Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Is Steam Deck Really Worth it? – My Experience So Far…”.
Thanks nerdwallet for sponsoring a portion of this video, what’s going on guys, travis consumer and today we are finally checking out this guy, the steam deck. So i’m going to be giving you guys my thoughts, my review, i guess, but we’re going to be doing this one a little bit differently since this is, i don’t want to say, complicated, but this is a device with a lot of layers. There’S a lot of different things you can do with this, so today we’re going to be tackling this from a perspective of just the average consumer, just a regular person who wants to pick this up play some games kind of like they would do with the nintendo Switch i’m not gon na lie. I got ta familiarize myself with all the different things that you can do with this guy. So for now, let’s talk about it from the average consumer’s perspective, but before we get started, we have to give a huge shout out to the sponsor of this portion of the video nerd wallet.
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Nerd wallet i’ll, of course, have everything linked down below in the description, so you guys can check them out but again shout out to nerdwallet for sponsoring this portion of the video. But now let’s talk about the steam deck, so this is a very interesting device. The second they announced it, it was really intriguing. The possibilities seemed endless for those of you who aren’t too familiar with the pc side of gaming.
Steam is a platform that has access to a huge, huge library of games, and the idea is to be able to access those games on a portable device instead of something like your pc, so portable pc gaming, that’s kind of the way you need to think about This device now when i first saw it, i was like whoa, that’s a that’s a pretty gigantic looking handheld, but i’m not gon na lie. Ergonomically feels pretty good. I’Ve been using this for a while and playing on. It is actually really comfortable so check it out. You’Ve got your d-pad all the way in the left corner, which looks odd same with your. What do you call these kevin? What do you call these buttons over here? This is your buttons, okay, you’re, not wrong.
You got your main buttons in the top left and right corners and, while that may look a bit odd when you’ve, when you’re actually holding it in your hand, it actually feels pretty comfortable got the joysticks on the insides, and you even have these touch pads, which Work as buttons as well like your d-pads, but they also are touch sensitive, so it gives room for some extra controls. I don’t have much of a problem with them, but i also haven’t used them much in gaming. Just yet, and you’ve also got like your steam button over here, which gives you your steam menu, and this gives you your quick settings and up here you have like your share button menu button. Those are more so for in-game.
You got your volume buttons up top power button over here uh. One thing i do wish the power button wasn’t recessed. I wish it was just like the volume buttons where it kind of protrudes just a little bit. Making it easy to tap also got your headphone jack over here, your usb c port, up top, which you can use to charge it and, interestingly enough, you guys you have a slot for a micro sd card. So you get some expandable storage right here.
So you can of course, add some extra space, so you can add more games. I have the 512 model, so i haven’t needed to use this just yet, but i’m sure, as i add more titles, bigger titles i’ll eventually be tapping into that, you’ve also got a few triggers in the back kind of like what you see with pro controllers. Here, i think that’s pretty good forward thinking uh for those of us who are used to playing with this style of play where you map certain buttons in the back kind of covers all the bases right here, uh overall i like the layout. I think it feels comfortable. Would i change anything, probably not i’m good with this.
Yes, and that is, i guess, another input as well. You’Ve got your touchscreen pretty responsive. I don’t have a much of a problem with the touchscreen, it’s not bad.
Now this is a 1280 by 800 resolution display which on paper, does not sound great in terms of resolution, but it is a 7 inch display. So i think it’s fine, even for those more graphic intensive games. I haven’t been sitting here like man. This is a poor graphical experience because of it actually looks pretty solid.
Now this is a 60 hertz display and i don’t know pc gamers i’d be like yo. I need 144 or nothing, but if you’re considering what we’re dealing with here, a portable pc, handheld system, uh, i think 60 passes. I think it’s fine now, like i said, even though this thing looks large, i feel like the buttons are in a comfortable spot.
I do feel like with the way the sides kind of taper downward. It feels pretty comfortable in the palm. The palms rest very nicely on this. I can play this thing for a long period of time. My hands don’t cramp up. I find the nintendo switch less comfortable than i do this uh without like an additional grip or something. This feels, surprisingly good in the hand, but what’s it like to actually, you know go around with it right like i said this is a really big device and it’s an expensive device. So for me personally, i’m not just throwing this thing in my backpack i’m going to protect it.
You guys know me, i use cases so i’ve been using the included case that i bought with my system. Listen guys! This is a chunky, it’s a chunky case. So you know it offers all the protection that you would want, of course, but this is the way this is designed. It’S not really meant to go, i i’d say in a backpack, you could do it i’d. Do it.
Oh, what do you see how big this is like? It’S, not even everything. I don’t even have my headphones, but you know you can get it in here. It’S fine, but it’s it does take up a lot of space. So while i can do it carl, it’s not fun, i do all that to show you guys you can make it work, but it is a bit cumbersome even for a guy like me who likes to pack a lot. This is a lot now.
Let’S talk about games right, that’s the most important thing about this: here’s what i have to say about gaming! So i have a few games in my steam library, not a not a ton of games, but i’ve got a few games and it was to my disappointment to see that so many of my games weren’t compatible. So i would highly suggest if you have games in your steam library – and you want to you – want to pick this up, so you can play those games. Look into what’s steam deck compatible. First, what’s nice is that games can be updated in the future so that you can go ahead and add it to the steam deck um.
As of right now, you might want to check the status of where those games are and it’s kind of, a mixed bag. Sometimes there are games that say: hey we’re, not gon na work like this game. It says it’s unsupported and unsupported basically means it’s not officially supported by the steam deck like valve, hasn’t certified that it’s good for the system, but sometimes you just got ta download it and see because this is not officially supported. But when i actually tried it, it worked completely fine. So it’s you don’t know what you’ll get with your library all the time, but what’s nice is that valve does have a great on deck section. So if you do go into the store, you can find a list of games that are 100 compatible.
You’Ll know for sure that they work, but for the games that it does run. How well does it run them right? Well, i’ve been playing, tells of horizon the most and it’s been smooth. It’S been a really smooth experience. I’Ve been having a really good time until i decided to take it on a trip. I was on a plane like oh i’m, about to about to get it in. I got all this time.
I’M gon na do me play my game. Put a bunch of hours in it was like a five hour flight and then all of a sudden, while i’m playing the frames, the frames dropped down to a crawl. I had to be getting like one frame per second turned off: the system tried to reboot it and it basically bricked on me. I don’t know what happened, how it happened.
It just went and gave me this black screen, and i was super frustrated because i had to wait until i got to my hotel do a bunch of research and then i got into the world of really tinkering with this thing in order to make it work. Luckily, i was able to fix it, but i had to download some recovery tools from valve’s website. Add an external hard drive to this thing and then re-image it which is like basically like reformatting it like three different times to get it to work. So it’s safe to say i was really disappointed by my first experience traveling with this thing, because it just bricked on me out of nowhere um, i don’t even know what really caused it.
Am i scarred a bit. I am because, whenever the battery drops down to like 15, i start seeing those frame drops, i start seeing performance take a hit a bit and then i’m like oh man, it’s about to brick on me again and i’m gon na have to reimage this thing. Like three times so, i’m a little scarred wasn’t crazy about that experience, but i think we’re cool for right now and speaking of dropping under 15 battery life battery life is trash. It’S it’s bad.
You guys, i feel most comfortable playing. If i’m close to an outlet, is it because i’m playing a graphic intensive game like tales of a rise, possibly i’m sure, if you’re playing something that’s not as graphic intensive you’ll get much longer battery life. But the whole idea here is to be able to play those. You know great titles portably right um.
So if that’s your cup of tea do not expect your battery life. The battery life on this is trash. It’S trash, it’s worse than the nintendo switch.
So just expect to keep that charger nearby. That is the best advice i can give you now. One thing i will say is that, while playing a lot of times, the fans will kick up based on some things that i’ve seen online, some people steam decks, run hotter than others. So that’s a whole nother thing that i i don’t even want to know about. I don’t want to know that mine doesn’t run the way some others do.
I don’t need that in my life, but apparently quality varies. So that’s a thing too. So from a software perspective i feel like valve did a pretty good job with this. It’S really easy to navigate easy to find the games that you might want to play on this.
I have no real problems with the software now in terms of ease of use. It could be a little bit difficult for folks who encounter issues i feel like for just finding games downloading them playing on. It might be pretty fine, it’s pretty self-explanatory, but if you try to get into the other world where you might even want to install windows and all that kind of stuff, you might need to watch a couple tutorials to make sure you do it right. So, overall, do i recommend the steam deck.
I’Ve had some real hiccups. With this thing, i don’t know if it’s completely recommendable for everyone. I feel like you have to understand that this basically is a handheld pc and you’ve got to be willing to learn how to tinker with it a little bit to get the most out of it. So would i recommend this for, like my little cousin or maybe someone who isn’t really tech savvy? Probably not, i feel like if you are a pc gamer chances are you’ll, probably just find picking this up and being able to use this with no problem, but we’re going to talk about having experience and just all the stuff that you can actually do with this Thing from adding windows getting into emulation to get the most out of this and all the other stuff in another video that video i feel like is for the person who’s.
Maybe a little bit more experienced more experienced than myself, because now i’m gon na go. Do the research learn what i can do with this and learn how to maximize my use out of it? Do another video for those people who are a bit more experienced we’re going to see how this fares for that crowd? Did i have some growing pains with this absolutely but uh, it’s allowing me to play games that i normally didn’t have the time to play like sitting down and had the time to play, so i feel really good about it, but that about wraps it up. For this video guys, hopefully you enjoyed it if you did be the cool guy or girl that gives this video a thumbs up.
If your experience was a little bit different, maybe you’re not a big pc guy and you picked this up and you’ve been having a great time with it. Let me know with a comment down below: if you have the steam deck, i want to know what your experience has been like, but till then it’s your average consumer peace carl. Would you buy it? No, why not? I was like playstation 5., it’s easy! That’S it! That’S my system, i get it .