If I have a switch and a PS5, is the steam deck worth buying?
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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As someone who owns both and a PC as well, yes. Playing my steam library in bed is incredible. Also, if you have a larger library, it can be cheaper to just buy a Deck than re-buying everything on a different platform.
Cool, thanks for the advice.
So, you can basically play any PC game on the Steam Deck? And the performance depends on the game?
I haven’t found anything personally that I want to play that I can’t play as I play a lot of indie games and singleplayer games. Proton is pretty incredible. YMMV though. If you play games that heavily rely on mouse and keyboard and twitch reflexes, or any game that has strict anti-cheat/DRM, you might have a suboptimal experience or not be able to play it at all.
You'll be able to play any game that can be run on Proton (Valve's Linux compatibility layer). Technically, you can install windows on the deck and then run anything on that, but that's not supported out of the box.
You can look at a list here for what Steam labels as "Deck Verified" https://www.steamdeck.com/en/verified
Additionally, you can look on protondb which is similar to the above, but takes input from users and may have additional notes on compatibility: https://www.protondb.com/explore?selectedFilters=whitelisted
Performance and battery life will depend on the game, but there's a ton of videos and benchmarks if there's a particular game you're curious about.
Also, don't forget emulation! It's an amazing retro gaming device.
I have a PC and a Switch and despite liking it a lot when I had it from a friend, I decided against getting my own. Mostly based on the fact that I already covered all my bases:
- I can play at the desk.
- I can play at the TV (Moonlight in-house streaming)
- I can play PC games.
- I can play Switch on the go, and I got more than enough games in my backlog that I don't need more games for that.
But if you game a lot and are on the road a lot, I would say it's a damn good investment.
For me I’m not a huge fan of the form factor and prefer to play on a TV or at my desk. If I don’t have a good PC already, though, I’d definitely consider getting it.
That's something I had been considering but at the time the support for docks was really bad, so using it Switch-style and docking it to a TV was a no-go. I heard it's really good now though, so that's an interesting thought.
Maybe. I have those two and a PC and I think the Deck is essential. But I do really like being able to seamlessly pick up my games on my main machine sometimes too. If I didn’t own a PC or a PC game library it might be less enticing but even then I still think it’s worth it. You may struggle deciding where to buy games though and you will probably end up building a gaming pc if you enjoy the Deck.
Would be nice to pick one up.. If only they sell them here I live. I don't get why they are shipping to Norway..
If you are willing to pay a bit extra in shipping (and trust a rando online) I’d be happy to help ship you one from the US.
Thanks for the offer stranger ❤️ But If I where to get one It would have been through Amazon. There is always the risk factor at hand of buying from someone you don't know unfortunately. And you don't get warranty this way, and I'm pretty sure I can get some more rights if I bought it inside EU / UK, but I would have to check carefully. I'm always sceptical about buying stuff like this from abroad.
In my country you get an extra warranty that's called reklamasjon that last for 5 years. This warranty can in some cases be lower depending on how long the product should work.. But for tech like this it's supposed to at least work for 5 years. So then you would get a full refund in that time frame if something happens that is out of your hands, that it breaks before of hardware or other things like that. It might very well be this right that Valve DO NOT want to have to think about.
This is fantastic, I missed out on buying one during the summer sale. I've had great luck with refurbished devices in the past hoping the same since they claim to have high testing standards.
Awesome!