The Diary Game 24/02/2022 - The Steam Deck is now launched and looks like a very interesting laptop.

alein (70)memberAquilain Italy • 2 years ago

Steam Deck Valve is launching these days, even though deliveries will start timidly. Steam Deck is a portable gaming console, similar in shape to a Nintendo Switch, but which can run games on Steam and, in fact, most Windows games. It starts at € 419, but the good option actually costs € 549.

It is difficult to predict whether or not it will succeed in the market. This depends on many factors, and the competition in the market is high, from high-performance gaming on mobile phones to streaming on consoles or GeForce Now. But Steam Deck seems interesting to me as a technical achievement because it proves that you can make an ultra-portable PC perfectly capable of playing almost anything on the market.

Looks like below: 7-inch touch screen, control scheme similar to an Xbox controller, plus other buttons. It has two front speakers, USB-C port and audio jack, wifi and bluetooth, 40 Wh battery that keeps you playing for a few hours (not many, but it doesn't matter so much) and offers 45W charging. Steam Deck runs a version of Linux that most Steam games run on, and includes an emulator that makes Windows games (or programs) run directly without much hassle.

Forget the button layout: Steam Deck has two joysticks, a D-Pad on the left, ABXY buttons on the right, two touchpads next to the joysticks, four "trigger" buttons on the top side and 4 more buttons on the back. Almost any modern game can be played with a controller, and Steam Deck actually offers a lot more buttons than one, so there probably won't be much of a problem in that direction. And if it's a game where you need precise mouse-style movement, you have a touch screen and two touchpad-style areas on the console.

The hardware is based on an AMD brand APU based on the Zen 2 architecture, a solution similar to that of the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X. The 7-inch screen has only a resolution of 1280 x 800 px, quite small for that diagonal and in my opinion, the only weak point — maybe along with the 400-nits brightness — but the advantage of that resolution is that you can run any game. Valve, by the way, shows the console running Baldur's Gate, Jedi Fallen Order, Hades and a lot of other games.

The specifications are complemented by 16 GB RAM LPDDR5, microphone and speakers and audio jack, bluetooth 5.0, accelerometer. The USB-C port can output video. Steam Deck is actually a portable PC, it can be connected to an external monitor or TV and to the mouse and keyboard, like any PC. Supports 8K @ 60 Hz resolution on video output. It weighs 669 grams and measures 298 x 117 x 49 mm.

The official prices for Steam Deck are as below. I think most will prefer the 256 GB SSD storage. An eMMC is so slow that loading games or levels may take more minutes than is comfortable. They all have a microSD slot, but I see it for storing some music or saving games.

I like the design and the idea of the console. Its success on the market, as I said, will be rather shaped by how receptive the gaming market is to such a thing. One detail that could put them in trouble is the battery life. If it only takes you two hours to play, for example, the collective decision may be "it's too little, skip." It remains to be seen.

Valve says you'll be logged in to the console with your Steam account and you'll see all your purchased games there. It also sells separately a charging docking that also has an Ethernet port, in case you don't like the download speeds on wifi.