Just picked up a Steam Deck, haven't owned a handhold system of any type since the OG game boy.
What is good to know about this thing? Any particular kind of games run well on it vs any kind run like crap?
Can you put emulators on it or is it pretty much locked to steam compatible games?
Are the controls and response times good enough for 'twitchy' games or more just stardew valley type stuff?
Doing basic searches shows all sorts of conflicting results so I'm hoping someone in here has one.
It's a Linux PC. It does what a Linux PC does. Check ProtonDB to figure out what the likelihood of any given game working is.
Yes it runs emulators.
I upgraded my Steam Deck with a 2 Tb NVMe and I've put over 200 games on it. Most games even the newest resource hogs run well on it. I prefer playing any games that draw less than 15 watts as the fan doesn't kick on and the deck isn't working as hard. The last two days I've been playing Nier Automata which runs amazingly well. Some other games I've played are: The Forest, Enter the Gungeon, Fallout 4, Grand Theft Auto 5, Star Wars Battlefront 2 and they all run great.
You can install emulators, PS3, Switch etc. it all works.
The controls are responsive and perfect between the analogs, touchscreen and haptics there's always an option that's comfortable. The customizability is impressive too; one example is I mapped one of the back paddles to magnifier in case there's any microscopic text (which is rare).
I didn't realize you could upgrade components inside of it, that is pretty sweet.
Yeah, it's designed to be upgraded so the process is fairly easy.
Upgrade to an extent. RAM and APU are soldered on the MB. But a lot of the components are modular and switching them is easy. There are even 3rd party hall effect joystick modules that eliminate joystick drift.
I hope so it has been a few years since I've built a PC.
Make sure to remove the microSD before opening up your Steam Deck.
...wait why?
If you take out the back panel before taking out the microSD, you’ll snap the card in half.
Ahhhh I misread it and thought every time I turned on the Deck I'd have to pull the Micro SD card. I'll keep that in mind before I upgrade, I appreciate the heads up!
Yes, it can run emulators of which almost all of them have Linux versions. The latest mainline build of Yuzu supposedly improves performance on devices with AMD CPUs by 20%.
You can even play non-Steam native PC games. You can either do it through Lutris or Heroic on desktop mode or you can add them on the Steam client as non-Steam games.
Steam deck is awesome. I put 10k ebooks on it. Yuzu + switch roms ftw. I have at least 20 switch games installed and several hundred nes to GameCube roms. battle net for diablo wow and starcraft. Elder scrolls online. Borderlands 3. Csgo. Street fighter 6 soul cal 6 umvc3, I could go on.. there is so much you can install, get used to desktop mode I even got.my iptv service running on it! Oh and spotify runs in background nicely if you don't want to hear game sounds. And of course almost everything in the steam library.
Edit: you can get a cheap dock from Amazon for like 30 bucks, and I've found all my fightsticks even old ps3 one works flawlessly, and the hdmi port on the dock just makes it so easy to plug into any TV. Oh yeah console controllers connect via Bluetooth no problem, my ps4 and ps5 controllers sync first try.
I've never tried the Switch, any decent games I should seek out on it?
More like, before you buy a single player game check for switch rom first, example octopath traveller or cult of dead cow, plus of course Mario and Zelda games
There's also Aperture Desk Job, which is more or less a glorified tech-demo for the steamdeck, but it's a fun and quick little diversion. And it's free.
Can all the steam decks upgrade their HDDs or is it just the more expensive models?
In addition to what everyone else mentioned, you can also run a lot of native Windows apps, too.
For instance, there is a guide to run Star Citizen on the Steam Deck. If you optimise the settings you can get about 20fps in the cities, and around 50 fps in space:
But yeah, EmuDeck is a must-have, as it's easy to install and gives you access to every important emulator out there.
Also, a few noteworthy games to get on the Steam Deck with native support: