I do not usually bother reviewing hardware unless it has genuinely changed how I play games, or annoyed me enough that I need to talk it through. The Steam Deck managed to do both. It has quietly crept into my routine in a way I did not expect, and after enough late nights, sofa sessions, and mild swearing at docks and controllers, it felt worth sitting down and giving it a proper, honest write-up.
For anyone somehow unfamiliar, the Steam Deck is Valve’s handheld gaming PC. It is essentially a portable Linux machine built around an AMD APU, with a Zen 2 CPU, RDNA 2 graphics, 16GB of RAM, and fast storage depending on the model. The whole pitch is simple: take your Steam library with you, no streaming, no compromises, in theory, just your games, wherever you happen to be.