The Steam Deck is my best gaming purchase in the last 10 years. It seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. Its what owning a device should be about.
this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
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I had someone tell me "your hands are small, you'll hate the steam deck! You'll get hand cramps reaching for the thumb stick!" I'm glad I didn't listen to them. This thing comes with me almost everywhere, but especially when I know I'll have a wait. I just finished Cyberpunk 2077, playing only on my Steam deck and it was fantastic. I don't have a gaming computer, just this thing (and a Nintendo switch, but I won that in a raffle), and it handles anything I've tried to play so far. I hope it sticks around for at least another 5 years, cause prices are crazy lol.
My hands are about average size, maybe just a little smaller, and I do in fact have difficulties reaching the thumb sticks.
It's not a major issue. I've had my Deck ever since original LCD launch, and absolutely love it. But playing on something like the Legion Go S is noticeably more comfortable.
Overall, it's probably not about hand size, but grip and preference. There are many people with small and weak hands who say the Steam Deck is perfect for them. And there are also people with big, strong hands who say that it's a little too big or heavy.
It's a 2021 and back swiss-army-knife for gaming, and 6th gen, ps2 and gamecube? We got you, fam. My Deck is the foundation of my gaming. I use it more than my Desktop out of convenience.
Heck yeah! I bought the thing on sort of an impulse when it came out. Figured I really wouldn't really get a ton of use out of it, but neat to have. I was so wrong.
I like gaming on it more than I thought I would. AND when my main PC died, I ended up using the Deck in desktop mode as my replacement desktop monitor/keyboard/mouse setup. With the tiniest bit of getting familiar with the most basic of linux stuff, I was up and running. Ended up just using it like that for almost a year. Little thing exceeded my expectation in many ways.
As the Steam Deck slowly marches toward its fifth birthday next February, owners are likely eager for a way to extend its life rather than investing in expensive high-end competition.
With the AI bubble and the cost increases that come with it game developers are coming back around to the Steam Deck's specs.
Yeah, and with indie games being better quality, more affordable and requiring less resources than games from AAA studios.
That’s probably the only good part of the AI bubble. Now they have to optimize and think about doing more with the same hardware.
Or we all will just be pushed towards cloud services
Resist and tell everyone you know why they also should.
I think that’s part of the plan and risk of AI. They will try and rent cpu usage and knowledge. Hopefully, they don’t succeed and instead we have open source AI and less dependence on tech. Even without a crash.
As much as demand for ram and video cards is killing everyone currently, there should be an increase in supply if it’s prolonged enough. Even without a crash.
Now, add a crash and we may have better home ram and video cards for cheap. I think given American volatility, and tech enshittification, people no longer trust the cloud and are moving away from it. They are also sick of subscriptions.
Wouldnt that require every single developer to stop making games for low end hardware and for the older games to disappear?
Honestly, the Steamdeck has a really good mix of components to ensure gaming for a decent while.
My Steamdeck now costs more than what i paid for it. The last time something like that happened was with the GPU shortages, I had just bought the RTX 3070 and then prices skyrocketed.
Weird times indeed. As someone who also got a ps5 before the price hikes and without having paid extra to a scalper, this has happened to me multiple times now where hardware increases in value. Since i'm not looking to sell any of it it doesn't mean much in practice, but still wild to think about.
I think I'm still going to grab a Steam Deck. It works just fine, I'm sure. Also, a Nintendo DS was more than enough fun when I was a kid. :)
The NDS is still a solid choice. I just finished playing Puyo Puyo 7 this week.
If you've got the disposable income for it, yes, it's a great device. The value isn't as great since the price increases, but the slowing market also means hardware at that level will stay relevant much longer.
More powerful handhelds have come out since, but I agree on not putting too much focus on the numbers. Most comparisons seem to miss how important ergonomics and UX are for actually using devices like this, and nobody else seems to have figured those out quite to the degree Valve has.
That said, the power is still enough for a lot of people to play AAA games with it. I'm a bit too spoiled by easy, frequent access to better hardware to quite enjoy that myself, but I can see myself still using it as a AA/indie/backlog machine for many years.
Got my current phone via Swappa just this March. Hadn't heard of them before that. Great site.
I got my last four phones (Pixels 4 XL, 6 Pro, 8 Pro for GrapheneOS, OnePlus 6T for the short-lived DivestOS) my Ayn Thor Pro, and my Samsung Galaxy Tab S5E for LineageOS from Swappa. All mint condition!
Nice! 9 Pro Fold for GrapheneOS here, new in box.
AMD > Intel
ATM & IMO
4 AI and gaming
My 7900 XTX agrees.