All hands on Steam Deck - Valve's handheld PC

This…

Big pharma has you covered.

It has escaped the Troutdale, OR Fedex facility event horizon and is allegedly out for delivery.

Steam Deck received. And very very shiny.

I waited to buy Elden Ring until it arrived, since they had gone to such trouble to support it cleanly. Then I had to figure out how to disable the mapping of the back buttons because I kept accidentally triggering the wrong thing.

Any issues noted yet? Fan noise or heat?

Nope. Fan noise is there, but not overly high pitched, and with music and sound on not really noticeable. If you feel the air over the fan exhaust, it is clearly hot, but the unit isn’t.

Definitely want to keep that fan clean, though.

Seriously, that place. This is the perfect description.

Nice, congrats!

On a whim, I installed Insurgency: Sandstorm, and found that it runs like a dream, despite being flagged as unsupported due to EAC. Even playing on thumbsticks works great out the box.

Does it drain the battery slow enough that you can charge off a USB C external battery while using it? Thinking my big battery pack + the Steam Deck would be a nice combo on a long flight.

(My gaming laptop laughs when you use the supported USB charging instead of the brick while gaming… Drains the power much faster than it’s coming in.)

A couple useful bits of Deck software I’m keeping an eye on:

Things are moving so fast with QoL tools for making non-Steam games and emulators as easy as Steam games, that it’s probably better to wait a little while for the ecosystem to stabilize. But in a few months, the Deck is going to so much more bonkers than it already is.

very cool, thanks for sharing

Any word on production ramping up? Seems like everything else is.

Dire dire dock news:

I picked up a USB-C dock on Amazon a while back and have had no problems with it, but this does suck for people wanting to wait for the official one.

Warp, what all do you have plugged in to the dock? Just wondering what kind of peripherals I need to eventually plan for.

I don’t use the dock much - most of my Steam Deck use has been as the actual handheld - but I’ve used it with up to three external monitors across HDMI and DP, a wired keyboard and mouse, and USB storage, and it’s been fine using all of that with the stock AC adapter for power delivery.

Very nice! That’s great to know. I have some spare USB docks from work and home. I’ll try them if/when my unit ships.

+1 here. I have my Steam Deck finally, and yeah… I think I need a third pair of glasses just for steamdeckness…

One that I have tried which you can find right in the discover app is called Heroic Games Launcher. It allows you to download and play your Epic and GOG games on your Steam Deck. I’ve tried 3 Epic games so far with decent success.(Darkest Dungeon 2, Satisfactory and Outer Wilds)