Our review unit is the high-end one with the "premium anti-glare etched glass." Nano Texture it is not, but in practice, it has less glare than the non-OLED Nintendo Switch, and about the same as that higher-end Switch. It's also beneficial to the hardware, since it doesn't need to crank out gameplay at higher, more resource-consuming resolutions. That resolution, along with a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz is more than enough for a seven-inch display. At 1,280 by 800 pixels, the screen has a pixel density of 215ppi, with its brightness of 400 nits also adequate for evening gaming. This difference in speed may be an issue for some games that are storage-dependent for loading maps and graphics, which may push some players up to the higher capacities.Įven these capacity options won't be enough for some games, so there's an option available to use microSD as a secondary drive.Īll of the gameplay is shown on a seven-inch multitouch-enabled display, an optically-bonded IPS LCD panel to help with readability. The Steam Deck is longer than an iPad mini, and almost as wide. The controllers don't slide off, like the Nintendo Switch. While those accessories clamp onto the ends of the mobile devices and add extra controls, Valve instead goes for an all-in-one device, with fixed controls either side of a central display.Īt 11.73 inches long and 4.6 inches tall, it's a hefty device to carry around, especially since it doesn't fold or disassemble to a smaller size. View, Menu, Quick Access, and Steam buttons,Īt face value, you could probably compare the Steam Deck to the various iPhone and iPad add-on controllers on the market. Valve's continued attempts to get into hardware has resulted in the Steam Deck. Instead of streaming, such situations call for on-device processing and localized gameplay. If you're away from home, that vital connection to the host won't be enough to fully enjoy gameplay. Let Valve do its own thing with Steam Deck, and hopefully, it'll be tremendous.The Valve Steam Deck packaging offers a bold claim for gamers. Nevertheless, if you want a gaming handheld that runs Windows, you're better off just buying one in the first place. Part of that is probably the Windows license, but more likely since these are small companies they're not building at the scale Valve is shooting for, so getting the cost down is more difficult. What they also have in common is that they're quite a bit more expensive than the Steam Deck, or at least, the lower two spec Steam Decks. These all run Windows out of the box with drivers and firmware and whatnot all optimized properly. It doesn't bother with a keyboard, so personally, I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy navigating it, but it's a phenomenal thing and you can buy it right now. There are others out there, too, and on a hardware front, the Aya Neo is closer to the Steam Deck as it uses AMD for the CPU and graphics which makes it a potent little handheld. There are already Windows-based gaming handhelds on sale Be honest, how many times has a Windows update broken something on your PC that you've been quite cross about? Is it really worth the effort and the potential trouble just because you "prefer Windows?" You won't get support on Windows, and there's no guarantee what your experience would even be. Valve will be supporting SteamOS on the Steam Deck, continually making it better, and working in tandem with the hardware it had custom designed. And by all accounts Valve is still pushing as hard as it can to make Proton work with everything on Steam, including that pesky anti-cheat. And for most people what it runs underneath doesn't mean a thing so long as their games work. Having total control over the software experience gives Valve what it needs to make sure that using a Steam Deck doesn't suck.Īs a consumer product that's what matters the most. Valve is responsible only for making that experience as good as it can be, and the simple truth is that Windows doesn't offer the flexibility needed to turn Steam Deck into a proper games console. Source: Valve (Image credit: Source: Valve)
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