My First Experience with the Steam Deck: A Mixed Bag

I recently had the opportunity to try out the Steam Deck, a handheld PC designed for playing games on the go. Unfortunately, my experience was marred by a black screen that left me feeling frustrated and disappointed. I was super excited to try out the device, but it just bricked on me out of nowhere. I was forced to wait until I got to my hotel to do some research and then spend a bunch of time tinkering with the thing in order to make it work. Luckily, I was able to fix it, but not before downloading recovery tools from Valve's website and performing multiple re-images to get it working again.

The experience left me feeling scarred, especially since I started noticing performance issues when my battery dropped below 15%. The frame drops were noticeable, and I found myself thinking "oh man, it's about to brick on me again." I'm a bit of a PC gamer, so the idea of being able to play graphically intensive games like Tales of Arise on the go was really appealing. Unfortunately, the battery life is terrible – it's worse than the Nintendo Switch, and I found myself having to keep my charger nearby just to get through a few hours of gaming.

One thing that did surprise me was how hot the device gets when playing demanding games. In some cases, the fans will kick up based on what I've seen online, suggesting that quality varies between devices. I don't want to know about it, and I'm glad that my experience hasn't been affected by this issue. However, it's clear that some people may encounter issues with temperature and fan performance.

From a software perspective, Valve did a good job with the Steam Deck's user interface. It's easy to navigate, and finding games is straightforward. The system is also relatively self-explanatory, making it accessible to new users. However, if you try to get into more advanced features like installing Windows or using emulators, you may need to watch some tutorials to make sure you do things correctly.

So, would I recommend the Steam Deck? My experience has been mixed, and I'm not sure if it's completely recommendable for everyone. As a PC gamer, I think you'll find it easy to use and get started with, but you'll also need to be willing to learn how to tinker with the device in order to get the most out of it. If you're looking for a handheld PC that can handle demanding games, this might be a good option – but if you're not tech-savvy, you may want to think twice.

The Steam Deck is a powerful device that allows you to play games on the go, and I'm excited to learn more about it. In my next video, I'll dive deeper into the software features of the device, including how to install Windows and use emulators to get the most out of your experience. If you have a Steam Deck, I'd love to hear about your experiences with it – are you having any issues or successes? Let me know in the comments below!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthanks 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 gonna lie i gotta 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 i know for a lot of us having a good savings account is a big deal i know that's especially true for you guys since we all know tech ain't cheap but sometimes you don't know which accounts are the best for your needs and that's where nerd wallet comes in so just like we do on the channel to let you know which tech might be the best for you nerdwallet does the same with high yield savings accounts so you can find one with an interest rate that you're happy with and i'm not talking interest rates from your everyday savings accounts these will actually let your money earn more than the traditional account i like to think my viewers are smarter than the average person so if you're looking to make equally smart decisions compare and find the smartest credit cards or those high-yield savings accounts definitely check out 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gotta 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 itthanks 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 gonna lie i gotta 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 i know for a lot of us having a good savings account is a big deal i know that's especially true for you guys since we all know tech ain't cheap but sometimes you don't know which accounts are the best for your needs and that's where nerd wallet comes in so just like we do on the channel to let you know which tech might be the best for you nerdwallet does the same with high yield savings accounts so you can find one with an interest rate that you're happy with and i'm not talking interest rates from your everyday savings accounts these will actually let your money earn more than the traditional account i like to think my viewers are smarter than the average person so if you're looking to make equally smart decisions compare and find the smartest credit cards or those high-yield savings accounts definitely check out 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gotta 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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\n"