like Heroic, and Lutris. So while in Desktop mode, you can install
launchers for your non-Steam games. I have games from Humble, Epic Game Store,
Amazon Prime, GOG, Battle.net, Origin, and even Ubisoft. So yeah, basically everything. And if you’re new to PC gaming, you should
know that Epic gives out at least one free game per week and Amazon includes several
games per month if you’re already an Amazon Prime subscriber. So these are sort of free games you should
be claiming if you have any interest in playing them. As for playing them on the Steam Deck, I haven’t
tried all of these stores on my Steam Deck yet but I can tell you what I have tried. You can use Lutris for all of these, I’m
pretty sure; so it’s a good choice if you only want to install one extra application. But I personally really like Heroic Game Launcher
for games from the Epic Games Store and GOG so I have that installed too. Both Heroic and Lutris are on the Discover
store. Heroic Game Launcher is nice because game
installation and configuration is easier to me, and it has support for GOG Cloud Saves. In Heroic Game Launcher, I just log in to
my Epic or GOG account. The games will populate and I choose what
I want to install. These games do require a quick configuration
before you play so hover over the game, click the Cog to select a Wine version. Just choose the latest or, once again, visit
ProtonDB if you’re not sure where to start. If you want to add these games to Steam, I
recommend BoilR which is also on the Discover store. When you first start BoilR, go into the settings
to enable the launchers you want to use. While you’re here, you can also add a SteamGridDB
API Key to make sure you get cover art for your non-Steam games. You can save using the button at the bottom
and then you go back to the Import Games tab. Select the games you want to import and click
the button at the bottom. You’ll need to restart Steam to see the
games added. Then there’s Lutris. I use Lutris for everything other than Epic
and GOG. Most specifically, I use it for Amazon Prime
games since I’m already subscribed to Amazon Prime - that’s a bunch of included games
per month. So install Lutris from the Discover store. When you launch it, click the Hamburger menu
on the top right and then click Preferences. From here, go to Sources. You can enable Amazon and/or Humble. I’ll show you the process for Amazon. Enable that and close this window. Then log into Amazon Prime Gaming by clicking
the little person icon. Once you’re logged in, all your games will
populate and you can install an individual game. When you go to install one, just check the
“Create steam shortcut” box so that this game shows up in Steam. Don’t forget, you’ll need to restart Steam
to see the game added. And that’s basically it. Once again, if a game doesn’t work out of
the box, check ProtonDB to see if anyone else got it working. No Steam Deck feature really exemplifies the
“open, but make it streamlined” quality of the Deck like the ability to add your own
custom boot video. In order to do this, go back to the Discover
store and download the Steam Deck Repo Manager, click Install, and then Launch. Find the video you want to download. In this case, I’m going to use the Handheld
History animation which is the most downloaded and rightfully so. You’ll see why soon. After downloading that, it tells you to do
a reboot. By the way, all it did was place the video
file in the folder that Valve has made for these custom boot videos. Now all you have to do is restart the Steam
Deck. It takes a few moments to boot up so I’m
going to cut straight to the magic. How awesome is that? No wonder that’s the most popular boot video. I’m going to have my own boot video soon
so watch out for that! Playing the Steam Deck docked has really improved
significantly since launch. It used to be that the screen would hesitate
to turn back on, it used to be that you couldn’t raise the rendering resolution from 720p and
it used to be that you couldn’t lower the output resolution from the native resolution
of the display you were using. Now all of the above are fixed. I increasingly find myself playing more docked
gameplay with the Steam Deck. It’s not comparable to a PS5 or even a PS4
Pro. But it’s much better than the Switch and
closer to a base PS4, I’d say. Games like Cyberpunk and Spider-Man are quite
playable even though I usually end up playing indie games like Haak, Ghost Song, and Neon
White. If you are also playing indies, you may want
to increase the rendering resolution for crisper visuals. By the way, when I’m distinguishing between
rendering resolution and output resolution here’s what I mean. Rendering resolution is the resolution that
the game will render at, internally. The lower that resolution, the faster it can
perform. The output resolution is the resolution of
the signal sent from the Steam Deck to the TV. So if it’s rendering at 720 but outputting
at 4k, the Steam Deck will upscale before sending a signal to the TV. By default, games will launch in 720p and
you might have a game that can handle rendering at a higher resolution without sacrificing
too much performance. To increase the resolution, there are two
steps. First, go to the Game’s settings on Steam
and set the max resolution to the highest you want to try. Then from inside the game, set the actual
resolution to be what you want. For indies like Ori: Will of the Wisps, I
recommend trying 1440p or 1080p. Similar advice follows for older games like
Dishonored. The other thing I mentioned was lowering the
output resolution. This is helpful because you might have a 4k
display but you might also have a dock that’s only capable of 4k30. That means that at a 4k resolution, it can
only handle a max of 30fps. If you want to be able to run at 60fps, you’ll
need to lower the output resolution. Now the Steam Deck should do this automatically
but if you want to check just go to the Steam Deck’s settings and in the Display sub-menu,
check the resolution and you can even lower it to 1440p or whatever you prefer. By the way, if you don’t know what docking
station to buy, I highly recommend buying either the official Valve dock or one of the
ones from JSAUX. As I mentioned previously, it appears the
Valve dock has better overall compatibility but JSAUX offers a better bargain overall. As usual, I have a link in my Description
so check that out. I’ve already done several videos on emulating
on the Steam Deck. The two that I’m going to recommend here
is my latest EmuDeck video for a quick overview and then my Emulation Mega Guide if you want
to get deep on some specifics. Technically there are a few ways to set up
emulation but the number one way I suggest to do it is via an application called EmuDeck. Because of the way EmuDeck works, it’s not
available as a flatpak so you can’t just download it from the Discover store. Still, it’s the easiest experience I’ve
ever had when it comes to downloading, installing, and configuring this many emulators at once. You may encounter some trickiness but again,
I recommend watching my two emulation videos for more information. And the final topic to touch on would be troubleshooting
and repairs. If you are facing a significant issue the
first thing you’ll want to do is submit a support request to Steam. They will give you things to try at home before
talking about any kind of RMA. If you do need a repair, Valve does have repair
centers open. That means that in addition to being able
to take care of your repair for issues under warranty, Valve can also do out-of-warranty
repairs at a fee. If you’re looking to do your own repair
and you need a Steam Deck part, check out iFixIt as they have spare Steam Deck parts. There’s a lot of stuff that’s not in stock
but check to see if they have what you need. Finally if you are troubleshooting or installing
another OS, you should know that you can get to the BIOS menu by holding the Volume+ as
you power on the Steam Deck. By the way, if you do need a dual boot guide,
I have not done one but there’s a channel called Deck Wizard that has a wonderful step-by-step
guide. As usual, a link will be in the description. So that’s my starter guide folks. That was a lot to cover and I plan on doing
some more in-depth videos on some of the topics that deserve a deep dive like Plugin Loaders
so make sure you’re subscribed to catch those. Of course, there are some Decksperts watching
this video, so if I missed anything, make sure to comment below. And overall, the Steam Deck community is amazing
and there are a lot of awesome people making videos and writing articles so make sure to
seek those out too. Feel free to revisit the chapters in this
video when you’re stuck and make sure to let me know what topics deserve a deep dive. If you want more ideas on what to do with
your Steam Deck, check out my How-To Guides playlist. Deck Gang out. Goodbye.
