Steam Deck

The Steam Deck is a x86-based handheld gaming console that runs Steam OS in order to play games primarily hosted on the Steam software store.

I received my Steam Deck on the ninth of September in 2022 after placing my reservation way back in February. It arrived in the 64GB flavour as I had a spare 512GB SSD from my recently-upgraded Surface Laptop Studio. The laptop happened to use a 2230 SSD; amazing! It also turned out to be a blessing as, at the current point in time, the Steam Deck's firmware doesn't have full dualboot capabilities. It was due to be released alongside Steam OS 3, but that isn't available at the moment. What that means is that a typical user is restricted to choose between Steam OS and Windows as operating systems. I decided to use my time with the preinstalled OS as a means to demo its functionality out.

Software

Desktop Mode

What a buggy train wreck this is.

Steam OS is a serving of Arch Linux which autoboots to a built-in UI for the Steam Launcher. It is meant to be used as a bridge between PC gaming within a handheld form factor, a means to offer a handheld console-like experience for running Steam games. And... only Steam games...

It is completely possible to add non-Steam games to the Steam library. Therein lies the majority of the problems I've had with this band-aid solution Valve adopted to transform PC hardware into a console experience.

Not many versions of software support Linux natively. The ones that do often have compatibility issues or different featuresets entirely. Proton, a compatibility layer for Windows applications to run within a GNU/Linux OS installation, has been employed to full this gap. However, the user only ever interacts with it via the desktop mode of Steam OS, which drops you into a KDE Plasma 5 desktop where you have almost full-reign over the system. Within a desktop, it sure would be nice to have easy access to a touch keyboard on this handheld device...

Access to your keyboard is locked behind a button combo. The software keyboard itself is also poor; I found myself double or triple tapping on keys just to get it to register once. The UI doesn't always shift up, so you don't know what you're typing in a lot of scenarios. There were situations where I'd need a physical keyboard to escape full screen modes of some applications. In short, the desktop mode was an abnormally poor experience, partially in part of the nature of GNU/Linux based OSes. However, that, in addition to the PC's form factor, worked directly against each other.

This desktop, as it comes, it not suitable for general use without external hardware such as a physical keyboard and mouse. At this point in time, there are no drivers available that better utilise the hardware under Steam OS's desktop mode.

Steam OS

Desktop mode is all but unusable. Moving on, I attempted to use the device as intended, primarily within the Steam portion of the system. I considered myself to own a decent amount of Steam games; over $1.5k worth. The amount of incompatibilities and games that straight-up don't support the hardware made me feel as if I just made my account that day and was just starting out with my library. Some games with anti-cheat will refuse to function. Others have varying degrees of issues such as glitches. For this reason, the Steam OS community has opted to create a database of games and list their experience with Proton alongside them. This is known as ProtonDB, which is a great resource given that only a fraction of my games were verified for functionality by Valve themselves. The front page denotes that 20% of software tested is unsupported as of January 2024, down from 40% when this article was originally written.

For the games that worked, they worked as expected with no issues. Framerates were impressive, but that's also in part to the low resolution 720p (1280x800px 16:10) display. Most of the 3D games I ran all worked at least at 30fps.

That's nice. When I buy a PC for gaming, I primarily use them for emulation. This is not different from the Surface Laptop I bought for Wii U emulation or the desktop I have to do 4K Switch emulation. Luckily, I'm not the first. EmuDeck exists for people like me. It's software that can download and compile emulators into one place for easy management. It also configures the emulators to a degree.

The button layout within the Steam UI defaults to an Xbox scheme, where the bottom face button is the confirmation button instead of the rightmost button. As a Nintendo user, this is hellish, as button prompts won't match up to what muscle memory dictates.

There's still no way to swap this system-wide within Steam OS itself, and is entirely a game-by-game scenario.

This example of the lack of customisability in Steam OS in conjunction with its rampant incompatibilities essentially ensured that no trace of it would exist on my 512GB drive. There's nothing Steam OS can do that Steam Big Picture mode in Windows can't.

Windows 11

After Windows 11 was installed, I have never looked back for a millisecond. I have full functionality with all of my games and usual software. Valve released a minimum amount of drivers, but these ensure almost full functionality of the handheld PC as a standalone workstation. I can install the desktop version of Steam and run its games [including the ones with compatibility issues under Steam OS] completely fine. So really, what am I missing?

This driver makes navigating Windows 11 as natural as using a laptop, thanks to the capacitive analog buttons and the touchpads.

For the controller inputs, Valve does not have an official solution for applications to recognise the controller as a gamepad. However, there are open-source solutions for this. I have personally employed this Steam Deck Windows Controller Driver that seamlessly allows for use of the trackpads and buttons between Windows UI and as a gamepad in games almost perfectly.

I never actually went through the process the process of installing Windows 11 onto this unit. The SSD from my Surface laptop happened to have a working, non-encrypted installation of Windows 11 that worked without any fighting, out of the box. After the Valve drivers were installed, all that was left for me to do was to install/customise my gamepad drivers, update the OS, and remove the previously-installed bloat that I won't be needing on a handheld PC, like Photoshop. Weirdly, Wi-Fi worked straight out of the box, unlike the what the Valve website implies. I've not had to connect the system to Ethernet at any point.

I am more than satisfied with the device as it is running now. I have not had a single incompatibility with the software I've wanted to run; I'm able to run Epic Games Store software without fumbling with Proton or third-party launchers; all of my emulators are available and run almost better than the base console in terms of performance. I've even run Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in online multiplayer mode comfortably. I have a badge in the taskbar to bring up the keyboard if the UI doesn't launch it automatically. The typing experience is significantly better, though not perfect.

The Steam Deck Windows Controller Driver lets you map the buttons to keyboard keys, which I've used for both escape and the Windows key, eliminating any need for an external keyboard to bail me out. With these configurations, my Steam Deck is a fully independent and functional handheld Windows PC.

Paired with a kickstand and a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo, this may very well replace my desktop and laptop. If I were stuck with only Steam OS, I would have sold this machine.

Hardware

No contest in visuals nor size. Switch OLED wins today's battle.

Physically, the Steam Deck is pretty objectively clunky and massive. I've been able to overlook this aspect due to its functionality and power. Due to the size, I've never run into thermal throttling issues as the system is able to sufficiently cool itself in any scenario I've put it through. I'm no fan of the lacklustre display that depressingly lacks in color reproduction and viewing angles, and this is the aspect of the Deck that I'm most critical of. The Switch OLED, with its minimal bezels and perfect color reproduction, is my current baseline in tablet display quality.

The Deck... its work-grade LCD is winning no rewards. This is the basic model display which reportedly has a slightly lower color range, but as shown, the system's poor backlight stabs itself in the back, hard. With that said, it does get sufficiently bright, so there won't be many issues using it during the day or night.

The shell is definitely solid and will withstand drops and other impact. As for holding the device, it is a pretty hefty machine. At times, I've definitely found myself accidentally pressing onto the back buttons just to get a grip of the device. Also due to its size and shape, transporting this device without a case is without question. It's great that the device is shipped not in a box, but an entire hard shell carrying case.

Repairs

My personal Steam Deck requires a MAX77961 chip replacement as well as trace repair, since the chip straight-up blew up in my unit. It happened during a reshell, which otherwise went well. Luckily the reshell went well, as well as the DeckHD installation. I just can't witness it for myself since the MAX77961 handles power management, so my Deck can't even turn on aymore.

These labelless buttons will alleviate the gripes I have with the reversed button layout.

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Conclusion

This isn't a perfect device, and I am primarily waiting on an OLED screen upgrade to make itself known some time in the future. Custom hardware like the shell from eXtremeRate have been confirmed, and so have buttons from coloredcontrollers [Pictured].

I can't wait to see this device used to its full potential and I'm glad I didn't end up selling it due to mere software issues.