**The Steam Deck: A Game-Changing Gaming Console**

I have all of that to tweak for every game it's really cool now in terms of the overall ergonomics of this device, it's big, it's bigger than a Switch, it's thicker than a Switch, but I think most people are going to love the way this thing feels, not just tolerate it, I think they're actually going to really like it. It takes some time, no doubt, it's not something you pick up out of the box and you're like oh, this is like a super slim, super light package, it ain't that, but it's something that when you play games on it, it just feels right, and I think they did a really good job in terms of the fit and feel of the Steam Deck.

**The Spec Sheet**

Even from day one, the specs of the Steam Deck looked really good on paper, but it was the price point that made it super special - $399 for the base model, and it includes that fantastic case. Lord Gabin truly knows how to appeal to the gamer, but as you climb that product tier, you get more storage, and it's faster storage, but then at the top end, you also get a matte finish on your screen. My device, the review unit, is a 256 gig device, and this thing ran out of space really quickly - like Steam games are big, or some of them can get huge, right, some of them are like 100 gigs, 150 gigs, so these drives can fill up quite easily.

**Upgrades and Customization**

Now, if you want to upgrade the system relatively easily, pop off the back lid, and you have access to the drives. You also have access to the thumbsticks, if there's drift or any kind of issues with any of the modules, actually, it's just a very easily accessed system - you do need to be careful with the plastic tabs, though; it doesn't need a lot of pressure to put the back plate on or to pull it off, so just be gentle with it. And it should be pretty easy to access.

**What You Can Do with the Steam Deck**

Okay, uh, I'm going to wrap up this video with the top IC of like what you can do with the Steam Deck - so the truth is, at this point in time, I've covered so little above of what this thing can actually do, like I've shown you some games, I've shown you some frame rates, but this is capable of so much more. For one, the community that picks this up is going to be huge, absolutely huge - uh, but the other thing is that there's no drivers for this system in Windows right now, like I installed Windows, it's very easy to get Windows onto it, but none of the hardware is functioning properly in Windows; there's no Wi-fi driver, there's no graphics driver, so I wasn't able to test the Steam Deck properly in a Windows environment, but Steam OS is already fantastic.

**The Limitations of the Single USB-C Port**

I do think that if you have like the 64 gig model and you want to put Windows on it, that's going to chew up like half of the drive just from Windows alone, and also I think you lose like the suspend and resume function, the way that Steam OS has it right now, like you can just turn off a game and then pick it back up and play again, you would lose that if you're running this thing in Windows. Also, I forgot to mention this quickly - uh, I tested this thing, and it's kind of weird how fast some games can load off of the micro SD; it's not every game, but some of them are seriously just as fast as the internal drive.

**The Verdict**

This gets uh it's truly my full recommendation. I think there's so much I love about it, and the thing is, I've spent like three weeks with it, I feel like I've just barely scratched the surface of what I want to be able to try and test on this thing; there's just so much to it, I need those Windows drivers. There is one thing though, which kind of bugs me about this system - it's the single USB-C port; this is everything if you're just plugging up power, and that's all you're doing with it; fantastic, but if you want to plug up any kind of peripherals, you want a keyboard, mouse, a display out that's a single port, it can be limiting.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enlet's talk about this thing valve's new steam deck so three weeks ago when I first got it in I was super excited to pop it out of the box and it far exceeded my expectations like I had high expectations for it I knew it would be good but it was just that much better uh the first thing I noticed that when I pulled it out was actually the case this is a extraordinarily high quality Case for something that costs $399 of the base if you think about companies right now in this day and age Tech products when was the last time a company included a high quality Case in a product of this caliber it's just not a thing and so right off the just looking at that you know you're off to a good start okay the first thing I did when I pulled it out was checked out performance and the steam deck gets really good performance it's partially because of the lower resolution screen it's only 1280 by 800 but it's also because of amd's new rdan A2 based GPU and the performance is so good for a $400 machine now not every game runs properly on the system right now some games are optimized yet some games straight up don't even boot but in general you're looking at 60 frames per second or really close to it for even AAA titles most of the benchmarking I was doing here was with low to medium graphic settings but on a 7-in screen it still looks really good now if you take a look at the thermals on it it doesn't run hot it doesn't run loud and the external temperatures are great but I will say that the fans come on more often than I thought they would like even when the system's idle the fans kick in pretty frequently and you would think that if it's not doing anything that the fans could just remain silent but in this current version of the software they kick in pretty often if you run these games at 60 frames per second you're going to chew through battery life really quickly so some of these games can pull the full 25 watts and on a 40w hour battery you're going to drain it in like an hour and a half so to get the best possible battery life you have to cut frame rate and if you run this thing at 30 frames per second you're seeing significantly longer battery life but the thing is a lot of games don't look good at 30 frames per second like some games are really meant to be run at 60 frames per second or as close as possible to 60 so it really depends on the title as well as the visual experience that you want to really gauge how much battery life you're going to get I'd say it's like 3 to 4 hours for the average high-end game title you also get control of TDP as well as like GPU clock speed like there's a whole bunch of stuff you can tweak if you want to get sweaty but battery life I'd say is good if you compare this to like Nintendo switch that can easily get like five six hours on average games it's less than that but I think for what the system's delivering I'm very happy with the battery life the steam deck also FSR support so it can Render games at a lower resolution and then upscale it which gives you better frame rates while extending battery life it's kind of Hit or Miss right now though cuz some games look great on it others less so you can enable it for all the games but I think this is a feature that'll become much better over time as the device rolls out to more developers okay the first game I played on the steam deck was control the performance was really good but I did noticed that the screen felt a little bit muted like the colors just didn't pop the way that I would expect it to like I've seen this level in control I want to say like 50 60 times because I test it often when I do my laptop reviews and it just felt a little dull on this screen the panel does get quite bright and if you play it in the dark you can dim it really aggressively and it's an inexpensive product right $3.99 I can't really complain about this screen but if I'm being objective and I'm looking at this thing as a gaming device and I'm just looking at the colors on the screen it's a little muted also the touchscreen so I've had a couple issues with it the first is that if you poke too quickly it'll skip inputs you have to poke at it quite deliberately but the other thing is the screen protectors I ordered three of them one of them didn't even fit the second one it did fit but the middle era just stopped working like I would poke at it and it would not register any of the inputs the third one did work so I don't know if it's a digitizer thing or it's a software thing that can tweak but the touchcreen isn't the best uh same with the speakers they get loud and the upper frequencies are great but the mids and lows are just not represented properly now when it comes to a gaming device I'm okay with it like a lot of GES for like positional audio and just game sounds upper frequencies are probably the most important for like just like doing the job uh but in terms of like the ambient feel of a game a lot of times it's like midtones and lower frequencies and it's I don't know 3.99 I can't complain but I'm just saying if you wanted great speakers on the steam deck they don't have them okay now I want to move this conversation over to what I think is the most unique part of this product uh it's the controls so I love these controls I really think that this is what separates this product from anything else out there so let's start off with the thumbsticks these are awesome they're responsive they're well positioned easy to replace if it ends up getting drift or just crapping out down the line nice tension on it it's great for so many types of games and I've never used sticks for DOTA before but they did a really good job with them and it's not just the hardware the developers tune the controls a bit and now these sticks can feel so good even in games that are usually played with a mouse now for Shooters what I prer these over like a traditional mouse and keyboard no way and certainly not for any kind of competitive shooter but for sticks on a controller these are truly excellent now the d-pad and the buttons so when I first saw pictures and videos of this product I thought right away that these things were positioned way too close to the edge like way too close to the left Edge for the d-pad and the right Edge for the buttons but holding them they're in a really good position they're comfortable to use for a long period of time and for Platformers they're great but I find that they're not great for f games so I'm someone who spent like 5600 hours playing Street Fighter 4 on different types of controllers like Xbox controllers PlayStation controllers that I've always been comfortable on them but this controller I don't know maybe it's because they're so wide apart like you can't like grip it tight like a regular controller but I could not do like the regular fadc Ultra that I'm used to like this is a move that it takes a little bit of timing and you got to be quick with it but the inputs just weren't picking up I tried for like 20 minutes still couldn't do it okay so there's also these haptic trackpads down here and these are just mini trackpads that have Motors underneath them that give you this tactile response as you slide your finger around and they serve to give you just a better feel of the control or the accuracy of it and I really like them so these are similar in idea to valve's steam controller a little while ago but the haptics in this device were way more powerful it was like very clicky as you moved it around it was like strangely tactile these are more gentle but they still get the job done the faster you slide your finger around the faster you feel that tactile feedback it's really cool and I actually think it'd be neat if laptop companies adopted this tech for their trackpads if steam hasn't patented it but it gives the user this secondary feedback of how much they've moved their cursor by and you you without even looking at the screen right you can just be like okay that was eight clicks or it felt a certain number of clicks and it's a consistent feel every time you use that input so it's good for any kind of RTS games or kind of top view strategy things where you're navigating around it's actually really cool it's just that the haptics are definitely a lot weaker than the Big Boy Controller from a few years ago there's also a gyroscope and this is something that has existed on multiple control mechanisms before it feels okay and you can tweak it a lot in the settings but I've never been drawn to it I've always found them not as precise as I'd want a game controller to be you also get two shoulder butt buttons on each side as well as two back buttons on each side and these buttons are great they're positioned well so that if you want to press them you can but you never accidentally hit them like I never had a single accidental press on the back buttons that says a lot about the kind of design on this thing CU I often smash those things by accident the controls in general are fantastic and because you have full customizability for each game like you can choose whether you want to use the Gyros or the thumb sticks or the directional pad like you have all of that to tweak for every game it's really cool now in terms of the overall ergonomics of this device it's big it's bigger than a switch it's thicker than a switch but I think most people are going to love the way this thing feels not just tolerate it I think they're actually going to really like it it takes some time no doubt it's not something you pick up out of the box you're like oh this is like a super slim super light package it ain't that but it's something that when you play games on it it just feels right and I think they did a really good job in terms of the fit and feel of the steam deck now even from day one the specs of the steam deck looked really good on paper but it was the price point that made it super special $399 for the base model and it includes that fantastic case Lord gabin truly knows how to appeal to the gamer but as you climb that product tier you get more storage and it's faster storage but then at the top end you also get a matte finish on your screen now my device the review unit is a 256 gig device and this thing ran out of space really quickly like Steam games are big or some of them can get huge right some of them are like 100 gigs 150 gigs so these drives can fill up quite easily now if you want to you can upgrade the system relatively easily pop off the back lid and you have access to the drives you also have access to the thumbsticks if you need to replace them if there's drift or any kind of issues with any of the modules actually it's just a very easily accessed system you do need to be careful with the plastic tabs though it doesn't need a lot of pressure to put the back plate on or to pull it off so just be gentle with it and it should be pretty easy to access okay uh I'm going to wrap up this video with the top IC of like what you can do with the steam deck so the truth is at this point in time I've covered so little above of what this thing can actually do like I've shown you some games I've shown you some frame rates but this is capable of so much more for one the community that picks this up it's like the steam deck Community is going to be huge like absolutely huge uh but the other thing is that there's no drivers for this system in Windows right now like I installed Windows it's very easy to get Windows onto it but none of the hard Ware is functioning properly in Windows there's no Wi-fi driver there's no graphics driver so I wasn't able to test the steam deck properly in a Windows environment but Steam OS is already fantastic I do think that if you have like the 64 gig model and you want to put Windows on it that's going to chew up like half of the drive just from Windows alone and also I think you lose like the suspend and resume function the way that Steam OS has it right now like you can just you know turn off a game and then pick it back up and play again you would lose that if you running this thing in win windows so uh I will be testing it in the future it's just that I think there's some very clear advantages to just keeping CMOS on this system it's really good also the SD card forgot to mention this real quickly uh I tested this thing it's kind of weird how fast some games can load off of the micro SD it's not every game but some of them are seriously just as fast as the internal drive and you can install Windows on a Micro SD and use that as like a separate Windows boot drive if you want or you can run a second partition and have both on one system it's a computer you can do whatever you want with it and just play games or you know what you could even use this as like a regular computer you plug it up keyboard mouse do your thing that's the steam deck it's fantastic so this gets uh it's truly my full recommendation I think there's so much I love about it and the thing is I've spent like three weeks with it I feel like I've just barely scratched the surface of what I want to be able to try and test on this thing there's just so much to it I need those windows drivers there is one thing though I will say that kind of bugs me about this system it's the single USBC so this is everything if you're just plugging up power and that's all you're doing with it fantastic but if you want to plug up any kind of peripherals you want a keyboard mouse a display out that's single port it can be limiting okay there you have it steam deck double thumbs up hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it see you guys next timelet's talk about this thing valve's new steam deck so three weeks ago when I first got it in I was super excited to pop it out of the box and it far exceeded my expectations like I had high expectations for it I knew it would be good but it was just that much better uh the first thing I noticed that when I pulled it out was actually the case this is a extraordinarily high quality Case for something that costs $399 of the base if you think about companies right now in this day and age Tech products when was the last time a company included a high quality Case in a product of this caliber it's just not a thing and so right off the just looking at that you know you're off to a good start okay the first thing I did when I pulled it out was checked out performance and the steam deck gets really good performance it's partially because of the lower resolution screen it's only 1280 by 800 but it's also because of amd's new rdan A2 based GPU and the performance is so good for a $400 machine now not every game runs properly on the system right now some games are optimized yet some games straight up don't even boot but in general you're looking at 60 frames per second or really close to it for even AAA titles most of the benchmarking I was doing here was with low to medium graphic settings but on a 7-in screen it still looks really good now if you take a look at the thermals on it it doesn't run hot it doesn't run loud and the external temperatures are great but I will say that the fans come on more often than I thought they would like even when the system's idle the fans kick in pretty frequently and you would think that if it's not doing anything that the fans could just remain silent but in this current version of the software they kick in pretty often if you run these games at 60 frames per second you're going to chew through battery life really quickly so some of these games can pull the full 25 watts and on a 40w hour battery you're going to drain it in like an hour and a half so to get the best possible battery life you have to cut frame rate and if you run this thing at 30 frames per second you're seeing significantly longer battery life but the thing is a lot of games don't look good at 30 frames per second like some games are really meant to be run at 60 frames per second or as close as possible to 60 so it really depends on the title as well as the visual experience that you want to really gauge how much battery life you're going to get I'd say it's like 3 to 4 hours for the average high-end game title you also get control of TDP as well as like GPU clock speed like there's a whole bunch of stuff you can tweak if you want to get sweaty but battery life I'd say is good if you compare this to like Nintendo switch that can easily get like five six hours on average games it's less than that but I think for what the system's delivering I'm very happy with the battery life the steam deck also FSR support so it can Render games at a lower resolution and then upscale it which gives you better frame rates while extending battery life it's kind of Hit or Miss right now though cuz some games look great on it others less so you can enable it for all the games but I think this is a feature that'll become much better over time as the device rolls out to more developers okay the first game I played on the steam deck was control the performance was really good but I did noticed that the screen felt a little bit muted like the colors just didn't pop the way that I would expect it to like I've seen this level in control I want to say like 50 60 times because I test it often when I do my laptop reviews and it just felt a little dull on this screen the panel does get quite bright and if you play it in the dark you can dim it really aggressively and it's an inexpensive product right $3.99 I can't really complain about this screen but if I'm being objective and I'm looking at this thing as a gaming device and I'm just looking at the colors on the screen it's a little muted also the touchscreen so I've had a couple issues with it the first is that if you poke too quickly it'll skip inputs you have to poke at it quite deliberately but the other thing is the screen protectors I ordered three of them one of them didn't even fit the second one it did fit but the middle era just stopped working like I would poke at it and it would not register any of the inputs the third one did work so I don't know if it's a digitizer thing or it's a software thing that can tweak but the touchcreen isn't the best uh same with the speakers they get loud and the upper frequencies are great but the mids and lows are just not represented properly now when it comes to a gaming device I'm okay with it like a lot of GES for like positional audio and just game sounds upper frequencies are probably the most important for like just like doing the job uh but in terms of like the ambient feel of a game a lot of times it's like midtones and lower frequencies and it's I don't know 3.99 I can't complain but I'm just saying if you wanted great speakers on the steam deck they don't have them okay now I want to move this conversation over to what I think is the most unique part of this product uh it's the controls so I love these controls I really think that this is what separates this product from anything else out there so let's start off with the thumbsticks these are awesome they're responsive they're well positioned easy to replace if it ends up getting drift or just crapping out down the line nice tension on it it's great for so many types of games and I've never used sticks for DOTA before but they did a really good job with them and it's not just the hardware the developers tune the controls a bit and now these sticks can feel so good even in games that are usually played with a mouse now for Shooters what I prer these over like a traditional mouse and keyboard no way and certainly not for any kind of competitive shooter but for sticks on a controller these are truly excellent now the d-pad and the buttons so when I first saw pictures and videos of this product I thought right away that these things were positioned way too close to the edge like way too close to the left Edge for the d-pad and the right Edge for the buttons but holding them they're in a really good position they're comfortable to use for a long period of time and for Platformers they're great but I find that they're not great for f games so I'm someone who spent like 5600 hours playing Street Fighter 4 on different types of controllers like Xbox controllers PlayStation controllers that I've always been comfortable on them but this controller I don't know maybe it's because they're so wide apart like you can't like grip it tight like a regular controller but I could not do like the regular fadc Ultra that I'm used to like this is a move that it takes a little bit of timing and you got to be quick with it but the inputs just weren't picking up I tried for like 20 minutes still couldn't do it okay so there's also these haptic trackpads down here and these are just mini trackpads that have Motors underneath them that give you this tactile response as you slide your finger around and they serve to give you just a better feel of the control or the accuracy of it and I really like them so these are similar in idea to valve's steam controller a little while ago but the haptics in this device were way more powerful it was like very clicky as you moved it around it was like strangely tactile these are more gentle but they still get the job done the faster you slide your finger around the faster you feel that tactile feedback it's really cool and I actually think it'd be neat if laptop companies adopted this tech for their trackpads if steam hasn't patented it but it gives the user this secondary feedback of how much they've moved their cursor by and you you without even looking at the screen right you can just be like okay that was eight clicks or it felt a certain number of clicks and it's a consistent feel every time you use that input so it's good for any kind of RTS games or kind of top view strategy things where you're navigating around it's actually really cool it's just that the haptics are definitely a lot weaker than the Big Boy Controller from a few years ago there's also a gyroscope and this is something that has existed on multiple control mechanisms before it feels okay and you can tweak it a lot in the settings but I've never been drawn to it I've always found them not as precise as I'd want a game controller to be you also get two shoulder butt buttons on each side as well as two back buttons on each side and these buttons are great they're positioned well so that if you want to press them you can but you never accidentally hit them like I never had a single accidental press on the back buttons that says a lot about the kind of design on this thing CU I often smash those things by accident the controls in general are fantastic and because you have full customizability for each game like you can choose whether you want to use the Gyros or the thumb sticks or the directional pad like you have all of that to tweak for every game it's really cool now in terms of the overall ergonomics of this device it's big it's bigger than a switch it's thicker than a switch but I think most people are going to love the way this thing feels not just tolerate it I think they're actually going to really like it it takes some time no doubt it's not something you pick up out of the box you're like oh this is like a super slim super light package it ain't that but it's something that when you play games on it it just feels right and I think they did a really good job in terms of the fit and feel of the steam deck now even from day one the specs of the steam deck looked really good on paper but it was the price point that made it super special $399 for the base model and it includes that fantastic case Lord gabin truly knows how to appeal to the gamer but as you climb that product tier you get more storage and it's faster storage but then at the top end you also get a matte finish on your screen now my device the review unit is a 256 gig device and this thing ran out of space really quickly like Steam games are big or some of them can get huge right some of them are like 100 gigs 150 gigs so these drives can fill up quite easily now if you want to you can upgrade the system relatively easily pop off the back lid and you have access to the drives you also have access to the thumbsticks if you need to replace them if there's drift or any kind of issues with any of the modules actually it's just a very easily accessed system you do need to be careful with the plastic tabs though it doesn't need a lot of pressure to put the back plate on or to pull it off so just be gentle with it and it should be pretty easy to access okay uh I'm going to wrap up this video with the top IC of like what you can do with the steam deck so the truth is at this point in time I've covered so little above of what this thing can actually do like I've shown you some games I've shown you some frame rates but this is capable of so much more for one the community that picks this up it's like the steam deck Community is going to be huge like absolutely huge uh but the other thing is that there's no drivers for this system in Windows right now like I installed Windows it's very easy to get Windows onto it but none of the hard Ware is functioning properly in Windows there's no Wi-fi driver there's no graphics driver so I wasn't able to test the steam deck properly in a Windows environment but Steam OS is already fantastic I do think that if you have like the 64 gig model and you want to put Windows on it that's going to chew up like half of the drive just from Windows alone and also I think you lose like the suspend and resume function the way that Steam OS has it right now like you can just you know turn off a game and then pick it back up and play again you would lose that if you running this thing in win windows so uh I will be testing it in the future it's just that I think there's some very clear advantages to just keeping CMOS on this system it's really good also the SD card forgot to mention this real quickly uh I tested this thing it's kind of weird how fast some games can load off of the micro SD it's not every game but some of them are seriously just as fast as the internal drive and you can install Windows on a Micro SD and use that as like a separate Windows boot drive if you want or you can run a second partition and have both on one system it's a computer you can do whatever you want with it and just play games or you know what you could even use this as like a regular computer you plug it up keyboard mouse do your thing that's the steam deck it's fantastic so this gets uh it's truly my full recommendation I think there's so much I love about it and the thing is I've spent like three weeks with it I feel like I've just barely scratched the surface of what I want to be able to try and test on this thing there's just so much to it I need those windows drivers there is one thing though I will say that kind of bugs me about this system it's the single USBC so this is everything if you're just plugging up power and that's all you're doing with it fantastic but if you want to plug up any kind of peripherals you want a keyboard mouse a display out that's single port it can be limiting okay there you have it steam deck double thumbs up hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it see you guys next time\n"