Honestly? Just buy a Steam Deck

It's 2025, and I just bought a Steam Deck OLED. I literally watched the launch of the Switch 2 and thought to myself: "Nah".

Ok, in all honesty I'd been thinking about getting a PC handheld for a while. I have a Switch, and a PS5, but I wanted something that allowed me to play just about anything in my Steam library. So, I started looking at my options. Windows wasn't something I was particularly interested in for a gaming device. Yeah, more games are compatible, but I'd heard that Proton has come a long way, and right now I'm even thinking I might switch to Linux instead of using Windows, so SteamOS is more of a positive than a negative.

But what about the Lenovo Legion Go S? Not super expensive, better APU inside of it, and it also has a SteamOS variant. Well, for me, I just can't imagine buying a new display that isn't OLED anymore. So that ruled out basically every other handheld on the market, aside from a select handful that started at £1,200, early adopter tax and all that. So I pulled the trigger, and 5 business days later, I had myself a Steam Deck OLED.

And what do I think?

The Good

Let's start with the obvious: The display is gorgeous. Nothing beats OLED for colour, and in games more vibrant colours are exactly what you want. Seriously, I'm so glad the "grey and brown" gritty realism of the PS3 / Xbox 360 era is behind us.

The trackpads. Oh my god, the trackpads are a dream. Literally every handheld needs a good trackpad. I'd like it if there was a "left-handed" setting that let you universally swap them over throughout the entire OS, but that's just me. Being able to more easily navigate desktop mode and play games that require mouse input is incredible.

My entire Steam library is playable on more than one device now. Like I said, I have a Switch, and a PS5, but if I bought a game on one that I wanted to play on the other, even if that game supports cloud saves for cross-play, basically none are cross-purchase for different ecosystems. But with the Deck, and Steam cloud saves, I can buy and play pretty much any game on either my desktop or the deck itself and then pick it up on the other at any time.

It isn't a walled garden. Ok, Windows isn't either (yet, give Microsoft time), but you have such freedom with the Deck. With Decky Loader, EmuDeck, Lutris, and the full power of the Linux terminal in desktop mode, you have the freedom to tinker, and bring all the functionality of SteamOS, like fully customisable control layouts and quick suspend / resume, to literally any game, even if it wasn't bought on Steam.

It only cost £479! It comes with an OLED screen, all that hardware, 512GB of storage and it cost less than £500. Plus, if there were a refurbished one available, I could have gotten that for closer to £400. Wild.

The Bad

The battery life could be a little better. 50Wh is nothing to sniff at, and the Deck is already kinda heavy as it is, but the competition is rocking closer to 80Wh, especially devices due to release later this year.

The performance is ok, but not incredible. Don't get me wrong, for indie games that don't have intense graphics, the custom AMD APU that the Deck uses is more than powerful enough, and it's definitely efficient, no doubt about that, which is good, because that helps it get more out of that 50Wh battery, but there are some games that run poorly even if you crank the settings all the way down to the point where they look terrible, and part of that is definitely because developers aren't optimising their games as much these days, but it's also because the "Sephiroth" APU (love that name, btw) just isn't quite powerful enough to deliver high quality visuals at a playable framerate.

I know the screen is OLED, and 800p isn't awful, but 1080p would be just a little bit better. Mind you, then the performance would be even worse, but hey, if we're thinking about a dream machine, it would have both a higher resolution screen and better performance. And the reason I say only 1080p (I guess technically 1200p for that 16:10 aspect ratio) and not some pipe dream like 4K is a) I wanna be somewhat realistic, and b) at screen sizes just single-digit inches on the diagonal, you really don't need any more. Newspapers pride themselves on having "print quality", which is 300 ppi (pixels per inch). A 1080p 7" screen has a pixel density of ~315. You genuinely do not need higher than that, it's just wasted pixels your eyeballs can't even see properly. For reference, at 800p the deck is more like 215, which is still respectable, but not quite that "premium" level of quality that would be ideal.

SteamOS is.....clunky. It's fundamentally based on a version of Linux called Arch, which is fine for me, I like to tinker, but for a lot of users it's not a particularly beginner-friendly experience, especially if you're used to Windows. It's an excellent choice for what Valve are trying to build, but I have a feeling those who are happiest with the Deck are probably those who either love Arch Linux (they probably use it btw) or who simply never touch desktop mode, because otherwise it's not quite as "pick up and play" as many would have you believe. It almost is, but not quite, not like the Switch.

It gets a bit warm, not so much that it's particularly uncomfortable, but enough that you'll notice your palms getting sweaty after a longer session.

The Ugly

SteamOS is a relatively young operating system, and with that come some annoying quirks and bugs. There have been times when I've woken it up from sleep and the sound just doesn't work until I suspend and wake it again, or it changes my control layout for no reason.

Occasionally, the Wifi just drops. Sometimes it reconnects automatically after a few seconds, sometimes it doesn't, and I either have to restart the deck, or go into desktop mode to manually reset the connection.

The onscreen keyboard is kind of awful. I suppose it's better than nothing, but there aren't even any CTRL or ALT keys, so there are some things you just can't do in desktop mode, because it's locked behind a keyboard shortcut you physically can't input. I know it's only meant to be an "in a pinch" kind of input method, but I still think an onscreen keyboard, for accessibility, should allow you to perform any function you could with a physical keyboard.

Obviously, there are some games that just don't work on SteamOS, and in some cases they never will. Consoles live and die by their games, and Windows has a big advantage in that regard. And while we're on that subject, what the heck is up with the "Steam Deck Verified" program? I swear, half the time I'll fire up a "Verified" game that is just riddled with performance issues without significant tweaks to the settings, and other "Unsupported" games that run just fine. More recently, I added Proton badges to Steam game pages via Decky Loader, and it's so much better. The badges are far more accurate about what does and doesn't run well, and if a game is Gold or below, meaning it can run fine but needs adjustments, you can just select the badge and it'll take you right to that game's page on ProtonDb, which always has a dedicated "Steam Deck" tab to tell you what specific changes to make for the Deck to make a game run as well as it can.

It's deceptively heavy. When I first unboxed it, I look at it, picked it up, turned it over in my hands, and to me it seemed slimmer and lighter than I'd been led to believe. But it's not the initial weight that gets you, it's actually fine if all you're doing is a quick half hour gaming session. But if you're gaming for like 3 hours straight, it's the constant that tires out your arms. To be honest, I'm not even sure what's in there to make it so heavy compared to competitors with bigger batteries, but whatever it is, I hope Valve is able to make the next generation of this product considerably lighter.

Why Not the Switch 2?

Good question. I already own a Switch, I'm a big fan of Nintendo games, I like the idea of being able to just pick up a console and put it down whenever, wherever, and "it just works™️". So why did I get a Steam Deck instead of a Switch 2?

Well, aside from the OLED thing, I'm just getting annoyed with Nintendo for much the same reasons I've been getting annoyed with Microsoft and Windows. They keep treating their users like they're either children, or criminals, and there's no in-between.

I'm sick of walled gardens, I'm sick of being told what I can and can't do with a piece of hardware I paid for, I'm sick of having ads, telemetry, and other crap I didn't ask for forced upon me. And I'm sick of all this corporate greed. What do you mean I have to pay an extra £10 just to play Tears of the Kingdom, a game I already bought for full price and played on the original Switch, at 1080p 60fps on Switch 2? Get outta here with that.

The one downside to boycotting Nintendo is missing out on games that their talented and passionate developers pour their hearts into. I can't play Donkey Kong Bananza on a Steam Deck. But as much as it pains me to do so, I am willing to give up even The Legend of Zelda if it means giving more money to pro-consumer companies and less money to anti-consumer ones.

All I want is the freedom to choose what's best for me. And these more open Linux-based platforms give me that.

The Future of Gaming

The Steam Deck OLED is not a perfect device. But it is an oddity in our modern age, a device that simply gives you the keys, no strings attached, and it's ushered in a new generation of devices that, with the public release of SteamOS, may bring more competition into the gaming space than there's ever been before.

The first quarter of the 21st century has been dominated by "The Big Three", meaning Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft (sorry Sega, I know you did your best). Now though, I sense that the landscape is about to change, and I'm hoping it's change for the better.