Thread by @wongJP

1/ #SteamDeck impressions 🧵
Controls are comfy. Speaker sound can be nice and loud. Screen is OK but only because I’m spoiled by Switch OLED display. Steam OS experience isn’t wholly casual consumer friendly, but is solid. Had to hard reboot once due to settings not sticking.

2/ Some Deck Verified games still required display settings change to 16:10 (1280x800) once launched. DOOM Eternal, No Man’s Sky, and Redout run nice and smooth at avg. 60 fps.

Deck is lighter and thinner than I thought.. It’s still a wide boi.

3/ "Aperture Desk Job" is the Deck's 25 minute onboarding experience (Free. Play it!) Through it, bot Grady gets you familiar with controls, demonstrates the on-deck mic, how to take a screenshot, and also tests the gyro aiming capabilities of the console. More Cave Johnson even.

4/ From the Steam button menu, in "Power", you can "Switch to desktop mode" - I believe it runs "Arch Linux" -> Discover App store let's you download emulators, applications, and so on. Edge (Beta) browser is in there if you want to play Fortnite through it and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

5/ Battery life feels definitely on "shorter" side if no power settings are tweaked. User can easily adjust reduced framerate, display brightness, and even limit the CPU if they'd like to conserve power. Oh, fan noise is always present with beffy games. Not whisper quiet.

6/ Overall the system feels snappy, thanks in part to the onboard SSD. Many games in my library are installable for the Deck, but not yet fully verified ✅. Some popular titles such as Halo MCC are not playable due to a title’s own anti-cheat software.

7/ Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch OLED sizes.

8/ Deck supports Bluetooth 5.0

Deck display: maximum brightness is decent but this is coming from someone who always plays indoors and in a generally dimmer living space.

To leverage max brightness, untick “Enable Adaptive Brightness.