Hey folks, I wanna gift a steam deck to myself. The main games I’ll (infrequently) play on there are CS:Go and age of empires 2 HD, both of which I own and never get a chance to play on a regular PC.
I suppose I want the OLED one. Is it ok to go for the 64 GB version or should I go for the higher storage tier? It has expandable storage yeah? Or is that not reliable or fast enough?
Also, what’s going on with the pricing? It’s just obviously better to buy direct. Why are people trying to sell it on Amazon? I get people trying to sell on eBay and Craigslist but Amazon? What’s the deal there?
Another big factor with the OLED deck is that it gets significantly more battery life. Especially in less demanding games, you can get 2x or even 3x the battery life of the LCD version (cries in LCD deck).
As for storage size, if you’re comfortable replacing the internal M.2 SSD, I believe you can save a bit of money there by buying the smallest size model (+ you get a bonus smaller SSD which can be nice for some projects). There is an ifixit guide for it.
If you’re not up for that and still want to save money, the micro SD card support is supposed to really good and practically indistinguishable from the internal SSD from what I’ve heard, but I haven’t yet tried it myself.
Is the increased battery life coming from the OLED screen, or did they improve the motherboard/CPU efficiency as well?
Yes to those and the battery is bigger. 50Wh vs 40
I believe the OLED screen is thinner, so they had more space for the battery. And then they also improved the efficiency of the SoC.
Not saying they will be on sale as they are still very new, but the Steam spring sale is in 4 days, so there is a chance they might be discounted a little. I would recommend buying from Valve, they have very good support.
I’d go for the 512GB OLED, but if screen and battery life isn’t a problem for you then the LCD version is still perfectly fine. If you plan on using it a lot though, treat yourself to that OLED ;D
You can put a micro SD card in, a good A2 V30 card will be absolutely fine for it, I have a SanDisk Extreme PRO (~$60 for 512GB) myself in mine, though I don’t play heavy games on it. You can also replace the M.2 SSD in the Steam Deck itself if you fancied.
Don’t bother with the SD card, just buy an SSD and swap it. I did exactly that and installed 2Tb SSD and I couldn’t be happier
Thanks for the tip about the sale. I’ll wait it out. Also, yeah OLED makes sense to me from longevity thinking too. Better battery and better tech…
Yes, I would go for the OLED. There is no OLED with 64 GB, only with 512 GB and one TB. Alternatively, you could go for the 64 GB IPS model, which is quite cheap.
Every Steam Deck can be expanded with micro SD cards. I don’t notice a difference where the game is stored, but I also don’t track startup times with a stopwatch ;) But please buy a decent micro SD card if you plan to extend your storage.
I bought the 512Gb OLED, and within two months decided I needed to upgrade the storage. I replaced the drive with a 2Tb drive, and I’m much happier. That said, I download a ton of stuff and keep it on there. I don’t often play a single game straight through, so I like having the ability to have a wide variety at any given time. Replacing the drive is trivial if you’re handy at all.
I would buy direct, I wouldn’t trust getting something second hand. I’m sure plenty of people are selling their LCD for an OLED, but I would rather go direct unless you’re getting an amazing deal and have some level of purchase protection.
I suppose I want the OLED one. Is it ok to go for the 64 GB version
Yes you do. But there is no 64GB version. There’s not even a 64GB LCD anymore. Minimum for OLED is 512GB.
But honestly the 64GB was a joke, even if you stored games on the SD card, the SSD would fill up with shaders pretty quickly.
The 64GB was nice when you wanted to upgrade the SSD yourself anyway. Much cheaper that way.
There’s not even a 64GB LCD anymore.
There is, and it’s only $349. Huge savings over the base OLED if you don’t need the battery life or 90 hz, etc., and you can upgrade the SSD at some point.
Welp, I stand corrected. Just assumed they would have sold out by now.
I got the 512 OLED and I’m quite smitten with it. It’s actually my very first gaming “pc”.
Just a heads up that CS2 isn’t super enjoyable to play on the steam deck. Unless you’re really good with the gyro aiming, you’re going to get wrecked. I also had some frame drops when playing csgo. It’s possible that that’s gotten better with CS2 though.
I’d stick with the old mouse and keyboard for those games unless you’re somehow playing with folks who also have steam decks.
Hmmm. Thanks for that feedback. Playing COD a lot these past few years, I’ve gotten used to gyro aiming with custom settings to make the aim move faster. That said, it’s never as fun as CS with a mouse 😋
By the way, can we connect Bluetooth keyboard and mouse to the Deck?
Yes, I’ve tried it and it works fine. I should point out though that if you plan to do that, you might as well buy a USB splitter and then use wired.
Ah, that’s an interesting point! I’ve never thought much about the latency caused by Bluetooth. But maybe it’ll be noticeable on the Deck?
I haven’t extensively tested it but I have been able to get it to work with both. I was also able to use a usb hub with a Logitech dongle for a mouse and a Bluetooth keyboard. On my flights, I’ll normally pair my Sony Bluetooth headphones.
All of it has worked seamlessly for me.
The following context is at least a year or two old, so I’m betting things have gotten a lot better since: I had issues when pairing multiple Nintendo pro controllers to the steamdeck. It would work and then suddenly drop one or both of the controllers. When using a mouse and keyboard with the deck, I’ve had issues when using game mode (as opposed to desktop mode). Frequently this resulted in my character looking straight at the ground no matter what I did. When in desktop mode, performance takes a hit and my games would drop frames occasionally. I originally hoped I could seamlessly dock this and play couch coop games. At the time this functionality felt mostly broken, but I’ve been told it’s gotten a lot better in later patches.
I have the older steam deck, but I still love it. I’ve used it for rocket league, a whole suite of indie games, Sifu, Like A Dragon, and a semi tolerable bg3 experience. Emulation is also pretty fantastic.
I use the SD daily and dock it from time to time to play with my family with knockoff pro controllers. I haven’t experienced any drops and I had the straight at the ground issue maybe like a year ago but haven’t had any issues with it in a long time. Can’t speak to any performance issues but I can confirm that the product has been getting refined.
Nice! Glad to hear it’s gotten better! I haven’t tried in a long awhile so I’m not surprised it’s fixed
Yeah the big issue I’ve had lately is remote play together, but I can’t tell if it’s the Internet connection or buggy software. It just keeps dropping out and the streaming option doesn’t work; which would be nice because discord doesn’t stream well in gamescope mode. Some of the recent updates were targeting it but no luck.
Check here if a cheaper refurbished model is available in your region: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamdeckrefurbished
I have owned both, the LCD and the OLED one and there really isn’t that much of a difference.
I suppose I want the OLED one. Is it ok to go for the 64 GB version or should I go for the higher storage tier? It has expandable storage yeah? Or is that not reliable or fast enough?
Depends on what you care about. If you can afford more onboard, it’ll be faster than an SD card. Some people say to buy the smallest one and install your own SSD separately, but personally I preferred to just get the first party one.
Also, what’s going on with the pricing? It’s just obviously better to buy direct. Why are people trying to sell it on Amazon? I get people trying to sell on eBay and Craigslist but Amazon? What’s the deal there?
No idea. Maybe those are resellers or scalpers? Just buy it from the Steam Store.
Get the lowest storage one and replace it with a drive you get from Amazon. My partner did it just by reading a guide online. No special tools necessary.
I’ll second this. Swapping out the SSD took me like 30 minutes.
The OLED has a nicer screen. Apart from that they are all pretty much the same performance wise. The expansion via SD card works very well. You can swap the internal ssd but it’s not recommended. I’d buy it directly from valve if you don’t want to buy used. Their support is quite good.
Not entirely true - OLED has a not-insignificant performance improvement, and has much better battery life
As someone else said, the 64GB model is LCD only, if you want an OLED model you will have to spend at least $550 for the 512GB version.
The main differencea between the OLED and the LCD is the screen and battery life. The OLED gets 30-50+% longer battery which is really nice. More demanding games can go from 1.5hrs on the LCD deck to 2.5hrs on the OLED deck. This is less of an issue on lower battery use games unless you have really long play sessions. The screen looks fantastic, especially on games like Persona 5 that have real vibrant colors. There are also a lot of smaller upgrades
If you do go with the 64GB LCD, understand that the internal space is very limited. You will definitely need more storage. MicroSD cards are easy, but make games very slow to install and make load screens take longer. Many indie games run perfectly fine on microSD cards, but some newer AAA games will have significant performance issues due to the bottleneck in read speeds.
You can also upgrade the internal storage, it’s not too difficult. The biggest issue people run into is stripping the screws, but that’s not an issue unless you overtighten them or don’t use a properly sized and seated screwdriver.
Don’t go for the 64gb because straight away you’ll have to buy a new storage drive and take it apart. Doing so will barely save any money compared to buying a higher storage device.
Not with the games they listed. 64GB could be good enough. I have a 64GB model and mainly play older or indie games which it handles great without additional storage.
