2w ago

Planning on buying a SteamDeck. What should I know before purchasing?

Optionally, what would you have wanted to know before you bought one?

Thanks!

Edit: Hey, thank you all very very much for your comments and suggestions, I really appreciate. I will most likely save up more and get the 1TB OLED model rather than the LCD model I was initially planning on. A couple of reasons for that, one, I am not good with electronics and I'd probably screw something up putting a new storage drive in. And two this thing will most likely be a permanent replacement for my old gaming laptop, which at this point is more than 10 years old, and seems to be on its last legs (I installed Linux on it, which was a struggle, but that is probably on me rather than Linux or the computer being at fault).

Anyway, I appreciate everyone's responses and thanks for helping a gal out!

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148 comments

It comes with a free Portal-universe game that teaches you how all the controls work. It's fun. Play it immediately. It will teach you that the thumbsticks are capacitive. Turns out that's a useless feature, so just get some nice thumbstick caps that make them larger, more rubbery, and more comfortable.
I highly recommend a 180° USB-C adapter to use the power cord while playing. It makes the cord angle down instead of up, which feels more natural. Plus, I feel like it would be gentler on the cord and USB-C port if the cord got tugged hard when plugged into an adapter instead of directly into the Steam Deck.
Plus, with a 180° adapter, you can keep the Deck in it's case while charging. Normally you can't do this because the top of the Steam Deck faces the hinge of the case. But the adapter fits in the case OK and reroutes the wire downward. It definitely raises the deck up slightly, but you can still zip the case halfway closed. I do this because I live in a very small apartment with a high chance of knocking or spilling something onto the Steam Deck if I were just to leave it laying around.
Fun fact: the touch pads don't actually click when you press them like a button, but you will swear they do! The haptic feedback mechanism is incredibly good.
Major Overheating Issue
I don't know how this is not a more widely complained-about problem.
I paired a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller to my deck, played a game, then put the deck in its case while asleep. (You tap the power button and the deck goes to sleep.) Well, apparently, "Wake on Bluetooth" is enabled by default and you can't turn it off! So, I threw my Nintendo Switch controller in a drawer, and of course a button got hit. It woke up my Steam Deck in it's case. I had a game running, so the Steam Deck starts rendering the game and creating a lot of heat that is just being circulated within the case by the fan. The Deck got insanely hot!
I noticed it sometime later only because I heard it make a sound. When I took it out, I used my infrared thermometer to measure the back of the deck, and it was over 140° F. Uncomfortable to touch! It would have sat there for hours like that if I hadn't noticed.
Solution: I had to install the Decky Loader plugin system in order to install a plugin that disables Wake on Bluetooth. I still don't see any way to disable it without using Decky. Decky is pretty great though, and it has tons of cool plugins. Of course, you could also just turn off Bluetooth before putting this Steam Deck in its case, but if you forget, it'll be a problem.
- You can disable wake from bluetooth in system settings now, and you can even disable it per device.
  Also 180 degree USB-C connectors are really nice, but they actually aren't USB-C spec compatible and can potentially burn up or other issues. Basically when you use a USB-C cord, there's 3 way communication where the charger and cord both report to the deck what voltages and amperage amounts they support, and then the Deck decides what to charge at. The 180 degree connector isn't part of this communication, and is invisible to the rest of the system. If it's not able to support the charge rate of the other devices, it can burn up and potentially destroy your deck and cable.
  
  You can disable wake from bluetooth in system settings now
  Good to know!
  The JSAUX one is definitely robust enogh to handle Steam Deck charging. Also, I'm pretty sure it has a chip in it. It was advertised as such when I bought it. That means it probably is compliant.
  
  The thing is it can't actually be compliant, because the spec doesn't allow all 4 pieces to communicate. The adapter is either passing on the cable's info (and pretending to be invisible) or it has to overwrite it with its own info.
  The adapter could maybe do it safely if it evaluated itself vs the cable, and specifically reported the lowest performance piece to the device, but that would still be a standards violation.
- Might be a minority opinion but I think the capacitive thumbsticks are awesome. They have been super handy every time I brew up a controller config that uses the gyro.
  
  Can you give an example of how you use them?
  
  Usually you use them to enable gyro, and automatically disable it when you aren't touching one of the sticks. Part of this is it lets you set the deck down without the gyro going crazy from movement, but the biggest part is it lets you "reset" your position. When using gyro aiming it's easy to get the deck turned in an uncomfortable position, and all you have to do is lift your thumbs off the stick for a moment, reposition, and go back to playing.
  In comparison, when using gyro aiming on systems without capacitive sticks, you usually need a camera reset button (like Splatoon) or need to make gyro aiming only available when holding down an "aim" button (like LT).
  You could also use capacitive sticks to change other controls. Some games have awkward menu controls, especially when using steam input to simulate keyboard keys. In games like this, you can have the controls normal for playing when touching the left thumbstick, but when you swap your thumb to the dpad instead it switches to "menu mode" with different binds to navigate menus easier.
  
  Thanks. I understand better, but I feel like I would just use one of the rear buttons as "disable gyro" if I were to use that kind of setup.
  Your last idea is interesting, but again, there are back buttons for thing like that. Also, how are you even hitting the D-pad when your thumb is on the left stick? I don't see why you would need to change what the D-Pad does based on whether or not your thumb is on the left stick because to hit the D-pad, your thumb is always not on the left stick.
  When I played Horizon Zero Dawn, I had gyro activate on left trigger, like you are saying, and it was very nice. I was so used to playing BotW that I couldn't play any other way.
  
  The dpad wouldn't need to change based on whether I was touching the stick, it would be more about changing the abxy buttons. If I'm simulating wasd controls for a game, when touching the left stick I would usually want the A button to be space and B to e key, but when navigating menus I want A to be enter and B to be esc.
  
  Ah, gotcha.

148 comments

Major Overheating Issue