Yes, You Can Use the Steam Deck OLED Like A Real PC! It's Awesome! Desktop Mode Hands-On

I use my steamdeck in desktop mode 90% of the time. It's a great media/browsing PC.

ive been using my steam deck as a desktop pc for about 7 months now, and it has completely replaced my windows desktop in some areas. For basic video, web and email, this thing is a delight to use, and after some months I feel like i understand the OS a bit more than Win10. The only gripe is i wish i had more performance for other heavier games such as Uncharted and cyberpunk, but as is im happy with it, i have a portable gaming machine with emulators and steam games and a great home pc when docked.

What is lovely about the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED is that its essentially a Linux machine that you can do all sorts of IT stuff. Ultimately it can also be a good business expense for developers who already have a Windows machine and want both a Linux machine and a nice handheld for gaming off-hours. Kudos to Valve!

5:05 one small detail there: Netflix only stream in 720p to web browsers, as Louis Rossmann pointed in a recent video. But, there are extensions for Ffox and Chrome to force 1080p on Netflix.

If you use the PS5 DualSense you can activate gyro and turn it's sensitivity down to 25% for fine tuning your aim and manipulating the mouse pointer, even in desktop mode. It's very nice!

I actually do use my Steam Deck as PC substitute for work when traveling and when I need to work during blackouts. I hook it up to an 14" LapDock (Nexdock Touch) and it becomes an usable semi-portable machine for doing real work (in my case - Linux stuff, some coding and devops). Since my work machines are virtualized, all I have to do is transfer their VM images over to an external SSD and fire up VMware on my Steam Deck. Runs beautifully. I also very commonly use my deck as a digital companion for browsing the web and watching media. The new OLED screen works really well for media playback. Well, since I'm a Linux geek, I also sometimes do hop on to the terminal to do some light admin work.

Yesterday I got my new monitor (Dell S2722DZ). It is a "conferencing monitors" so it has a HD webcam, mic, speakers, and an RJ45 port on it. I got it for this for this exact reason. It works great. My setup is SUPER CLEAN!!! Only 1 visible cable from the monitor to the Steam Deck. I for one LOVE these new USB C monitors because USB 3.2 Gen 2 has so much bandwidth it makes your monitor your I/O center. NO MORE OF MY 6'4" BUTT CRAWLING UNDER A DESK!!!

Also docked is a great way to play strategy games with mouse and keyboard. And you can play CP 2077 at 30 FPS with decent image quality and higher than low settings. FSR 2.1 at balanced is enough. You can run CP2077 navite 800p at a mix of low and medium settings 40 fps with dips into the 30s due to cpu constraints. In fact the OLED has a bit better 1% lows as the faster memory helps CPU bound scenarios. But I prefer the on the go experience on the deck OLED. That ridiculous OLED HDR display is crazy and makes the game look awesome. It feels like raytracing is enabled. It isn't but those blacks and the play between light and shadow... Awesome.

Strongly considering getting one of these for my daughter as a starter gaming pc

2:51 a wild black square appears (before then but it’s most visible when your hand is in front)

If they had added for external GPU, I would have picked this up, but I'm happy with my LED one and let's see what deck 2 brings

Nice to see content about the Linux desktop :D

I mostly enjoy the Steam desktop experience, but the one major pain-point for me is getting setup for file-sharing services like G Drive & iCloud.

My main gaming pc is a Manjaro (Arch) Linux based PC so the desktop mode looks basically just like my regular pc desktop. And trust me, once you learn Linux you wont really miss Windows much. So much faster/more stable.

To the best of my knowledge steam deck does not have superuser privileges activated, unless done by the user. This means that you don't really need to use the terminal anyway. The app packages are also different, they are flatpacks which means that installing and uninstalling works similar to Android apk's Best Regards

Your videos helps alot

The Steam Deck might do more for bringing desktop Linux onto peoples desks than any other initiative ever did.

🤔 I'm thinking on buying it this month and having as substitute for my PC seams a good idea. I have a desktop, is big and take a lot of space. I have a work/study laptop with Linux. But for gaming is my desktop, having the steam deck is the perfect solution

I think I'm using my steamdeck more as a desktop than actually as a handheld. And when I use it as a handheld mostly with AR Glasses. After installing EmuDeck I don't even have a switch anymore

The memory bump on the oled really helped out with forza at 1080p. I remember not that long ago trying that on my lcd and it was basically stuck at 900p and 60 wasnt really an option