*** The Official Steam Deck Thread ***

[LadFromWales]

@gamerTM21 definitely creates battery anxiety! Even just playing some Forza Horizon 5 on my break at work (in "performance" mode as hadn't yet faffed with other settings) would consume half the battery within 45 minutes. Not very portable if I need to connect to power within an hour of playing.

Whenever I used it at home I was tethered to the power cable.

I get owning multiple handhelds, but you can only play one at a time. I totally understand owning a PC handheld and a Switch, of course, though the former can emulate the latter if you aren't fussed about Nintendo Online...
Having just looked the Odin 2 is an Android device. I guess there are Android games you play frequently?

From my short time with the Legion Go, I think the older generation 15W Ryzen chips (and the Deck APU) is the sweet spot for gaming handhelds for the foreseeable. I imagine the Deck 2 will also target a 15W TDP.

 

[Alexrose1uk]

So touchwood, my wife's Deck OLED seems to work perfectly, beyond her managing to drain the battery extremely quickly dabbling with Death Stranding, faster than my in car 35W charger could keep up with!
The only thing that worries me is a few times now, on initial boot, the microSD card hasn't been showing properly, just ~30MB that needs formatting. A quick eject and reinsert of the memory card seems to resolve the issue, but still find it a little concerning. I'm going to get the MicroSD card replaced, but has anyone else encountered this?

 

[Ravenger]

Got my 1tb OLED with the etched screen yesterday but only really had time to play today. You really do notice the difference in colours between the OLED and the LCD. It's pretty stark. The levels of brightness are insane compared to the LCD too. I can see why some people would prefer the glossy screen, as playing under lights can affect the contrast, but I hate reflections, so I'm happy with the etched version.
The dpad feels much firmer, and gives more feedback when pressed,. The other buttons feel much the same as the old ones, except for the special buttons which are raised slightly and not spongy like the originals. The sticks raised edges take a bit of getting used to but I'm glad they're not as slippy as the originals.
The trackpad feedback is way stronger than the LCD, I think I'll have to lower that a bit.
It's definitely quieter than the original too - you can barely hear the fan.
I love that it supports wifi 6E, I was getting 350mb/s download rates, which makes installing large games much quicker.

Is it a worthwile upgrade from the LCD? I'd say yes, but if you don't have the money then the LCD is still great and you won't miss much. The upgrades are not so much better that they're absolutely essential if you already have the deck, more in the 'nice to have' category.

 

[Guest2]

Got my 1tb OLED with the etched screen yesterday but only really had time to play today. You really do notice the difference in colours between the OLED and the LCD. It's pretty stark. The levels of brightness are insane compared to the LCD too. I can see why some people would prefer the glossy screen, as playing under lights can affect the contrast, but I hate reflections, so I'm happy with the etched version.
The dpad feels much firmer, and gives more feedback when pressed,. The other buttons feel much the same as the old ones, except for the special buttons which are raised slightly and not spongy like the originals. The sticks raised edges take a bit of getting used to but I'm glad they're not as slippy as the originals.
The trackpad feedback is way stronger than the LCD, I think I'll have to lower that a bit.
It's definitely quieter than the original too - you can barely hear the fan.
I love that it supports wifi 6E, I was getting 350mb/s download rates, which makes installing large games much quicker.

Is it a worthwile upgrade from the LCD? I'd say yes, but if you don't have the money then the LCD is still great and you won't miss much. The upgrades are not so much better that they're absolutely essential if you already have the deck, more in the 'nice to have' category.

I must have got one of the crapola batch as my dpad was really soft with little to no feedback. In contrast my LCD model dpad is much firmer.
Im also sure my LCD model deck (only 3 months old so guess latest batch) must have wifi 6e too, my downloads peak at almost 500Mbps / 60MB/s.

 

[PaulM]

Got my replacement yesterday, not noticed any issues with this one and both speakers work this time so that's an improvement

 

[ElliorR]

Got my 1tb OLED with the etched screen yesterday but only really had time to play today. You really do notice the difference in colours between the OLED and the LCD. It's pretty stark. The levels of brightness are insane compared to the LCD too. I can see why some people would prefer the glossy screen, as playing under lights can affect the contrast, but I hate reflections, so I'm happy with the etched version.
The dpad feels much firmer, and gives more feedback when pressed,. The other buttons feel much the same as the old ones, except for the special buttons which are raised slightly and not spongy like the originals. The sticks raised edges take a bit of getting used to but I'm glad they're not as slippy as the originals.
The trackpad feedback is way stronger than the LCD, I think I'll have to lower that a bit.
It's definitely quieter than the original too - you can barely hear the fan.
I love that it supports wifi 6E, I was getting 350mb/s download rates, which makes installing large games much quicker.

Is it a worthwile upgrade from the LCD? I'd say yes, but if you don't have the money then the LCD is still great and you won't miss much. The upgrades are not so much better that they're absolutely essential if you already have the deck, more in the 'nice to have' category.

From ordering to receiving how long did it take to arrive? I’ve decided to buy the 512gb version.

 

[martos123]

From ordering to receiving how long did it take to arrive? I’ve decided to buy the 512gb version.

Took 9 days for mine to arrive.

 

[Ravenger]

10 days for mine.

 

[Guest2]

Had a good session tonight on the deck (LCD) for a couple hours.
Hydro Thunder Hurricane and Switchall (Xbox 360)

Both are fantastic and run really well on 30fps/60hz locked. They look great so no doubt look even better on OLED.
When I tried 30fps/90hz though on the Deck OLED there were frametime spikes making it feel jittery so might need to wait until 30fps/60hz is available, unless it is already.

edit

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Guys, just a quick headsup to be VERY careful with Steam Deck if you're intending to use it with family sharing or more than one user, as it seems that Steam Deck/SteamOS does not properly segregate save data/user data when adding multiple steam accounts, which IMO is a MASSIVE screw up.

Wife almost lost hundreds of hours of progress in a game, because the steamdeck decided to overwrite her save/progression data with mine, and sync it up to her cloud save.
Luckily a dev was able to restore her mostly, albeit she still lost some tertiary progress on that game/account, but it was a pretty stressful and upsetting experience.

Wanted to raise this so anyone else picking up a Steam Deck/Steam Deck OLED is forewarned, but also as I think more fuss should be made over this, as it's not only a pretty serious error/issue, but one that should NOT be present still after almost 2 years of the Steam Deck's release, especially as it happens with no warning or user interaction other than using the deck normally, it's also a massive spit in the face for those of us wanting to use family sharing!

Once I started to dig into this issue, I found quite a few effected parties across multiple games, one example:

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

Despite the potential severity of the issue, I don't see it being talked about much unless I specifically looked for this issue, which makes me think it's not widely known about outside the enthusiast/affected communities.
The dev team of that title/mod team seemed well aware of this issue (and the only real way they could suggest to avoid it was to manually go into Steam OS Linux Desktop and manually create additional linux user accounts, ergo outside the standard Steam/Steamdeck Valve experience); so it seems likely it is happening to a reasonable number of people; more needs to be said and done and more awareness should be raised. Fundamentally save/user files between one Steam account on the deck and another should be kept seperate, and it's hard to understand why Valve hasn't done this, to account for the fact that not all developers will follow best practice and ensure thier own save systems specifically recognise profiles/user accounts. Given how much work they HAVE put into the deck, this seems like a massive and fundamental flaw and oversight; and one I cannot believe they are unaware of, given I found complaints going back to release; with people's game experiences being ruined by it.

 

[gamerTM21]

Ordered on Saturday and just had my tracking number provided by GLS.

How long does it normally take at this stage to arrive?

 

[2StepSteve]

I’ve got the Tomtoc case for it, far less bulky than the standard case!

That's the one I have. It's still a sizable chunk compared to the Switch those.

 

[LadFromWales]

Is it the grey case you have? Is it a nice colour? Hard to tell from the pictures!

 

[Alexrose1uk]

@TNA Wow is an understatement.
It seems its related to the way proton emulates the windows user folder tree structure so games don't run into issues when running via proton, and means that games that aren't account aware basically end up writing over other users user data on a game by game basis if you're unlucky, and then of course once it's done that, it's all but automatic for that false data to then get backed up to steam cloud overwriting your correct info EVERYWHERE.

What I don't get is why, especially on the steam deck, where multiple users on a single device and OS login is more probably, Valve did not think to incorporate User ID into the folder structure syntax, so that seperate steam account user data is kept completely seperate. Whilst there are a couple of situations where this could have disadvantages or cause additional duplications, it is a far better solution than risking games overwriting the user data of other steam accounts on a device, and then uploading that incorrect to steam cloud; a pretty massive developmental oversight imo, and one they should fix ASAP.

I suspect after 2 years however it won't get fixed except either by luck, or by the community kicking up some fuss.

 

[ElliorR]

Ordered on Saturday and just had my tracking number provided by GLS.

How long does it normally take at this stage to arrive?

I ordered mine Sunday morning and it's currently "Packaged". Hopefully will ship today but we'll see. From what I've seen it might be next week but the Estimated Delivery Date is currently 3-5 business days where early last week it said up to 10 days. Fingers crossed.

 

[Guest2]

@TNA Wow is an understatement.
It seems its related to the way proton emulates the windows user folder tree structure so games don't run into issues when running via proton, and means that games that aren't account aware basically end up writing over other users user data on a game by game basis if you're unlucky, and then of course once it's done that, it's all but automatic for that false data to then get backed up to steam cloud overwriting your correct info EVERYWHERE.

What I don't get is why, especially on the steam deck, where multiple users on a single device and OS login is more probably, Valve did not think to incorporate User ID into the folder structure syntax, so that seperate steam account user data is kept completely seperate. Whilst there are a couple of situations where this could have disadvantages or cause additional duplications, it is a far better solution than risking games overwriting the user data of other steam accounts on a device, and then uploading that incorrect to steam cloud; a pretty massive developmental oversight imo, and one they should fix ASAP.

I suspect after 2 years however it won't get fixed except either by luck, or by the community kicking up some fuss.

Just tell your Mrs. to get her own Steam deck and account, problem solved!

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Just tell your Mrs. to get her own Steam deck and account, problem solved!

We actually have an original and OLED but we tend to use family sharing on single player games and it has made us VERY wary about that now, at least with the steam deck.

It's incredibly frustrating because the steamdeck FAQs actually highlight how easy it is for multiple users to play on a deck but neglects to mention you might screw up each others achievement or saves which is pretty terrible and borderline false advertising when they haven't ensured it works flawlessly.

Pretty major oversight here tbh.

 

[gamerTM21]

I ordered mine Sunday morning and it's currently "Packaged". Hopefully will ship today but we'll see. From what I've seen it might be next week but the Estimated Delivery Date is currently 3-5 business days where early last week it said up to 10 days. Fingers crossed.

Interesting that yours hasn't been shipped yet. I ordered a day or two earlier and had it shipped this morning.

Although I guess it's coming from the Netherlands and it seems it can take ages to be picked up by a UK courier once it arrives in the country.

Have heard of a few people ordering last week and receiving it within 4-5 days total, so here's hoping by the end of the week!

 

[ElliorR]

Interesting that yours hasn't been shipped yet. I ordered a day or two earlier and had it shipped this morning.

Although I guess it's coming from the Netherlands and it seems it can take ages to be picked up by a UK courier once it arrives in the country.

Have heard of a few people ordering last week and receiving it within 4-5 days total, so here's hoping by the end of the week!

I received notification and a tracking number 30 mins ago. GLS haven't collected it yet but I have the number.

 

[LadFromWales]

Ordered Friday early evening.
Got email this morning "We're preparing your items to ship".
Checked tracking just now, is on the GLS system but not yet picked up...maybe later! (As my order on Steam claims it has shipped!)