Steam Deck

What are the benefits of having Windows on there?

The Destiny 2 thing is a bit of a bummer. I hope Steam are thinking about a more meaningful way to allow for anti-cheat software because not being able to play competitive MP on it will hold back its success.

I’m using the hp one that came with my work laptop. Seems to work well, saves me switching the mouse, keyboard and monitor and was free. Highly recommended.

One of the anti cheat guys was saying it’s not going to happen because there’s too many ways to get around it on Linux.

What's performance like in Windows? I remember the early benchmarks indicated that it was noticeably worse than in SteamOS, but that could just be before the drivers were sorted.

Personally haven't had a huge urge to put Windows on it. I've not tried a massive variety of stuff, to be fair, but had no issues with the games I have tried and emulation (at least SNES and Mega Drive), was very simple to sort. The only thing I feel I'm missing out on is Game Pass, which would be incredible to have on the go, but I'm not exactly short on things to play.

Next thing I need to sort is getting access to Epic and GoG, but sounds as if that isn't too hard.

Steam deck then. It’s all right I guess?

There are 256GB Samsung A2 cards for £17 on Amazon at the moment which are ideal for a Windows install. Never really bothered comparing games either when I tried it on mine, it was just to try stuff like Destiny (which wasn't a great experience)

It's really no faff to switch back and forth as someone else said, so if you're curious and have a spare SD card just jump in. Had to faff about a bit to get auto login and stuff like that working to make it as seamless as possible. Also enabled RDP so I could just jump onto it from a laptop rather than having to go upstairs to plug it into my work dock.

Yeah, it's a bit of a confusing mess. Main one to pay attention to for this kind of use is A1 vs A2. A1 would be fine for something like playing ROMs and some more lightweight games, but for running Windows you'd really want A2 (much better IOPS)

Getting GOG games working with Heroic is straight forward however I cannot get Galaxy into a usable state, even after adding the exe as a nonSteam game in desktop mode. Works when first installed but subsequently (and yes it is pointed at the actual exe not the installer) doesn't load. Annoying as Heroic doesn't support cloud saves (not sure about auto-updates either). Not tried Epic outside of Heroic yet. This sort of faff is one reason I fancy running Windows too (just not from an SD as it sounds like it will quickly wear out the SD)

I've had my Steam Deck for a few months now and it's quickly becoming one of my favourite gaming devices. I was never really one of handheld gaming but having access to my entire Steam library and the ease that everything has worked has kept be coming back again and again.

Having game pass games on a windows sd card is great, you get a blank save game for the game pass version of Vampire Survivors.

I wish I could say I done something else but apart from Medieval Dynasty I got lost in the starter game of VS again.

Edit: Tell a lie, I installed Overwatch 2 and it made my eyes hurt trying to play it after being on the pc for the first one for a couple of hundred hours, I dont think I'll be playing many quick fps games on it.

Still can't decide about getting this machine. On the one hand, I am currently without a Gaming PC (mine died a couple of years ago) and have a not inconsiderable Steam library that I cannot fully access. I don't really fancy paying current prices for a machine that doesn't match up comparably to what my old one was and with the energy crisis, I don't fancy a heavy duty PC anyway. So Steam Deck does tick a lot of boxes. But I am not one for tinkering too much, I like the ease of playing on something you don't have to stress too much about getting the settings right and also I am a carer for someone so would use it when possibly in the same room as them (ie, in the evening when the TV is on) and the idea of a loud fan worries me.

I haven't found the fan to be noisy at all. Sure, it is a bit louder than a Switch, but certainly nowhere near as loud as a gaming laptop. Someone else in the same room might hear it, but unlikely to be any more distracting than any other background noise.

As with tinkering, I've found the majority of games to just simply work out of the box. Most common tweak I've need to make is with the controls, normally just switching to a community made template and perhaps amending an option or two. When it comes to graphics options, automatic settings have done a good enough job and even if they haven't been quite right you can normally just change to a low preset and you are good. It is nice that there is plenty of ways to get your hands dirty with settings or delve into desktop-mode to get other stores running or emulators, but you certainly don't have to do any of that.

You can almost completely bypass the fan by reducing the TDP by a few watts and even then it's no louder than, say, a work laptop. Even at full tilt it's quieter than my wheezy old Switch when it's docked, for example. So when you set it to 11W instead of the max 15, not only do you get maybe 90% of the performance, you also get an extra hour on the battery and much less noise.