Love it! Demo runs great on Steam Deck, also.

Will definitely keep an eye out for the full release.

Thank you! It was a lot of fun.

Thanks! Someone else suggested freecad recently as well. I’ve been meaning to check it out!

That’s a good point. Also with it being a PC, you can keep a library of DRM free games on an sd card or something and kind of get the same thing. Limited on what games you can do this with officially though. DRM is the worst

That’s pretty much her entire character in every episode she’s in. I can’t think of a single example of her respecting boundaries or consent

Battery life definitely depends on what you are playing. In BG3 I get around 2 ish hours. But I can play older games like Morrowind, or newer retro style games like Skald against the black priory (10/10, do recommend) for 6-8 hours, maybe more.

You also have a lot of control to improve battery life like clock speed, frame rate limiting, etc.

But yeah it has a huge screen and if you play newer games with good 3d graphics it drains fast. Switch doesn’t really have those kinds of games so it’s not a 1:1 comparison.

EDIT: I also agree with your points on it being very bulky and not well suited to a 10 minute session. Launching games is slower on the deck and most PC games have more loading screens before gameplay.

I love the steam deck. I haven’t used my switch for anything other than family Mario kart since I got it. I really like having access to PC games, especially at steam sale prices, which makes the deck a lot cheaper in the long run vs Nintendo games that never go on sale. Even Pokémon games that are years old are still full price when they’re 2 or 3 releases behind in the series.

The only thing I prefer about the switch is physical cartridges. The deck wins in every other category for me.

You could get one of those Bluetooth keyboard/ trackpad combos and a case with a kickstand for desktop use. Small screen but usable. I personally wouldn’t replace a laptop with it, but if you didn’t have a laptop it could be useful to buy one device that does handheld gaming and other stuff too instead of buying two devices

True, but Steam deck lets you boot into the Linux desktop environment of the os and you can do whatever you want with it. I have installed games and emulators outside of steam on mine pretty easily.

You could probably even put a different Linux OS on it entirely if you wanted to.

That control over the platform was the biggest selling point for me. More control even than the windows based handhelds.

Some games that say not supported actually work fine. I was disappointed to not be able to play some older games like Jedi Academy, but I installed it, set a community made controller mapping, and it works with zero issues.

Sure there are some games that don’t work, but a lot more do than just the ones that are steam deck certified / playable.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unitedhealth-investors-lawsuit-brian-thompson-luigi-mangione/

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/08/unitedhealthcare-sued-by-shareholders-over-reaction-to-ceos-killing.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/unitedhealth-group-lawsuit-ceo-investors-mangione-b2747303.html

Only issue I’ve had with mine is double sided printing not working by default in Debian, just had to install the brother driver, which was easy enough

I definitely should pick up an inflatable one

Ah, true. I have several of the foam self inflating pads but I don’t really think of those as mattresses. They are very nice tho. I have seen the ones without foam that are even more portable too.

If you are bringing an air mattress, you’re probably car camping and may be able to leave the food / cooler in the trunk.

Once in Missouri I went camping with my parents and they love to cook at camp Tons of chopping boards, utensils, etc were left out overnight, which attracted dozens of raccoons. They had the coolers secure but it was still wild to see. Rookie mistake from people who actually have a lot of experience.

Also, hammock camping can be very comfortable if you have an under quilt and tarp

Putting stuff away is the worst part, especially if you have to air out wet tarps

I love camping, and have had some great trips in the rain. Can be very comfy even with a backpack setup if you know what you’re doing.

That being said, this is hilarious.

And at least you have enough unsolicited advice to make it more comfortable if you want to go again 😅

The track pads are phenomenal for any game that doesn’t have great built in controller support. I use them for mouse input on games like FTL, and they are much more accurate for aiming in FPS games than emulating a mouse on a stick. I also use them as radial menus for expanded controls on games like Elite Dangerous that really need more buttons than a controller has.

I agree with your point in general, and SteamOS was the main thing that pushed me towards steam deck over other handhelds with better specs. Now that I’ve used it though, it would be hard to give up the trackpads if the other options dont have the same quality. My hope is that 3rd party devices will basically mirror the steam controller setup, since the SteamOS controller mapping and provided layouts are a huge part of why so many games work on the platform even without official controller support. It’s not just the hardware or the software but how well they work together.

Morrowind is the best. Oblivion remaster is better than skyrim (in my Morrowboomer opinion) and that was just refreshing a 20 year old game. I feel like there is a lot of hype for TES6 that it may not live up to, but surpassing skyrim is definitely doable.

I have a Lenovo 2 in 1 tablet laptop and it works OK. I am running Debian with KDE Plasma and it has been a little flaky with the automatic screen rotation and sometimes i have to toggle it on and off to get it to kick in but that’s it. Not sure if that’s something that would be fixed on different distros or DEs.

I didn’t have to do any extra 3rd party driver setup or anything like that.

The touch screen itself works great. I have used tablet mode mostly for reading RPG source books that I only have PDFs of. Works great for that.