My absolute favorite parts of the deck are the bang for your buck and the input options.

The Deck might not be the most powerful gaming device out there - heck, not even the most powerful x86-based gaming handheld - but it is suprisingly performant nonetheless. Part of that is the 1280x800 screen, which sounds small if you are used to 1080p or even 4k screens, but allowed Valve to use a less powerhungry APU, which resulted in the battery lasting a bit longer.

And frankly, the part where the Deck absolutely shines is the fact that they gave it trackpads with haptic feedback, gyro controls and a touchscreen plus the four extra triggers on the back. The gyro is perfect for shooters, and the touchpads for games that would normally need long mouse movements, or assigning them to radial menus or whatever. And you can just remap everything on a game-by-game basis.

The only flaws in my mind - nitpicks, really - are twofold:

1. It has the USB-C port at the top, so you cannot just slot the Deck into a dock and be done with it. As someone coming from a Switch, it is a slight loss of convenience.

2. You cannot use external GPUs*, so if docked, the Deck might struggle to play games on 4k. I think the ROG Ally had the right idea by allowing you to use a dock with a GPU in it, which gives you greater portability on the go and a beefy GPU when docked. I wish the Steam Deck could do the same thing.

Another thing that depends on the user is that with the stock Steam OS, some games will not work despite Proton because of anticheat software or DRM that is incompatible, but that one can be easily mitigated by installing Windows, if you absolutely have to. Personally, I strongly recommend sticking with Steam OS though, but that’s from the perspective of someone who usually plays singleplayer games anyway.

• Yes, I know, you can do a hardware mod that replaces I think the SSD with a GPU, but it’s still not as easy as plugging in a USB-C cable and be done with it.