The reasons you mentioned for wanting one: handheld gaming, not looking at AAA titles and emulation are the same reasons I bought mine. Yes it won’t run certain games as nicely as others, such as my current game Yazuka 3 Remastered - but I’m enjoying it as I have with many other titles and will for a while! I usually only play Verified games when I do, simply as growing up with consoles more than PC gaming I like it just working first time with minimal effort configuring something. There are a few games out there that need a bit of tweaking, but there’s so many resources to find the best way to do it fast such as steamdeckhq and protondb it isn’t as hard as it was when it first game out.
You can run Saturn fine on it, I’ve tried many games and not seen any performance issues I’d say ruin the experience at all. And with emudeck as a tool, emulation couldn’t be easier for a lot of platforms.
The only downside for me is when playing older emulation games it feels really big! Which is odd I know, but say for a PS1 game it feels good, but with a gameboy game it does feel very, very big. I still play them in handheld mode, just something about playing something which was designed for a smaller screen and portable that makes it a different experience.
For the price, what you want to do with it and Saturn emulation I can’t see how you’d be disappointed!
For the price it’s good. If you know how to do a little tinkering, it’s great.
If you’re willing to hookup a keyboard and mouse for setup, then…
Run old and DRM free Windows PC games via Proton, up to PS3 and Switch emulation with some compromise, Saturn and N64 emulation should be fine if you’re not a perfectionist.
Not everything is controller and handheld mode friendly, but it’s a great machine for those that know how to use it.
That’s really good to know, thanks for being so detailed about your experience!
I am 100% with you, I can’t deal with PC setups anymore personally, and I was a real latecomer to Steam when I finally started, in part because things are so patchy in terms of Mac versions. This will probably end up being my emulation platform of choice for PS1 and beyond. But I probably won’t get too much into pre-PS1 emulation since the Analogue Pocket does most of that extremely well.
Now I just have to decide how badly I like the OLED screen version!
The newer emulators are improving almost daily with compatibility so you should be more than happy with that, even more so if you’re not interested in anything before the mid 90s. I’ve run PS2, Wii U and had good results with 360 emulation recently so it can only get better.
Most of the time mine is docked and I use my main monitor with it. I have an original model but would get the OLED if I bought it today. But that price for the original is so damn tasty and it really is a nice screen if you’re looking at emulation.
I bought the OLED Deck at launch last year and have been obsessed with it ever since. Also agree that all the reasons you’re considering one are very good reasons to go ahead and get one. I play a lot of Saturn, Dreamcast, PS2, and GCN games on it, in addition to super cheap Steam sale games I never expected it to handle, such as Death Stranding. I’ve been very disappointed with console gaming lately, and thanks to the Deck I’m full handheld now. (I agree about playing pre-PS1 games on a smaller screen, and use my Vita Slim for that.)
I tinker slightly, but not nearly as much as I had planned to need to. Many games not yet marked as Deck verified work just fine on it without any tinkering. And I’ve even used my Deck as a mini PC to modify Micro SDs for other handhelds/cameras etc. since my MacBook doesn’t have a micro SD slot.
Anyways, I could ramble for too long about how great the Steam Deck is and I think you’ll love it as well.
This may be common knowledge, and may also have been mentioned in this thread already, but I thought I’d place the information here for future generations. Emulator performance is MUCH better when you run the standalone emulators in desktop mode, rather than through EmuDeck, ES-DE etc.
I hadn’t put much time into PS2 emulation on my Steam Deck because the games I had tried ran fine-but-not-great on there. I had been using Emulation Station. I installed the standalone PCSX2 last night and can now run most games at better than full speed, with internal resolutions bumped up to 720p and beyond (when the games suit such a thing).
one thing i will add for anyone on the fence about getting a steam deck, when you boot it into the linux Desktop Mode it really does feel like a cyberpunk Deck from neuromancer, way more than a cellphone ever has
i’ve posted about this elsewhere but just to make it official: my steam deck oled is arriving this week and i am stoked. will be going through this thread as i set it up and such.
They still are not officially available here in Australia, which is annoying! There are a few places that are selling them via grey imports, but I’m a bit wary of that. The warranty situation would be questionable, as grey import purchases are not going to be covered by our generally robust retail consumer protections we have here. Also, there is some real opportunistic pricing going on! $1,509AUD seems ludicrous.
interesting this thread got bumped cuz i’ve been diving into steam deck stuff for the first time this past weekend – my gf got one for super cheap a while back but never really used it and now i’m cracking it open to play all these pc games i never played cuz i hate sitting at a computer to play them! mostly it’s been a vampire survivors box tho lol god what a dopamine fest
also very very interested in getting emulation set up on this – is there a steam deck-specific emulator or set of emulators that is best?
Lol, I got sidetracked this past week and didn’t place my order for the 512GB OLED Steam Deck, so I ordered it this morning… only to find out that they are apparently having supply issues for sales to Canada, so it will take as long as it takes to fulfill my order
Fingers crossed that it doesn’t wait to ship until I’m just about ready to take a trip or something (which is what happened with my Analogue Pocket order)!
Haha, never mind, it turns out my partner might get laid off later this week and while we will be okay, that is over $700CAD that I don’t need tied up on a video game! I got a refund, and maybe I’ll order it if things don’t go as badly as they might this week!
Gotta hand it to Steam for handling refunds so quickly and easily!
Okay my dumb ass ended up reordering once it became clear that it was a false alarm and my partner isn’t getting laid off after all. It’s supposed to come today!
Wowee, I though Canada had it bad at $499, $689, and $819 for those same three! I know, it’s all relative, but still!
Having quite a bit of fun playing around with my Steam Deck over the long weekend. I’ve been playing mostly demos for now, but it was extremely cool to play the (extremely generous) Metaphor demo on a handheld! Looking forward to finally playing Soul Hackers 2 eventually.
So far I only have a few issues with it that are all very minor, and all of them relate to Switch comparisons, like I don’t really love the battery life (although I can play while it’s plugged in, I believe), and I wish it was just a little bit less chunky and heavy. It also runs way hotter than I expected! The store and the interface in general very much feels like it’s been shoehorned into the handheld form factor.
The screen though is quite good! And the controls feel very good, so far! I also really love that it came with a case (and a nice case at that)!
But yeah, thanks everybody for encouraging me to buy this!
I may regret asking this question but did anyone upgrade from the regular to the OLED & is it worth it?
I’m considering offering my base model to my partner & upgrading. Obviously because I’m great & want him to experience the joys of PC gaming and not because I’m trying to find ways to convince myself that, despite owning a really good portable battery from which I can get 2(!!!) full Steam Deck charges, I REALLY need that extra 50% battery life…
I’ve only had the OLED model, and not sure what model @Karasu has, but my OLED has none of the stated issues. Battery life is great, fan rarely turns on, and it’s light enough for me/handles very well. The newer games still get the fan pumping a bit, and decrease battery life of course. But I’ve found I never pay attention to the battery life unless I’m playing Death Stranding or something comparably taxing.
I can’t speak on the difference between the LCD and OLED versions-- my 512GB OLED is my first and only Steam Deck-- and as for the battery and fan, I’ve somehow managed to mostly play the Metaphor Re:Fantazio demo, which is likely the most battery and fan intensive game I could play on the Deck. And when I say I would prefer longer battery life, it’s likely I’d say the same thing if it had even 50% more battery life on top of what I have now.
