I love my steam deck and it is blue the only machine I use to game. I even use it as my desktop computer when I plug it into my monitors with a usbc hub.

Is a pretty decent machine.

I only use my Steam Deck while I am away from my gaming (Linux-)PC. The reasons for this are that for me a big screen wins compared to the small (and relatively low-res) display of the Steam Deck, and also the games I usually play play way better with mouse and keyboard than with gamepad input… Also, the Steam Deck is relatively heavy, so gaming in bed or stuff like that also isn’t that enjoyable…

That said, the Steam Deck absolutely shines in situations where I cannot access my gaming PC. I usually take it with me when I go for a longer train ride, and also brought it along for vacation.

Compatibility wise I am in the situation that all the games I ever tried are working on the Steam Deck, but that’s mostly because I have been using Linux exclusively for decades, and have made it a habit to check if a game is going to work before buying it. Though, in recent years that habit slightly changed, thanks to the work Valve has put into WINE development. While back when I switched to Linux most Windows games would not run via WINE, nowadays one can expect that almost all games do. It is still a good idea to check protondb first, of course. Also, there are still a few games that need tinkering to get them to run, and protondb usually has some info on how to do that.

One negative point I have to mention is battery runtime. It strongly depends on what one is playing, but very demanding 3D games can drain the battery in 1.5 hours. However, I am talking about the old LCD model here, the newer OLED models run longer with one charge (though I don’t know how long actually).

Another negative is the display resolution. Most games don’t mind running on 1280x800, but some do. This can lead to illegible text, broken UI, or, as is the case with Stellaris, a different UI that is less convenient to use.

And last, but not least, performance. The Steam Deck GPU is just enough for the built-in display’s resolution, and also only under the assumption that games are reasonably optimized. I have not yet been in the situation that I would have gotten unplayable FPS, but I have heard a lot about games only running with 20 FPS, and needing upscaling… So, basically don’t expect it to run Crysis (yes, I know that joke is old, and that the Steam Deck can run Crysis just fine).

Fan tastic. Used as a guest computer for a while. Plays all games worth playing and if you are desperate for win blows you can install it.

I love mine and once my win 10 stops working I will be using it as my main computer as well

I love mine. I have a pc i havnt used for gaming in years because its in another room. Bought a steam deck, now i get to play all my pc games on the couch

It’s great for offline, singleplayer games. Unfortunately some multiplayer games just refuse to work on Linux, because of the anti-cheat. But I mostly use my Steam Deck when I’m traveling and have a very poor or no internet connection, so I can only play singleplayer games anyway.

I love mine. I bought one as soon as they went on sale and it has completely replaced my gaming laptop when I travel. What I like most of all is that it makes it easy for me to play games in my backlog that I would not otherwise have plaid. I have almost 900 games in my library and it’s opened up my playtime in platformers, casual story games, puzzle games, racing, space sims, and more. The fact that I can do that on a plane or wherever on holiday is awesome. I have no doubt that there are games in my library it can’t play, but I’ve not actually tried to play a game on it that just didn’t work.

If you aren’t a gamer I don’t know how much value there is for you. If you want to become a gamer it’s a well balanced device with a solid store behind it and your library will be accessible by any PC you buy in the future. If you are considering it as a gift for a gamer, just keep in mind if they aren’t primarily a PC gamer (that is to say they play on a console) they will have to rebuy some games if they want to play on the deck.

As far as being a full laptop replacement, I wouldn’t bother.

It’s a decent piece of hardware designed for ease of use similar to consoles while also allowing people as much control as a normal PC. How well it works depends completely on what kind of games one wants to play.

I tend to play mostly indie and older titles, both PC and console ones, and Deck works great for that. The few AAA games I tried worked without issues but your experience might vary based on when they were released, whether they use third party launchers, DRM etc.

Deck was a bit of an impulse buy for me but I can’t say I regret it. It’s a neat device and a great way to get into PC gaming, well worth the asking price in my opinion.

The funny thing is that we started buying MORE games after getting it and filtering steam for the ones that work best.

It completely replaced the Nintendo Switch as our party platform, we have been adding piles of local multi player games to it and using multiple Xbox controllers with it docked around the main TV most of the time.

I think when it comes to how many titles work it is going to depend on your gaming preferences. If you play a lot of EA games or Ubisoft games it is clunky to get their store loaders going sometimes or at a min you get prompted to sign in via onscreen keyboard which is a PITA sometimes and there is lower support.

Steam native games however are great.

I love mine, but if you’re not a gamer it probably won’t be a good device for you.

The biggest advantages of the Deck (in my opinion) are it’s portability, and the ability to suspend mid game. I used to play games primarily on my computer, but as a father I had to mostly drop playing games. I can’t afford to lock myself away from my wife/kids for long periods of time, and there are frequently interruptions (kids crying, someone’s hungry, wife needs help, etc) that makes it hard to know how long I have to play before I need to be able to stop playing. Due to this, I had stopped playing PC games almost completely. I still played phone and Nintendo Switch games some, but these both have downsides (most phone games suck and the controls limit what games are viable, nintendo switch games are overpriced and I have to compete with the kids for it).

The steam deck solved my game issues, and really let me play games freely again. I can play for short bursts, and if I need to stop I can just suspend and pick up in the same place later. It’s been a great device for me, but I was someone who wanted to be playing games and lacked time/freedom to do it.

In comparison though, when I upgraded to an OLED deck I sold my LCD deck, and I know that the person I sold it to hasn’t gotten very much use out of it. He’s generally less into games than I am, and when he wants to play he can play on his PC without issues. He didn’t have much of a use-case for the Steam Deck outside of trips.

So in summary, the deck is a fantastic piece of hardware, but it’s really dependent on what you want out of a device that will determine if it’s something that will be good for you personally.

The only things I’ve found that just straight up don’t work on the deck are things with draconian anti-cheat (which don’t work on Linux in general, not just the deck), and very old titles that have weirdly restrictive resolutions or control schemes or whathaveyou. Some games require some tweaking (mostly around controls, occasionally changing the Proton version, which is very easy to do within Steam), but generally that’s been minor. The things that don’t work well are typically things you wouldn’t expect to work anyway.

It’s worth noting that it makes it very easy to remap controls, even for games that don’t natively support controllers or don’t let you remap the controls at all normally. You can also invoke an onscreen keyboard as needed (for e.g. typing names). The controller mapping is very strong; it’s not limited only to single buttons; you can create custom contextual radial menus, for instance, so even games that need many more unique controls than the Deck has buttons work fine with some tweaking. You can also view / download / rate other users’ control mappings for any game that has them, so you don’t even need to do the work yourself.

It’s a fantastic piece of hardware for gaming. Looks great, feels great. It’s a bit large (won’t fit in a pocket, obviously), but that shouldn’t be a problem for anyone who would reasonably want a handheld gaming PC. It’s not a phone or a Gameboy.

I was without a desktop PC for a week or so due to a hardware failure, and was able to do everything I needed to do on the Steam Deck (with a USB mouse/keyboard, plugged into a monitor via a dock). So it’s a great piece of hardware even for that.

Excellent. Simply excellent. Don’t expect it to run AAA games at 60fps, but it’ll run most very well. Doom and Doom Eternal can hit 60fps easily. Even Baldurs Gate does a decent 30fps. For the portability and convenience you can’t lose. Don’t forget it hooks up to a TV, Bluetooth controller, or a keyboard and mouse! I’ve gamed at work in lunch break using a USB-C adaptor for screen, mouse and keyboard and it works great.

I use mine to play some Steam games and to run emulators. I haven’t had any compatibility issues, but I also tend to stick to games that are Steam Deck verified.

As far as how good it is, it’s the only handheld pc I’ve used personally, but from reviews and discussions I’ve seen, despite other handhelds being more powerful, Steam Deck is a solid contender because of its price point and SteamOS being purpose-built for a handheld, whereas Windows is not.

There has been 1 game I’ve tried to play that hasn’t worked, people say it does, but there are 2 versions of the game (square enix, final fantasy 8) and I have the older version, for some reason no control input is sent to it no matter what I do. I’m sure if I bought the new version it would work fine, but I’m done with that company after they bricked my phone copy of ff6 (even though the phone didn’t change at all) and told me “if I want to continue playing you need to buy the new version”. I’m sad they seem to be doing the same thing with all their old games.

That rant out of the way.

I have 1400 games in my steam library, the above is the only one I’ve wanted to play but haven’t been able to get working.

I highly suggest a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard for first person style games (I’m too old to get used to the “gyro control fine aiming”, but the younger people say it works great.) and 4x games.

I play a lot more 2d platformers and rogue-lite games on the deck than I ever did on a PC/laptop. The controls are fantastic and there’s no input lag like I used to have with a wireless control to my PC.

I’m about to buy a 3rd because my household, and the company we bring over, sometimes use mine when I want to be using it.

Some of the games I’ve played on it: red dead redemption 2, Witcher 3, elder scrolls Skyrim, rim world, dead cells, path of exile, Warhammer total war 2, sid Meier’s civ 5 and 6, subnautica, factorio, satisfactory, monster Hunter frostborn wrath, baldurs gate 3.

It’s actually amazingly good at running the ported PS2/4 and xbox360 games, I was amazed to see 5-6 hours predicted battery life while playing dynasty warriors 8 and Disgaea 4.

I was thinking about getting a new gaming laptop to replace my 5 year old 15" dell, but the deck filled that need perfectly, and at a fraction of the price a new computer would’ve cost.

When I originally bought it (pre ordered the 512 gig) I bought a “leather skin” and screen protector, I’m glad that I did, but I think the skin was going overboard.

If you aren’t a gamer I’m not very sure how much desktop function there is, I’ve only done it once or twice, but I was able to YouTube and Amazon through the browser.

If you get one (and I highly recommend it) I suggest getting a kick stand, a Bluetooth mouse and a Bluetooth keyboard.

My next investment is going to be a “dock” and a pair of a.r. glasses so I can charge it and use the glasses as a monitor and lay in bed and game until mold grows over me.

A lot work, but some of those are with an asterisk.

E.g., dyson sphere program, a factory game, is listed as playable. But, there’s no steam cross-play - so you can have the same save file on your PC and deck. And that game is computation heavy so I doubt if it would work well. Or Fez: I tried launching a few different ways, but it hard crashed. I’m sure there’s some way to fix it, but I didn’t bother to find out.

All that being said, I haven’t touched my gaming PC in months because the pause / resume feature is so convenient for getting gaming in, 15 minutes at a time.