Honestly coolest piece of tech since the iphone.

Valve originally expected to lose money on every Steam Deck sold, but thanks to high volume of units sold and other factors this ended up not being the case. Even with tariffs affecting that bottom line, I think the Decks still ended up being more profitable than they ever expected and they can afford to do sales like this, even if they potentially result in hardware being sold at a loss.

Speaking of which, @Railcar8095@lemm.ee you told me 6 months ago to ping you if tariffs come into effect and the price of the deck doesn't increase.

Over OLED? Probably not, but LCD is perfectly fine.

Unless you really care about OLED and slightly better battery, then a much cheaper LCD is a good choice.

I've owned the first gen Steam Deck since the day it came out. (LCD)

No problems, greatly enjoy it.

I wouldn't say I recommend it over the OLED, but they both work great. My OG LCD still holding up strong, but the OLED is definitely an improvement in both screen quality and battery.

Many people don't need an oled. Like casual players or people with it hooked to the tv most of the time.

In a specific use case: absolutely. If you want to dock it a large percentage of the time and use it as a "PC games console," plugged into power and hooked up to your TV / projector / monitor / whatever:

1. You're not going to care about the built in screen as much
2. You're not going to care about the lesser battery as much
3. The huge savings over an SD OLED will help you get over the 1 or 2 FPS you'll lose in most games.

If you're that person, you should definitely go for it. And even if you find yourself playing handheld more than you thought you would, it's still not a big deal.

For the price? Yeah absolutely. I got mine really discounted and it holds up, my partner has an oled which looks great and I like the larger screen, but not sure if $300 more is worth it for everyone. You can get a solid case & screen protector, battery bank and upgrade the ssd for nearly that.

The two main advantages of the OLED deck are a drastically better screen, and much better battery life in demanding titles.

Games that max out the Deck's power draw (Cyberpunk, Bladur's Gate, etc) will typically get about 1:30 of battery life on the LCD deck, and 2:30 on the OLED deck, which is a pretty huge increase. It's less of an issue for less demanding games, and you can always get a high output battery pack instead.

I had both and I find the OLED massively overhyped.

I have an LCD Steam Deck which I got used for around 300$ since I already have a Ps5 and the Deck was my first time trying pc gaming.

Because of how everyone was praising the OLED, I thought the screen would be bad, but it is awesome to my eyes.

The battery management is the annoying part of an handheld, but you also have it, maybe less, with the OLED.

If the prices were the same, I don’t see why someone wouldn’t get an OLED model, but it ain’t the case and I wasn’t be ready to pay more than 300$, so an used LCD was perfect.

In fact, you can play more Nintendo games on the Steam Deck than you can on the Switch 2. Just not the newest ones (yet).

Pirating Nintendo games is the morally right thing to do.

Any recommendations for a budget dock

I don't know if it's the type you're looking for but I'm quite happy with my Genki Covert Dock. It does the job quite well, and the portability is nice to have.

Ah... damm.

Not... from not Amazon, no.

But maybe you can find this somewhere else?

Behold... I call this thing... the DockStand.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0BRXZDWDV?psc=1

Somehow, a kickstand, and a sort of bare bones dock, at the same time, that just securely clips on to the exterior of the Deck, no screwdrivers or adhesive required.

Currently under $25.

It has worked flawlessly for me.

It is ....yeah, barebones, but quite functional.

Gives you an HDMI port, 2 usb A 3 ports, and an additional microsd slot, which only works when the power is run through the dockstand, and also ... does not have a spring release mechanism, it is literally just a slot, and the properly seated card just sticks out a little bit.

Janky? Yes.

But also, cheap, and functional.

Particularly if you are like me and spend a lot of Deck time basically just using it as a big phone to watch videos on... the kick stand is good for that lol.

Like, you can find just kickstands alone, with no dock like capabilities... for about the same price.

I ended up pairing this with i think a jsaux replacement power adapter that also came with a 90 degree joint adapter mabob for the usb c power source... I had been using the power adapter that came with the deck so much that i managed to start destroying the cable.

Also, at least with my... I guess average sized hands for a dude? ... I have never had a problem with the DockStand getting in the way of my hands and the controls while playing.

Same here with not wanting to further fund Amazon. All I can say is beware of eBay sellers, because I've ordered like four things from eBay and they still drop shipped from Amazon. Frustrating.