wow the sound stage on this thing
that is impressive the time is now six
days ago and I am about to get my first hands on with a production unit of the
valve steam deck now there's going to be an LTT video that we're going to be
working on over the next week or so where we get into more details
performance thermals anything else that
we're allowed to tell you at this point we can't get too deep into the software
because that's not final yet so this video is going to be focused on the
unboxing experience the specs and just
uh first impressions of this potentially
revolutionary gaming handheld so we got
a bunch of different languages telling you places that you can play with it I
think we'll toilet
they know their audience don't they over there at valve
okay so Packaging um we've got nice little like guide so
you press this button to bring up this menu press this button to bring up this
menu really impressed with the packaging so far I was going to talk about this a
little bit more detail later but we actually considered doing a carrying
case for the steam deck as like an LTT Store item and then we found out that
valve was making their own and I kind of went well hey if uh if it's not any good
then maybe that's still something we can explore but unfortunately it seems to be
kind of kind of awesome so I got a nice
little elastic strap there if you want to strap it onto something we've got
this little pouch that you can kind of stash in there if you're into that sort
of thing carrying handle
seems oh it's in there isn't it well it's probably fine it's pretty armored
hold on we'll get to that in a second though first let's have a look at our
power adapter might have preferred to see just a type c female Jack on it so
that this cable can be replaced with a longer one if I really want but it's a reasonable length my one concern is that
the steam decks only charging port is at the top so if you have this plugged in
and the Outlet's not right next to you it could actually be a bit of a reach
issue to get up and around the device I didn't mention this but the astute among
you probably figured this out I'm planning to do size comparisons on short
circuit here with all the other gaming hand tubs that we have on hand
there it is ladies and gentlemen I
opened it upside down trust me I'm a professional
so that's fine um yeah that's fine but the outlet has
to be pretty much right next to you in fact you often if you can you see that
thing so you can see there's actually not a lot of slack on this it would have
gotten another six inches if it had been down here but
I'm sure valve knew what they were doing when they put the power in on the top if
I had to guess based on that I actually used the top charging port on the ineo
more often than the bottom charging port I'd say that's because of the weight of
the device and what I find is that after even like 10-15 minutes really I have to
set it down on something so I suspect
it's going to be quite a similar story for the steam deck and the last thing you want to be doing is setting it down
on your cable you know causing like a strain or like a breakage so steam deck
650 grams actually I think it's lighter than the ineal I thought it was just due
to the better ergonomics oh never mind well okay it feels
deceptively light because of the the really nice hand grips back here I'd say
that they're designed for someone whose hands are maybe a touch bigger than mine
but that doesn't prevent me from Comfortably reaching everything abxy
d-pad joysticks everything is easily
within reach the only thing is that if I'm playing a driving game and I want
finer control over the joysticks up here I need to shift my palm up just a little
bit okay let's uh let's do some more size comparisons real quick here so
we've got the 1X player mini 566 that's the lightest one of the this class of
device and then if you're looking at something like the GPD XD okay so that's
around 350 but that's Android based that's not a full fat computer and then
for the Big Kahuna the 1X player we're looking at around 782 grams so it's on
the heavier side of what's out there right now but because of the ergonomics
I'd say it punches down I don't know I
don't know what the best way wording that is this video is brought to you by dbrand you know those punksters that are
always putting phones in cakes or dumping buckets of chocolate loonies on
me well this time the prank is on Nintendo because they're announcing
project kill switch haha funny name I I
get it which is a case for the valve steam deck that aims to make it a little
bit more you know rugged and drop resistant oh I get that one too and also
presumably a little bit more ergonomic I haven't had a chance to actually get my
hands on it yet because it looks like it's still in very early stages right
now but I gotta say the design looks freaking fantastic goes to show you bad
people can design good products
what hey they started it
so you guys can check it out we're gonna have it linked in the video description
it's kind of like their grip phone cases so it looks like it has a really nice
kind of padded interior to protect your steam deck and then this outer layer
that looks like particularly if you have larger hands it's going to be super
comfortable so we're gonna have that linked down below and it will actually
be released someday unlike Half-Life 3. haha Half-Life 3 joke very very current
banana for scale yes thank you thank you very much jono lttstore.com you can get
your very own banana for scale also the sweet indoor hoodie now one of the
things I'm realizing with all these devices spread out in front of me is there's a lot more to portability than
just the weight and I've put a lot of hours on the original ineo and now the
2021 Pro since I did my first Hands-On and one of the things that is really
great about it is how flat it is how
easily packable but there are a couple of things that make the steam deck even
though it's main body segment here is
about the same thickness the actual overall profile of the device is like
double and that's because of the grips
as well as the fact that the joysticks are more of a full-size controller class
of joystick with super long travel compared to pretty much all of these
other devices like look at the profile of these joysticks next to each other
Hoffman can you see that so you can see there's like
double the travel so if you want finer control
this is going to be it but you know this I could conceivably put in
my pocket like when I'm walking around the mall and I did that the other day right my
son and I were going for haircuts and I knew I was gonna have to wait for him
for 20 minutes so I just grabbed the Neo
Chuck it in my pocket we're walking around the mall steam deck
um I mean yeah maybe but I wouldn't really
recommend it you're putting a lot of strain on that thumbstick fortunately
valve's approach to right to repair so far has been exemplary so I'm expecting
it to be very easy to get your hands on and replace these thumbsticks if you do
accidentally screw them up one of the other things that's really standing out
to me before even turning it on is the anti-glare coating for the preview valve
set out the 512 gig version which has okay well it has some other extras it
has like a special keyboard theme or something like that but the big one is
this kind of etched glass anti-glare coating you guys can kind of see how the
reflection is compared to these other
devices which are mirror-like see that it's kind of hazy so it's got a
quad core zen2 CPU eight threads total 16 gigs of LP ddr5 memory so it's
running at 5500 Mega transfers per second that's going to help both with
CPU performance and more importantly the onboard GPU it's running our dna2
Graphics instead of Vega based Graphics which means that theoretically we are
looking at significantly better GPU
performance on this compared to everything else on this table
so on the top you got pretty much an Xbox controller like layout so you got
your d-pad left thumb stick you've got your start and select whatever the
modern names for that are on the Xbox controller two microphones I have very
high expectations for both the microphone and speaker on this thing
based on my experience with the valve index for a company that doesn't make
dedicated audio products valve seems to know a freaking lot about audio uh you
got your abxy second thumbstick we already saw what these buttons are
supposed to do so this one is your steam button which brings up your steam
Library steam store anything steam settings and then this one right here is
going to bring up your like your system overlay I mean I guess I don't need to
get into too much detail about that right now because that's sort of software volume buttons headphone jack
USBC so that's for charging or connecting to the dock which we don't
have unfortunately power button and then we've got shoulder buttons
oh those feel pretty good actually I'd say that's a nice respectable travel
distance on those triggers then you've got L3 and R3 when you press
in the analog sticks by the way these are capacitive so they're touch
sensitive on the top which is pretty cool yeah I know right then you've got
L4 R4 L5 R5 on the back now personally
I've never really daily driven a scuff type controller with uh with the back
paddle actually I do have an elite controller I've never really used them but what I will say is they are super
easy to access you got to kind of shift your grip on the device a little bit so
it's kind of you kind of clawed a little bit more but I'd say they're a really
good balance of pressing force and like tactile response actually all the
buttons feel pretty darn good I wouldn't mind if the abxy were a little bit
shorter travel I do have a preference for that but there's definitely better
feeling than the Neo but the Neo I think the problem is just that they have the
long travel and the small buttons I feel like you got to pick one oh I guess I
never really talked to size comparison with the 1X player so you can see the
profile is actually quite similar because the 1X player also has a
sculpted grip like the steam deck everyone's taken a very similar approach
to cooling it's almost like there's just a best way to do this you've got your
intake at the back exhaust out the top it's the only way to get the heat into
the unit without getting suffocated for sure and away from the user
here's the size comparison with the full-size 1X player that thing is such a
such a chungus surprisingly though it's
a touch narrower full-size 1X player with the lake almost nine inch display
oh now's probably a good time to talk display specs it's 1280 by 800 so that's
16 by 10 aspect ratio 7 inches it's very similar in terms of specs to the eye Neo
it's rated for a typical brightness of only 400 compared to 500 nits but if the
black levels are anything to go by I think once we actually get the game
loaded up here we go it's gonna look significantly better compared to the 1X
player it's not going to be as sharp so 1X has decided to go for a 1440p class
display I believe it's 2560 by 1600s on the full size 1X player and then this
one I believe is a 1920x1200 but the
reality of it is that the processors in these things they're not going to be able to drive that kind of resolution
anyway so personally I agree with Aya and valve's decisions here this feels
like probably about 20 FPS right now
so let's see if there's anything we can do to fine tune that a little bit oh
wait what the heck why is it running at non-native
resolution there we go wow
that's gotta be a solid 30 FPS now you
know it is amazing how good a modern game looks even at lower medium details
on a display this size like it makes a huge difference to be
running this class of Hardware compared to you know what Nintendo's put in the
switch which is basically like a six-year-old phone processor
let's fire up a game that I can run side by side and compare now to go much
deeper I want to spend more time with it and you're going to have to tune into the full LTT video but there are a
couple of little things I want to try real quick here first is the mouse this
pad is set up to control the mouse cursor and it kind of vibrates actually
here can you hear this oh yeah crazy right oh it's momentum based so
you can be like and kind of flick it over and it'll kind
of Rumble so kind of almost like it feels like uh like a like a friction
ball or something that you're rolling your finger over so you can move it or
you can throw it and then this one you can use as a touch pad to oh I guess you
could just use it as a d-pad if you want to that seems to be how it's configured
right now one of the great things about the steam controller was how highly
configurable it was you could use it to play just about anything from FPS to
third person to racing to even like RTS
games uh and I believe valve intends to
continue that Legacy here because they certainly aren't continuing that Legacy
in the form of steam controllers
just take a moment to appreciate that Forza Horizon 5 a Microsoft game is
launching on Linux like we're not talking software much
today like I said but huh
valve rates the 50 watt hour battery for anywhere from two to eight hours
depending on what you're doing so it sounds like that's going to end up quite
similar to the 47 watt hour battery in the eye Neo which gets just under two
hours under the heaviest loads and much more than that if you turn down the
performance profile of the soc or whatever else what else is there to
really say it's got Wi-Fi Bluetooth all the connectivity that you'd expect
and we are now loaded into Forza Horizon
5. on a Linux based machine if I had to
guess I'd say this is somewhere in the neighborhood of
it's actually really hard to tell that's interesting see my car looks great
that looks like 60 FPS locked
but then there's kind of this judder or stutter or something when I look at
objects in the distance can you see that that's like
it's very subtle here let me show you this one for comparison man it's hard to
even show this one to you guys because the screen's so shiny by comparison
see how the towers and stuff are smoother
more motion you say nope they are both set to exactly the
same settings you're looking for distant objects whether they look smooth or whether they
look juttery oh yeah okay so you know what I'm you
can see what I'm talking about on camera it's not final and we have a lot more
investigation to do over the next six days actually let's talk acoustics
to my ear which obviously is not very scientific
it sounds very similar to the Aya Neo in its 15 watt profile and that would be at
exe fan mode whatever that means so that's kind of what I try to aim for for
an enjoyable gaming experience otherwise it gets this thing gets loud in Wild fan
mode and that's really impressive considering that that's an at 15 watts
and this is a 25 watt chip running in auto mode right now
thank you
wow the sound stage on this thing
it sounds so good okay that is impressive and you guys
aren't even getting the directionality like an absolute toy by comparison
this makes noise this has a sound system
and I think that pretty much wraps up the ShortCircuit First Impressions guys
head over to LTT for our full first impressions thermals benchmarks all that
kind of good stuff and make sure you get subscribed