I bought a Steam Deck. It was on sale in July. I had no plans on buying one, so the $130 I “saved” does not really count as saving. I was going to wait until a “version 2” in a few years, but the sale price was too tempting to ignore. I bought the high end model and a dock. I plan on mainly using it as a portable emulating device, and the Steam Deck rates high, although expensive. It does have several other benefits, like being able to play and stream Steam games.

Being me, I have only played some NES and Gameboy games via RetroArch. I have installed a few Steam games, and look forward to playing them while on the go. Also, I played around in desktop mode, and installed a few other things. Overall, I am enjoying the device.

My Steam Deck docked
Look! It plays Steam!

I think the controls are amazing. I love the many buttons, and the customization I am able to do with them. The D-pad works perfectly, which is hard to find in a controller. The analog sticks feel great. The rest of the standard buttons and triggers are easy to access, and I do not feel strained when using them. The additional buttons offered by the Steam Deck are my favorite ones to customize. It has four buttons on the back; I use two of those buttons for save and load state buttons in RetroArch. It also has two trackpads, which can have four actions mapped to each pad. I have various RetroArch hotkeys tied to those. They also work great as mouse pointers. The haptic feedback feels good when gliding the mouse around. I would not use them as a mouse for extended periods of time; they are still trackpads, and trackpads in general suck. However, they are nice for when a controller is not 100% supported. The Steam Deck also has a touch screen, which can also be useful. All of these things come together, and I feel I can play pretty much any type of game on it.

I took it with me on a weekend trip out of town. I tethered it to my phone, so I could access RetroAchievements. I did not have a lot of time to play, but Super Mario Bros. 3 kept me entertained for a few hours. The battery held out the entire weekend without me charging it. I did run into a small issue with my tethering idea. I beat SMB 3, and the achievements popped on the screen. However, when I checked online I did not have the achievements from my last session. Turns out, I lost Internet. It was a bit of a bummer, but I replayed the game and got the achievements along with a few others I missed.

Playing Super Mario World on Steam Deck
I’m pushing the Steam Deck to the limit with Super Mario World

I played a few games outside. The screen on the high end model is amazing, and works as advertised. I was able to play outside on my deck, and enjoy a beer. I had no glare the entire time.

I think the dock is too expensive, even on sale, but I am glad I bought one. Plugging in a keyboard and mouse is a requirement for long uses in desktop mode. Every time I need to transfer screenshots, I dock it, and transfer them to my file server in desktop mode. It is also nice to have a dedicated space to charge it. Instead of buying an official dock, you can find a third party one for $30 on Amazon.

Overall, I do not regret my purchase. I look forward to playing some actual Steam games on it. It will be nice to take my games on the go. It will also be nice to play some games while watching TV. I am thinking either the Deathspank series or Shadow of War will be played on it in the near future.

I got another portable gaming device. Remember when said I bought an Analog Pocket? Yeah, May 2022. Well, it finally arrived. After getting the Steam Deck, I thought about canceling my order. When I finally got the shipping notification, I just accepted it. It is cool.

My Analog Pocket with games
Back in my day, we had to blow into the cartridges, and slam them into the back of the console like this

It can play Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, and Game Gear (with an adapter) game cartridges. I fiddled around with it, and I am impressed by it! I like how compact it is. The buttons feel good, and the screen looks great. There are a ton of settings you can change to tweak the look of the games. I did have to buy some alcohol to clean my cartridges. After a quick swab, they worked great in it! I did not play for any extended period of time, but it felt good. I feel tethered with the Steam Deck, just because I want to make sure I am connected to the Internet. With the Analog Pocket, I feel completely portable. It does not have any way to connect to the Internet.

Which is the main reason why I won’t be using it very often. In the past year, I have really gotten into RetroAchievements, which needs the Internet. The Steam Deck is perfect for it. I will probably end up using the Analog Pocket on replays, after I have gotten achievements. I do not know if it was worth over $200, but I think it is neat.

I like both of these portable gaming devices, and look forward to playing with them more. Maybe I spent too much on both of them, but they both seem high quality. I will do an update if things go south.