
Published:
Readtime: 14 min
Every product is carefully selected by our editors and experts. If you buy from a link, we may earn a commission. Learn more. For more information on how we test products, click here.
- The Steam Deck is arguably the best handheld on the market
- It delivers great performance at a price point lower than some of its main competition
- However, newer games are getting harder to run, and the Deck’s older architecture is starting to show its age
We’ve come a long way from the gaming handhelds of the past. While a lot of us grew up with a dedicated handheld capable of barely capable of delivering stable gameplay if the device even considered rendering something in 3D, we’re now living in a day and age where smartphones are as powerful as most laptops, and gaming handhelds are delivering console-quality experiences in the palm of your hands.
It’s fair to say Nintendo deserves a lot of credit for how well the Switch popularised the merging of console and handheld gaming (though we could potentially go back further to the PSVita for that as well), the Steam Deck has largely been the vanguard of merging handheld and PC gaming.
Yes, Windows-based handhelds existed before it from the likes of Aya Neo, but Valve’s Linux-based machine made it something most people could actually afford, coming in at between AUD$649 and AUD$1,049, and which didn’t run out of battery within an hour or so of powering up.
But this is all old news, right? The Steam Deck launched in 2022 to rave reviews, and we’re well and truly in a post-Steam Deck world. In 2025, we’re looking down the barrel of a Nintendo Switch 2 launch, revised models of Lenovo’s Legion Go, and both Sony and Microsoft dipping their toes into the handheld market.
The thing is, even four years later, the Steam Deck is still the best value PC-based handheld on the market, and is probably only beaten by the Switch OLED or Lite if you’re looking for something closer to a traditional console experience.
And it’s finally available Down Under: after almost three years of waiting, the Deck launched in Australia in late 2024, at a completely reasonable price, and despite all that waiting it actually managed to deliver on the hype.
I’ve played with the competition, as have my colleagues, and I can say that the first few days I had the Steam Deck actually kind of felt like magic. While not every game works out of the box, a lot do, and they work seamlessly. The OLED screen is honestly beautiful, and makes going back to my launch-model Switch difficult.
It’s not the most powerful handheld on the market, and it doesn’t have the best resolution compared to some others I’ve tested, but it just feels right in a way that I’ve found Windows-based devices don’t. When I’m using the Deck, it doesn’t feel like I’m holding a gaming laptop compacted into a less-than-ideal form factor, but rather like I’m holding a bespoke console built from the ground up to play Steam games on the go: which makes sense, that’s exactly what it is.
Suffice to say, I think the Steam Deck is really good.

Comparing the Competition
Valve Steam Deck LCD | Valve Steam Deck OLED | ASUS ROG Ally X | Lenovo Legion Go | |
Price | AUD$649 | AUD$899 AUD$1,049 | AUD$1,599 | AU$1,499 |
Display | 7” LCD 800p 60Hz | 7.4” OLED 800p 90Hz | 7” LCD 1080p 120Hz | 8.8” OLED 1600p 144Hz |
Weight | 669g | 640g | 678g | 850g |
OS | Linux, SteamOS | Linux, SteamOS | Windows | Windows |
Internals | GPU: AMD RDNA 2 CPU: AMD Zen 2 4-core RAM: 16GB Storage: 256GB | GPU: AMD RDNA 2 CPU: AMD Zen 2 4-core RAM: 16GB Storage: 512GB – 1TB | GPU: AMD RDNA 3 CPU: AMD Z1 Extreme (Zen 4) RAM: 24GB Storage: 1TB | GPU: AMD RDNA 3 CPU: AMD Z1 Extreme (Zen 4) RAM: 16GB Storage: |
Ports | 1x USB-C 1x 3.5mm Audio 1x MicroSD Card Slot | 1x USB-C 1x 3.5mm Audio 1x MicroSD Card Slot | 2x USB-C 1x 3.5mm Audio 1x MicroSD Card Slot | 2x USB-C 1x 3.5mm Audio 1x MicroSD Card Slot |
Battery | 40Wh | 50Wh | 80Wh | 49.2Wh |
Other | – Dual trackpads – Touch Screen – 4 programmable buttons on rear | – Dual trackpads – Touch Screen – 4 programmable buttons on rear | – Touch Screen – 2 programmable grip buttons | – Touch Screen – Controllers detach and can be used in ‘FPS’ mode – Screen has a built in kick stand – 4 programmable buttons on rear |
Why Trust Us
Here at Man of Many, we use a wide variety of technology. We’re not fans of any one brand, like to get our hands on the latest-and-greatest tech before we call it the next-best-thing, and we’ve built up extensive experience in reviewing tech as a publication over the past 10 years.
The author of this article, Dean Blake, is Man of Many’s technology journalist, and has followed the gaming and tech industries for years. He’s reviewed a fair bit of the competition, and was provided the product by Valve for the purposes of this review. No money exchanged hands, and all opinions expressed are those of the author and haven’t been seen by Valve ahead of time. For more information on our independence, testing and review guidelines, you can read our full editorial policies here.

Form and Function
Despite the fact that the vast majority of my gaming throughout my life has been done on handhelds, I’ve never really found any gaming handheld overly comfortable. Thankfully, we’re starting to hit a point where hardware developers are taking ergonomics more seriously, and the Steam Deck is up there as one of the best.
It comes in at around 640 grams, according to Valve, which is notably lighter than the gargantuan Legion Go (854 grams), and just under the Ally X (675 grams), which is just enough that it feels good in the hands for the most part, but still gets heavy after longer play sessions.
I tested the 1TB OLED model, and the screen is honestly a sight to behold. I’ve tested quite a few OLED monitors in the past few months, and while it’s tough to compare a 32” 4K monitor and a 7.4” 800p screen, the Steam Deck is impressive nonetheless. With a colour contrast of 1,000,000:1, and 90Hz refresh rate, pretty much every game I tested popped and looked great.
I’m also pretty impressed with the overall feel of the device. The controls are very comfortable, with the sticks in just the right place, the triggers feeling good, and the trackpads, surprisingly, being a delight to use.
I played through quite a bit of Inscryption using the trackpad to move the cursor and triggers as mouse click, and had a great time doing it. Would it have been easier if I had done so on a mouse and keyboard at my desk? Yeah, probably. But then I wouldn’t have been in bed.
I don’t particularly like how the Dpad feels, and wouldn’t personally want to play a precision platformer using it, but it is more than sufficient for most games that simply use the Dpad for menus or items. If you’re looking for a new Celeste machine, I’d look elsewhere.

Performance is Good, but Getting Old
Thanks to the Steam Deck’s Zen 2 CPU and RNDA 2 GPU, it can actually handle quite a bit, but it is a bit ‘weaker’ than some of the competition which have seen hardware updates to push them into a higher performance profile with RDNA 3 graphics and Zen 4 architecture.
In fact, I’d say that while I’ve been left impressed with the Steam Deck’s performance overall, I think it’d really benefit from a hardware refresh to bring it up to date with where the competition is. In saying that, I also appreciate having a single SKU that developers can optimise for, so I’m not going to say it’s a simple problem for Valve to solve.
AMD did show off the upcoming RDNA 4 graphics architecture at CES in early 2025, but Valve has said they aren’t working on a new Steam Deck refresh just until there is a pretty major performance jump without sacrificing battery life, so for now, this is the kind of performance you’ll get for your hard-earned bones:
Steam Deck (800p) | Legion Go (800p) | |
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree | 40-60fps | 40-60fps |
Resident Evil 4 Remake | 30-45fps | 60-100fps |
Dishonored | 100-130fps | 90-100fps |
Subnautica | 60-90fps | 80-100fps |
Hollow Knight | 300+ fps | 400+ fps |
All games were tested with the low present graphics options where available, on the Steam Deck’s native 800p resolution with the Deck’s TDP set to automatic. I’d have loved to have had the ROG Ally X in here as well, but we no longer have a unit available for testing.
As you can see, most of these games ran pretty well and I probably could have just set the unit to either 45Hz, 60Hz, or 90Hz frame rate caps via the Deck’s performance overlay and pushed the graphics up a notch. Comparing the Deck’s performance to the Legion Go, you can tell it falls behind in power, but it’s pretty damn close for a device selling at two-thirds of the price in it’s most expensive iteration.
In saying that, the above games are considered ‘verified and playable’ on the Deck: something that the software makes easy to filter in your library, which makes finding games that’ll run well a breeze, and though you can rely on external sites to deliver more nuanced setting configurations if you want a particular game to run better, Valve has done a good job of taking most of the work out of the equation.
That’s not to say I didn’t run into any performance problems, though.

Resident Evil 4 was probably the most taxing game I tested on the Deck, and it sat at a very uncomfortable 30-45 fps with as many graphical options turned down or off as possible. If you dropped it to 720p (or lower) I think it’d probably run better, but it would start becoming a bit harder to really see what is actually going on when its in motion.
Enshrouded, a game that I spent most of last year utterly obsessed with, runs at an unstable 20-40 fps on the Steam Deck with the game’s display options set to performance mode – it’s marked as ‘unsupported’ on the store, but I had to try it.
Lost in Vivo, an indie horror gem that’s been in my backlog for a while and is marked as ‘playable’, booted up fine but the controls didn’t work until I did a little bit of fiddling in the Steam overlay. After that, it did work great, so credit where credit is due.
The Medium, a psychological horror game (made by Bloober Team, the people behind 2024’s impressive Silent Hill 2 remake) drops into the low 10’s due to the particulars of the way that game runs, with its dual-world rendering being way too taxing for the Deck (I don’t think this one runs well on any gaming handheld, to be fair, and it’s also listed as ‘unsupported’ in Steam).
If you’re coming from a console it’s worth remembering that while the Steam Deck is an impressive handheld PC, and you’re getting access to the ‘entire’ Steam library, not all of that library will work well with the Deck itself.
You’re not beholden to only playing games on Steam, though. While the likes of Epic Games Store isn’t available natively, there are workarounds that would let you boot up Fortnite anyway, as well as putting any Linux-compatible emulator or software on the Deck. Though the handheld boots into SteamOS’ Big Picture Mode by default, it can also be loaded into desktop mode and used as a decent little desktop replacement, should you so wish.

It’s worth noting that while a lot of what I tested didn’t cause the Deck to flinch, booting up Elden Ring and Resident Evil 4 kicked on the fans immediately. I never felt the device getting hot, which is definitely a plus, and the fans aren’t overly distracting unless you play anything particularly taxing – so make sure to invest in a decent set of noise cancelling headphones if the Deck will be a AAA-machine for you.
That isn’t something I’d advise, honestly. I have serious doubts that any of this year’s biggest games will play well on the device at all: Capcom’s upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds got a lot of flak for its outsized PC requirements, and the recent ‘network test’ barely ran on any gaming handhelds, with frame rate sitting in the single digits on the Steam Deck.
We’ll see how the game performs once its out, but that’s about where I’m expecting it to land at launch.
If there’s a niche I think the Steam Deck fills perfectly, though, it’s in letting you play indie and slightly older games in a more accessible format. Being able to just pick up the Deck, boot a game and suspend it whenever you’re busy is a godsend, and while I’d love to say I always want to play at my desk for a ‘superior experience’ that’d be a bald-faced lie.
I spend at least eight hours of my day, five days a week, sitting in front of a monitor using a keyboard and mouse, and it has essentially killed PC gaming for me.
The last thing I want to do when I get home from work is to get right back into the same position and remain sedentary for another couple hours, so handhelds have largely been how I play games unless I’m specifically playing co-op games with my friends.
The Deck has allowed me to jump into a few of those smaller games I’ve been wanting to play, but haven’t wanted to dedicate the time to at my desk: I recently dropped about 30 hours each into Outward and Vampire Survivors which just wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Most of that time was found here and there before bed, or on weekends when I’m avoiding the desk life.

iFixit Should Make Repairs Simple
If you’ve played as much Nintendo Switch as I have, you’ve undoubtedly run into the issue of stick drift. I’ve replaced the sticks in my Joycons twice, and am very much hoping Nintendo has solved the problem for the upcoming Switch 2.
The Steam Deck has much better analogue sticks than the Switch, but they’re not the internet’s beloved hall-effect sticks which are less likely (but not immune) to drift over time. While this does mean its totally possible that, in a few years, you’ll find your Deck drifting, Valve made the smart move to partner with iFixit to provide replacement parts, as well as guides on how to pull the device apart, install the new part, and put it all together again.
It’s not just the analogue sticks though. iFixit sells new screens, bumpers, triggers, buttons, batteries, and a bunch of other stuff you’ll hopefully not need, but if you do it’s there.
We’d all like to live in a world where our tech doesn’t fail, but that’s not reality, and partnering with iFixit and providing users a way to keep their devices working beyond an individual part’s failure is a good thing that’s worth pointing out. It isn’t something the competition does, and it’s a way to keep your investment going for a few extra years.
What’s our Verdict?
At the end of the day, I think the Steam Deck is one of the best PC handhelds on the market, and is in league with the Nintendo Switch for the best handheld more broadly.
It’s not as powerful as some of its competition, but it also largely has better battery life, hits a more reasonable price point, and delivers performance that is close enough to devices that are, on paper, better.
If you’re looking at buying a PC gaming handheld, and aren’t turned off by the prospect of something running Linux, this’d be my recommendation. Just don’t get sucked into a Steam-shaped vortex like I did.
