First Steam Deck Hardware Reviews today

Neuromancer

Neuromancer

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Hi,

from what I read 3 news outlets have received Steam Decks early and are allowed to publish a hardware review which will be released tomorrow (not sure about the exact timing) :D They obviously will not talk about Software and Games etc. in particular since the full coverage will be on the 25th of February for all Gamingsites.

These are Gamers Nexus, Linus Tech Tips and The Phawx. I picked the right section in the vids for convenience ;)

Gamers Nexus mentions here without giving out the date (yet) that they worked in the last couple of weeks secretly around the clock on this and will go deep into hardware !


Linus mentioned it here


The Phawx aka Cary Golomb twittert about the review and the date here :

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1489365324902420493

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1490138801745838082

And here about the content of the Review (Benchmarks & GameDemos / SSD vs MicroSD load times comparison / Input Latency / Battery (Worst/Best Case) etc. :


Looking forward to tomorrow and I´m extra hyped to learn more about battery life and the inner workings of the Deck ... 🤓
I will update the thread with links to the reviews as the pop up.
 
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Kupfer

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itsaboutime.png

I'm waiting!​
 
Kupfer

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Okay, watched the Gamers Nexus video by now and wow - so much data, so much information. Too much to talk about right now, but the Deck, all in all, surpasses my expectations. Everything seems to be very close to Valve's advertising promises, even if there are small outliers in the battery life - but as a user and through the settings, you have the power over that yourself. I would like to finally hold the deck in my hands even more now.
 
FlySwatter

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All three were informative and worth watching. I only watched about half of Linus' unboxing video. From a price/performance perspective, Valve has created an impressive piece of kit here.
 
Neuromancer

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I watched Gamers Nexus and Phawx so far and man, this was crammed with datapoints and information :D

My personal main takeaways :

  • Performance overall is great
  • Can be tweaked in many ways
  • SSD vs. SD is no big issue .. worst case was 17 sec. which i dont care at all, performance itself is same. In most cases it was almost the same as SDD funnily
  • Battery life is as expected i have to say, but for me 3-4 hours for more demanding games is perfectly fine .. I would anyway not play 6-7 hours straight
  • General positive impression and no real negative points so far :D
I can´t wait to get it !
 
God

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Neuromancer said:
I watched Gamers Nexus and Phawx so far and man, this was crammed with datapoints and information :D

My personal main takeaways :

  • Performance overall is great
  • Can be tweaked in many ways
  • SSD vs. SD is no big issue .. worst case was 17 sec. which i dont care at all, performance itself is same. In most cases it was almost the same as SDD funnily
  • Battery life is as expected i have to say, but for me 3-4 hours for more demanding games is perfectly fine .. I would anyway not play 6-7 hours straight
  • General positive impression and no real negative points so far :D
I can´t wait to get it !
Click to expand...
I think the only thing of concern right now is the os that the deck is running on. Valve hasn’t allowed any reviewers to give their thoughts on it yet and with the deck coming so soon, it’s natural to be a little apprehensive about it. That being said, I’m optimistic about it giving valves track record!
 
Neuromancer

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The full review embargo lifts on the 25th .. so this is more of a tease and Valve is ironing out the OS & Software. Reviewers mentioned that there have been updates every day .. so it makes sense to let them review hardware as they cannot change anything on the production units anyway.

But of course, 25th will be super interesting :)
 
Neuromancer

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Quite interesting how easy it is to disassemble the unit for most part .. iFixit will be happy :D

Only bummer is the glued battery which makes the exchange later on a bit more difficult. AS it was still a preproduction unit this might be changed in the final product .. but i doubt it.

Update :

Another tear down by Linus .. he is sometimes a bit too much over the top for my liking, which can be a bit tiring. He is removing the battery .. which is .. brutal ^^ Definetly not good as it is glued. Thats the only negative on the hardware design in my opinion as this is the most likely the be replaced part of the Deck, especially if we use it for several years.


Also some thoughts on size from Phawx

 
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