I have recently bought a Steam Deck LCD 256GB on a promo Valve has had and have been using it for a few weeks. I want to start by giving you a perspective on how cheap it actually was.
The price for the 256GB LCD Steam Deck is usually 419 Euros. It is a good deal, the Steam Deck is a good console, but you can get it for cheaper.
Right now the refurbished 256GB LCD is out of stock. Usually you can buy it for 339 Euros, a much better deal, right?
Well, I don't want to brag, but... Ok I lie, yes, I do want to brag. During the sale I snatched a brand new one for 335,20 Euros! A new Deck! For cheaper than a refurbished one!
I have been playing with it for a few weeks so I do have some initial impressions to share. But first I thank Valve for including a great carrying case. If you take into account that 335 Euros (and 20 cents) was the price for the Steam Deck with a case doesn't the deal get even sweeter?! Any other handheld console you buy will require you to get out of your way and spend at least 20 more euros for a carrying case!
The console is not the most powerful out there. It is a custom chip by AMD that draw up to 15W. 4 CPU cores, 8GPU cores and 16GB of RAM. The screen resolution is 1280x800, not great but works, it came out during the Switch (one) era of handhelds so it competes and beats the first Switch.
I won't get too deeply into gaming performance but it has managed to run all games I want at a mix of low-medium settings. Some games like Titanfall and Minecraft run at a locked 60fps on max settings, others like Hell Let Loose and Red Dead Redemption 2 run at 30 to 40 FPS on all low settings with no to quality FSR (resolution scaling). Cyberpunk 2077 is where the hardware shows its limitation, often the performance, even with FSR performance enabled, drops below 30FPS and it is noticeable. I can play and enjoy but it is not a great experience.
When I got the console booting it was hard. It took me 2, almost 3 days to get it working. There was some sort of bug where it would update forever. I won't get into that but it was not smooth and I considered returning it. After managing to boot the next day for some reason the Steam Deck reset and I lost everything and had to install, update and download EVERYTHING again.
Thinking back I think I should have returned it? Maybe my unit is defective and this issue can come back in the future to bite me? For now it is working, after the initial headache and bugs while updating/installing it everything is smooth but I am uncertain about the future.
I love Linux. I have used it on my personal computers, my servers and for work for years. Now Linux beats Windows for gaming.
If you search on the internet you will find plenty of posts about how Linux makes games run 10 to 20% better than Windows. That is why Valve chose a variation of Arch Linux to build its mobile OS.
For handhelds Windows sucks particularly more than for regular desktops. The controls don't work well, you have to configure a lot of stuff and you lose performance.
The Steam Deck comes with Linux so you don't have to worry about anything. Every single game I have downloaded just runs by simply pressing play. Steam got really good at making Windows games just work on Linux, they take care of all compatility things, you just worry about downloading and pressing play.
Even with the compatibility layers it still runs 10 to 20% better than Windows, so that is an absolute victory for Linux. No competition. Linux is better than Windows for games and that is it, there is not much else to talk about in that regard.
The deck is super comfortable to hold, lightweight, and has great battery life. The performance is good enough to play anything I want and for the price I paid (and even the regular price) nothing else that runs what it can is cheaper than the Deck.
The second cheapest after the Steam Deck is the Switch 2 but they can't compare. The Switch 2 doesn't run the my Steam library and Nintendo games + subscription is yet another cost to take into account, not worth it, specially with such a great deal for the deck.
The Deck is not my only handheld, I also have a Legion Go S. It also runs Steam OS (Linux! I love Linux and Linux loves me back!) because why would someone run Windows on a handheld? Why suffer when you can just use a gaming Linux distro where everything just works out of the box and works well?
The Legion Go S, despite running the same OS, did not have any problems booting up. It was straight forward, just turn it on, install an update, download games and play. It was smooth. Funny how it was smoother than the Steam Deck on the first install and update because Valve makes the operating system for both but the it was bugged on Valve's hardware... Anyways...
The Legion Go S is better in every aspect, except for the lack of a trackpad, it should be illegal to call that little square a trackpad, it looks like a fingerprint scanner and should have been one, but it is not, which makes it double useless.
I will make another post about the Legion Go S.
It has 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, 8 CPU cores, 12GPU cores, a 1920x1200 LCD screen with higher brightness and better colors and hall effect analog thumbsticks, it is better on paper... But the Deck... The deck is 100g lighter and doesn't make much noise. The deck is much more comfortable to hold. The deck is... Look...
The Legion Go S feels like a handheld computer, it is powerful enough to run very well pretty much anything I throw at it at higher settings and on Full HD, but the Deck feels like a proper handheld console! Not a computer, but a gaming console!
The Legion costs more than double, it performs more than double, it is more in every aspect (except the damn trackpad!) but still I play with the Deck often. For less than half the price I think that makes the Deck a winner in terms of cost benefit. If a product competes by itself (without taking price into account) with something so much more expensive and powerful but it is cheaper then it is clearly the winner, the cheaper product wins.
As people say on the internet, if you don't know what handheld to buy, just buy a Steam Deck!
