Steam Deck review: Just portable enough
A lot of people are going to compare the Steam Deck to the Switch, and that’s totally fair, but after spending more than a week with Valve’s portable PC, I think there’s a better analogy at hand: The Steam Deck is what happens when the Vita and the Wii U get drunk on Linux and make a big baby together.
The Steam Deck combines Valve’s familiar PC storefront with some of the best ideas from these iconic, discontinued consoles, and packs all of it into a beefy bit of hardware. Just like Sony and Nintendo did all those years before, with the Steam Deck Valve is silently asking, does anyone need this?
The short answer is, no. But you’re still gonna want one.
When I unboxed the Steam Deck and got a good look at Valve’s handheld PC for the very first time, I laughed. I couldn’t help it, but this thing is seriously so large it’s funny. The Steam Deck is 11.7 inches long, 4.6 inches tall and 1.9 inches thick, and it weighs 1.5 pounds. For comparison, the Switch Lite and Vita each weigh about half a pound, while the Wii U gamepad weighs just over 1 pound.
The Steam Deck’s heft affects how I interact with every game in my Steam library. I find myself holding the system low in my lap, often propping it up on my thighs and craning my neck down in order to play. After about an hour in this position, the muscles along the back of my head start to ache, and I’ve been calling this phenomenon Steam Deck neck. It’s easily remedied with some stretching and repositioning, but the Steam Deck always ends up back on my lap and the cycle of discomfort continues.
And then there’s the sheer size of the thing. Anyone with smaller-than-average hands, here’s where you need to listen up.
The Steam Deck is a full-size controller with a 7-inch LCD touchscreen
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