So this thing was announced yesterday. People are really excited. I was excited too, but, being me, I actually did something called “thinking” and “researching”, and… yeah, this thing… I’m not excited anymore.

So I’m gonna rant a bit about this thing. Because dammit, I don’t rant enough.

What is it?

So this was just announced by Valve. I was actually surprised this was official, at first I thought it was some weird third-party thing. It’s a computer, but it’s portable and it’s made for playing games. When you get it, it has SteamOS installed, which is basically Steam Big Picture. If you want, you can actually install Windows on this, so you can run whatever you want on there, not just Steam. Epic Game Store, GOG, various cloud gaming services and so on. This is advertised as a POWERFUL console that plays anything in your Steam library (though I hear SteamOS doesn’t actually support every Steam game, so installing Windows might be a must in some cases).

There’s 3 models. First one has 64GB of slow storage, at 400$. Middle one has 256GB of NVME storage which will be faster because of the NVME, at 530$ (which… is a bit too much of a price increase). The final one has a 512GB faster NVME, and the screen has “premium etched anti-glare” glass, this one being 650$. The base model is absolutely 0% worth even thinking about. The mid model is a bit better because you’ll actually have some amount of storage space, but if you want to install more than one new-ish game alongside the windows install you’ll need to get the most expensive model. And there’s some extra costs, I’ll talk about that later.

Basically, play PC games on the go. Install Windows to get access to a pile more stuff. Fun. Overall it does seem interesting on the surface, but you gotta dig a bit.

The controls look awful

Just look at this thing. The placement of the sticks compared to the d-pad and the buttons are just obviously awkward. Those huge useless touchpads are an eyesore and certainly won’t feel good to use. There’s grip buttons which… I’ll have to hold off on an opinion of those until I’d actually try them (which I won’t), but I feel like they’d be in the way. Thankfully the grip overall seems fine minus the buttons, there’s some bulk to it so it should feel okay. I dunno about weight though. I really just wanted to point out that the button/d-pad/stick placements are pretty bad.

I think what sucks most about this design is that the controllers aren’t detachable. I love the joy-cons because they’re strangely comfy and I can just take them off of the console and use them really well separately for the most part. So when the Steam Deck stick inevitably drift (which is a pretty common thing with modern controllers, with both the Switch and PS5 having really awful drift issues), that’s the whole thing you need to send to Valve to get it fixed, if you don’t have that expertise yourself.

HOWEVER… This is a PC. And you get the PC advantage of being able to hook up whatever you want there. The ports on the console itself are lacking, you’ll need to get a USB-C hub to get access to USB (and HDMI so you don’t actually need the dock for TV usage), but once you have that, you should be able to hook up whatever controllers you want to the thing. And it does support bluetooth so that should allow you to use most modern controllers wirelessly as well.

Oh and there’s no kickstand on the thing, so tabletop mode will be awkward if you don’t have the dock.

The hardware is the big oof

I looked at what Valve purports the APU in this thing to be if you look at the Tech Specs page. I cross-referenced current Zen 2 APUs with what they have listed in their tech specs, and found that it is indeed custom, but there’s one that stands out as being almost identical. That would be the Ryzen 3 4300GE, the lowest-end Zen 2 APU. For those who don’t know, APUs are CPUs that also have separate cores for graphic processing, so they’re not as good as CPUs at CPU tasks, and aren’t as good as dedicated GPUs for graphical tasks. Basically you can run a computer, including the graphics, from a single chip instead of having a separate graphic card. Using an APU obviously makes sense for a portable device of course, the form factor almost requires it. A dedicated GPU alongside a better CPU would take both more space and more power and generate more heat. The problem here is that the APU in question is pretty meh for gaming. And since the Steam Deck IS A PC and can be used AS A PC, that’s how I have to judge it.

The Ryzen 3 4300GE features 4 cores of “CPU” with 6 graphical cores. The Steam Deck’s APU is a bit different in 2 key areas. First, it can’t be overclocked (though I’m sure some tech-y people will do it anyways). Second, the graphical part has 8 cores rather than 6, but they’re slower cores. This likely ends up running a little bit better than the base 4300GE because of the extra graphical cores (though not as well as the overclocked 4300GE), and the screen being at a weird 800p resolution (what even is that?) means it doesn’t have to push 1080p visuals so you’ll have some extra frames on the Steam Deck.

So since that’s essentially the APU we have, looking at benchmarks for the 4300GE should be a pretty good indication of how games will run on this machine. Do NOT take this as fact, because there’s some factors that could provide both better or worse performance. This is just to have an idea of how it’ll perform.

I’ve seen people comparing it to a PS4 power-wise, so let’s look at a PS4 game first. Days Gone recently got released on PC and the benchmarks I found included it. The base PS4 runs Days Gone at a pretty smooth 30fps. The 4300GE runs Days Gone at a crispy 25fps, on 1080p low settings (not sure if low settings are better or worse than the PS4’s settings). So the 4300GE gets outperformed by the PS4. FF15 on PS4 runs at a pretty smooth 30fps. The 4300GE runs it at an unstable 22-27fps, on 1080p Lite settings. So the 4300GE gets outperformed again, and runs it pretty pathetically.

A more egregious one for me was looking at the performance of Apex Legends. This is a high-intensity, fast FPS, where every frame matters. Anything below 60fps gives you a massive disadvantage, so playing it on anything less than a mid-level PC is probably not recommended if you want to be competitive. The 4300GE’s performance in Apex Legends is a pretty awful, unstable, 25-45fps (it varies WILDLY as you play). So if you want to be competitive in Apex, the Steam Deck probably won’t be the platform to go to, even if you hook it up to a proper mouse and keyboard setup for decent controls.

I’ve looked at several games that people benchmarked and it was a lot of the same. Witcher 3 at 1080p low settings, 20fps (that’s less than the Switch, though the graphics are probably better even on low settings). Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p low settings, 23fps. Far Cry 5 at 1080p low settings, 25fps. Warzone at 1080p low settings, 40fps (very unstable). COD:CW at 1080p low settings, 60fps which drops down to 40 if you’re moving and shooting. Dyson Sphere Program (I don’t know what this game is) at 1080p low settings, 25fps. And something I notice for some of these benchmarks is somewhat stuttery visuals, due to the 1% lows and 0.1% lows being really bad on a lot of these games.

If you plan on only playing potato games like Fortnite, Rainbow 6 Siege and CSGO, yeah the Steam Deck will be fine since you barely need power at all to run those at a huge framerate (the 4300GE runs CSGO at around 90fps, though there’s gonna be some stutter here and there), and there’s some games that run decently on the setup like Forza Horizon 4 largely keeping at around 60fps (though that’s the overclocked 4300GE). But for a lot of these games, you’re looking at 1080p low settings games running at 30fps or less. I will note some of the numbers I found were using the 4300GE but overclocked it, but I mostly avoided mentioning those because I wanted to keep to the CPU clock of the Steam Deck. For example the overclocked 4300GE runs Death Stranding at 1080p medium settings at ~33fps.

The performance isn’t awful, but it’s not great either, especially at the price. To be clear… basically you’re getting Switch-level framerate, on a system that should be much better. You do get slightly better graphics, but the framerate you’ll get is not ideal. And again, to be clear, these numbers may not be fully accurate on the Steam Deck for a variety of factors. The lower resolution (800p compared to 1080p), the cooling solution, the 2 extra cores, I can’t predict the full effect of this. This is kind of the baseline performance that we can expect based on what that APU can do, but it could definitely be a bit better, and it could definitely be worse.

Cooling is a concern. That’s not because the 4300GE is a hot APU. It’s not. In a PC tower with decent airflow and even a pretty minimal air cooler, it runs pretty cold as far as CPUs go. However, this is the form factor of a Switch, which hardly has airflow. The Switch has a good cooling solution for what’s in it but it does get pretty hot (won’t overheat, generally, but it’ll still be hot), and the hardware that’s in the Switch isn’t as strong as the hardware of the Steam Deck. This thing might run pretty hot. This is why I’m not taking some of the benchmark numbers I saw as fact, there may be thermal throttling here. And obviously overclocking is gonna be a no-go, more than likely.

And battery life… Valve says 2-8 hours. When you get battery life estimates from hardware manufacturers, the trick is to take their lowest estimate and assume that’s as much as you’re getting for the most part. This is always the case for Nintendo and Sony handhelds. I figure that 8 hours is on very-not-demanding games, or web browsing maybe. Anything even mildly demanding, 2 hours is what you’re looking at here. Not great. I’d definitely hope for a better battery solution, though you can use power banks if you have any to extend the battery life, so it’s not a huge complaint.

What to buy

I almost called this a scam. I mean, you’re getting almost what you’re advertised. You see the image, that’s what you’re getting. The tech specs have no reason to be inaccurate, especially since they’re clear on it being the APU I cross-referenced based on the numbers they’re giving. But they’re advertising a POWERFUL machine, which is not what you’re getting, as I noted. They do say exactly what you’re getting, but they’re being a bit misleading in their wording. Calling it “powerful” is just not cutting it for me. But anyways, there’s 3 versions of it, which one is actually worth getting?

The 400$ base version only has 64GB of space. If you want to use the Steam Deck to its full potential, you want to install Windows on it. And if you do that on this version, that’s ~30GB of space taken by Window and all the crap it installs, alone. That gives you at most half the storage to install games, and modern PC games tend to take a decent amount of space, so hopefully you don’t want more than one game installed at a time, because with the small amount of space here, you won’t. Base model is a no-go. Do not get this version.

The 530$ version has not only more space at 256GB, but it’s an NVME drive so it will boot faster, load games faster and overall just be better for non-gaming tasks. So this is the minimum version you should get if you want this. Even after installing Windows you could totally load up Steam and Epic and GOG and emulators, and even a few games for each. Though that depends what you want to play on it, of course, if you want to play Warzone on it that’s pretty much gonna be the only thing on the machine. I’d largely recommend against getting this version.

The 650$ version has the most space at 512GB, and it’s an even faster NVME drive (so even faster booting and loading and such), and at that point space becomes a lot less of a concern. Just uninstall games you’re done with and clean up the drive from time to time, but you’ll be able to have several things installed at once without issue. Pretty much, the most expensive version is the one you should go for. Also is has a nicer screen, with it having anti-glare glass. I’d recommend against getting this one, because that price without actually better hardware (minus the NVME drive) is a bit much.

But then there’s the other option: ignore this crap. Honestly, take the money you save from not buying this, and upgrade your PC or build a new one or something. You’ll build something better than the Steam Deck with no issue (by the time these ship out (current reservations will go out in Q3 next year so LOL) GPU prices might finally calm down). Then, you probably have a smartphone, most people do now. Buy a controller for it, install Steam Link, and BAM, portable PC gaming. If you wanted to use it as an emulator machine… there’s other options. You can mod other platforms for example. Heck, not even joking, I’ve heard good things about some of the shitty Switch rip-off emulator handhelds you can find on aliexpress, and those are cheap… you might have to experiment to find which specific ones aren’t shit, but they exist. No need to over-spend on a meh portable PC to just play a portable emulator.

Another thing you’re not told about upfront is the extra stuff you may need to pay for. That Windows license ain’t free, for example, and you NEED it if you want the versatility the Steam Deck is capable of. Getting an OEM license off amazon will cost you a nice 110-150$ on top of the Steam Deck’s price, so you have to think about that. You can try getting one on some less-than-trustworthy CD key sites for around 40$ too, might not be legitimate though, so do so at your own discretion. So for the system to suck less (because SteamOS is linux-based and, as such, actually won’t run some Steam games), that 650$ model is suddenly 760$. If you want to play this on a TV or monitor, you’re gonna need to get a USB-C hub that has an HDMI port in it, or the not-included dock (which we don’t know the cost of yet). So this is at least 25$ extra. I think it may be possible to just use a USB-C cable, I’m not sure (and of course your TV/monitor would need to have that port). If you want to plug in a mouse and keyboard, you need that USB-C hub or dock as well… so the dock or hub is basically a requirement. Also this thing has no kickstand, not even a really shitty one like the Switch. You need the dock for it to stand, or get a third-party accessory. So if you want to do tabletop mode, that’s an extra cost. And you can totally use Micro SD cards for extra storage, that’s an extra cost if you want that, though that goes without saying. You WILL need that if you get the base model… so don’t get the base model.

Overall thoughts

This thing isn’t really good. It’s, like, almost there. Put an APU in there that’s better and keep the price as-is, and you might have something really good to go with (though yes a better APU means cooling becomes more of an issue, of course). There’s plenty of advantages to it as well. The fact that you can uninstall the SteamOS and put in Windows is huge because you can literally use it as a normal PC and use all marketplaces and browsers and emulators and apps and stuff. It’s super fucking versatile. With Steam and Epic and GOG, it basically has, as it’s library, every noteworthy PC game ever (though yes, without playing with a keyboard+mouse setup some games won’t be playable on it). It has so many really interesting games to play that might be pretty interesting to play on the go.

But it’s basically all potential, ruined by a meh APU. I’d expect a portable PC to perform better than the Switch, not gonna lie, and that’s not what we’re getting with this which is pretty unfortunate.

This is something I was really excited about until I looked up the specs and compared with equivalent hardware. I was sure I’d reserve one. But… yeah I’ll skip this. I’m just looking at things objectively here, and objectively… I’ll have to wait for the Steam Deck 2, maybe at that point they’ll put some decent horsepower in it (and maybe improve on the design, that button placement and useless touch pads and grip buttons and lack of detachable wireless controllers is something that needs to be addressed). If they don’t abandon it like every other Steam attempt at hardware, of course. That’s also quite likely.

Honestly none of these portable PCs so far (this, Aya Neo, GPD Win 3) have been at all impressive for me. I really really love this idea of portable PCs to play using my Steam account, but it needs decent power (not talking about a 300fps monster like my PC, just… decent) and it needs to not be ridiculously overpriced. The GPD Win 3 seems to be the best of the bunch but it is pretty expensive, if it were a bit weaker but half the price I’d like that.