After viewing some positive reviews of the new Valve Steam Deck, I decided to take the plunge and try it myself.
I have always wanted to play old-school Arcade games (using MAME emulation) on a portable device. In addition, I was intrigued that the Steam Deck could also run games from Wii, WiiU, PSP, and the latest Nintendo Switch (in addition to most PC games).
Since Amazon did not have any in stock, I ordered directly from Valve (which had a 1-2 week shipping time). I decided on the 64GB version since I would upgrade the onboard drive to 1TB anyway.
I selected the Sabrent Rocket 2230 NVMe drive and used the iFixit guide to disassemble the Steam Deck. I also purchased the iFixit kit to have access to all of the required tools to assemble and re-assemble the deck.
Removing the 8 screws on the back of the deck was easy, but opening the deck took a bit of time and patience. Once opened, most of the other screws were easy to remove.
The only difficulties I ran into were:
- Disconnecting the battery
- Re-attaching the metal foil shield around the Sabrent Rocket 2230 NVMe
- Reconnecting the battery
After re-assembly, I inserted a pre-formatted USB-C into the steam deck and tried to boot (the Steam Recovery image was already on the 64GB Sandisk USB-C stick). At first, it did not boot, but I somehow booted into a screen from which I could recover. It took about 10 minutes for all of the updates to complete.
I installed the Steam guide I wanted to play: Red Redemption 2 (which was relatively easy to do). However, installing the Emudeck emulator took a lot more work.
The main issue I ran into is that using the small 7" screen without a keyboard was tricky. I found a solution by installing the following tools:
- FileZilla: to transfer files between PC and Steam Deck's SD Card
- AnyDesk: to access the Steam Deck using PC
With these tools installed, I could transfer my MAME ROMs to the Steam Deck and configure the Steam Deck using my PC's keyboard and mouse.
Location of roms on SD Card: /run/media/deck
Valve Steam Deck Review
Highlights
- Easy-to-use interface to install and play all Steam games
- Fully running Linux for easy maintenance
- Support of multiple Emulators for most gaming handhelds, including Nintendo Switch, Wii, WiiU, Gameboy, and Sony Playstation PS1, PS2, and PS3)
- High-performance AMD cores with GPU allow it to run most games reasonably well
- Ability to upgrade the internal storage from 64GB to 1TB (using iFixit tools)
- $399 price
Lowlights
- Battery life is not very promising
- The 7" Screen could be better. It has a mediocre screen resolution of 1280 x 800. The iPhone has a much sharper screen with a better resolution.
