Valve Steam Deck Hardware Review & Analysis: Thermals, Noise, Power, & Gaming Benchmarks

Our Valve Steam Deck hardware review & benchmarks test for battery life, power consumption, gaming performance, thermals, noise, and more in this in-depth video.
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Our Steam Deck tear-down and other follow-up content will be up this week! Check back for that!

We also went through the specs of the Steam Deck here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkolKam3kjU

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This Steam Deck review (or initial review, anyway -- we're still waiting on ability to review SteamOS) looks at the production-ready Arch Linux-based handheld gaming PCs for the first time. The video includes methodology notes for our in-depth testing approach and demonstrates the basics of the more advanced principles we apply behind-the-scenes in testing. The benchmark sections follow those, with a heavy focus on Steam Deck battery life, thermal testing of the memory, ICs, APU (GPU/CPU), and more, and acoustic testing alongside RPM ramp and hysteresis.
We're looking forward to a review of the UI and OS for SteamOS in the future. We didn't test Windows yet because the drivers were incomplete, and so the data would not accurately depict a version with GPU drivers.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - Steam Deck Overview & Testing Notes
03:01 - Schlieren Imaging Setup Explained
04:35 - Steam Deck Schlieren Imaging Analysis
05:48 - Thermals (Gaming Load)
09:53 - Thermal Design, Chassis, & Analysis
14:06 - Fan RPM & Hysteresis
15:25 - Noise Testing Methodology
17:44 - Steam Deck Noise Level Tests
18:58 - Battery Benchmarking Methodology
20:38 - Steam Deck Battery Life Tests
22:03 - Charge Time & Charging Behavior on Steam Deck
23:54 - Power Consumption on Valve Steam Deck
24:58 - Game Benchmarking Methodology
26:55 - Control Benchmarks (Dx11) on Valve Steam Deck
27:39 - Ghostrunner Steam Deck Game Benchmarks
28:34 - Forza Horizon 5 on Steam Deck
29:03 - Devil May Cry 5 on Steam Deck
30:03 - Latency Testing on the Steam Deck
31:14 - Latency in Control (Steam Deck)
32:13 - Latency in Dead Cells
33:11 - Conclusion: Steam Deck Review

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Host, Test Lead, Writing: Steve Burke
Testing, Writing: Patrick Lathan
Video, Schlieren Setup: Andrew Coleman
Video Production: Keegan Gallick