With thousands of games and extensive input options, the Steam Deck is an incredible piece of hardware that can transform into a full gaming PC.

As long as you're okay with two hours of battery life, the Steam Deck is an incredible bit of hardware to lets you take a full PC gaming experience anywhere. Best of all, you probably already own hundreds of compatible titles, with more added daily.

The Steam Deck from Valve is an engineering marvel that makes the Nintendo Switch look like a child's toy. Chances are you already own a ton of games that’ll work on it, including demanding AAA titles. It’ll even run Windows if you're particularly fond of punishment.

It's far from perfect though—as you might expect from a first-generation device. But is it the ultimate portable gaming device? Quite possibly.

From a design perspective, the steam deck comes in black and might be bigger than you expect, measuring 30cm long, 12cm tall, and 5cm at the deepest part of the grips. It also weighs a hefty 670g, so you'll naturally want to rest your arms on a table or your legs. Compared to the svelt Nintendo Switch, it's an absolute beast of a machine.

Included in the box is a nice solid case to keep it in, molded perfectly to the shape.

The Steam Deck comes in three variants:

I opted for the mid-range model, and have almost filled the drive (mainly due to the 70Gb of Horizon Zero Dawn). Clearly, the 64Gb eMMC option would be very restrictive, in addition to having very slow load times.

Storage can be expanded with microSD cards, and you can effectively treat them as swappable cartridges. However, at the time of writing, many users have reported the microSD cards are "bricked" after being formatted by the Steam Deck.

Though not officially supported, users have been able to swap out the internal drives for larger 1TB storage without too much issue. This will break your warranty, of course. On the subject of repairs, it's praiseworthy that Valve has partnered with iFixit to offer replacement parts and repair guides for virtually every component, ensuring a long product lifecycle in an age of otherwise disposable electronics.

Other internal specs are identical. The system features 16GB RAM, and a custom Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) from AMD, based around the Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures. Valve claims the performance is equivalent to a Ryzen 3000 CPU, and Radeon RX6000 GPU, and raw performance is around 1.6 teraflops (what's a teraflop?)

For comparison sake, an undocked Nintendo Switch runs at a mere 0.3 teraflops, while the Xbox One S sits at 1.3, and the Playstation 4 at 1.8. So the Steam Deck sits somewhere between the latter two; as powerful as a last-generation console.

On the display front, there’s a 7” touchscreen, running at 1280 x 800 (essential 720p, but for a 16:10 ratio screen), at 60Hz. It runs at a maximum brightness of 400 nits, which I found wasn't bright enough to play a dark game like Gauntlet outdoors, even in the early evening. If you are trying to play outside, you should find a shaded tree.

Connectivity comes from Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi up to AC speed, and a USB-C port capable of full input and output. That means the USB-C port can carry video to an external monitor, and allows for other USB peripherals to be connected, such an external Ethernet adaptor; all while simultaneously charging the device. Connect up a hub and you can transform the Steam Deck into a full gaming PC, complete with mouse and keyboard controls.

However, it's worth bearing in mind that while the Steam OS interface and Linux subsystem support a wide range of resolutions, if you launch a game through gaming mode, it'll be locked to 1280 x 800. In the example below, Horizon Zero Dawn scales back and doesn't utilize the full ultra-wide monitor resolution, leading to unsightly bars on either side. If you want to run at full HD, you'll need to drop down to the Linux desktop and launch from the full Steam client. And while games run well at the standard resolution, you may get less than great results if aim higher.

As well as the option to connect a Steam-compatible Bluetooth controller or mouse and keyboard, the Steam Deck itself features a wide range of input options.

To start with, there's the touchscreen, which is useful as a keyboard and navigating the UI, but not much else. Then you have a standard controller set of twin joysticks, D-pad, ABXY buttons, should buttons, and triggers. In addition, you'll find two "paddles" on the underside.

There are also two trackpads featuring delicate haptics, which are an interesting inclusion (first pioneered back on the Steam controller), but to be honest, I've largely ignored them as I'm used to console controls from the couch.

Finally, the Steam Deck is equipped with a 6-axis gyroscope. This can be used natively, or forced to emulate a stick or mouse. It's a game-changer where fully supported, offering far greater precision than a stick alone.

Steam offers an extensive input configuration utility for you to customize the controls of any game to something that precisely suits you, but it's not something the average user is going to delve into. As a result, the overall design can feel a bit clunky at times.

If you're anything like me, your Steam library is probably full of hundreds, if not thousands of titles you've picked up in various Humble Bundles and Steam sales over the years. Many of those will be instantly available to play on the Steam Deck.

This is all thanks to a compatibility driver layer called Proton, which allows the core Linux system of SteamOS to run Windows software. Proton is an extension of the existing WINE layer, but designed for high-performance, graphically demanding games.

While the Steam Deck hardware is new, the SteamOS it runs has been in the works for almost a decade, as Valve has pushed to break free from the shackles of Windows. You can even download SteamOS to install on your own PC, if you want.

When looking through your library, you'll notice one of four different icons to indicate compatibility.

Green tick games are officially verified and work great.

One step down is the yellow "i" icon. These are playable but might have some quirks. For instance, some of the interface elements might be too small to comfortably read, or some of the controls may be mislabeled for the keyboard. The experience might be less than perfect, but basically, these games work fine.

Games with a grey question mark and dotted outline are "unknown". These haven't been tested by Valve, and may or may not work. You may need to tweak the Proton driver used or perform some other install.

Finally, games with the grey "no go" symbol are not compatible at all. This is commonly the case with VR titles (for obvious reasons), and a number of online multiplayer games that make use of anti-cheat systems. But even then, you might be able to get them to work anyway, by installing Windows.

If there's a specific game you want to check or need help with, ProtonDB is a crowdsourced list of Steam Deck compatible games and is your best source of information.

As is seemingly now a tradition for Valve hardware, it developed a free demo for the system, called Aperture Desk Job. It's a short, fun title that's really just designed to show off the various control methods, but it's not locked to the Steam Deck hardware so if you wanted to play through on desktop, you could. The main highlight is getting to try out gyroscopic aiming, which allows you to tilt the Steam Deck to move the view around. While it takes some getting used to, I found gyro-aiming to be far superior to just sticks; but still not as good as a mouse.

Gyroscopic aiming can be enabled in any game, and when not directly supported, it can emulate either stick or mouse control. However, it's can be buggy or awkward where not fully supported, so while I tried it briefly, I didn't leave it enabled.

Horizon Zero Dawn was on my wishlist, but not something I'd played on desktop previously. As a green tick game, it runs beautifully, and when uncapped, achieves a super smooth 45-60fps with gorgeous sweeping vistas and intense combat. So far, it's been a standout game for me, and I put that down to the more intimate nature of the Steam Deck. Though the screen is small, the experience is more personal.

Mini Motorways is such a ubiquitous title, available on every platform imaginable, so it's no surprise that it's verified on Deck. Unfortunately, if you're used to playing with a mouse, you'll find the stick controls of the Steam Deck to be woefully inadequate. You can use the touch screen to drag out roads, but it's just too imprecise and frustrating once you have larger cities. You can of course plug in a mouse through a USB-C hub, but it's hardly convenient. This is one I'll probably uninstall.

Titanfall 2 is my multiplayer title of choice, and while I've been unable to play much lately due to constant server attacks, that seems to have fizzled out, and the game is mostly playable again. It's a yellow game, and apart from a lengthy install routine, I've not had any issues; it runs smoothly and without lag. The game requires some additional DirectX components and the Origin client to be installed, but this is a one-time setup and didn't require any user interaction, nor do you need to log in separately. In short: it's fantastic.

That said, despite being used to playing with a controller, I found the Steam Deck controls difficult to adjust to. The D-pad is placed awkwardly off to the left of the stick. It's not so bad that I'd hook up an external controller, but you might find yourself a little hobbled. If there's any game I'm going to explore Steam Input configuration for, it'll be this one.

One of the biggest selling points of the Steam Deck is the ability to pick up where you left off, with your game state seamlessly synced between your Deck and desktop or other machines. This isn't unique to the Steam Deck, but most of us don't have multiple gaming PCs, so until now it's mostly just been a convenient way of ensuring you don't lose saves when you reinstall Windows. But with the Steam Deck, the cloud save feature truly comes into its element.

In case it isn't obvious, your Steam Deck needs to be online for this to work. If you're planning on going somewhere without a data connection, you should fire up your Deck and sync the saves before heading out. Then, when you get back, ensure you power on again briefly to sync them back to the cloud. If you exit the game and accidentally hit the sleep button before it's uploaded, you may find yourself out of sync.

Though not unexpected, battery life from the 40-watt-hour battery varies wildly. In my experience, anywhere from one and a half to four hours. Faster refreshing action-packed demanding titles will achieve less runtime, as will using Wi-Fi or keeping the screen at a high brightness.

Thankfully, there are steps you can take to extend the battery life, like capping the frame rate or limiting the GPU clock. For me, simply limiting the refresh rate of games to 30 frames-a-second maximum felt like a decent compromise. The gameplay still feels smooth enough, and I was able to achieve a solid two hours of gaming in most titles. That's more than enough for me, since I'm never more than a short distance from a USB port to recharge. If they're not out already, I'd expect to see external battery pack cases fairly soon, for those who wish to extend the gaming time even more.

Speaking of charging, a 45W USB-C charger is included in the package. When sleeping, the Steam Deck draws no more than 20W; the full 45W is reserved for gaming and charging simultaneously.

The Steam is also great at preserving power during sleep mode. Perhaps too good, in fact. If you're accustomed to devices that wake themselves up to complete downloads, or continue to run in a smart low-power mode, you might find the sleep mode of the Steam Deck to be quite annoying. Even when plugged in and charging, don't be tempted to press the sleep button if you're in the middle of a big download, or you may come back to find that 70GB Horizon Zero Dawn install is no closer to completing.

The biggest downside of being a full portable gaming PC is that the Steam Deck is... a full portable gaming PC. And it comes with all the associated baggage and hassle that entails.

There are constant updates, both to the Steam Deck itself and your game library. Some games take forever to install, with various extra runtimes or the Origin Client or other third-party bits and pieces. Anything not verified might run, but you may have to look it up on ProtonDB which driver version to use. Yep: driver versions! Oh joy.

Cloud Sync doesn't always work, and when it does fail, it fails spectacularly.

At one point, I was left with an "unable to sync" cloud error, and no matter how many times I tried to force a resync or restart, I was left with the sinking realization that my entire save was lost. Of the many solutions I found online, only one eventually worked: I had to drop down to the Linux desktop, restart the Steam Client from there, and resync again.

Don't buy a Steam Deck for your child to pick up and play for twenty minutes. It is very much not a Nintendo Switch, despite my comparisons during this review. It is not as user-friendly; it is not as quick to get into some action. Cloud saves can be awkward, and if you're not careful, your entire saved state can be lost or reverted to something weeks old. It's just not as neat, tidy, or well packaged. It is very much a first-generation device, and you can expect to spend some time checking ProtonDB on how to run a particular game if it's not a green or yellow tick title.

Do buy the Steam Deck if want a powerful, great value portable gaming PC for you to play in the car while your kids are at soccer practice. You can pick up where you left off from your gaming PC the last night. You can even hook it into your living room TV, connect multiple Xbox controllers, and have some family fun. Do buy the Steam Deck because you have a vast backlog of games that you’ve been meaning to play and just never got around to. Do buy it because you want something that's a bit hackable—a Linux machine cyberdeck at your fingertips—the potential for which is as yet unrealized.

If you don't already have a preorder, you'll have to wait up to a year if you reserve a spot today. Such is the reality of the constrained supply system we now live in. In fact, my preorder wasn't due until December, despite placing it the day after orders opened last year. It's only from the kindness of my wonderful colleague Gavin that I was able to get this unit.

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James has a BSc in Artificial Intelligence and is CompTIA A+ and Network+ certified. When he's not busy as Hardware Reviews Editor, he enjoys LEGO, VR, and board games. Before joining MakeUseOf, he was a lighting technician, English teacher, and data center engineer.

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