Valve’s Steam Deck wows reviewers: ‘The most innovative gaming PC in 20 years’ | Hacker News Reader

Valve’s Steam Deck wows reviewers: ‘The most innovative gaming PC in 20 years’

pcworld.com

97 pointsmywacaday52 comments

I feel like a lot of these comments are missing the point. Many of these reviewers have handheld pcs that are comparable or better than the steamdeck on a hardware level but cost 2-3x as much (although they got them for free). They’re excited for what this means for the industry. An affordable, usable linux device by Valve pushes publishers and developers to make their game work on linux (whether natively or via proton). Higher linux adoption means better linux drivers and more use of opensource and free software, which would be huge in an industry plagued with proprietary work.

It also respects the user. You're free to install whatever software or OS you want on it. This thing will still be useful in 10 years.

Yes, these days it's hard to see actual investments on PC as a platform. Everyone has been cultivating their own walled gardens for the past 20 years, and now that a corporation tries to make profit off an open platform there's a lot of doubt and pessimism. Actual Stockholm Syndrome.

I'd rather have a handheld PC based on Linux than a closed, warranty-void-if-opened box from the other players such as Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft.

At this point, I'm not really interested in buying one, but I'm pretty excited for the Steam Deck from the perspective of mobile computing and repairability.

Nintendo has made repairing the Switch a pain and is very anti-consumer in giving you access to your save data without forking over more money.

In a similar vein, I think it's cool to see Sony take a more repair friendly approach with the PS5. Taking the sides off for cleaning or replacement is super easy and as a bonus creates an extra revenue stream for new accessories.

The amount of really cool stuff hacker types are going to get out of the Deck is one area to look forward to. Heck, this could be the mobile workstation tons on this site have been asking for since the iPad debuted.

When demand for the Deck dies down, I think I'll buy one if only to show Valve that I support the product and their respect for consumers.

> In a similar vein, I think it's cool to see Sony take a more repair friendly approach with the PS5. Taking the sides off for cleaning or replacement is super easy and as a bonus creates an extra revenue stream for new accessories.

Too bad Sony was so anti-competetive and sued Dbrand (and others?) for making custom side panels.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgdqwz/custom-ps5-plate-comp...

I'm considering using a SteamDeck as a portable workstation. It's no powerhouse but you'd be able to get a lot of stuff done on something like that. I'd connect it to a keyboard, mouse and external monitor. I've been thinking about not using Windows as my primary platform and Valve has put together something I think I could really get behind.

I was in a similar boat, but then I realized that (at least for me) at that point it made more sense to just get a regular laptop.

I find that a lot of laptops have underpowered GPUs and I like to game. Also, there's the repairability aspect. I've been interested in the framework laptop but I'd prefer an AMD SoC with some gaming capabilities.

Also, I'm not giving my money to Intel for the foreseeable future.

I am planning to get a Nexdock to use with it. I plan to use the thing as a handheld console about 50% of the time anyway, and having to carry around a second device in the form of the Nexdock isn't that big a deal. Plus I can even use the SteamDeck as a shitty second display.

If you're not even using the screen, why bother? There are a zillion tiny computers out there.

Any decent steam machine could do but I haven't seen many small machines that I'd want to buy.

if you're not gaming I'm not sure why you wouldn't just get a laptop.

Also, I'm not giving my money to Intel for the foreseeable future.

The steam deck might be more portable

Getting one, but just because it is essentially free as I can't withdraw wallet funds on Steam...

At worst I get a PC for something... Maybe for TV-box... At best something relatively portable.

Never done this and never researched, but maybe buying some expensive skins and reselling it on websites for real money?

It is possible but prefer not to risk my account with that. And I don't really like accepting money on online for anything. So would need to find something with SEPA transfer.

shoot me a message if you want to sell it :) the top model!

I'm excited to see the Linux graphic stack improve and suck less, but I'm also not holding my breath as I've seen this entire thing not happen for decades now. I thought maybe Stadia and the other cloud operators would improve the Linux gaming stack, but it didn't really happen.

Valve contracts out a lot of driver work to Mesa and Linux.

I'm looking for a small, hassle-free machine for my SO to play Cities: Skylines on. The screen would be wasted since it would only ever run docked, but if it turns out to be powerful enough, I'd be very tempted to get one.

I didn't pre-order one, because I don't have the money, but I'm very much hoping SteamOS 3 provides a large amount of momentum for the Linux gaming ecosystem :)

I'd insta-preorder a cooler running, less powerful, fanless version.

If Steam Deck is a success then I expect knock-off Steam Decks with such alternatives would be available in the near future.

It's arch based, you can probably make it cooler, less powerful, and turn the fans off.

Given the heat output I'd not count on a cool fanless version showing up anytime soon. Not without significantly less performance

Couldn't you just underclock and undervolt the current day SteamDeck to achieve that?

Or in general set a really strict power envelope for the AMD APU used in it?

Umm.. maybe? I'll wait and see. Not that I have much of a choice with the current hardware availability issues..

Have others found issues with the heat? From the reviews I've seen they kept it away from the user's hands.

I’ve watched these reviews and their overall conclusion of the product seems completely divorced from all the details leading up to the conclusion. It runs hot, barely manages acceptable frame rates at 1280x800 on older games, and has pretty abysmal battery life. The performance, poor as it is, requires the most expensive model at $630.

But then at the end it’s the most innovative gaming PC in 20 years. Really? It’s an expensive handheld with poor performance and poor battery life for a niche use case of PC gaming on the go and a relatively small subset of the Steam library.

Not sure I'd call it poor performance. The fact that it runs PC games largely unmodified at all in handheld form factor is quite a feat.

Relative to a mains powered desktop with massive thermal capacity it is poor performance yes but I'd say that is an unreasonable expectation.

And similarly using other handheld platforms running code designed specifically for it doesn't seem like a good comparison either.

That said I'm not buying one either. Mobile gaming doesn't appeal

I’d love to see mobile pc gaming get resource usage under control. It seems these days everyone is perfectly fine with gaming requiring 500w and 32gb of ram. Playing the switch is a real eye opening experience because you see how little having the latest graphics actually matter for enjoying the game. VR being the exception.

> completely divorced from all the details leading up to the conclusion

You seem to be the one completely divorced from anything that has been shown in these reviews. Hot, barely acceptable performance, abysmal battery, what?

Have you seen the competition, or are you just comparing it to some idealistic pipe dream of a handheld that just exists in your mind? I've seen nothing but cautious optimism and surprised at what Valve has managed to achieve with current tech and that price point.

Candidly, did you watch the reviews? Gamers Nexus thoroughly tested the device. 92C, 1-2 hours battery life in demanding situations, and consistently under 60fps.

The only difference between the versions is the screen and storage, so the performance should be the same in most cases.

and a portable PC for 420€ is not cheap, but an interesting pricepoint, especially compared to similar devices like the gdp win

The thing to compare it to is a NUC, and then add in the screen and $70+ for a controller. Add some more for the battery.

I have a lot of small computers, but nothing handheld, and while I want a deck, I doubt I'll buy one any time soon, as it is a bit pricey considering I have a switch and a "gaming laptop".

It's the best performing PC in that form factor and has actually good enough battery life. It's not GBA battery life but it's on par with the V1 Switch, the Vita and the PSP and considerably better than It's PC competition which are more like 1-2 hrs vs. 3-5. It's also the fastest and costs considerably less. Performance seems good for a PC half the price of even a cheap gaming laptop that's also considerably smaller. The only difference between tiers is storage with the base model having eMMC and the upper ones having NVME.

And we haven't even talked about software like resume feature yet. If that works it will fix my biggest pain point about PC gaming.

> The performance, poor as it is, requires the most expensive model at $630.

Why does it require the most expensive model?

Significantly faster storage.

How is the most expensive model ‘required’? The only difference in models is screen texture and storage.

Agreed. I’m sort of relieved after watching videos that there isn’t a big reason to drop more for some more storage and a matte screen (and better case). And I find it promising is that the micro SD slot loads nearly as fast as the SSD. My use case is to take with me on travel and really to not have to sit in front of the computer to play games. So I’ll load some games on it but likely stream heavier games from my PC.

I went for the matte screen. I saw in the LTT tear-down that that the SSD is upgradable by removing ~10 screws to get to it.

The storage speed between the three models is wide. To achieve even the poor performance of the Gamers Nexus review required the top end model.

I would need storage to install recent game.

The storage is user upgradable technically.

YouTube reviews are typically not actual reviews. They are usually hype videos containing “influencers” talking excitedly about the product they received for free under the condition that they sugarcoat everything.

A minimum of 60 jump cuts per minute is typically mandatory as well.

>YouTube reviews are typically not actual reviews

Disagree. "Youtube reviews" doesn't mean anything valuable because there are a million reviewers on youtube, some very good and some worse. Disregarding reviews because they're on youtube actually disregards some of the best reviews around.

Half the tech journals and websites turn out complete garbage that I rarely agree with, while many youtubers do a good job.

It's the specific reviewer, and I wouldn't call the big reviewers on youtube (LTT, GN, etc) worse than any magazine or trade journal.

near hour long discussions with game performance tests, thermal imaging, airflow testing, etc, don't seem to be the kind of stuff you're talking about

It's already sold at cost, especially the base model. You can replace the ssd by urself

Literally everything you pointed out is wrong. It has the best battery life out of its competitors, it's less than half their prices, and its cooling is not a problem whatsoever. This has to be bait.

Calling it a "relatively small subset of the Steam library" seems like a bit of a stretch. Proton is promising, and it doesn't seem like performance will be an issue for the vast majority of Steam games.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com