Valve made playing PC games on the couch feel as easy as flipping on a console, and it pulled that off with a handheld (a portable game machine you hold in your hands, like a Nintendo Switch). The Steam Deck went on sale on February 25, 2022. Four years later it's still the handheld everyone else copies. Not the fastest one. Not the cheapest. The one that just works.
That matters because the Deck created a whole product category from scratch. The Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, MSI Claw, and GPD Win 4 all exist because Valve proved people wanted this. So what did Valve get right, and where is it still weak? Let's pick it apart.
The hardware bet
The first Deck shipped with a custom AMD chip (CPU and graphics on one piece of silicon), 16GB of memory, a 7-inch 1280x800 screen, two trackpads, four back buttons, and a 40Wh battery good for two to eight hours depending on the game. Most handhelds before it used weak phone-style chips. Valve went the other way and crammed in near-desktop graphics power.
The result was thicker, heavier, and thirstier on battery than rivals. But it ran Elden Ring at 40 frames per second, which the competition simply couldn't. The trackpads were the gamble nobody liked on paper; honestly, most people figured they'd go unused. Wrong. They turned out to be the killer feature for strategy and point-and-click games. Crusader Kings 3 on a handheld is genuinely playable, and that's down to the trackpads.
The Linux bet that paid off
The bigger gamble was the software. The Deck runs SteamOS, which is Linux underneath. Out of the box it looks like a simple game launcher, but click into desktop mode and you get a real PC with a browser and a terminal. The clever part is how it runs games built for Windows on a system that isn't Windows.
That trick is called Proton (Valve's tool that lets Windows games run on the Deck's Linux system). It quietly translates what a Windows game asks for into something Linux understands, on the fly, with no fiddling per game. That's why a Windows game from 2018 can boot on a Linux handheld in 2026 and you'd never know.
ProtonDB, a community list of what works, shows the big majority of recent blockbusters run fine. The holdouts are mostly competitive shooters like Valorant and Fortnite, because their anti-cheat software refuses to load on Linux.
ProtonDB compatibility reports
The quiet win for Linux gaming
Here's the underrated part. The Deck didn't just sell as a gadget; it dragged Linux gaming forward for everybody. All the work Valve poured into Proton and the graphics drivers ships to regular Linux desktop users too, not only Deck owners. Steam's own hardware survey shows Linux hit a new high above 5% of users, a big jump from where it sat before the Deck arrived.
Some of that is Decks counting in the numbers. But a real slice is desktop folks who finally switched off Windows because their game library actually runs now. The hardware moved a few million units. The software it funded changed which operating systems count as serious for gaming. That's the legacy.
The OLED bump and the rivals
Valve released the Steam Deck OLED on November 16, 2023, with a brighter screen, better battery life, and faster Wi-Fi. Same chip, same memory, same general speed. A polish job, not a sequel. It's the model Valve pushes today, with a cheaper LCD version sitting below it.
The rivals have caught up on raw specs. The ROG Ally, Legion Go, and GPD Win 4 all match or beat the Deck on paper. What they don't ship is Valve's software. Windows handhelds work, sort of, but you fight notifications, power settings, and sleep that doesn't actually sleep. The Deck just turns on and plays. That gap in ease of use is the whole reason it still leads.
Where it still falls short
This isn't all praise. The hardware is showing its age. The original chip is four years old now, and demanding 2025 and 2026 games push it harder than it can comfortably handle. Battery life on the heavy stuff is still rough, often under two hours. Sleep and resume work great; long sessions away from a plug do not.
And there's no Steam Deck 2 yet. Gabe Newell, Valve's boss, has said the next one needs a real leap in performance before they'll bother, which means 2026 or later at best. Frankly, anyone hoping for a quick sequel is going to wait a while.
SteamOS breaks free of the Deck
The most interesting move lately is SteamOS leaving Valve's own hardware. With the SteamOS 3.7 update in May 2025, Valve opened the system up to other handhelds and even generic AMD PCs. The Lenovo Legion Go S became the first non-Valve device to ship with SteamOS preinstalled. If that catches on, expect more handhelds to drop Windows for Valve's setup.
That's the bet to watch. Now Valve wants its software, not just its hardware, to define what a handheld feels like. If you want PC games away from a desk without buying a gaming laptop, the Deck still does it better than anything else. Four years in, that's no small thing.
