While it was a pain in the ass to pre-order on that last Friday, I managed to put down my $6 CAD to reserve my 256GB version. Being someone who tried a GPD Win 2, the Steam Decks can't be any worst that's for sure.

What was wrong with it? I have been using it for a couple of years, and other than a couple of games having issues enabling controller (as it’s a switch on) had no issues. Runs everything fine, small enough to put in your pocket.

I guess you're excluding used hardware. I'm not.

Prolly that it doesn't have that "awesome" steam logo on it, and also that it doesn't give any money to gabe. ;)

He's got a good point, though. Would be interesting to see laptop prices dropping like rocks to compete. The thing i'm on now was 400 bucks earlier this year, and it's pretty solid compared to the junk i was using before from 2008 (and it was junk at that time). Would've been nice if i only paid, say, 100 for it. I wouldn't be near broke right now.

My used £200 Samsung Win10 laptop is having no trouble with gaming. It might not be new and flashy and exciting and cool and what the kids want, but those reasons don't influence me. All that bothers me is what comes between me and my gaming. I see no reason to spend additional money for an inferior experience.

-The triggers were garbage and one of them wasn't working properly, had to press it at an angle
-The screen is basically a cellphone screen which goes portrait in the BIOS or when you install Windows
-The GPU is an Intel Joke
-It overheated with basic 3D games and turned-off because of it...
-...due to the fact that it uses a power hungry Intel CPU
-The battery barely lasted a year before dying within 30 minutes just by surfing the web on it
-Oh yay, and the Wi-Fi is sucks

1 year for battery... thats bad

Well, I haven’t had these issues. Though I have not reinstalled windows, so can’t check that. I will have to try a heavy 3D game to see if I can get it overheat. I do know it can get warm around the exhaust area due to cooling, sometimes a bit too hot. Not had it shut down though. May do though, all laptops have the issue of overheating, especially when gaming.
Not had any issue downloading over WiFi, not done any comparison tests, but it was reasonable. Battery life is low, as again with most laptops for gaming, the handheld last as long as my gaming laptop currently.
The wonky button, you should have sent it back.
Personally I wouldn’t mind a gpd win 3, nit sure it’s worth the money though. Wouldn’t have thought the steam one is either. More of an expensive toy really.
Oh, my battery is currently 18months old and no loss of power as yet. Not used all the time though.
Not sure what the problem is with the screen, all screens are mostly the same?

Rant warning:
Funny thing is that joke Intel GPU is not that less powerfull (Wikipedia source for TFLOP info) than a Nintendo Switch nVidia GPU but as end user ARM games are so much more pleasant with low power devices...

I'm curious to see battery performance on the Steam Deck as AMD is usually not that enfficient on idle, low power and video decoding as nVidia.

I like that it's just a normal x86_64 computer in a very handy (see what I did there) form factor. If a person really wanted to, they could use a Steamdeck as their only computer. The specs make it better than any desktop from 2008 and CPU wise, it's waaaay faster than the Pentium, Celerons, and Althons in current low end laptops, so it's more than capable of doing every day computer stuff. That's kind of neat.

I couldn't even run Bloodstained ROTN on low settings.

Well, I was going to come back for this one, however. I just downloaded RotN and installed on the machine, 4gb/s same as I get on the main machine, not a scientific test of the WiFi at all, just saying my speeds don’t differ. Anyways, had to set most options to medium/low, and I had to turn voices off due to crackling. Got to say that is the first game I have had issues with. There are others who had the sound issues. Could just be a badly optimised game.
In terms of pure 3D, I installed shadow warrior 2013, and that ran surprisingly well, didn’t alter settings just ran on in there. I would play an FPS on this type of device, m+k is a must for that type, but it ran fairly smoothly.
It’s always going to be a bit hit and miss, much like on any laptop. Not having a dedicated graphics card is always an issue on any laptop

One thing I note about the steam deck machine, you can only preorder if you have a steam account, that’s a bit crap for anyone who is interested in the device and not steam. I might have picked one up if not for that, just to try it out as it’s £300 cheaper than the gpd win 3.

Yep, I fully concur. Performance is rubbish on the game on not up to date hardware. I have had various things running really well, even something like dolphin emulator running GameCube games, no issues. Currently playing ys origins, which runs fine other than you can’t skip things, and I have to start it with a plugged in mouse as it doesn’t recognise the controller once you switch from m+k to controller. Performance wise, someone had grand theft auto 5 running on it reasonably well, so why on earth a sort of 2d platformer runs so bad is beyond me,