Hello.
He asked his friend, who was one of the first to purchase it in Russia, to describe his impressions of the Steam Deck portable set-top box. I give the floor to Alexei, his experience, as I see it, is interesting for those who have an excess of money, like to play and look closely at the console.
I’ll make a reservation right away that I’m not a hardcore gamer, but rather an old fart: I mastered games very actively when a home computer was a luxury. But I now have the latest versions of consoles from Microsoft and Sony and a top gaming laptop in my arsenal, so there is something to compare Steam Deck with.
Choosing a portable game console, I opened up a whole world of devices. Basically, these are Chinese crafts of little-known brands, which are, in fact, Windows laptops packed in a miniature case reminiscent of the Nintendo Switch. And everything seems to be good in them – a powerful filling, a familiar operating system, even high-quality high-resolution screens. However, for users like me, there is one giant “but” in all these compact Windows consoles: they all require a lot of digging into the operating system and selecting the optimal settings for each game.
This is where the Steam Deck comes into play: a console that has one foot in console territory and the other is backed by a community of geeks ready to spend hours perfecting gameplay. Just what the doctor ordered! If you are not a fan of fine tuning dozens of game parameters, you can simply turn on Steam Deck and start playing: SteamOS is very similar in user experience to Xbox and Playstation. Valve even carefully puts a quality mark on each game, showing how comfortable the gaming experience is on the console. But if you like to keep track of heat dissipation, frame rate, battery drain rate, anti-aliasing, FPS limiting, etc., you can do it all on Steam Deck. Thanks to the integration of the community of players in SteamOS, you can even choose your own custom control settings.
Since I am an old gamer, I started testing the console with GTA V and various car games (Forza Horizon 5, Wreckfest, beamNG). The impression is the following: everything works perfectly. I don’t even have anything to complain about. And at the same time, I did not set up anything: I played like on a console: I installed the game, launched it – I play. Joycons, buttons, triggers, trackpads are made to last and evoke only positive emotions. In GTA V, it turned out to be very convenient to aim using the gyroscope: you put your finger on the right joystick and slightly tilt the console in your hands. Almost as accurate as aiming with a PC mouse!
