Just to keep all my ramblings away from the main Gaming dudes.
I’m using this thing as a freakin’ computer! With a mouse and keyboard! That’s bonkers!
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Linux is beautiful too. A desktiop with nothing on it. That’s heaven
Hi Bam, I’m really happy for you with your new console! Couple of noob questions as I’m thinking of maybe adding for one for Christmas for myself…
Where is the best place to get one from?
How easy is it to decide which variant you need?
How easy are they to use for someone who has always been a console guy would you reckon? I don’t even have a steam account, let alone know how to optimise my teraflops per gigahertz or what have you.
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Ill be right with you when i get back from my walk
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No hurry, have a great walk!
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Hey there, fellow Steamdeck owner!
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Have you discovered that you can easily change the video that plays when the Deck gets turned on? I downloaded a PS1 one from here and they do Gameboy ones, Nintendo ones, Sega ones, all sorts!
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I went with the cheapest possible one and then bought a massive SSD to put inside it. Isn’t it shockingly easy to do?! I think my 1TB drive cost like £60 or something.
Good console.
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I ordered mine directly from Steam/Valve, ordered it Friday and it arrived on Wednesday, shipped from The Netherlands no issue.
£349.00 - LCD with 256gb storage, £479.00 - OLED with 512gb storage, £569.00 - OLED 1tb of storage.
I went for the entry level model, I have no doubt that the OLED screen looks amazing and is the more premium model as it has better battery life but the innards are essentially the same so performance, controls and features are all the same. The LCD screen is not amazing but it is decent, you won’t really notice the downgrade in game apart from the blacks will not be perfect black more of a dark grey. Storage also isn’t a huge issue as @chanticleer says you can easily replace the internal drive or just pop a micro SD card in the slot and run games from there, which is what I’ve done as I have a 512gb card from my Switch which I’ll now use in the deck. Pleeeenty of space imo.
I’d say they’ve done a very good job of masking the fact that it’s essentially a PC from people who aren’t interested in faffing around. The UI is clean and responsive, although still overwhelming/powerful (depending how you look at it) compared to a switch, you can tinker with a lot from within the Steam Deck’s default “gaming mode”. If you want to use it as a PC or get into the weeds with modding/hacking/whatever then you can boot into “Desktop mode” by holding down the power button and selecting it from the menu.
Not every game is going to run on the Deck as Steam has PC games from the past 30 years on there although the nature of it being an open platform means they let you try if you want to. They do a good job of surfacing “hey this won’t work right as the screen resolution is not supported/requires mouse and keyboard/flat out does not run on Steamdeck” sort of stuff.
If you stay within the bounds of Steam’s Verified games you should be fine.
As you can see here on mine there’s a tab on the store that is explicitly for games Valve recommends runs great on the Deck, you can think of this as the console equivalent, though from my experience the ones I’ve tried that are not “verified” work just fine. The main reason so far is that some of my older games require me to pull up the onscreen keyboard to type in text fields in the save menu for example. That is apparently enough for them not to verify it on deck so they are being very strict with what they consider the perfect deck experience.
The best thing about the device for me is there is tonnes of community help and it’s baked right into the device in a way that Nintendo/Sony/MS never would, for example every game you can load up custom controller profiles that the community on steam think are the best button mappings, there are plugins that can allow you to see how long the game takes to beat, what issues it might have on steamdeck, clearing up junk files on your deck, changing the UI and the artwork, basically anything can be customised and there’s a good effort to make that simple and quick as opposed to your classic tinkering around for ages in subfolders on a PC.
Obviously I’ve only had it a day so I can’t speak to the long term durability but it feels solidly built so should last me a decade +
Lastly battery life is not great on AAA games so be aware that on the base model if you’re giong to play Red Dead Redemption 2/God of War/Elden Ring and whatnot expect to get 90 minutes without needing a charge.
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That’s super helpful, thank you so much!
also these games will go with you to any PC you have in the future (so long as Valve continues to exist) so the longevity of your purchases is probably way better than any console
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What are the audio options like? Bluetooth? Audio jack? I find it annoying that I can’t Bluetooth to my switch.
yeah bluetooth and 3.5mm jack
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if your’e worried about tinkering in games these days it’s usually as simple as if it doesn’t seem to be running well enough go into the graphics menu and drop it from high to medium or medium to low preset and see. You really don’t have to get into the weeds with stuff unless you want to.
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Yeah I really don’t want to get involved in all that stuff, which is why I’ve always been a console guy.
Would be interested in how the screen visibility is in different light conditions: does it show things well/clearly if there’s direct light) sunlight etc?
yeah that’s the achilles heel with the LCD to be completely honest, I’m sure the OLED would be much much better on that front jugding from my Switch OLED. Certainly bright enough for indoor use in daylight but in direct sun I think you would probably struggle
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do you have the OG switch?
Always thought a steam deck was a virtual thing but it turns out it’s a real physical console that lives in your hand
I’d love to have a go on one
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you can have mine if you want
Aww no, it seems like you really like it
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lol yeah I do
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