whoa i'm using gyro control i've got an hour
and a half hands on with the valve steam deck and i'm going to be plugging as
many dongles in and running as many games as they're going to let me run i
brought everything i need to answer as many of your questions as i can
including a nintendo switch as well as an a neo so i can compare ergonomics as
well as a thermal camera they won't let me open it even though i did bring my
eye fixture kit just in case they were gonna allow it they didn't they didn't
i'm putting it away i'm sorry okay so at least maybe i can show you
guys you know hey where's the cooling system where the where are the hot zones
these are early units these are engineering units so these are going to be far from the final experience but
i mean i'm going to be one of the first in the world to even touch rd and a2
hardware running on an apu
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first things first they are not going to let me directly capture off the device
today hopefully that along with a disassembly is something that we can
follow up on for you guys in the future but what we can do
is we can record the gaming experience this
this is it this is me picking it up immediate
impressions absolutely raw ergonomics of the handles of the
controller itself i think they've actually done a really outstanding job i
mean it shouldn't be a surprise the ill-fated steam controller for all of
its quirks was absolutely a comfortable
controller to hold and in spite of the fact that my hands are pretty small
like i am easily able to reach everything from these thumb pads to the
joysticks the d-pad and abxy i mean if you're a retro gamer if you want to play
you know emulated snazz games or anything like that this is what you're
going to be into and ooh the feeling is actually
pretty good considering how early these units are
d-pad is smooth to roll but has a good click for each individual direction the
abx y i can tell these are a little bit early you can see you can actually feel
it the b is a little bit different it's a little bit wobblier you can see it's actually a little bit of a different
shape compared to the other ones it looks weird but it actually feels
exactly like the other ones to the thumb so no problem there i like these valve guys
i walked in they said no no no no no no no no and then all of a sudden they were
like okay well you can try your monitor and they're saying you can try to
capture it's not going to work on this unit but we might actually be able to do
it on the desktop docked one over there these are in sandbox mode so we can't
have the desktop experience so that's the thing you guys got to understand
this is not a game console like a nintendo switch where it's this
completely locked down thing it's going to run a custom version of Linux so all
these games are going to be running through the proton compatibility layer but fundamentally this is just a pc it's
a zen 2 CPU with four cores eight threads at anywhere from i believe it's
2.4 to 3.5 gigahertz it's going to have some kind of rdna2 based GPU integrated
into it 16 gigs of lpddr5 memory and
that bit is critical because it's actually running at 5500 mega transfers
per second quad channel that's insane
we've actually never seen to my knowledge outside of
bespoke console chips we've never seen
any kind of pc built with that kind of memory bandwidth to an integrated GPU
and you got to remember an integrated GPU has to share bandwidth with the CPU
so the more you can have the absolute better now in terms of storage they're
going to have 64 gigs of emmc on the 399
unit that is not going to be enough thankfully the microsd expansion card uh
yes right there you can actually see we're using it on these demo units is
going to allow you to install a much larger game library than that i mean in
the terabytes but microsd
i mean especially when you consider the way that game development is going
relying on these super fast ssds and the playstation 5 and the xbox series is
it doesn't feel very future future-proof if i were you i'd go for the 256 which
is going to be 529 or the 128 which is going to be 649. now
that SSD is not upgradable but i can pretty much guarantee that the
good folks that i fix it will find a way a couple more housekeeping items it's
got a 40 watt hour battery which is fairly comparable to devices like the a
and neo and this usbc port which is used for charging is a bog standard USB-C
port so that means you could use it with standard peripherals like check this out
here's a random five-year-old usb hub i'll plug it in and boom
i am using my mouse which is important
and i will show you guys why this mouse is so important later
i mean really a huge part of the story here for me is the sheer choice
available to the gamer even before i plug in a mouse and navigate the
interface using that i have three different options for
navigation i can use the d-pad i can use
the thumbstick i can use the touchpad which i think they've still got a little
bit of tuning to do on the haptics but it is a very interesting feel
definitely a step forward from the steam controller of your yeah it's got a
little bit too much uh like kind of vibration and not haptics right now
we're gonna tune it he says yeah i bet they will turning around to the back we
find a little confusing thing that may or may not get changed with the final
units uh we're whopping four buttons on
both the right and left sides so you've got your l1 l2 this is an analog trigger
so it's going to be great for throttle control and things like racing games as
well as l4 and l5 here is l3 bound to
something else it's bound to pressing down the stick
there you go so uh it's just a little bit of a weird
numbering thing there are in fact four buttons
down to each side and it's kind of up to you to decide how you want to use them
after all that i forgot about a control scheme touch you can scroll through the game
library click on it and boom why don't we play some doom eternal now valve has
taken some criticism for this move with some people saying that 1280x800 is not
enough resolution in the year 2021 but i'm going to defend them here just like
i did with the a neo and just like i did with the nintendo switch OLED edition
at this screen size it is enough and
from my perspective i would much rather be running at 60 frames per second more
often it's a 60hz display compared to running at
30 frames per second and 1080p and we
are still limited by you know what is fundamentally an ultrabook crammed into
a handheld gaming console how awesome is this they're at exactly
the same spot as my save game on the a neo which is just right near the
beginning of the game this is cool this gives us a look at the pause menu so we can adjust screen
brightness audio oh that's right it does have built-in
microphones at least two of them i can't remember if there are more than that for
noise cancellation i do not see any others but it does at least have
a two mic array wi-fi bluetooth there's
an advantage over the nintendo switch can you even believe the new OLED one is
not going to support bluetooth headphones still i mean talk about
things that make no sense in 2021 that
that right there we can turn haptics on it well i want haptics on
okay now something that is built into this
game conveniently that they didn't tell me i'm not allowed to turn on
is performance metrics
oh hold on a second we gotta tune this first though
this is this is an ugly default setup here
you know what let's tune them both at the same time
okay yeah running at native resolution that is not gonna be a thing
overall quality medium apply changes
yeah yeah go ahead and roll i mean this is this is the experience ed
this is what the people want to see
okay so we're getting anywhere from around 40
we're seeing some dips down to like 20.
that's pretty much to be expected
i'm actually going to turn these speakers down they do sound great though
i mean you do end up with a much larger face
than something like the a neo but the speakers are pointed at you so
it kind of comes back to the old htc one like experience is it worth it to you to
have a big speaker girl looking at you and you know actually be able to hear what you're listening to or do you want
a kind of a sleeker looking device
the weight is good it's got a good size to weight ratio it doesn't feel cheap
but it also doesn't feel too heavy i have not like compared the FPS numbers
looking at exactly the same thing yet but running almost all medium i turned
off motion blur because it's for plebs and like tuned a couple of other little
things but mostly medium and i locked it at native resolution valve had it set to
dynamic resolution which doesn't tell us anything about the performance
it is a way smoother experience so if
your question was does rdna 2 run better than vega the
answer is yes even if you have to sacrifice a couple of CPU cores in order
to get there oh valve also has the
significant advantage in terms of joystick although
to the aneo's credit it's a little bit more
pocketable or like sleevable if you want to slide it into a little pouch in your
backpack you can see the profile especially if we account for the height
of the joysticks is at least twice as deep for the steam
deck compared to um well really i would say this is the most comparable handheld
on the market right now looking out into the skybox i don't have
a lot of character models on screen or anything like that but
based on this very early hardware
running very early software i would be surprised if we don't see somewhere in
the neighborhood of a 50 performance uplift
over a similarly equipped device and what we know based on what valve has
told us about the internal battery and the estimated battery run time is that
the power envelope of these two chips is fairly similar
not bad something i noticed holding them side by
side like this is that there's a much more muted glare on the steam deck
compared to the a neo especially off
axis okay but this shouldn't be a huge mystery because they've actually
look at this they did r d check this out
so they've got different types of glass over here that they're showing us so
that we can compare what happens with an anti-glare etched glass
versus just a regular glass that is going to be like hey where's my camera
lens hi ed can you see me can you see me in the glass head okay
how about this one can you see me
no yeah but you're not as clear right
you only get the premium etched glass on the 512 gig model but at 649 that's
starting to look like a good deal just for the glass i mean apple wouldn't even
give you a stand for their etched glass monitor at that price
now that we've got the game running well it's time to try some alternate control schemes these are touch sensitive
joysticks so as soon as i put my finger on it whoa
i'm using gyro control now valve's had support for gyro control with
playstation controllers for some time now but
having it integrated into the device rather than something that you need to
plug in a third-party controller in order to use is pretty freaking sick now
it's more for fine control i guess let's see
yeah it's more for fine-tuning your aim so you get there with the stick and then you fine tune
with the gyro that is pretty awesome
it's a good way to like hold on target while an opponent is you know moving
around or whatever
it's gonna take me a little while to get used to it for sure like the fact that i
have to touch this in order for it to work oh you can also touch this pad
so you can just be touching this pad and you can look with this as well so more
like a like a touch pad but less horrendous what happens if uh like
the meat of your thumb
i think you just shouldn't do that honestly it'd be very hard to do that like ergonomically
i don't see it as a problem now that both of these have been running due maternal for about 15 minutes i'm ready
to talk about noise and thermals now when it comes to fan noise there's the
the volume like the the sound pressure level but there's also the quality of
the noise
and the a and neo though my understanding is after the first 500
units they're getting a different fan along with analog triggers and a couple
of other little upgrades definitely has a higher pitch to it
but i would say both of them are similar in terms of their volume which makes
sense given that we've already inferred that the power envelope of these chips is quite similar now i want to pull up
thermal camera i've been really looking forward to this
there's two main reasons i want to look at the thermals one is i want to see if
it will give me any hints as to the internal layout of the device and two is
i want to know how comfortable the touch surfaces are going to be when you've
been sitting gaming on this thing for half an hour an hour two hours five
hours who knows valve says it can go up to eight hours if you're running light
loads although it should be noted it won't get nearly as hot when you're running those kinds of applications
curiously both the a and neo which we're looking at right now
and the steam deck have their hot spots on the right so maybe there's a good
reason that it was done that way both of them managed to maintain very
reasonable grip temperatures but you can see the a neo is
notably hotter so it's sitting at around 35 degrees
around the left thumb stick there while the steam deck
probably thanks to the fact that it's larger
is more in the neighborhood of 27.
the touchpad is 29 just shy of 30 on the
right and very similar over on the left hand side let's flip them over
there's the a neo conveniently a shipped me a clear unit so we can actually see
everything CPU's here ssds here
batteries here and then the actual heatsink is here so that gives us a
really kind of good idea of what we're what these heat signatures might look
like uh okay well let's see how we do here oh
okay there might actually be some insights
here this is almost definitely our
CPU slash GPU this could be memory or storage
this big block here i'd be surprised if it's not a battery or something like
that it does have a little bit of of heat output to it and this right here
now that's interesting that's our intake but there's
quite a lot of thermal activity right around it you know what maybe we can
peek through this grill and find out what that thing you can see there's a
little there's a little outline here let's see if we can figure out what that
is nope the answer is a big fat no to my
eyes that is completely impenetrable
since we're back here though once again grip temperature is advantage valve with
the a and neo being as high as 35 degrees where your index fingers might
rest around the back of the grip and valve is sitting
i mean maximum 28 degrees
so they did go big they lost that compactness but what they gained is a
more enjoyable thermal experience for the user
uh you guys are doing great in terms of grip temperatures that's their goal
see that oh nice so it's like
night and day so there's too much you can see there's too much uh kind of
leaked heat from this uh heatsink here so the intake's here and there's too
much kind of spreading out in this direction and then you guys have
basically kicked it all straight out it looks like you've got pretty good
kind of shrouding it looks like we could probably use a longer intake if i was to
kind of just look at this and say you know hey
what would i do not that you guys care but it looks like there's a little bit
more cooling needed here from the intake because there's still a pretty significant heating uh signature here
even though there's nice fresh air coming in it looks like you guys have some kind of shroud covering whatever
this is i'm if i had to guess i'd say maybe SSD or
something like that but i don't know for sure obviously
there's some kind of chipset there maybe there's a micro sd reader i don't know
i don't know only you can know you'll find out soon yeah no there you go
apparently we're not getting any answers today now one point of contention for some
users is the top location of the charging slash usbc port i can
understand it both ways on the one hand it's a little bit more ergonomic to have
something hanging down while you're sitting like this but on the other hand
if you are you know lying in bed or something like that that's going to put
a lot of strain on a bottom mounted port now
aya obviously worked around this by just having them on the top and the bottom
but valve for whatever reason didn't seem to
feel it was necessary to add more so when you're charging or when you want to
dock and plug into a wired Ethernet connection you're going to have
something hanging off of the top of the device the good news is that as i
mentioned before the weight is very comfortable so even having this
dongle hanging off of it it's not bad
it's not bad now it's time for the next act
valve was very particular about which games we're running i'm installing cs go
you know the developer has to give permission so they didn't have cs go on
these devices we had to get special permission from the developer in order
to run it in all seriousness that is fairly
standard practice at hardware launches but the reason i want cs go is because
the m4 has a really bright muzzle flash that i can use for the NVIDIA ldap
here we go now i pre-tested the a neo and what we're looking at with the ldap
is the total latency from click to photon
so what kind of internal input lag the
steam deck might have so far it's felt really good but
feelings are just feelings and numbers are better so we're going to go ahead
and strap this on i
pre-adjusted it i'm kind of expecting it to be a little bit smaller in person
but that's okay this is quite an unusual control scheme
i wouldn't expect most people to prefer it but
hey there you go what's interesting is even though we've loaded up a few games
now whether we're coming off of the internal SSD or the microsd expansion card it's
been fine but then direct storage also you know
isn't a thing yet um so we'll see
then again direct storage on Linux will that even will that even be a thing
it's hard to play with the ldap covering the screen the game's running really smoothly
though i've been extremely pleased with
the gaming experience in everything i've tried so far
okay i want to get about 20 if i can
we got 40 seconds till the bomb goes off
okay good enough on average it is
measurably better than the anu and this is even in its early state right now
what they're showing here is a functionality called bookmarks where i mean if you've been paying attention to
steam for the last 15 years it's got a built-in web browser right so
essentially what you're doing is you're just bookmarking a web page whether it's
something like twitch or netflix and you're able to use it to
consume content on them that's pretty cool i could see people hacking all
kinds of fascinating functionality into this
just like that eh let's go ahead and pick something people
won't judge me for
responsive man i wish it had an OLED display
i truly do and this is an area where the 720p resolution does hurt it more in my
opinion than in gaming something where you're supposed to have that super sharp
cinematic look versus a game where you know honestly you're moving around so
much all the time that your eyes natural motion blur is going to fill in a lot of
the gaps 1080p would have been nice for content
consumption credit to valve for their tuning of the display out of the box by
the way at least at this early stage of development they haven't put it in any
kind of gross vivid profile everything looks to my eye
accurate to what i would expect from a color accurate display so that's awesome
scott insisted i show this one this is a mind-blowing demonstration this my
friends is online multiplayer that's right i've got one pc here and over the
power of the internet scott look at this we are playing a
co-op game he's on his steam deck
you guys are super tech savvy you guys know what's up this thing is a
full-fledged gaming pc so if it wasn't already clear
that's it it's one of those but smaller hey i just
got permission to try my own monitor let's see what happens
i would like to try usbc displayport in
is it worth a shot all right hey should be fine that's famous last
words right there hey if it doesn't work
if this even makes it into the video we're not
just like that so if you weren't already convinced that this is a full fat
pc just in a handheld form factor well
this should pretty much do it so can i just i'm going to switch to external
screen right that sounds right because it's not a laptop but the the os for
running things as a laptop and if you were curious if it's going to run 4k 60
hertz um that's your answer right there i
think oh it might be at 30 right now it's hard to tell i'm so used to uh no
it's at 60 hertz freaking awesome
just like that how relieved are you guys right now
pleasantly surprised we're gonna go for full completion here
uh extend to right oh yeah so this is we plugged it
down honestly the fact that it's working this well already is mind-blowing to me
so we can even use this display as a secondary display i mean imagine that
right you're gaming on your steam deck you've got your twitch chat up on your
actual steam deck while you're using your monitor to play your game or whatever like
i'll take it by the way they're working on their own dock this is uh daisy chain of right
angle type c connectors indicates that valve has in fact noticed that the top
mounted type c is something that does need to be overcome but that's okay they
have very skilled engineers and i'm sure they're going to sort it out haha first time lttstore.com has been fired up on
valve's campus actually probably not there's enough nerds that work here any
valve employees out there already got this shirt it's the new color of our do
not drop shirt oh yeah mouse pads are in stock
like for the first time in a very long time valve's making me pack up and get out
before i can test all my controllers but i'm sure they'll have that compatibility
pretty much sorted out one thing i do want to squeeze in before we go is a
quick size comparison with the original nintendo switch this is not the upcoming
OLED one you can see it can it could basically dock
under the steam deck but
okay yeah it's got a size advantage but that's to be expected given that it's
kind of like comparing a full-blown you know apu equipped ultrabook pc with
four or five-year-old mid-tier smartphone in terms of hardware
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and neo which is the closest thing that the steam deck has to a competitor the
steam deck is expected to be shipping sometime in december of this year with
orders placed now already somewhere in the middle part of next year so what
that's going to mean for the competitive landscape well with our dna 2
apu's probably coming around that time it's going to be very interesting i'm
excited