Optionally, what would you have wanted to know before you bought one?
Thanks!
Edit: Hey, thank you all very very much for your comments and suggestions, I really appreciate. I will most likely save up more and get the 1TB OLED model rather than the LCD model I was initially planning on. A couple of reasons for that, one, I am not good with electronics and I’d probably screw something up putting a new storage drive in. And two this thing will most likely be a permanent replacement for my old gaming laptop, which at this point is more than 10 years old, and seems to be on its last legs (I installed Linux on it, which was a struggle, but that is probably on me rather than Linux or the computer being at fault).
Anyway, I appreciate everyone’s responses and thanks for helping a gal out!
You may become spoiled by the Steam Deck’s excellent controls, such that no gamepad currently for sale will ever come close.
For me and Rimworld, I became dependent on the four back buttons, and now I can’t stand playing it on desktop with a controller because no controller on the market offers four additional buttons that work like that (as far as I know)
I may catch some flack for this, but I was and still am a big fan of the original steam controller, so much so that I still use it on my aging gaming laptop. How do the steam deck controls and buttons compare to the steam controller?
I have an original Steam Controller as well. The Steam Deck is a lot better in my opinion because I can choose between thumbstick or thumbpad on each side, whereas with the old controller you have to live with the touchpads and the single stick on the right.
The build quality feels a bit better too, and the haptics a bit more refined.
Really, the Deck offers everything the Controller did aside from form factor. And maybe if some folks vastly prefer the bigger touchpads, that might possibly be a downside, but I doubt that’d be the case for most
The 8BitDo Ultimate 2 Wireless has 2 back buttons and two extra shoulders, and it has full Steam Input support (must update the Controller and Dongle firmware and hold the B button when turning on)
No trackpads though…
It’s possible to use your steam deck as a controller on your pc. You can use steam link, but if your WiFi isn’t very good there will be problems, or virtualhere. I haven’t tried virtualhere but I have heard that it is good, unfortunately, the only good guide I found for it is on reddit :(
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/v22ddf/guide_how_to_use_your_deck_as_a_steam_input/
i really wanna get into rimworld on steamdeck so much. i played it on pc but never took the plunge back in on deck. What config are you using? Id love to get everything right so i can get hooked as fast as possible :3
Totally stock controls, dozens of hours. Works really really well!
It works so good I even use it as a portable Linux machine. Just for internet etc.
Yeah! I use mine as a media device sometimes. With the first party dock. And with KDE Connect on my phone already since I use KDE on both my work and personal machines, adding the Steam Deck to that works so incredibly well for remote input
and now I can’t stand playing it on desktop with a controller
I mean… Yeah. Why would you not use a mouse for Rimworld on desktop?
I do a lot of couch gaming. I do have a wired lapboard for keyboard and mouse but it’s nice relaxing with a gamepad too
I don’t know Rimworld but the GuliKit KK3 MAX has 4 back buttons and works great with the steam deck
From what I’m reading they are not independent buttons though. They can only be copies of other buttons. Utterly useless.
Playing rimworld on the deck seems tricky. Feels like a game where I want the precision of a mouse. What actions have you set your back buttons to?
I haven’t played Rimworld on it, but I have played other mouse-dependent games, and it’s amazing how quickly you can adapt to the thumbpads. They actually work very well for fine mouse control.
L4/R4: slow down or speedup time R5: move screen faster, also hold down to select multiple L5: something to do with the touchscreen but I don’t use it
Get the 1TB with the etched screen if you’re considering it. It looks fantastic, and works great when not indoors. Like, in a car or airplane for example. I was debating between it and the 512GB because I often prefer a glossy screen, but the effect is small yet mighty.
Also, get Moonlight on your Steam Deck and Apollo on your PC. You can stream games from your PC with Apollo to Moonlight at much higher quality than Steam’s own streaming system. I send 1440p to my deck so after chroma subsampling I get fully defined 1280x720 pixels. It looks significantly better than just sending 1280x720 or 1280x800 to the Deck.
And finally, pick up Geometry Wars 3. It’s like the perfect pick-up-and-put-down game for the Deck.
I got the 512gb and upgraded the SDD to 2tb. I learned about this screen after! If I had known I would have gone that route instead.
You can get an etched glass screen protector that emulates the effect. The one I got isn’t as good as the base screen (which is essentially perfect), it has a very small amount of color scrambling if you look really closely due to the nature of the etching, but it’s not bad and I got used to it quickly.
I got the entry model and an etched screen protector and upgraded to a 1tb ssd and saved myself a couple hundred. This was pre OLED though so YMMV
The OLED has a bunch of upgrades over the base model that aren’t obvious. It’s really worth the splurge.
Other than that, don’t get too caught up in the hyperbole and expect to play things mostly up to the PS3/360 generation AAA and indies. Newer games will run sometimes but it’s often not worth the hassle. There are exceptions, particularly in games that have specific issues in other platforms, but… you know, it’s a 3 year old handheld, keep your expectations in check.
Don’t buy it for AAA games. It thrives on AA and indie games, but AAA games will suck the battery like crazy (on the original model, at least) and you’ll be lucky to get 60 frames on any AAA games from the last few years.
modern AAA but ps4 era works like 60-70% of the time and older than that youre usually goated too!
30fps locked is perfectly reasonable for many games. I seriously don’t understand some people’s obsession with needing 60fps or higher at all times. A Steam Deck is a compromise on many levels, it’s not a gaming PC, so adjusting expectations is perfectly reasonable.
To each their own. Personally, I can’t stomach it for 3D games. 2D / isometric is a different story, but most games from those perspectives don’t have the hardware requirements of 3D games.
I dunno, I grew up on the earliest 3D consoles and just never have had an issue with 30fps. Sure, when available, 60fps is great, but even that’s the limits of what I’ll push a device to do. People that push for 144fps+ for a turn-based game just confuse me honestly.
Tons of PS1 games ran at 60fps
(Sorry for the reddit link):
https://www.reddit.com/r/psx/comments/16onvdj/which_psx_games_ran_at_60_fps/
Depends on the game. For example, on the Xbox Series X or PS5, I often elect for better graphics (raytracing, 4K, etc) at 30fps, especially with third-person titles where you can really appreciate the scenery. God of War Ragnarok in 4K with raytracing is a sight to behold on a big OLED TV. But some games (most first person titles, racing games, and perhaps surprisingly Diablo 4) I prefer the higher framerate.
If I were a squijillionaire, I’d have a 5090 and get both framerate and fidelity. But I am not. I am a humble console peasant taking his earliest steps in the PC gaming world.
Yeah, hard disagree.
With the 30fps being good enough?
Yeah
Finding a good USB-C Hub for your needs is a good thing to know before purchasing if you want it docked at all. Whether the official steam deck dock suits your needs, or a third-party hub on any tech website you can find.
Oh that’s a good point! I hadn’t thought about playing docked. Thank you!
Do you have one that lasted more than 18 months?
I have a discontinued verbatim usb 3 port x 3, ethernet, headphone, HDMI, MicroSD/SD Card usb-c input hub that has been rock solid and hasn’t died on me yet. there are a ton verbatim branded hubs but not this particular model unfortunately.
Simple stuff to prevent you from panicking early on:
- Say you’re playing docked with an external controller and you put your steam deck to sleep while playing a a game. After it wakes up the next time you use it, 99% of the time, the game won’t respond to the controller input anymore. You need to reorder the controllers in the menu and it’ll come good again. Only in extremely rare cases have I had to restart the game.
- Less so now, but early on there were definitely cases where I had to power cycle the steam deck because something went wrong. Even if the screen is black for a bit, just give it some time.
- There’s years of tips/tricks or software mods that people have collected that may/may not be relevant anymore. Just play it for a week or two before tweaking things. For instance, I love Decky loader for adding things like protondb support and how long to beat times to the library… but you definitely don’t need it.
If you do decide to play docked, Sony Dualshock 4 or Dualsense 5 controllers are great because they have touchpads. This makes them super useful in games with half implemented controller support (i.e. the games work fine but the menu controls still use a mouse) or using desktop mode from the couch. They also have gyro support too.
I haven’t had many issues with PC usb-c hubs… but all hubs are created differently. If you care about 4K output, VRR, HDR or anything above basic usage, I found a dedicated jsaux docking station works pretty well (note: I never considered the official dock as it was only officially available in my country well after I already had a steam deck).
If you’re comfortable changing an m.2 SSD in a standard laptop, then working on the steam deck isn’t much different. My advice is buying the lowest storage SD and then buying an aftermarket 2TB.
But also be aware that gameplay on SD cards is also very performative, so you may not need that extra storage anyway.
Just be aware that you need a 2230 M.2, not the much more common 2280 size.
Don’t set charge limits, because odds are you can never get back to 100% battery charging ever again due to bugs (at best I get 99% now.)
Don’t expect your games to “just work” - even if they have a green check box, expect to have to troubleshoot like you always have, almost certainly even more.
Memorize Steam button + X to open the keyboard, you’re gonna need it.
Don’t go anywhere without a charger unless you’re playing a game that you know will last long on battery.
The more games you install, the more games you won’t play. A giant SD card and a giant SSD just means you have more shit that you look at and feel guilty before you power it off because you can’t decide what to play anyway (and that’s a big factor for why our backlogs have been growing all this time even before getting a deck. Too many games, not enough time and motivation.)
Know that a USB-C dock is gonna have issues. You’re gonna have to fuck with audio output settings each and every time you connect it, and sometimes when you resume it from sleep. It will not always gracefully recover when you unplug it either.
There’s gonna be a refresh to the hardware before you know it, and you’re gonna want that version.
It’s too big to fit in your pocket, you basically need a backpack for it.
You won’t need any kind of case, but a glass screen protector is a good idea.
The bottom plastic near the screws will crack from stress. It happens even moreso on the transparent model.
Expect very poor control schemes on any game that is not incredibly popular with official gamepad support. If you are patient and can setup the keybinds yourself you can do OK- but some games just don’t work well with a controller, period.
Sleep mode drains battery like a motherfucker. It seemed great on release, but now I lose what feels like 20% a day, or more. This means the deck you set down Sunday night will almost certainly be dead by Saturday when you get back to it.
Games that have poor save schemes like what has been found in older RPGs can be frustrating to deal with, because if you pause your session and come back to it… you still need to grind to the next save point or lose your progress. This is in a non-issue in tons of games, but can be an issue sometimes.
Some games sync in-game settings to the cloud, and overwrite what you have on your deck or PC depending on what was last used.
If you use an SD card, sometimes it can take minutes to hours to provision the storage necessary to begin downloading and installing the game on said SD card. This is after it’s properly formatted, no matter how many games have been installed and how much space is free. It’s a great mystery.
There’s hotkey combinations to turn up and down brightness. If you hold down the steam key long enough, it shows you many more of those combinations to do many more useful things.
When you’re changing settings in a game, you can specify changing global settings or hit a slider to make it per-game profile. It’s almost always better to change per-game profiles so your settings can be custom per game.
You can remote play on a ps5 incredibly well. Chiaki4deck is great.
Your GOG, Epic and other games do not work easily natively. There are fan projects like Heroic Games Launcher to have this functionality, but they aren’t native to the system.
It’s very easy to not have any of your steam playtime register with steam.
It’s very easy for your steam playtime to suddenly display dozens or hundreds of hours from sleep mode being utilized in some games.
That’s just what I can mention from personal experience.
I have never had that issue with a sd card on either of my steam decks. That’s weird and shouldn’t happen.
I also haven’t had to do any trouble shooting for games with a green good to go.
But mostly that SD thing, something else must be an issue. I install only to the SD card, does that matter?
The SD card thing was something I definitely saw a ton of others with the issue of when I knew the exact description of what was happening, but it’s been a few months.
When you go to install a game it does something to the effect of “provisioning space for game” and it was taking me minutes to hours before it would install some games. Installing to the onboard nvme ssd would get very fast rates that were bottlenecked by wifi attenuation mostly, and said provisioning time is instant.
The card I have is this PNY one. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DM9NNMND So far i’m using only maybe 15% of the space. I noticed it when I first got it and was downloading a couple of games, not even necessarily large ones.
Yeah I haven’t had that problem at all and I have put some pretty big games on them. I think the latest one I am using is a SanDisk 1TB Extreme microSDXC UHS
Apparently the issue is games that have very many tiny files that aren’t all inside of one larger file. This is a thread that sounds about right: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/tcomih/reserving_space_extremely_slow_on_sd_card/
So if a game is like GW2 and has nothing but a couple of extramassive files, it’s very fast to allocate the space. If tha game has hundreds of thousands of very tiny files, it takes forever to allocate the space.
That is really interesting, Thanks!
Hard disagree on the case. The Steam Deck is not made to be dropped like your average Game Boy. Far too expensive, and far too fragile.
I have dropped it exactly 1 time, 2 feet off a couch and I had to replace both triggers on one side.
The cases are not expensive. I had the Spigen one for $15 and now I have the Jsaux Mod Case.
The Jsaux Mod Case which is nice because it allows you to slide a battery pack on, and it has a hard screen cover so you can slap it in a bag, and not worry.
But I mostly use it because it allows me to use a lanyard.
Also I’ve never seen the bottom crack “from stress” but again I only dropped it once.
Side note:
It is a heavy device, it is giving me cubital tunnel syndrome from propping my elbows on tables. No idea what to do about it other than play less.
With the case I just figure the one it comes with is the best case i’ve ever seen offered first party at no extra cost.
If you drop the thing though outside of said carrying case it’s toast. it’s way too big and heavy to survive any real fall. I’d be very surprised if even some kind of otterbox would work (but I admit i’ve never looked into it.)
Ah okay there’s 2 meanings of cases.
There is one for travel - that it comes with.
But there’s one that fits more like an otter box, an in-use case. The Spigen, Jsaux and KillSwitch all do that. Though I’m sure there are rip-offs all over Amazon by now for all 3.
With how big the thing is I really don’t want more bulk on it. My brother in law had a deck until his girlfriend knocked it off a table and destroyed the shell…
My wife has already knocked mine off a couch and caused the case to un-clip in one spot, but it could have very easily been much worse.
I get wanting a case on the thing lol
Buy a nice case for transporting it. I like my JSAUX case, it has alot more storage space then the stock case.
Or don’t, because the original one is perfectly fine.
I never understood what people have against it.
The original one is solid, but takes up a lot of space. Which is fine in a car boot or something, but may be a problem in a backpack.
Having said that, if you’re putting it in a bag where it won’t be rattling around, protecting the front is probably enough, so a half-case which covers the front will probably suffice.
I have nothing against the original, I used it for a few months and it works great. I switched to a different case when I got a different charger and other cords to use with the external battery I added to the ‘entourage’ for the Deck. The original case didn’t have the room for all that, and things like earbuds didn’t like to stay in the elastic hollow of the original. Wasn’t a big deal, but it was a noticeable change after switching cases.
OG case ftw.
Other cases seem like a waste of money.
Okay, thank you! If I can ask a dumb question, what else do you take with you when you bring your steamdeck places?
I bring the power brick, a USB-C dongle, HDMI cable and one or two controllers.
That way I can plug it at my friends or in a hotel etc.
I have a portable USB-C display that I bring sometimes, if for example travelling by train for a longer period.
Not being snarky, but you bring a screen for your device with a screen? Any particular reason?
Haha, yeah I get that.
The screen is a 15" portable, with a much higher resolution. It goes together well with the controllers and a second player :)
Power brick, USB-C cable, external battery, earbud headphones.
Sometimes I also add a folding bluetooth keyboard, mini bluetooth mouse, and USB drives, but that’s only when I’m gonna use the Deck as a computer for 3D modeling or typing tasks.
It comes with a free Portal-universe game that teaches you how all the controls work. It’s fun. Play it immediately. It will teach you that the thumbsticks are capacitive. Turns out that’s a useless feature, so just get some nice thumbstick caps that make them larger, more rubbery, and more comfortable.
I highly recommend a 180° USB-C adapter to use the power cord while playing. It makes the cord angle down instead of up, which feels more natural. Plus, I feel like it would be gentler on the cord and USB-C port if the cord got tugged hard when plugged into an adapter instead of directly into the Steam Deck.
Plus, with a 180° adapter, you can keep the Deck in it’s case while charging. Normally you can’t do this because the top of the Steam Deck faces the hinge of the case. But the adapter fits in the case OK and reroutes the wire downward. It definitely raises the deck up slightly, but you can still zip the case halfway closed. I do this because I live in a very small apartment with a high chance of knocking or spilling something onto the Steam Deck if I were just to leave it laying around.
Fun fact: the touch pads don’t actually click when you press them like a button, but you will swear they do! The haptic feedback mechanism is incredibly good.
Major Overheating Issue
I don’t know how this is not a more widely complained-about problem.
I paired a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller to my deck, played a game, then put the deck in its case while asleep. (You tap the power button and the deck goes to sleep.) Well, apparently, “Wake on Bluetooth” is enabled by default and you can’t turn it off! So, I threw my Nintendo Switch controller in a drawer, and of course a button got hit. It woke up my Steam Deck in it’s case. I had a game running, so the Steam Deck starts rendering the game and creating a lot of heat that is just being circulated within the case by the fan. The Deck got insanely hot!
I noticed it sometime later only because I heard it make a sound. When I took it out, I used my infrared thermometer to measure the back of the deck, and it was over 140° F. Uncomfortable to touch! It would have sat there for hours like that if I hadn’t noticed.
Solution: I had to install the Decky Loader plugin system in order to install a plugin that disables Wake on Bluetooth. I still don’t see any way to disable it without using Decky. Decky is pretty great though, and it has tons of cool plugins. Of course, you could also just turn off Bluetooth before putting this Steam Deck in its case, but if you forget, it’ll be a problem.
You can disable wake from bluetooth in system settings now, and you can even disable it per device.
Also 180 degree USB-C connectors are really nice, but they actually aren’t USB-C spec compatible and can potentially burn up or other issues. Basically when you use a USB-C cord, there’s 3 way communication where the charger and cord both report to the deck what voltages and amperage amounts they support, and then the Deck decides what to charge at. The 180 degree connector isn’t part of this communication, and is invisible to the rest of the system. If it’s not able to support the charge rate of the other devices, it can burn up and potentially destroy your deck and cable.
You can disable wake from bluetooth in system settings now
Good to know!
The JSAUX one is definitely robust enogh to handle Steam Deck charging. Also, I’m pretty sure it has a chip in it. It was advertised as such when I bought it. That means it probably is compliant.
The thing is it can’t actually be compliant, because the spec doesn’t allow all 4 pieces to communicate. The adapter is either passing on the cable’s info (and pretending to be invisible) or it has to overwrite it with its own info.
The adapter could maybe do it safely if it evaluated itself vs the cable, and specifically reported the lowest performance piece to the device, but that would still be a standards violation.
Might be a minority opinion but I think the capacitive thumbsticks are awesome. They have been super handy every time I brew up a controller config that uses the gyro.
Can you give an example of how you use them?
Usually you use them to enable gyro, and automatically disable it when you aren’t touching one of the sticks. Part of this is it lets you set the deck down without the gyro going crazy from movement, but the biggest part is it lets you “reset” your position. When using gyro aiming it’s easy to get the deck turned in an uncomfortable position, and all you have to do is lift your thumbs off the stick for a moment, reposition, and go back to playing.
In comparison, when using gyro aiming on systems without capacitive sticks, you usually need a camera reset button (like Splatoon) or need to make gyro aiming only available when holding down an “aim” button (like LT).
You could also use capacitive sticks to change other controls. Some games have awkward menu controls, especially when using steam input to simulate keyboard keys. In games like this, you can have the controls normal for playing when touching the left thumbstick, but when you swap your thumb to the dpad instead it switches to “menu mode” with different binds to navigate menus easier.
Thanks. I understand better, but I feel like I would just use one of the rear buttons as “disable gyro” if I were to use that kind of setup.
Your last idea is interesting, but again, there are back buttons for thing like that. Also, how are you even hitting the D-pad when your thumb is on the left stick? I don’t see why you would need to change what the D-Pad does based on whether or not your thumb is on the left stick because to hit the D-pad, your thumb is always not on the left stick.
When I played Horizon Zero Dawn, I had gyro activate on left trigger, like you are saying, and it was very nice. I was so used to playing BotW that I couldn’t play any other way.
The dpad wouldn’t need to change based on whether I was touching the stick, it would be more about changing the abxy buttons. If I’m simulating wasd controls for a game, when touching the left stick I would usually want the A button to be space and B to e key, but when navigating menus I want A to be enter and B to be esc.
Ah, gotcha.
I’m not sure what sort of information do you expect… it’s fun? It’s just a portable PC, not much more to it, I love mine.
That’s fair and honestly I don’t know either. I guess maybe I’m just trying to calm any fears that I would regret spending that much?
It has became my main gaming device over time, when my pc broke i took a guest buying it and no regret except maybe not waiting for the Oled version other than that back button suck ( L4-5 and R4-5 ) so i mostly use them for the system zoom which is nice to read small text some game have.
Really good for emulation if that something you want
Ps4 controller work nice with them as a controller when i play docked
That it’s awesome
So I got my steam deck as a late Christmas present and I loved mine. One thing I do in 3D games is set the R5 (right bottom back button) to A so I can play stuff like Deep rock or no man’s sky and be able to jump while still being able to look around
Both the back paddles and the trackpads have so much customization (and the normal buttons if you want) being able to bind them to normal controls like I did with the jumping thing. You can also create menus for the trackpads, I mostly use it on emulators with save/load state, full screen mode, some utilities
You can also make the buttons emulate pc controls, when I was feeling particularly insane I got planetside on my deck and mapped joysticks to WASD and mouse movement and triggers as mouse 1 and 2 with my left trackpad 1-9 for equipment
One thing I like to do in shooters is a half trigger pull only activates the trigger but a full trigger pull does trigger and activates gyro
The only exception is deep rock since right trigger is mine so I have one of the back paddles be a toggle
As far as games go if you stick to verified and playable you’ll have no problem. The playable games sometimes have small issues such as small text (the deck has a built in magnifier) a 16:9 resolution leading to small black bars at the top of the 16:10 screen
You can boot into desktop mode and have a full on desktop environment, not some half desktop but like a full on computer. It does use a Linux system so I can’t really say much about that as I don’t use Linux on my computer. But I did get Emudeck going which has a ton of emulators ready to go and makes it easy to use in game mode (the mode where you’re not in desktop)
If you’re into cosmetics the only way (that I’m aware of) to get the fancy Steam profile stuff and special keyboards is to buy the 1TB version. If you’re interested in customising your Deck with themes, intro videos and the like the 1TB version is the way forward as space gets eaten up quickly.
It’s worth buying a screen protector and a small, fine paintbrush to dust out the grooves and vents.
Enjoy your Deck!
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If that is the case I could very well have misunderstood; my partner bought the 512GB and (as far as I know) didn’t receive the special profile, keyboards or intro video. Maybe they simply haven’t claimed them.
edit: we just checked and they did NOT receive any bonus profile flair, keyboard layouts etc… My original comment seems to be correct.
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The steam deck is somewhat old (2022) and VERY VERY VERY BULKY <-- I have difficulties holding it in my small hands
Go to a store and check out similar products from other brands to see if you like the grip
Also, only buy linux based/ linux compatible consoles
The steam deck is an excellent product, with great repairability, amazing software and the touchpads are a godsend. But if you are never going to use it because of it’s size, alternatives are worth considering
If you decide to go with the deck, buy a silicone case for it. The JSAUX one is great, albeit only available in black as far as I know
