> I find the Deck too annoying and limiting to fritter away hours of my time on it
I think this is a good example of an under-explored type of life hack: making things enough of a pain in the ass that you don’t resort to them as a means of procrastinating.
It's best to think of the Deck as a portable console with a bigger library than what you can get on the Switch, rather than a gaming PC on the go. It's replaced my Switch entirely despite the worse ergonomics and battery life. I don't use it very often at home, but it's a godsend on long plane/train/car trips.
I got a Steam Deck recently, and I've been getting a lot more use out of it than I did out of the Switch.
Regarding ergonomics: The Steam Deck is heavy for a handheld console, but it's not *that* heavy. I had an Atari Lynx as a kid, which weighed in at 519 grams. The Steam Deck (original) is 669 grams. That's about 30% more than the Lynx, but as an adult, I have ~250% more muscle mass than I did back in 1989.
But also, you don't necessarily need to be holding onto the Deck. With a dock (~$40) and a Bluetooth controller (~$20), you can use the dock as a stand, or connect its HDMI output to a TV.
Regarding controls: Steam's input mapping system is ridiculously customizable, so if there's any conceivable way a game could be playable with the Deck's controls, you can make it happen. Or you can use a mouse and keyboard with it if you really want (Bluetooth, or USB via dock), assuming you have somewhere to put them.
But personally, I just haven't been using it for first-person shooters - there's plenty of stuff in my Steam library that's better suited to a gamepad, including a lot of games I've bought on sale and never played: Ballionaire (new release), South Park: The Stick Of Truth (on sale for like $3 last week), Transport Fever 2, Guacamelee 2, Spelunky, Just Shapes and Beats, and so on. The ones that are well-suited to playing with a gamepad also tend to be easy to pick up and put down, like one does when using a handheld console to kill time at the airport or whatever.
That also helps with the graphics issue. I'm not playing hardcore, immersive games that demand a lot of GPU power, so these games look as good on the Steam Deck as anywhere else. And most of the ones that have been sitting in my library unplayed are several years old anyway, so the Steam Deck's specs aren't bad compared to the PCs they were designed for.
Those are all great suggestions that I've already thought about, the problem is that adding controllers or hooking it up to a TV is just another way to half-asssedly replicate my already amazing computer set-up.
I've basically created a separate list of games that are best suited to passively play on the Deck. Basically the ones I don't need to pay super great attention to and can pick them up easily after months of inactivity. So the Deck is still fine for me.
Have you looked into the idea of streaming games from your computer to your TV through the deck? Seems like it would solve all your problems, plus provide even more screen real estate for your 4070 to shine.
I have a set up at home using Moonlight and Sunshine (which are open source game streaming systems). I admit it's a little bit fiddly, you do really want your PC to be connected via ethernet (which honestly it really should be anyways), but if you do so you can use your steam deck as nothing more than an interface between the full power of your PC and your TV while you lounge on the couch with a controller or kb+m with your hands in the optimal position. I'd highly recommend it.
I considered it but I actually only have a projector set-up, not a TV. The projector is so amazing for my wife & I to watch movies at night, but using it for gaming has additional hurdles that make it totally not worth it. You can't really use it during the day unless you get black-out curtains, it adds more latency than normal unless you use a mode without keystone correction, and it uses up the living room towards a mediocre application.
I bought a deck when they first released, and came to the same conclusion as you have. It rarely gets used, because anytime I’m able to game it’s a short walk to my much nicer PC. It is an extremely impressive piece of hardware, but it can’t compete with a 4080.
On the controller issue...have you tried the touchpads? I've been a Steam Controller user for about eight years so I was in a great position to use the Steam Deck's touchpads. You really can get as good with them as you are with a mouse.
That definitely has not been my experience. They're certainly neat and I'm glad they were included, but they take a certain bit of effort to 'click' them and in the process the cursor moves ever so slightly. I haven't bothered to invest the time to compensate for that.
My solution to this problem a Raspberry Pi 4 that boots directly into SteamLink, which I've hooked up to the big TV in my media room. It lets me stream games from my desktop to that TV (thus using the full power of my graphics card), with the added bonus that I'm also wired for surround sound in there. I have a wireless mouse and keyboard combo connected to the RPi4 which could in theory be used for gaming, but I'm the opposite of you where I much prefer playing with a bluetooth controller.
In addition to that I also have a Logitech G-Cloud, which is essentially an Android tablet with the same form-factor as the SteamDeck (a bit more comfortable to hold, in my opinion), which I also use with SteamLink to stream games from my desktop when I want to play lounging on a couch or in bed or whatever.
The downside of all that is that I don't really get the gaming-on-the-go convenience that a SteamDeck would give, since you can't really use SteamLink from an external network. But I have a Nintendo Switch for that.
My experience is almost the exact opposite. I think it mainly comes to computer use. I work outside my house, and I’m a pretty casual gamer.
When I still had my (midrange) gaming pc setup it wasn’t my primary computer and it lived in my bedroom, as such i kept it turned off unless I was using it for gaming.
So anytime I wanted to game it was a sequence of; wait for pc to boot, wait for any updates to complete, start Steam, wait for potential game updates to download, then game.
With the steam deck I can go from watching YouTube on the couch to gaming in about 30 seconds without moving.
I use it way more then I used my pc before, and my pc is now disassembled in the corner.
> I find the Deck too annoying and limiting to fritter away hours of my time on it
I think this is a good example of an under-explored type of life hack: making things enough of a pain in the ass that you don’t resort to them as a means of procrastinating.
It's best to think of the Deck as a portable console with a bigger library than what you can get on the Switch, rather than a gaming PC on the go. It's replaced my Switch entirely despite the worse ergonomics and battery life. I don't use it very often at home, but it's a godsend on long plane/train/car trips.
I basically just use it on my exercise bike. Works fantastically for me because I find most forms of aerobic exercise dead boring
I got a Steam Deck recently, and I've been getting a lot more use out of it than I did out of the Switch.
Regarding ergonomics: The Steam Deck is heavy for a handheld console, but it's not *that* heavy. I had an Atari Lynx as a kid, which weighed in at 519 grams. The Steam Deck (original) is 669 grams. That's about 30% more than the Lynx, but as an adult, I have ~250% more muscle mass than I did back in 1989.
But also, you don't necessarily need to be holding onto the Deck. With a dock (~$40) and a Bluetooth controller (~$20), you can use the dock as a stand, or connect its HDMI output to a TV.
Regarding controls: Steam's input mapping system is ridiculously customizable, so if there's any conceivable way a game could be playable with the Deck's controls, you can make it happen. Or you can use a mouse and keyboard with it if you really want (Bluetooth, or USB via dock), assuming you have somewhere to put them.
But personally, I just haven't been using it for first-person shooters - there's plenty of stuff in my Steam library that's better suited to a gamepad, including a lot of games I've bought on sale and never played: Ballionaire (new release), South Park: The Stick Of Truth (on sale for like $3 last week), Transport Fever 2, Guacamelee 2, Spelunky, Just Shapes and Beats, and so on. The ones that are well-suited to playing with a gamepad also tend to be easy to pick up and put down, like one does when using a handheld console to kill time at the airport or whatever.
That also helps with the graphics issue. I'm not playing hardcore, immersive games that demand a lot of GPU power, so these games look as good on the Steam Deck as anywhere else. And most of the ones that have been sitting in my library unplayed are several years old anyway, so the Steam Deck's specs aren't bad compared to the PCs they were designed for.
Those are all great suggestions that I've already thought about, the problem is that adding controllers or hooking it up to a TV is just another way to half-asssedly replicate my already amazing computer set-up.
I've basically created a separate list of games that are best suited to passively play on the Deck. Basically the ones I don't need to pay super great attention to and can pick them up easily after months of inactivity. So the Deck is still fine for me.
Have you looked into the idea of streaming games from your computer to your TV through the deck? Seems like it would solve all your problems, plus provide even more screen real estate for your 4070 to shine.
I have a set up at home using Moonlight and Sunshine (which are open source game streaming systems). I admit it's a little bit fiddly, you do really want your PC to be connected via ethernet (which honestly it really should be anyways), but if you do so you can use your steam deck as nothing more than an interface between the full power of your PC and your TV while you lounge on the couch with a controller or kb+m with your hands in the optimal position. I'd highly recommend it.
I considered it but I actually only have a projector set-up, not a TV. The projector is so amazing for my wife & I to watch movies at night, but using it for gaming has additional hurdles that make it totally not worth it. You can't really use it during the day unless you get black-out curtains, it adds more latency than normal unless you use a mode without keystone correction, and it uses up the living room towards a mediocre application.
I ended up selling mine because of these issues and its really short battery life. Cool device but the limitations kept me from using it much.
your most neet coded post, 2025 is the year of the couch potato
out: being a respectable member of society
in: gremlinmaxing
It's winter and I'm doing WWW: wife, working out, and writing. I'm entitled to gremlinmax
I bought a deck when they first released, and came to the same conclusion as you have. It rarely gets used, because anytime I’m able to game it’s a short walk to my much nicer PC. It is an extremely impressive piece of hardware, but it can’t compete with a 4080.
Yep, and I just realized that the people most likely to buy a Deck are the ones who already had a reason to accumulate a Steam library.
On the controller issue...have you tried the touchpads? I've been a Steam Controller user for about eight years so I was in a great position to use the Steam Deck's touchpads. You really can get as good with them as you are with a mouse.
That definitely has not been my experience. They're certainly neat and I'm glad they were included, but they take a certain bit of effort to 'click' them and in the process the cursor moves ever so slightly. I haven't bothered to invest the time to compensate for that.
I use the right trigger to click, which generally avoids that.
Oh man I totally forgot about that. Thanks for the reminder
My solution to this problem a Raspberry Pi 4 that boots directly into SteamLink, which I've hooked up to the big TV in my media room. It lets me stream games from my desktop to that TV (thus using the full power of my graphics card), with the added bonus that I'm also wired for surround sound in there. I have a wireless mouse and keyboard combo connected to the RPi4 which could in theory be used for gaming, but I'm the opposite of you where I much prefer playing with a bluetooth controller.
In addition to that I also have a Logitech G-Cloud, which is essentially an Android tablet with the same form-factor as the SteamDeck (a bit more comfortable to hold, in my opinion), which I also use with SteamLink to stream games from my desktop when I want to play lounging on a couch or in bed or whatever.
The downside of all that is that I don't really get the gaming-on-the-go convenience that a SteamDeck would give, since you can't really use SteamLink from an external network. But I have a Nintendo Switch for that.
My experience is almost the exact opposite. I think it mainly comes to computer use. I work outside my house, and I’m a pretty casual gamer.
When I still had my (midrange) gaming pc setup it wasn’t my primary computer and it lived in my bedroom, as such i kept it turned off unless I was using it for gaming.
So anytime I wanted to game it was a sequence of; wait for pc to boot, wait for any updates to complete, start Steam, wait for potential game updates to download, then game.
With the steam deck I can go from watching YouTube on the couch to gaming in about 30 seconds without moving.
I use it way more then I used my pc before, and my pc is now disassembled in the corner.