Steam Deck. If you can get your hands on one of these, you may end becoming the neighbour’s (home or office) envy. The handheld gaming PC is available in limited markets and that too in limited quantities. Despite all the punches thrown at it by critics, nobody has written it off, ensuring demands continue to balloon. What is it? Let’s find out.

At a glance

It’s a console that’s not a PlayStation or an Xbox and it’s sold online only. The hand-held device is on the bulky side, coming with a built-in game controller. But it’s like a gaming computer. In fact, it’s half Nintendo Switch and half gaming PC. Confused? It looks like a Switch console but works like a PC and has a touchscreen display. You can also plug it into a monitor or TV or hook up controllers or a mouse and keyboard.

Behind it is Valve Corporation, a company in Bellevue, Washington. You may have heard of the company for developing the software distribution platform Steam and the franchises Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead and Dota. Well, that’s quite a lot.

Steam Deck is an ambitious project that somehow has captured our imagination, thanks to the form factor as well as power. On the one hand, it’s like a handheld Switch, known for family-friendly games and on the other it’s like playing Sony’s PlayStation 5 or Microsoft’s Xbox Series X, which come with processor-intensive games. The Steam Deck runs Linux, an open-source operating system, which allows it to execute titles made for personal computers and some PlayStation and Xbox games. You can also play older games by installing emulation software. The company has partnered with AMD to create Steam Deck’s custom APU, optimised for handheld gaming. It is a Zen 2 + RDNA 2 powerhouse, delivering more than enough performance to run the latest AAA games.

Is it friendly?

Now, this is meant to be for gaming enthusiasts, people who want to go beyond a plug-and-play experience offered by a traditional game console. You can’t insert a disc to load a game, instead you have download titles over the Internet. Users will primarily get titles through the Steam app store, which means you need a Steam account. Once you have signed up, there are countless titles to choose from, like Among Us to Final Fantasy VII: Remake. In case you want to go beyond the device, switch to desktop mode and control with a virtual keyboard and a tiny trackpad built into the controller.

Besides, Steam Deck is bulky, weighing 672g. If you think it’s not too much then consider Nintendo Switch OLED which weighs 436g while the iPhone 13 is 174g. If you play for long hours, chancesyou’re your hands will feel numb. You get access to the more than 60,000 titles in Steam’s marketplace but not all games will have optimal performance on the Steam Deck, at least not for the time being.

The company is listening to consumer feedback and given by the response, updates to the console shouldn’t be ruled out while bugs in the OS can easily be fixed.

At the moment, customers in the US, Canada, European Union, and the UK can reserve a Steam Deck ($399). Hopefully it won’t be long before expanded regional availability is announced.