Based on my experience of the current Deck I'd say it's not for everyone, but for my use-case it's one of the best purchases I've ever made. If you've got a large backlog of PC games you've built up over the years, you're OK with a little bit of tinkering to get some of them working, and you want to play them curled up on the sofa, then this is definitely the device for you!

Yeah man,jump right in. The waters even nicer than when it came out two years ago!

The battery seems like better than a marginal improvement. Valve claims 30-50% longer battery life, but some early reviews are reporting better improvements than that (IGN reports that Cyberpunk went from 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours, same settings).

Valve has already started talking to press outlets about their plans for a Steam Deck 2 in two to three years.

https://www.polygon.com/23951070/steam-deck-2-valve-interview

They said a faster one was unlikely. This isn't faster, so, they were the best kind of correct, unfortunately. Are you able to return yours, by chance?

Depends. How techy are you? None of those games are officially supported on the Steam Deck, but Valve lets you dig around under the hood and install whatever you want. However, anything that isn't on Steam and officially supported will require some work for you to get running. That said, you can play just about anything on the Deck if you're willing to put in the time. The touchpads make the Deck very capable on traditionally kb/m games.

For what it is worth, I’ve had a few games that weren’t officially supported so I just turned on the Proton setting and it’s worked so far. Online multiplayer seems to be a sticking point though due to anti-cheat.