Valve Steam Deck Reviews Roundup [LIST]

Valve’s $499 CAD portable PC gaming device, the Steam Deck, finally launched on Friday. So far, the consensus about the handheld device is that it is awesome and will blaze the trail for a new generation of gaming, but the state it is currently shipping in isn’t, strictly speaking, complete.

“The Steam Deck is incomplete,” says tech YouTuber Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips. Fortunately, Valve is rolling out constant updates for the device, shipping fixes and improvements pretty much every other day.

As soon as embargoes lifted, several media outlets across the internet published their reviews of Valve’s handheld gaming console, so here’s a quick roundup:

• Ars Technica — “Steam Deck: The comprehensive Ars Technica review”
• Bloomberg — “Valve’s Steam Deck Is a Game System Built for Frenzied Parents”
• CNet — “Steam Deck Surprised Me, in Ways Both Good and Bad”
• Digital Foundry — “Console Quality Handheld Gaming – Believe It!”
• Engadget — “Valve Steam Deck review: Just portable enough”
• Forbes — “Steam Deck Review: An Unrivaled Portable Gaming Powerhouse”
• Game Developer — “Steam Deck review: A strong start to an exciting new hardware category for game devs”
• Gizmodo — “Valve’s Steam Deck Is a Glorious but Unfinished Dream Console”
• iFixit — “Impressively Repairable” (A solid 7/10 for repairability)
• IGN — “Steam Deck Review in Progress”
• Linus Tech Tips — “The Steam Deck is Incomplete”
• PCMag — “Steam Deck Hands On: Valve Successfully Frees PC Gaming From the Desktop”
• PC Gamer — “The Steam Deck is already the emulation system of my dreams”
• Polygon — “The Steam Deck is my new favourite console”
• TechRadar — “A killer handheld”
• Tom’s Hardware — “Steam Deck Review: Valve’s Handheld Has Big PC Energy”
• Wired — “This new handheld console has a lot of flaws out of the gate, but that could change over time”

You still have a chance to pre-order the Steam Deck with a $5.70 CAD reservation fee, but new orders aren’t expected to be confirmed until “after Q2 2022.”