There’s no way it’s going to fit in a pocket. The size difference is enough that going back to my Switch after using the Steam Deck exclusively for a few days makes the Switch feel like a microconsole. It’s 11.7 inches from end to end, which is more than two inches longer than a Switch, and at 1.5 pounds it’s quite a bit heavier. It never lets you forget that it’s really a PC, and it just isn’t as smooth an experience as a walled-garden console provides.Īs you've already seen from the memes, the Steam Deck is pretty massive. However, given how many popular games just don’t work on Steam Deck right now, it has a long way to go towards achieving the goal of truly letting you take your Steam library anywhere. When the stars align this chunky handheld can do some impressive things, putting a pretty powerful little PC in the palm of your hands. We have that now, and the Steam Deck has smoothed out some of its launch issues, too.
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The Steam Deck has received a lot of updates since it launched nearly three weeks ago, but what I was mainly waiting for is the graphics driver that would allow us to put it through its paces as a standard Windows PC and sidestep the limitations of Valve’s Linux-based SteamOS. When it's not working as intended, however, it's a frustrating experience that shines a light on the parts of PC gaming that turn most people off to it.
In fact, when it's working at its full potential it's amazing.
And after a couple of weeks of gaming on Valve’s ambitious handheld PC I can say that a lot of the time it does live up to that hype. The Steam Deck is easily one of the most anticipated pieces of PC gaming tech since… well, maybe ever? The promise of carrying the entirety of your Steam library wherever you go on this bulky but well-designed and relatively powerful handheld gaming device is massively alluring, especially to those of us who continuously fatten our backlog with each passing Steam sale.