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.
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.