Steam Deck OLED Review: internal storage is essential and other things you need to know

Even though the Steam Deck only became available in Australia last month, I've had one since 2022, via an imported, expensive purchase on eBay. Valve also sent me a Steam Deck OLED to review for Gloss.

Here's what I've learnt after 2 years with a 64GB LCD Steam Deck and things you should know when choosing between the LCD model and the OLED model.

Buy the OLED model. On my LCD Steam Deck I had some issues with Bluetooth audio and controllers when docked to a TV. Sometimes, even when close to the console, I'd have input issues with just one Bluetooth controller connected. Describing the improvements of the Steam Deck OLED, Valve confirms "we’ve also added a dedicated Bluetooth antenna, improving connection for multiple controllers". Having two controllers connected for multiplayer was a non-starter on my LCD model, and one was often unreliable. Battery life, improved Bluetooth and the beautiful OLED screen should make you seriously consider the extra AU$250 the OLED model costs. Also you can now wake the OLED model with a Bluetooth controller when it's docked.

Internal storage is way more important than you think. I'm putting this point at the top of this review because it was a huge factor in my original 64GB LCD Steam Deck. While a Nintendo Switch can be expanded really easily with a microSD card, which is a seamless upgrade, the Steam Deck is a Linux computer at heart. PC games often require shader compilation, due to varying hardware configurations, and the Steam Deck caches shader information on the internal drive by default. Without advanced workarounds, the 64GB base model (which luckily isn't available in Australia) is largely inadequate for anything other than indie games and maybe old emulated games. Storing just one or two big AAA games on a 64GB model, even on an external microSD card, will still require large internal caches that are hard to move to the external drive. The games themselves can run from an external drive, but caches in the background fill up that 64GB drive very quickly. Even if you uninstall games, sometimes that cache doesn't clear by itself. I also had one experience where my storage filled up and I had to enter the Steam Deck BIOS and mess around with commands to get the device to boot again. Buy a model with a big enough internal drive upfront. I'd honestly recommend 512GB at a minimum, especially considering how big some normal PC games can be now, but 256GB is a nice base-model change from Valve.

Valve provided me with a Steam Deck OLED with 1TB of storage and the "premium anti-glare etched glass" display. Honestly, it's made me realise how incredible the Steam Deck, as a concept, is. Not only is the OLED display a night-and-day upgrade from the smaller LCD screen, with vibrant colours and deeper blacks, the storage plays a huge role in making it seem like a real portable PC. I don't have to worry about storage almost at all, including huge games like the Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Grand Theft Auto V. Which made me realise how much further the Steam Deck takes the hybrid concept from the Nintendo Switch. Seeing Red Dead Redemption 1, a 2010 game, running at 30FPS on a Nintendo Switch when I can run it at 60FPS on a Steam Deck is a huge step forward. Plus I can run GTA IV, GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 too, which likely won't be ported to Switch anytime soon, if ever. Honestly it all makes me frustrated about Nintendo's highly anticipated, long overdue Nintendo Switch 2 still not being announced.

Valve's official dock, which isn't available in Australia yet and is a bit expensive, has some neat bonus features. The main one is support for HDMI-CEC. This means on the OLED model you can wake the device with any Bluetooth controller and it'll also hopefully turn on your TV and change the input to the Steam Deck automatically. I'm not entirely sure if HDMI-CEC is available on third-party USB-C dongles.

It's also just a bit nicer than a third party USB-C dongle, which the Steam Deck also still supports quite well. The official dock holds the Steam Deck in place and has a generous selection of ports, including support for an additional monitor with DisplayPort.

Linux can be a double-edged sword, but it's also eye-opening. It took me a while to start really using my Steam Deck. People underestimate the cost of switching ecosystems, and as someone who mainly games on Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation, it was a little challenging to justify PC game purchases. I had to wait for new games to come out. And they did.

One of the first times I really started using the Steam Deck daily was when I sideloaded a PlayStation Remote Play app. While Sony now sells a PlayStation Portal for AU$330, which can't even run games without a network connection to a PS5, the Steam Deck can run PC games and, through open source software, PlayStation and Xbox Remote Play on the one device.

Chiaki, the open-source PlayStation remote play software I use, was the the first of many interesting side-loaded experiences. Not only did it allow connection to the PS5 from a non-Sony device, with easy configuration of controls and connection, but I could also run other Linux applications on the side. I have a habit of listening to podcasts while gaming, something the Nintendo Switch can't do and where the PS5 is limited by third-party native apps (Spotify, Apple Music but no Apple Podcasts). But on the Steam Deck I can run Chrome alongside other programs and just stream from Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I can even have a YouTube video playing in the background and listen to the audio.

Decky Loader - an unofficial but fully functional homebrew manager for the Steam Deck - also let me install other cool third-party software and tweaks to Steam OS. This includes options to change the sound effects of the Steam Deck, which I have setup to use the nostalgic sound effects of an Xbox 360. One tool also lets me mix the individual volume levels of different applications, meaning I can lower the sound of Stardew Valley while pumping up the volume of my podcasts. Even the PlayStation 5, which should theoretically be a more polished experience than a Linux comptuer, makes audio mixing difficult. And I haven't figured out a way on my PS5 to have Spotify play loud enough to hear over an average PS5 games audio.

Emulation is also eye-opening with the Steam Deck's power. Not only is Retroarch available on the Steam Store, but a community tool to configure emulators called Emudeck makes setting up additional emulators on the Steam Deck a walk in the park.

You do kinda need some basic knowledge of using a Terminal on a computer, but it's easy to walk through the steps. But you might want to also have access to a keyboard or mouse to set this up - which the Steam Deck, as a full-flavour PC, supports easily out of the box.

This is another important part of the Steam Deck as a Linux comptuer. Via Desktop Mode, you basically are just running a full Linux desktop OS. You can access the filesystem, download Linux software, add third-party programs to Steam and much more.

Emudeck even includes Steam ROM Manager, which makes your emulated games look and feel like native Steam games, with options for RetroAchievements, easy controller setup and beautiful custome cover art. From your Steam library, emulated games have cover art and look like native games that you've purchased.

This kind of open emulation, and the community support of the Steam Deck and Linux, thanks to the Steam Deck being a computer, was a bit of an eye-opener for me. Especially when it comes to preservation attempts from the big three console makers.

On Nintendo Switch, Nintendo locks NES, SNES and Nintendo 64 games behind monthly subscriptions. If you forget to open the SNES Switch Online app before a big flight, sometimes you'll just be locked out until it can check your subscription status using Wi-Fi. And you also can't buy major Nintendo games as a one-time purchase. If you want to play Super Mario Bros 3 for the NES on your Nintendo Switch, you need to pay for Nintendo Switch Online theoretically forever. Some huge games are missing too. You can't play any old Pokémon games on a Nintendo Switch. Why? Who knows. It doesn't make business sense I guess to even offer them as purchases. On a Steam Deck, you can run any older Pokémon game.

On PlayStation 5 the situation isn't much better, and is often worse, with some games requiring a PlayStation Plus Deluxe subscription. Some games on PlayStation and Xbox can be purchased separately, but the business of re-releasing games factors into every decision on big consoles. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft drip-feed releases of old games and some publishers refuse to make their games available on consoles emulation platforms. Square Enix, for example, insists on creating separate collections of old games, with inconsistent care and quality depending on the title. Vib-Ribbon, the weird first-party PS1 vector music game, can't be purchased on PS5. Maybe it'll come out some day, maybe not. Despite owning a device that is powerful enough to run almost any software, you can't run a PS1 game that you own until Sony deems it possible.

Nintendo is, in my opinion, the worst, because of the lack of individual purchases and the drip-feed of its own titles. And Sony has only just implemented a working PlayStation 2 emulator on the PlayStation 5, with the same license and software limitations and drip-feed. Microsoft has stopped introducing new Xbox 360 releases on its store, admitting that some older games are just too difficult to license, such as sports games or games with big music libraries.

But on the Steam Deck, you can play almost anything up to the PlayStation 3 generation, and emulation is improving all the time. Even some Nintendo Switch games can run, though I haven't tried many due to Nintendo quite fairly cracking down on Switch emulation. Dolphin emulates Wii and Gamecube games excellently, and I've also had a great time playing PS2 games with PCSX2. And technically, if you have a big collection of physical games that Sony and other publishers either refuse to re-release or offer for purchase, it's legal to emulate these games if you own them.

Because emulators on PC are open too, you can mess with settings and either improve internal resolutions of some games, or as I like to do, enable shaders to make PS1 games look like they're running on an old CRT TV.

This is all a bit of a revelation and I sometimes honestly forget that I can just run old Tony Hawk games that Microsoft refuses to remaster, or Crash Bandicoot games that are in a state of Activision-Microsoft licensing limbo. I can play almost any classic Nintendo game, even if they want to hide them behind a limited release like the insulting Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection on Switch, which you can't buy anymore. Pokémon Black looks beautiful on the OLED display, and yes I do own the real cartridge (just in case). And just because Nintendo refuses to release The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker on the Nintendo Switch, doesn't mean you can't emulate it perfectly on a Steam Deck. I own that game too, by the way. Ape Escape 2, which for some reason is broken when emulated on the PlayStation 5 via Sony's official PlayStation Store, runs perfectly on the Steam Deck.

The big business aspect of modern gaming evaporates when you have access to a console-like PC handheld, and it's amazing as someone who just loves older games. No more monthly fees to play older games you already own, and no more license-hell, no more drip-feeding releases.

Steam itself is also an incredible service, one that makes console makers seem lazy and stingy. Game Mode on the Steam Deck (Big Picture Mode) is the main controller-friendly interface of the Steam Deck (also known as Game Mode). It manages game controls, non-Steam applications, the Steam Store, social features and your library. And even though it resembles proprietary console interfaces, it can be expanded and is super flexible.

In a way it is still more difficult figuring out which games are compatible when compared to a console store. If I buy a PlayStation 5 game I know I'm going to have a good experience, most of the time. But on the Steam Deck I have to judge which games I can play on a more graphically limited portable console and which games were deemed to be compatible with Linux too. There are some badges that Valve shows on store pages, describing compatibility with the Steam Deck, but sometimes they're not too reliable. Some games will say they're not Verified and run perfectly, for example. While others might still have issues. I couldn't get Metaphor: ReFantazio to boot at all without tinkering, despite being Verified on the Steam Store. I feel like this was just a case of Linux sometimes randomly deciding to not work, and I don't even remember how I ended up getting the game to boot.

Other games are just not available on Linux, particularly online games. Fortnite, for example, isn't supported due to fears of anti-cheat technology not being effective on the open Linux platform. This is the same reason why Grand Theft Auto Online no longer works on Steam Deck. And Rockstar Games just decided to kill support for GTA Online, despite it previously working on the handheld.

Even with these caveats, the Steam Deck is a still huge gateway into the PC ecosystem and its benefits (and downsides), and when you download an indie game that is designed for PC onto a handheld for the first time, and it just works right away, it's magical. Especially if the game isn't coming to console anytime soon. Port-begging is almost a thing of the past thanks to the Steam Deck.

Indie developers also don't have to do as much work to support the Steam Deck than they do a console. Stardew Valley 1.6 was available on Steam over 6 months earlier than it was on consoles, due to the small team working on that game and its ports. And a number of games that don't come to console, due to small developers not being able to buy expensive dedicated console development kits, just work on the Steam Deck out of the box.

UFO 50, release from Spelunky creator Derek Yu, launched with day-one support for Steam Deck and I absolutely love it. I've been playing more experimental indie games than ever before, including the excellent Australian game Frog Detective, which took years to come to consoles. Mouthwashing, a psychological horror game with no console-release in sight, also runs perfectly on Steam Deck. Unfortunately, I have had some horrific dreams as a result.

Many PC games, even Windows-only games, just work out of the box on the Steam Deck, via Valve's excellent Proton compatibility layer. And Valve has done a lot of work behind the scenes to make this a reality, much more work than any other company in the PC ecosystem.

And once you own a game on Steam you can technically play it in a number of other ways thanks to free Steam features. You can also share your library with a household via Steam Family Sharing and the more limited new Steam Family features. Some games that I've purchased years ago for a computer that is long-gone still work on my Mac laptop and Steam Deck, and some even sync saves between Linux, Windows and Mac. But because PC gaming isn't as standardised as a console, some games also don't sync saves between platforms.

The Steam Deck is still just a PC, for better or worse. Unlike the Nintendo Switch, which has a sleep mode that supports downloading games in the background, the Steam Deck requires the device to be awake with the screen on to download games. Have a 100GB Grand Theft Auto V install to suffer through? You'll have to make sure the Steam Deck is awake and ideally connected to power the entire time.

You also need to enable Offline Mode to play most Steam games when a network connection isn't available, even offline singleplayer games. And you can't enable Offline Mode without an internet connection. It's not a huge deal, but something to remember before boarding a flight.

Other benefits of the Nintendo Switch mobile architecture are also obvious when you compare it to the Steam Deck. Sometimes the Steam Deck is a bit hard to wake from sleep, or just has a slower interface, and sometimes the Steam OS itself is a bit more janky than the seamless PlayStation or Switch interfaces. The device is also a bit warmer and the fan a bit louder than my Nintendo Switch, though theoretically because the PC is an open platform there is more competition and incentive for manufacturers to improve the hardware. I expect the next Steam Deck, which is probably years away, to take another big step forward.

Or even better, a handheld PC manufactured by another company may be released in the future, with better hardware, and would still support your existing Steam games. A number of Steam Deck competitiors already exist, but Valve definitely has the best value handheld PC at the moment.

Great Steam games are amazing. But the open PC ecosystem does have downsides. The best Steam games have achievements, cloud saves, online social features, an activity feed to share with friends, remote play support and more. But some lack certain features due to the same corporate battles and enshittification we see everywhere. Red Dead Redemption, a 2010 game that finally release on Steam a few weeks ago, doesn't support some of the best Steam features. Instead a Rockstar Games launcher is forced on players, with a separate login and cloud save system. The game does support Steam achievements, but the Rockstar Games launcher requires an additional few minutes sometimes to even launch the game and doesn't always work well with the Steam Deck's offline mode. Sometimes you'll be randomly logged out from your Rockstar account, and will awkwardly have to type out your full email and password on the Steam Deck's touchscreen or your controller. In a way, while the Rockstar Games launcher could provide players with more competitive pricing for games, via its own store, it is a great example of the downsides of the open PC ecosystem. And a number of other PC games have these limitations and weird launchers too.

But PC gaming in general is liberating. There were times where I'd see an indie game on Twitter, download it via Itch.io or GOG and then just technically own it, with no DRM. In the future, I'll be able to plug a USB-stick with the game executable into a computer, and with some tinkering, run it. Meanwhile you still can't run any PlayStation 3 games on a modern PlayStation.

While Valve definitely wants people to buy games via its store, where it gets a cut and has varying levels of DRM, with a little bit of work you can quite easily sideload any game you want and run it, including indie Windows games and games from third-party stores and launchers. You can even install Windows on the Steam Deck, but I didn't really want to mess around the Deck in that way.

Valve provides so many additional features for free, such as cloud saves and online features, that it makes console subscription fees seem diabolically stingy. With the competitive nature of an open platform like Linux, it's unlikely that Valve would dare take this away either. If Steam started charging a monthly fee for these online features, such as voice chat or online multiplayer, there's a good chance people would just start buying games on a different storefront. On PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo platforms, this competition doesn't exist. You can't just start buying games from a third-party marketplace on a Playstation, and this means Sony has a bit of a monopoly on its own device.

On the Steam Deck, if a game is cheaper on GOG or Itch.io you can technically just sideload it via Desktop Mode and run it on the device.

That's a lot of words, but I wanted to provide a different kind of review considering how long the Steam Deck has been available in other countries. Honestly my main takeaways are these:

The way the Steam Deck is an open, full computer OS means you can do so much more with the Steam Deck's power than you can in closed console ecosystem. But it is not always as polished or as seamless as a console, with sleep mode, offline features and general consistency sometimes suffering.

The Steam Deck is pretty big compared to a Nintendo Switch, and handheld size inflation is real. The Nintendo Switch 2 is rumoured to be bigger than the Nintendo Switch too, and it does make me long for the pocket-friendly size of a PSP at times. But it's also a huge deal that you can play many full-size games on the Steam Deck, including a number of brand new games.

But overall I'm in love with my Steam Deck. I use it every day to play indie games, big-budget AAA games, stream PlayStation 5 games to it, and run classic games via emulation. It's truly my daily-carry portable console, and has even made me question my use of a big, heavy home console altogether. The open-platform has its quirks, but the charms outweigh the negatives if you're willing to waste a few hours setting everything up.

Just make sure to buy an OLED model and aim for more internal storage. It really makes such a big difference.