The first Steam Deck hardware and performance reviews are in (videos)

The Valve Steam Deck handheld gaming PC is set to begin shipping later this month, and ahead of that official launch, the first real-world reviews are starting to arrive. And for the most part, they’re good. Very good.

YouTuber’s The Phawx, Gamers Nexus, and Linus Tech Tips have been spending time with the Steam Deck, and they’re starting to share performance notes, impressions of the hardware, and some other key details — although there are a few things that they’re not talking about yet, because Valve is still tweaking the software.

For that reason, the video reviews don’t dig into the Steam Deck’s operating system, which is a custom Linux distribution called Steam OS. And Valve asked reviewers to only test 5 certain games which are known to run well (including some games that are Windows games running on Linux thanks to Valve’s Proton software).

Within those confines though, reviewers were able to look at things like real-world battery life (which seems to range from 90 minutes to 6 hours, depending on the game and graphics settings), game play, thermal performance, and hardware.

Compared with other recent handhelds like the ONEXPLAYER Mini (with an Intel Core i7-1195G7), GPD Win 3 (Intel Core i7-1165G7) and AYA Neo Next (AMD Ryzen 7 5825U processor), the Steam Deck appears to deliver on its promise of higher frame rates thanks to the higher-performance RDNA 2 GPU. It also gets longer battery life.

The display and controllers are said to be very good, but the Steam Deck is a pretty large device which could make it a little uncomfortable to reach some buttons. Haptic feedback, on the other hand, is said to be underwhelming at the moment (although Valve says that could be improved with software updates).

One of the things I’m most encouraged to see is that Valve’s promise that games would load nearly as quickly from a microSD card as they do from built-in storage, seems to be true (at least for the titles reviewers were aloud to test), which could be good news for folks who decided to opt for the entry-level $399 Steam Deck, which has just 64GB of eMMC storage (higher priced models have 256GB or 512GB PCIe NVMe SSDs).

Later this month we can probably expect to see more Steam Deck reviews after another embargo lifts and testers are allowed to talk about the software, test additional games, and maybe even install Windows or other software.

Valve Steam Deck Specs
Display	7 inches 1280 x 800 pixels LCD 400 nits Touchscreen
CPU	AMD Zen 2  4-cores / 8-threads 2.4 GHz to 3.5 GHz Up to 448 GFlops FP32 4-15 watts
GPU	AMD RDNA 2  8 compute units 1 GHz to 1.66 GHz Up to 1.6 TFlops FP32
RAM	16GB LPDDR5-5500
Storage	64GB eMMC (PCIe Gen 2 x1) 256GB NVMe SSD (M.2 2230 PCIe Gen 3 x4) 512GB NVMe SSD (M.2 2230 PCie Gen 3 x4) microSDXC card reader
Ports	1 x USB-C (with DisplayPort 1.4 Alt Mode for 8K/60 Hz or 4K/120 Hz video out) 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
Game controllers	2 x analog sticks with capacitive touch A, B,  X,  Y buttons D-pad L & R analog triggers L & R bumpers 4 x assignable grip buttons 2 x 32.5mm square trackpads with haptic feedback 6-Axis gyroscope
Other buttons & switches	Volume Up Volume Down View Menu
Keyboard	Virtual
Battery & charging	40Wh battery 45W USB Type-C PD 3.0 charger
Wireless
Audio	Stereo front-facing speakers 3.5mm audio jack
Webcam & mic	Mic only
OS	Steam OS (Arch Linux with KDE Plasma)
Dimensions	298mm x 117mm x 49mm 11.7″ x 4.6″ x 1.9″
Weight	669 grams 1.5 pounds
Docking Station	1 x HDMI 2.0 1 x Gigabit Ethernet 1 x USB Type-C power input 1 x USB-C out to Steam Deck 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A 2 x USB 2.0
Price	$399 (64GB eMMC) $529 (256GB NVMe) $649 (512GB NVMe)

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