Aussies: Is It Worth Buying a Steam Deck in 2024?

2024 has seen a string of unlikely events. Eternally in-fighting Britpop band Oasis reformed and set its sights on a world tour, human-sized Cheeto Donald Trump secured a second term in the White House, and Valve announced that it was finally releasing the Steam Deck into the Australian market, delighting Aussie gamers and likely putting the noses of grey importers firmly out of joint. As of earlier this week those Aussie Steam Decks have started shipping out directly from Valve’s local warehouse complete with an Aussie power supply and sold at a price point that substantially undercuts the inflated charges of every grey importer we checked at the time of writing. So, if you were planning on getting a Steam Deck then buying one directly from Steam is a no-brainer, but two and a half years after the system’s original launch – do you want to buy one at all?

Let’s rewind a little. When the original LCD Steam Deck launched in February, 2022, IGN’s reviewer Seth G. Macy said:

Steam Deck (LCD) Review

“When the Steam Deck is living up to its promises, it's absolutely incredible. Playing GTA 5, God of War, and other modern games on the go is an absolute joy, and the hardware and controls feel good to hold even though it’s a big chubby boy of a handheld. It seriously impressed me with how nice some demanding modern games look on its 7-inch screen. But those dizzying highs are all too often snapped away by insurmountable compatibility issues with SteamOS, and installing Windows to get around those comes with its own set of problems. I’ve lost count of how often I’ve been left frustrated and annoyed to have to troubleshoot issues when trying to play a game for the first time. Battery life is another major buzzkill – if you’re not careful with each game’s settings you can blow through a full charge faster than a train ride from Boston to Manhattan. Sure, it’ll last a lot longer if all you want is to play low-power indies, but in that case the Switch is a smoother experience for less money. So while I can certainly recommend the Steam Deck with some major caveats, including a noisy fan and comparably long loading times, I’m definitely not as head-over-heels in love with it as I hoped I’d be when I first opened the box.” – Seth G. Macy, February 26, 2022

Score: 7

Read the full Steam Deck (LCD) review here

It’s worth pointing out that a lot has changed in the couple of years since. Valve has rolled out hundreds of system updates to the Deck, improving everything from software compatibility to increasing battery life and even minimising the whine of the internal fan, no hardware mods required. In late 2023 it also introduced a second SKU, the Steam Deck OLED, which introduced a slightly larger and eminently more vibrant screen, as well as a slightly beefier battery among other tweaks to the hardware. Here’s what IGN’s reviewer Bo Moore said at the time of the Steam Deck OLED’s North American launch:

Steam Deck (OLED) Review

“The Steam Deck OLED is a clear, across-the-board improvement on what was already a fantastic gaming handheld. Steam Deck has matured greatly since it launched, and though there will always be some holes in its catalog that don’t work out of the box, the fact that you can easily play 2023 games like Diablo 4, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty on the go with few compromises make it a fantastic way to clear your backlog when you’re away from your main PC. The OLED model brings hardware tweaks beyond the absolutely gorgeous screen. The real star of the show is the improved battery life, which puts the Steam Deck significantly more clearly in the “portable” category than simply a handheld device that you’ll need to keep plugged in most of the time. Add in a slew of small but altogether significant improvements, combined with twice as much storage at the same price, and the Steam Deck OLED is a fantastic device that’s an obvious choice for anyone looking to get into handheld PC gaming. Heck, if you’re constantly running down the battery on your current Steam Deck, it might even be a big enough deal to consider upgrading.” – Bo Moore, September 12, 2023.

Score: 9

Read the full Steam Deck (OLED) review here

The Steam Deck is launching in Australia with three different SKUs: the 256GB LCD model for $649, the 512GB OLED model for $899, and the 1TB OLED model for $1049. The 512GB OLED model would appear to be the sweet spot, since it boasts both the better screen and larger battery capacity, and should 512GB of SSD storage prove to be too restrictive in this era of ever-growing game installation sizes it’s worth noting that all three Steam Decks can be expanded with increasingly affordable microSD cards. You can also open up your Steam Deck and swap out the SSD if you’re tech savvy enough, although Valve doesn’t recommend it and doing so may void your warranty even within the comfy embrace of Australia’s considerable consumer protection laws.

The OLED models provide a number of other advantages over the base LCD model too – they’re around 50g lighter which translates to a surprisingly more comfortable system to hold, the back paddle buttons feel a little firmer, and the speakers sound a little clearer at higher volumes. But beyond these tweaks (and there are a number of others), the OLED screen is just a substantial step up from LCD, and one worth paying the additional $250 for.

What About the Competition?

A lengthy delay to the Steam Deck’s local launch has given a headstart to the likes of ASUS and Lenovo to make a play for the commute-based gaming time of Australians. However, despite the fact that the ASUS Rog Ally and Legion Go may promise higher resolution displays and terror-inducing terraflop counts, most of them are hamstrung by their reliance on Windows for their operating system. And to speak plainly, Windows might be okay powering your desktop PC or Xbox, but it’s presently pretty unwieldy to work with on a gaming handheld. Updates to make its UI better optimised for handheld gaming are supposedly on the way, but at the moment these devices are just too painful to use compared with the more console-like experience of SteamOS on the Deck.

SteamOS’s UI is snappy and easy to navigate, and to be honest so many of its initial rough edges have been smoothed out by this point that it’s very difficult to find fault with it. Since receiving a review unit from Valve a couple of weeks ago, the Steam Deck has quickly become a terrific tool for trawling back through my gaming pile of shame. Games that I’ve pushed to the side in recent years in favour of making time on the couch for hardware-pushing AAA titles have finally grabbed my attention either in short bursts on the couch while I’m waiting for a pot to boil or in lengthier sessions on train rides, and I’ve finally been able to make time for the likes of Dave the Diver, Dead Cells, as well as more recent releases like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.

At the same time, I’ve also been chipping away at Rockstar’s recently released Red Dead Redemption PC port, which runs brilliantly on the Deck with visuals that are substantially sharper than those found in the comparatively smudgey Switch version. Surprisingly, despite the fact that only around 10 per cent of games on the Steam store are deemed either ‘playable’ or ‘verified’ on the Deck, I’m yet to find many games that I want to play that don’t work – officially verified or not. Even both Silent Hill 2 and Horizon Forbidden West, which are currently listed on Steam as being unsupported, seem to run fairly smoothly on the Steam Deck with a little bit of tweaking to the settings, for example.

That said, there are some obvious limitations to the hardware. The screen resolution is only 1280x800, which is certainly sharp enough for the Steam Deck’s seven-inch screen, and it also means the system’s GPU doesn’t have to push as many pixels as your desktop PC or gaming console. However, some more graphics intensive games struggle to hit even that relatively low resolution, with the likes of Hogwarts Legacy a little soft in their presentation. Even so, while you can’t go into the Steam Deck expecting it to handle absolutely everything you can throw at it, but if you’re anything like me you might be surprised at just how capable this sexy lapwarming slab can be in most cases.

There is of course the question of a potential Steam Deck 2. Valve has indicated that it’s working on a handheld successor, but in an interview with Reviews.org last month, designer Lawrence Yang said that his team wants “to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before we ship the real second generation of Steam Deck.” Just how long this generational leap will take to arrive is anyone’s guess, but you’d have to assume that the shiny new Steam Deck you pickup in November 2024 is unlikely to be superseded any time within the next couple of years at least. (Or indeed, dull new Steam Deck if you spring for the top of the line 1TB OLED model with the matte finish on its display.)

So is the Steam Deck still worth it as of November, 2024? I would argue yes. Though it may lack the power to run some of this year’s beefiest titles like Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 at a playable framerate, it still supports a staggering number of games – enough to fill up thousands of train rides or trips to the toilet – and, should you opt for an OLED model, it runs them with enough battery life that you’ll rarely feel the need to be tethered to a USB power cord. Australians should rightly feel aggrieved that we’ve had to wait this long to buy a Steam Deck without resorting to eBay sellers or relying on American friends to ship one over to us, but there’s an upside here – two and a half years of system updates and one hardware refresh means that those of us who waited will be getting our first hands on with the Steam Deck in its most optimal form.

Tristan Ogilvie is a senior video editor at IGN's Sydney office. He's increasingly afraid of social media, but on the rare occasion he does tweet you can find him here.

via Aussies: Is It Worth Buying a Steam Deck in 2024?
by Tristan Ogilvie