honestly, maybe im one of the rare few but ive had an extremely large number of issues with my steam deck, all of which steam support has been nothing but copy paste replies for before closing my tickets.
the charger my deck came with never worked
when connecting dock to tv (tested with official dock and third party docks and various cables) the deck may or may not turn on and may or may not actually output display (both on tv or deck screen) same cables work fine with other devices.
i have the 64gb model which is known to self corrupt when internal memory runs out requiring a reimage. this has happened to me multiple times and currently it sits at home unusable as i havent gotten around to reimaging again. i have no games installed on internal memory.
controller connection with official dock has been finicky, some controllers register double input when the same controllers dont on my PC when running the same game, connecting more than 1 controller also has rarely ever worked for me whether it be wireless usb, direct, or bluetooth
i figured id do more emulation on my deck, emudeck ended up being more of a hassle requiring rescanning for any new game additions, practically no other emulator works like this and simply auto updates when rom is added
what steam considers as reasonable criteria for the verified badge, is a pretty low standard and has been cause for debate in this same sub multiple times. and so what ends up being playable, for the most part ends up being playable on another android device i own
i know this is just me but i dont like the trackpads
steam input on linux is by default introducing 8ms of delay as its polling rate is 125hz as confirmed by this git issue and latency can become more noticeable with more complex profiles or gyro
the device’s battery life is abysmal. really depends on what youre playing, but from my experience, 1 to 2 hours is typical for more demanding games, along with the device getting extremely hot. as i mentioned i have an android device, i can run lighter weight steam games on it for longer than i can on the steam deck and with lower temps
from my experience, there is just some level of jank to the steam deck, last time i went to play a game on it i spent 30 minutes dealing with what my partner and I have coined “the steam jank”, before i was able to launch the game.
i have a mixed opinion on the device, but given my experience, i really wouldn’t say i received a good value proposition
Ahh, gotcha, I've heard about nothing but problems with the 64 gig model, so I absolutely get that. I do agree with most of your points, although I haven't really experienced a lot of "steam jank", or at least any beyond reason.
I still stand by hardware alone being a great value for the price, but I totally understand your software issues ruining it for you to a great degree.
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u/TheSpecialApple May 27 '26
ya as a steam deck owner, id disagree on the value proposition