T
here’s going to be a
whole cottage
industry of Steam
Deck accessories – the
versatile USB-C dock,
the fastest micro SD card, the most
convenient travel keyboard and
mouse – but I’m here to tell you
that the single best Steam Deck
accessory is a throw pillow. It turns
out that the small, overly firm
decorative pillows have been on our
couches all this time just waiting
for a higher calling: a Steam Deck
to plop down on top of them. After
hours of gaming on Valve’s new
handheld PC I’m amazed by how
capable it is, but that power comes
at a heavy price. As in, like, the
Steam Deck is really heavy.It’s inescapably a bulky device, weighing
68% more than the Nintendo Switch
and 38% more than an iPad. Holding it
high enough to keep my neck happy, I
started feeling a twinge in my forearms
after 20 minutes of Resident Evil 2
Remake and definitely needed a break
before an hour was up. Thankfully all it
takes is a pillow to solve my biggest
criticism of the Steam Deck – as soon
as I nestled one into my lap, I was cosyand ready to spend a whole evening
emulating Persona 3, exactly the PC
gaming experience I hoped the Steam
Deck would give me.BEST OF BOTH
From the beginning Valve has insisted
that the Steam Deck is a PC that you do
whatever you want with. Take it apart,
install Windows, futz around on the
Linux desktop to install other launchers.
That’s all true, but the more I use the
Deck, the more I’m genuinely amazed at
how well it manages to be both PC and
console, simultaneously deeply versatile
and dead easy to use. Valve’s debut of
SteamOS with Steam Machines may
have flopped, but years of iteration have
finally turned it into a secret weapon.
The UI is intuitive: the ‘Steam’ button
brings up a menu of major screens like
your library, the store, downloads, and
settings. The ‘...’ button pulls up a quick
settings menu that would look at home
on a smartphone, with brightness and
volume sliders and toggles for features
like Wi-Fi and night mode. The battery
tab gives a nice estimate of how much
life you have left based on the current
use, and the advanced options let you
tinker with all the framerate and power
limits you want.All Hands on Deck
How does it play? By Wes Fenlon
It all works seamlessly while a game
is running. So does the controller
configurator, the Deck’s greatest
feature. If a game lacks official controller
support, like Japanese indie classic
Cave Story+, you can press the Steam
button while it’s running, open up the
controller settings, and likely pick a
community-made configuration that
works brilliantly (shout out to capy’s
bindings for this one). The PCSX2 and
Dolphin emulators I installed weren’tTOP: (^) Even though it’s
heavy the Deck is easy
to control.
BELOW: (^) The Witcher 3
runs great on the
Steam Deck.
Steam Deck
COVER FEATURE