I posted my deep dive into the Steam Deck last night. For what it sets out to do I think it’s excellent. Not only does it perform well but it also feels like a fairly mature product.
Valve designed not only the hardware but also much of the operating system. SteamOS 3.0, which powers the device, feels very polished and optimized for the task. Additionally it does a superb job of running Windows games on the Linux based OS without complexity.
Things have improved significantly since we looked at SteamOS based living room PCs a few years ago. Back then only games ported to Linux would run.
In the review we look at the Steam Deck’s gaming performance but also explore some other areas including getting Epic and GOG games to run on SteamOS, evaluating its SD Card performance, trying out desktop mode, and booting up Windows 10 from an external SSD.
I have a feeling we’re going to see a lot more out of Valve when it comes to SteamOS. Don’t forget they are working with the ChromeOS team at Google to get Steam running on Intel and AMD based Chromebooks. According to the ChromeOS Wiki Valve’s Windows compatibility layer Proton will also be employed to get Windows games running on Chromebooks.