Exactly. It’s not like you’d be playing a ton of stuff on the Deck at 1200p if you had this screen… but it’d be nice to have the option for older games that don’t need a ton of power at that resolution. And this screen barely costs more than the 800p LCD replacement screen.
I’ve used it before when playing non-docked (otherwise I have a Blue yeti condenser mic hooked up into my docking hub).
The people I was playing with said I sounded good and clear. I’ve used it both with Discord and with Steam voice chat and I’ve never had an issue.
EDIT: I saw your post about issues with it when using wired headphones. That very well may be, but I can tell you it works fine with Bluetooth headphones (I alternate on a couple of pairs of BT bone conduction headphones).
I said it elsewhere, but it’s almost like they looked at the market research showing Steam PC gamers would buy a gazillion Steam Controller 2s or Steam Deck Controllers if they made and sold either one, or both.
And then they decided to make something that was neither one of those things. It’s totally bizarre.
Why would anyone buy this? You can already do this streaming through the Deck or any of the other handhelds, if Game Pass is your thing.
To be fair, when it’s winter in one hemisphere on the planet, it’s summer in the other.
You’d have to like the aesthetic to really want that version I think. Not sure if it was visually everyone’s cup of thirty-extra-dollars tea.
Sorry friend, Valve absolutely cratered the resale value of LCD Decks with the OLED launch and restructuring.
I was considering selling my Deck and moving to the Go in the days before the announcement, and the very day I decided to sell, Valve put out that press release. Instantly new LCD Decks were $150ish cheaper, so that just comes right off the top of what you could get for a used one.
The only thing worse than scalpers are people who buy from scalpers and perpetuate the cycle of scalping.
I hear good things about Chimera OS feeling a lot like Steam OS when you’re trying to get a similar experience for laptops, if that’s what you’re going for.
Keep a small Windows partition if you play any of those games with anti-cheat that don’t allow Linux.
Otherwise, almost everything else just works with Proton. It’s a lovely age.
My two favorite distros as well.
Mint Cin is a solid first distro. UI feels a lot like Windows and gives a comfy environment to learn in.
Be sure to check community control layouts, and not just the default.
I’ve had several games I thought would be terrible on a controller, only to discover someone had invented an ingenious and intuitive layout already.
It actually did replace my laptop when I got it last year. My dying, ancient laptop finally kicked it just a couple of days before the Deck arrived. I never had one iota of desire to get another laptop.
Of course our use cases are radically different, but I think that displays the versatility quite well.
This is the smallest obstacle, IMO. You could get rid of (or leave a small dual boot partition of) Windows, and use one of the good Linux distros tailored to a Steam OS-like experience, like Chimera or Bazzite, and just keep ticking along without missing a beat.
I love my Deck, but I’m already researching the process of eventually transitioning off of it simply because the screen is too tiny for my 40s eyes, and I don’t get to use it handheld as much as I’d like. This upcoming wave of Deck-like handhelds with 9 and 10 inch screens will be looking very good in this upcoming year.
Absolutely. Valve is the only player in this game that doesn’t have to turn their profits on the actual devices themselves.
And Valve’s definitely turning backflips that tons of people are entering the PC gaming space and Steam store on handhelds that Valve didn’t have to subsidize.
I’ll take a larger screen, the 7" is far too tiny for me for almost any game with text or captioning. Something in the 9" or slightly larger range would be golden, and you could get most of the way there by getting rid of the bezels. The actual Deck itself wouldn’t have to be that much bigger to accommodate the rest.
Being a 40s gamer with bad eyes, the only thing I dislike about the Deck is the small screen size, which keeps me from using it handheld as much as I’d like to.
But it’s my only PC currently, and it’s fantastic docked with Bluetooth M&K. In every other way but the native screen, it’s exceeded my expectations.
Down the road when it’s time to upgrade, I’ll probably get a device with a larger screen, but I will always love the Deck, which has convinced me that I’ll probably never main a laptop again.
Don’t sleep on Grim Dawn either. Deep, with a ton of class combos.
I love mine so much that I didn’t bother replacing my old laptop after it died, I just bought a dock, pulled an old Bluetooth mouse and keyboard out of storage, and the Deck is my daily driver now.
I have fantastic experiences playing mine. I recently upgraded to the OLED and gave the old LCD to a friend, and now he’s addicted to PC gaming as well. We play stuff every weekend, opening Steam voice calls is built right into the UI and it’s a fantastic experience. If you are thinking about getting into gaming, or gifting one to a gamer, I can’t recommend it enough.