Why I swapped my gaming PC for a Steam Deck and didn’t look back

Once upon a time, the only way to play games on the go was to own a Nintendo Game Boy or a Sega Game Gear. You’d have to sit at the right angle to get the best light due to their lack of backlit displays. Now, almost 40 years later, handhelds have progressed so much that we can play games like Elden Ring and Spider-Man 2 as we sit on a train, and you could arguably thank Valve’s Steam Deck for that. I sure do.

Created by the same company that made the Half-Life series and the gaming storefront Steam, the Steam Deck launched in 2022, offering a way to play the many games available on Steam on the go. But that’s not all; you can also customize their experience, such as installing other storefronts, including Epic Games, or another operating system entirely, such as Windows 11.

The handheld has already become the de facto standard and top pick from our guide to the best handheld consoles, with the Steam Deck OLED launching in 2024 and rumors of a Steam Deck 2 ramping up. We’ve also seen a bunch of Steam Deck alternatives crop up, including the Asus ROG Ally X and the Lenovo Legion Go.

Having been impressed by its capability, the Steam Deck led me to sell my gaming PC that I had built during the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning that the only way to play my PC games was via Valve’s console. Three years on, I’ve not looked back, and I don’t plan on buying another desktop PC anytime soon. Here’s why.

I’ve been building PCs since I was 16. The first one was strictly for Half-Life 2, back in 2004. I even emailed Valve’s CEO, Gabe Newell, to see if my then-GeForce 5600 was capable of running the much-anticipated sequel. To my surprise, he replied, explaining that, yes, the game would run fine, and it did.

Although my main machine these days is an M1 Pro MacBook Pro, I’ve always liked the idea of having a unit that I could fully customize and upgrade, both on the hardware and software side, whenever I wanted. But eventually, I began to get itchy feet.

The concept of gaming has evolved so much in the past 40 years. We’re not consigned to having to sit in one room to play a game anymore. With the advent of cloud services such as GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming, you can load up games like Fortnite and Halo on your smartphone or tablet, as long as you have a strong internet connection.

And of course, with the Steam Deck essentially firing the starting gun on PC handhelds, running modern games such as Control and Palworld on high graphical settings is no issue. No more could I stand being sat in one place in my home, when I could be sat somewhere else as a Netflix documentary played, or as I tried to get my newborn son to sleep.

Granted, Remote Desktop apps were an option that could connect to my PC wherever I am, but if I left the house, I couldn’t rely on it working on my Mac and iPhone. I wanted something purely dedicated to the cause, something that gave me freedom from sitting in one room, on my own.

Later that year, in 2022, I decided to take the plunge, buying a Steam Deck before selling off my gaming PC entirely.

As soon as the Steam Deck arrived and booted up, everything felt right. The handheld runs on a fork of Linux called SteamOS, so I didn’t need to go through the strenuous start-up screens that Windows has been providing for decades. It was essentially a matter of signing in with my Steam account, and then deciding which of the best Steam Deck games to download to the handheld. I had bought a 1TB SD card, so I didn’t have to pick and choose which games to play, either.

Granted, you can play almost every game that the Steam Store offers, but the useful addition of having the ‘Steam Deck Verified’ label on the storefront is a great touch for new owners. Games with this label will work with it straight away; you don’t have to do any fiddling. It’s another aspect of why the Steam Deck is approachable for those who may not have owned a desktop PC before. It gives you the confidence that certain games will just work.

The desk I had used for my gaming PC, as well as my SteelSeries keyboard and Razer mouse, now just houses a monitor, which I use as an external option for my MacBook, and Steam Deck when I want some time alone. I don’t have to play there, though. The Steam Deck has granted me the freedom to game in the front room, a car, a train, a coffee shop, anywhere I want.

This one benefit was worth the cost of the handheld, and it was made better when I realized I could customize the look and feel of SteamOS to suit my needs. Modding is another big part of why I love the Steam Deck. I can change certain aspects of SteamOS with minimal effort, including the start-up screen.

Setting up emulators was also a simple affair, thanks to utilities like EmuDeck, which can install a bunch of them in one go. I could play the games I’d converted to a digital format, and I didn’t need to worry about changing the settings of every emulator to run well on the Steam Deck. It just worked. Decky Loader is another fantastic tool, expanding SteamOS with plenty of new configurable options, such as plugins, displaying your Discord status, capturing video, and lots more.

And yes, you can install Windows if you wish. The Steam Deck is still a PC, just in a handheld design, so if you want to play Fortnite without using GeForce Now, as the game is not available via SteamOS, you can.

Expanding the internal storage of the Steam Deck is easy too. If you want to replace the 512GB SSD with a 2TB option, you can easily do it in just five minutes. You can easily make the Steam Deck fit your needs, and you’re not bound by what the handheld offers when you switch it on. Much like the gaming PC I owned for years, I can customize it to my liking, and it’s another big reason why I love owning one.

Ultimately, it’s the ease of use that appealed to me for the Steam Deck. I had spent around $1,000 on my PC, as well as a then-new GPU in late 2021, totaling upwards of $1,400. There was the maintenance of cleaning the PC every month, too, alongside dealing with any issues that driver updates or Windows updates would inevitably bring, leading me to spend several hours to have everything look and work as it did before. I never want to do that again, and the Steam Deck, three years on, has never forced me to do something similar.

Yes, I’d love to see improvements, such as the ability to download games in standby mode, but overall, the Steam Deck is one of the best products I’ve ever bought. Although the Steam Deck OLED, released in 2023, is mighty appealing, I’d rather wait for the fully-fledged follow-up.

We’re amidst a fascinating time with gaming handhelds. From the days of playing Wario Land on a Nintendo Game Boy, we’re now at a point where features like ray tracing and the ability to store games on 2TB of storage are easily possible on portable consoles.

PCs will always have a place; they’re not going away soon. However, having a PC handheld like a Steam Deck has created its own place in the market, with others like ASUS following up with their handheld takes.

The Steam Deck has given me the freedom to walk out of one room and into other places where I can carry on playing Red Dead Redemption II, Spider-Man, and much more. That alone justifies the cost of the handheld, and I’m very grateful for it. I know my son is.

There you have it, the reason I’ve given up my gaming PC and I’m sticking with the Steam Deck for the long run. If you’ve already got a Steam Deck and you’re looking for more great hardware, be sure to check out our picks for the best gaming phones and the best gaming tablets while you’re here. Or, if you’d prefer something a little more old-school, see our picks for the best retro handhelds.