I remember playing SkiFree on my mom's computer when I was too sick to go to school. Most people play games on their computers using the platform created by Valve, and I have amassed a vast library of games on Steam. Valve is the creator of hits like Half-Life and Portal. When Valve announced the Steam Deck last year, I was interested in it. It is the potential kick I needed to get through my Steam queue.
I have been playing games on my couch, in bed, in my car, and on a plane using the steam deck for several weeks. When I first heard about the device, it was bulky and the layout of the controls wasn't very intuitive, attributes you don't really want in a handheld console.
It feels like Valve could have used a few more weeks to polish the experience. The Deck was supposed to launch in December, but has already been delayed once. The console has been in development for four years, so it is not surprising to see last-minute issues to correct. Since I received it, Valve has pushed system updates every single day, meaning I have had to retest certain functions over and over again. After launch, Valve will push out frequent updates to squash bugs.
That is both good and bad. It shows how committed Valve is to the Steam Deck. This thing has a lot of potential and I am happy to see it.
The machine is bulky.
The top-end Steam Deck retails for $659 and includes a 512-gigabyte solid-state drive. You can pay as little as $399 for the Deck, but you will only get 64 gigabytes of storage. You will probably want to pay for the 512-gigabyte version of the game if it is more than 50 to 70 gigabytes.
The MicroSD card slot is my favorite feature. Once the MicroSDs are formatted to jump in and play a different game, you can swap them out for a whole lot more storage. I bought a 1 Terabyte card and it holds all of the games I wanted to download, including Mass Effect, ARK: Survival Evolved, and Cyberpunk 2077.
Death Stranding takes about 19 seconds to load up on the internal SSD and 30 seconds on the MicroSD, though this does fluctuate. I haven't noticed any major differences so far. The results were the same when I tried this with both 32 and 128-gigabyte SanDisk Extreme MicroSD cards. If you are worried about Valve's low storage options, you can count on MicroSD cards.
The steam deck is bulky but not as heavy as I had thought. For reference, the Nintendo Switch is The curved back of the console makes it easier to hold the weight in your hands. It feels weird to hold a wide handheld, but you get used to it. It was literally. The first time I played, my right hand was numb. It hasn't happened since I mix in a few breaks and stretch my hands out.
The layout of the buttons was my biggest concern since you cannot detach the controllers like you can on the Switch. The Deck's buttons and thumb sticks sit horizontally next to their respective thumb sticks, a design iterated on over decades of testing to reduce strain. They are high enough to make room for two trackpads on each side of the console. There are paddles on the back of the console that remind me of the Xbox Elite controller.
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