Okay, I love the steam deck so much I almost bought my whole family 64 gigabit decks. Even the cheapest deck with a solid gaming rig blow your socks off. I actually think it’s my preferred setup now. I have the top tier version of the lcd steam deck and while I have all this space. I mostly stream my games fro My pc. My OC isn’t even plugged into a tv. It’s plugged into my router and….sits i Next to my router. When I need to play a game off of it I stream it too my deck. THIS, is the most efficient t way to use your steam deck. The steam deck is insanely good at streaming with steam link, and so when your playing a AAA title like doom Eternal , halo infinite, war hammer dark tide: the deck rarely uses more than 30% it’s maximum capacity streaming the heavy lifting that your actual computer is doing in real time. This can also be achieved with the steam link which might be a better deal for some folks.

If you don’t have a gaming pc already the deck lacks power. Streaming game pass games on it is fun and incredibly satisfying, but still will have you leaving your deck to go play that game you CANT play on the deck. I initially wanted to get back into destiny 2, but ….once again bungie has to be that ONE millennial hipster and not support the steam deck. I hear good things about legion go, rog I think satisfies people who want something stronger, but annoys people who didn’t already come from a steam deck or a Nintendo switch. SD trolls the asus rog ally at 15 watts, but everything else goes to the ally. Someone made a post about the decks incredible “pause and pick back up Where you left off” feature, which is nice, but isn’t really applicable to games that are pvp multiplayer. Your not gonna be able to pause your fortnight regardless of which hand held you use, but the ally will At least do better with the epic game store considering it’s window OS.

Real question is what kind of games you looking to Play?

I feel like steam OS is the perfect balance. You can go from minimal tinkering to getting down and dirty with the settings. I wouldn’t be scared off by it being your first gaming pc. I’m primarily a windows user … and even going into the desktop mode (which you don’t need to) the steam deck is such a device with tons of community support you will always find answers to a problem. Either via Reddit or YouTube.

I would go for it . I’ve been loving mine as a first time steam deck user (although slightly more technically experienced with computers altogether)

Well, while it competitors might have some better specs, the Steam Deck has some of the biggest and ACTIVE communities out there. So for example, if you want to change something or are having a problem, you can almost be sure that the answer you’re neeing is just a google search away.

Very user friendly, in fact, its the best gateway into linux. Ive ways said, the real game with steam deck is getting things to run. If you have problems, most likely youll find a youtube video to help solve it.

I’m feeling pretty dumb with mine. Trying to put Uplay on it and even following a guide I got lost. All I want to do is play AC Odyssey and Valhalla but without Uplay and Ubisoft Connect I cannot.

Better than Windows for gaming, not as simple as Switch/PS.

Start up, install game, play game. That’s it. It’s a console experience in the best sense of the word.

Very friendly, I am not a PC gaming, and it’s very easy to set up and play games. Plus, Steam has great sales, so you can get great for cheap

There’s a site where it tells you which games are deck compatible even the ones steam says are not.

The only thing that caused some minor issues was finding the best settings for each. I am used to console gaming where you don’t tinker much with that kind of stuff

Very user friendly. There are a lot of power user features too. A lot of shortcuts but you can find them all by just holding the steam button.

Extremely. It’s prob my favourite interface since apple products. It’s miles more intuitive than windows. It really feels like an experience you would find in a console system.

It’s my first experience with PC gaming and I’m really happy with it. Coming from a console background I can honestly say it sits perfectly between a console and PC experience. Valve have done a fantastic job making it easy for newcomers to PC gaming by making it similar to something like a switch with Steam OS mode and allowing the user to change to a pc setup easily in Desktop mode. I won’t lie you will need to spend a lot of time changing settings regarding performance for games. Some games will require different settings and sometimes doing this breaks immersion. But overall it’s worth it because the console is awesome and it’s probably my favourite handheld device of all time

If you don’t plan on using the computer portion of it, then it’s basically just a glorified Nintendo Switch with the Steam store being where you buy your games. But plenty of YouTube videos make it easy to do other things with it.

The steam deck offers a console like experience because of Steam OS. Basically you can buy things from steam and load them just like on a console, no PC knowledge required. The Legion Go and Rouge Alley are basically just handheld windows PCs, so are the same to operate as a computer.

As long as you avoid visual novels with WMV video playback for cutscenes, and games from some publishers like EA and Bungie, it’s very good if you check ProtonDB on compatibility.

The tinkering is actually minimum if you only stick to games that are Gold/Plat on ProtonDB with default settings, and keep expectations lower if you’re only buying Steam Verified AAA game. Most AAA games will need in-game settings tweak for better experience, but there are tons of YouTube videos on best setting for the games you can follow.

Almost all indie games works great on the Steam Deck. indie games that don’t work well with the Steam Deck is very rare, because if it doesn’t work on the Steam Deck, it means the game already have problems initially regardless of the Steam Deck.

Games that do need a lot of tinkering are usually unsupported games, and bronze/silver rating on ProtonDB.

I suggest you learn how to install Proton-GE using ProtonQt, and how to force Proton Compatibility. Games that don’t boot-up can easily be fix by forcing Proton compatibility in the property settings. It’s not hard to do at all.

I own a steam deck, rog ally and the legion go. The steam deck is the easiest one to use. You don’t have to worry about installing any windows updates. The legion go is the most frustrating one to use and it is because of the software. I prefer the armory crate from the Ally.