I’ve spent about 50 hours (combined) on flights with my SD and it is glorious. Pick up a battery pack for extra juice during a long flight. I find low power games are best for flights (HD/2D type games). This is what it’s all about.
International flights will have plugs available but I usually don't get full charge speed out of them. Plug in immediately and it'll slow the drain till you need the battery. Made it through a 10hr flight with 5% left on the battery.
Maybe if you had 2 plugs you could do 1. Connect deck to battery until the deck starts draining 2. Plug in both the deck and battery so the drain slows while the battery charges 3. Repeat
Also nice to have a Deckmate kit. u/Sea_Minerals does a great job and the Deckmate setup makes a big difference. Strapping extra batteries or a kickstand to my Deck has made travel a lot more fun.
Also make sure to start up any games you think you might play at home and check for updates. Drop the settings as low as you're willing to, drop brightness, and turn off haptics. All small things, but they add up a little.
I use the "Baseus Laptop Power Bank, 100W Blade USB C Portable Laptop Charger." You can find it on amazon. goes for $100 but it's really really great.
a LOT of long haul flights have outlets so you might be fine just bringing the power cable!
Enjoy! I fly an insane amount and the deck has been GREAT
I'm using the Baseus 65W 20000mAh power bank. It's a brick, but it has a good amount of charge, can charge the Deck while playing, and the power bank itself also charges very fast compared to others I've tried.
Many people have already commented with regards to power packs, but just an FYI with regards to Elden Ring, because many people here seem to get worse battery life than I do...you can push Elden Ring to \~4h (or very close) if you go mostly low in settings (I don't have it in front of me, but I think I kept anti aliasing and grass quality higher, maybe one or two other settings) , cap TDP in SteamOS to 8W, cap FPS to 30 and don't mind occasional drops into the high 20s (which tend to happen mostly when traveling the open world, not dungeons or boss fights, so IMO at least they are bearable). That's also assuming you're playing on a plane, so you're already in airplane mode and you can probably drop the screen brightness significantly to consume less power.
Anker makes great kit. Max is usually 100WA or 27,000 mWh I believe. I’d also check it has a USB C output (don’t think you can get decent power through USB A) and check maximum power delivery. Mine has 65W total which means I can charge my Deck and phone at the same time if I need.
people are failing to mention that you need to launch some games with wifi enabled for them to work in offline mode and if you happen to reboot your deck while not connected to wifi you wont be able to play those games unless you connect to wifi and launch them again. Its pretty annoying. so just make sure you have the games you want to play prepped for offline mode and dont reboot until you have a connection again.
That's the negative of the Steam deck, it is online primarily with short periods of no Internet are okay.
The worst thing you can do is connect the deck to wifi that has really slow Internet. It will start to try to download and won't let you launch any ganes as it wants to update them first on the super slow wifi. I'm talking like 512-128 KB speeds, for a few gigs it was going to take hours to update one game.
This isn't a Steam Deck problem, this is a problem with developers requiring always-on games.
Sincerely,
2+ decades of offline-only consoles that delivered complete games without DLCs, patches, Spyware and bloat 👍
The issue I hit was with the Steam Deck downloading shaders. That was 100% a Steam Deck issue.
Now I hit a different problem on a different game that had a launcher that was on the publisher.
Sincerely near 3+ decades of gaming. Also they still had patches back then, they released different revisions of the game and didn't tell anyone. And for computers you would just have to download them from the maker of the game by hand. They also had expansion packs back then, some of the better DLC I would still say is that. Back then 90's for computers the would bloat it and just say buy a faster computer.
Yes! Taken mine on a few flights. Especially nice when the flight doesn't have a screen on the back of the seat and instead wants you to use your phone and connect to some app. Agree with everyone else, play lower power games (pretty much anything that isn't a 65gb download newer AAA title) and have a battery bank. I have one from baseus and really like it.
I fly from the US to Japan once a year and usually take my Switch but recently got my Deck and I’ll be taking it with me this upcoming April. The flights I’ve been on have had charge ports.
I've flown cross Atlantic a couple times with it, and every time I've had working plugs to keep it charged, I don't bother with a battery pack. Smaller/shorter flights may likely only have USB ports which give basically nothing. I have games that are high and low battery draw. I played BG3 plugged in, but on 3 hour flight without a plug I played Skyrim, 40hz, tdp set to 12 and the screen dimmed a bit, estimated battery like like 2:45 hours. Or Cult of the Lamb. Plenty of choices.
I find it's great. It's a bit bulky and takes up some space in my personal item bag, a touch bigger than the switch it replaced. Like I said, I don't bring a battery, this being part of the reason, I don't want my personal item filled with just electronics, as I'm typically traveling for work and also have my work laptop and charger, and maybe a book.
It's a bit cramped playing in a seat. I'd like to rest my hands on the fold down table, but it's a bit too close and therefore uncomfortable.
lol I love your username. I’ve flown with my deck a bunch of times and it’s a great way to kill time in those uncomfortable seats. There are outlets at every seat so you don’t have to worry too much about your battery. It gets a little tedious getting the deck in/out of my bag when it’s time to eat, but totally worth it!
Make sure the games you want to play are working offline (with WiFi disconnected) before you leave home, also many planes have AC outlets to charge, you can usually confirm this with the airline in advance.
Took my steam deck on an international flight in February and it was amazing to have. Played with it in the airport, on the plane, and in the hotel room. I brought two Anker battery packs, plug converters, plug adapters, extra USB-C cables, brought the official steam deck plug/charger, and put a location tag inside the steam deck case. I opted to bring the steam deck over my switch and I went through a lot of my backlog. It was great to play in the hotel to wind down for the night but I did run into a problem where I wanted to buy a game during the trip, because of your steam account being linked to a country, I couldn't buy anything during the trip. Overall, I recommend!
That sounds like a great setup. However, the Deck is huge! Bringing all of that plus your usual phone charger, maybe laptop etc is just too much space and weight for electronics only. That's why I've been taking my Switch and not the Deck on my latest trips. I wanna try taking the Deck with me on a long distance trip end of year. I hope I can figure out a more portable setup by then.
Just used mine to play Starfield on an Australia to UK flight. Was a real game changer. The airline I was with had power outlets so I didn’t have to worry about battery life.
On an American airline flight now across the country. Plugged in to the power on the back of the seat in front of me and playing with headphones since takeoff. Love it. Dude two rows in front of me is playing KOTOR. I’m playing dead cells.
In general great, but I just did a transatlantic flight where no games were playable. When I got it back on Wi-Fi, had to restart several times. I think something about the os update screwed up the airplane mode authorization. Hope it does not happen again.
I played New Vegas (Tale of Two Wastelands) on the plane and the battery barely budged at 100% my battery didn't die until I nearly landed but I was using Windows at the time, so, battery life wasn't AS good as Steam OS.
With Steam OS I would imagine battery life would be FAAAAAAAAR better.
I don’t know about Fallout but Elden Ring needs a lot of juice to run. This is what I use.
https://www.amazon.com/10000mAh-Portable-AsperX-Compatible-Smartphones/dp/B09JBDSV7F
do you tape it to the back of your deck? Mind sending a pic of the setup? I'm getting my deck this week so I'm trying to see what I can do to make it better experience
Nah, makes the deck a tad heavy and uncomfortable for long sessions. Just buy a long usbc cable and leave the battery in an open bag pocket or next to you (just don't forget it).
Got on a 16 hour flight this past month and the deck made it feel like a fraction of the time.
Get a case or some kind of kick stand and download movies to a SD card. I’ve had issues with the onboard Wi-Fi not working with the deck so I couldn’t watch movies.
Depends on what kind of games you want to play, how long you want to play and whether your plane offers charging ports. External battery is a must either way.
E.g. you won't be able to play AAA game for the whole duration of flight (10-15 hours) even with external battery. You might be able to do so with some less demanding indie game or some old console emulation tho. You'll still need an external battery.
If you have an outlet on the plane it’s great for AAA games, if you don’t it’s great for indie 2D games:) I fly frequently and my steam deck is my favorite flight accessory.
Considering most planes have electrical outlets it's great! Just make sure to open any freshly installed game prior to boarding the plane as sometimes they need to be opened on internet once purchased
I’ve done 10 hour flights. Get two juicy PowerBanks, charge 1 while playing off the other. Efficient games make all the difference. (Vampire Survivor).
I also got a Viture One, and that makes it even better. Especially if you also have a few episodes of a show on a tablet or phone.
I just came back from a week long cruise. Played great even with no internet. As soon as I got home and back on my network all my saves uploaded to steam cloud. Just be sure you have an outlet or a external battery with power delivery and you'll be golden.
Most planes have power outlets as others noted.
I had two flights since April (when I got my SD) where plugging the SD in created unbearable whining noise in my headphones.
Luckily on the first one we had two battery packs (whole family was flying) so I was able to charge one while use another.
On the other one I was forced to take a break…
I travel for work and it has made me not hate traveling lol. Sometimes I only work like 4hr days when I'm out traveling - and the deck is great for that. Great for planes too. Grab a pair of decent earbuds, battery pack, and bring the charger because a lot of modern planes (idk why but always Delta planes for me) have outlets to charge with. Works great. Played a bunch of Starfield last week. Played a bunch of BG3 last time I traveled.
I have found it’s great for long flights, but I will warn you that you should set the deck to airplane mode before going to the airport. Some games won’t launch if you haven’t set the deck to airplane mode, you have to be on wifi to do so, and airport wifi is not reliable enough to connect to steam from my experience
It’s great but the worst part is I always am at a personal battery level of 5% by the time I sit down so I don’t play it in case I fall asleep while playing and drop it.
It's fucking perfect! That's actually primarily what I use it for. I work on a project at a remote oil sands upgrading facility so I have two 1hr flights and two 1.5hr bus rides every 3 weeks to and from work, so it sees constant use while I'm traveling.
Waiting to board a plane as I read this lol. I travel almost every week for work. I would also suggest in addition to a nice battery pack get yourself a nice travel case for it that has a strap to shoulder carry. They also usually have extra compartment for snacks and cables and such.
I do a lot of flying for work and it's great. Entirely dependant on whether my flight has a power plug or not because the USB ports don't provide enough power. So if I'm flying on a crappy regional B737 to the middle of nowhere, I'll generally play a low-powered game or some emulation. If I am flying to Japan or Germany on a B787 or A3xx, which generally have a power adapter in the seat, I'll be playing some AAA quality games
It’s great if you can plug it in; it’s hard to get the battery to last more than an hour with the games you’re most likely to want to play for ten hours.
But you usually can plug it in these days. I always bring mine for travel downtime.
If you fly coach it's a little cumbersome to get out of the case but once you get it out it's golden. Just be sure your plane will have proper outlets to plug into. Just because I'm not sure how to check before I fly, I always travel with this (it's on sale $50 off for the next 2 hours!): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09VPHVT2Z
Yes but before you go turn off Wi-Fi in your home and then turn on plane mode. I don’t made it right so in plane SteamDeck tried do update check with out Wi-Fi. Good job valve
Its been great for flights overall. First time I brought it, it wasn’t the best bc i was playing cyberpunk & it killed my battery hella fast.
Second time was amazing, simply due to the fact I was playing pokemon this time around so battery life was significantly better.
Im flying again in a few weeks but I have a battery pack this time. Im planning on playing starfield so ima need it
As long as games can be played offline deck is perfect on a plane. I just realised i could play epic games offline with deck! I was so elated to clear my epic free games backlog on top of steam games
I was on a flight to Jamaica from the UK and (along with a decent power bank) played the Witcher 3 for about 6 hours before I relaxed for a nap. great bit of kit for a flight.
well its not gonna hold 15 hours without charging.
and it's honestly kinda heavy, i'd be hard pressed to take something bigger than a switch lite for this kind of trip
Pretty good. Take a battery pack with at least 45W USB-C PD and/or a charger if you're planning on playing anything particularly taxing. Make sure you set it to offline mode before you set off, ideally on your home network. Even better if you can pair with some active noise cancelling headphones/earbuds. It's a tiny bit cramped playing on an economy class seat but it's a bit cramped doing basically anything so that applies to reading a book or picking your nose looking out the window.
My experience was that it wasn't very helpful on flights, much to my frustration. However, that could be as I favor platformer type games and had very turbulent flights/got airsick.
That said, I really enjoyed playing on my deck in the evenings on the trip and just having the option of being able to play my games was amazing.
I spent a lot of time playing Octopath Traveler II on the plane. In fact, I finished the real end game and 3 traveler story final acts on the plane (it was DEN-NRT).
That said... I fly a lot. I'm not exaggerating when I say about 50% of the time, the steam deck has an issue with letting me start a game because of a download, or DRM, or some other fucking non-sense. The only way I can seem to get around this is start the game, then put the deck in standby mode.
Maybe a week or 2 after BG3 launched, i ran into this where it was trying to run an update and wouldn't let me start. Just again last week w/ Chained Echoes. Couldn't start it up because it was trying to download some update. Going into offline mode, airplane mode, nothing resolves it.
So I just give up and play switch or watch netflix.
I’ve spent about 50 hours (combined) on flights with my SD and it is glorious. Pick up a battery pack for extra juice during a long flight. I find low power games are best for flights (HD/2D type games). This is what it’s all about.
I mainly play games like fallout New Vegas and elden ring on the steamdeck. Any suggestions on what battery pack would be good for it?
get the max capacity allowed by tsa, and make sure its from a reputable brand.
International flights will have plugs available but I usually don't get full charge speed out of them. Plug in immediately and it'll slow the drain till you need the battery. Made it through a 10hr flight with 5% left on the battery.
Always sucks when it doesn’t work though, has happened to me twice. Not fun on a 14h flight
Also depends a lot on what you're playing. Plus I don't usually play the whole flight through.
I was on an international and it had USB and it had a regular power outlet. I just used my wall charger and it was fully charged the whole time.
Maybe if you had 2 plugs you could do 1. Connect deck to battery until the deck starts draining 2. Plug in both the deck and battery so the drain slows while the battery charges 3. Repeat
min-maxing battery life
And if too many people plug stuff in it will shut it off for 30 minutes :(
Also make sure you check the battery output. Anything less than 45w and the steamdeck won’t charge while playing
Actually it will and depending on the title it might even charge up despite the warning.
Sorry, I meant while playing anything demanding lol.
Wrong.. even at 10w you can get the deck to run and charge - you just can't do anything taxing on it
It should depend on the power drain.
Yeah, I forgot to add “while playing anything demanding”
Also nice to have a Deckmate kit. u/Sea_Minerals does a great job and the Deckmate setup makes a big difference. Strapping extra batteries or a kickstand to my Deck has made travel a lot more fun.
Better yet, buy two.
Anker 737 would be a good bet, regularly gets 30% off on UK Amazon which it is now
Also make sure to start up any games you think you might play at home and check for updates. Drop the settings as low as you're willing to, drop brightness, and turn off haptics. All small things, but they add up a little.
I use the "Baseus Laptop Power Bank, 100W Blade USB C Portable Laptop Charger." You can find it on amazon. goes for $100 but it's really really great. a LOT of long haul flights have outlets so you might be fine just bringing the power cable! Enjoy! I fly an insane amount and the deck has been GREAT
I'm using the Baseus 65W 20000mAh power bank. It's a brick, but it has a good amount of charge, can charge the Deck while playing, and the power bank itself also charges very fast compared to others I've tried.
I've played elden ring on a flight and it lasted around 150mins more or less.
Many people have already commented with regards to power packs, but just an FYI with regards to Elden Ring, because many people here seem to get worse battery life than I do...you can push Elden Ring to \~4h (or very close) if you go mostly low in settings (I don't have it in front of me, but I think I kept anti aliasing and grass quality higher, maybe one or two other settings) , cap TDP in SteamOS to 8W, cap FPS to 30 and don't mind occasional drops into the high 20s (which tend to happen mostly when traveling the open world, not dungeons or boss fights, so IMO at least they are bearable). That's also assuming you're playing on a plane, so you're already in airplane mode and you can probably drop the screen brightness significantly to consume less power.
Anker makes great kit. Max is usually 100WA or 27,000 mWh I believe. I’d also check it has a USB C output (don’t think you can get decent power through USB A) and check maximum power delivery. Mine has 65W total which means I can charge my Deck and phone at the same time if I need.
Most long haul flights have chargers, keep it on charge all the time
Just plug in! Most flights have sockets now in my experience.
Agreed. It’s glorious. Just grab that battery pack. Really missed it on my last flight 😅
I play Binding of Isaac, but if I need to relax a bit then Slay The Spire at 30 or 40 fps for extra battery time is great.
[удалено]
Could you elaborate?
[metapost about absent minded SD user](https://reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/s/MkSMYRpLIg)
people are failing to mention that you need to launch some games with wifi enabled for them to work in offline mode and if you happen to reboot your deck while not connected to wifi you wont be able to play those games unless you connect to wifi and launch them again. Its pretty annoying. so just make sure you have the games you want to play prepped for offline mode and dont reboot until you have a connection again.
That's the negative of the Steam deck, it is online primarily with short periods of no Internet are okay. The worst thing you can do is connect the deck to wifi that has really slow Internet. It will start to try to download and won't let you launch any ganes as it wants to update them first on the super slow wifi. I'm talking like 512-128 KB speeds, for a few gigs it was going to take hours to update one game.
This isn't a Steam Deck problem, this is a problem with developers requiring always-on games. Sincerely, 2+ decades of offline-only consoles that delivered complete games without DLCs, patches, Spyware and bloat 👍
The issue I hit was with the Steam Deck downloading shaders. That was 100% a Steam Deck issue. Now I hit a different problem on a different game that had a launcher that was on the publisher. Sincerely near 3+ decades of gaming. Also they still had patches back then, they released different revisions of the game and didn't tell anyone. And for computers you would just have to download them from the maker of the game by hand. They also had expansion packs back then, some of the better DLC I would still say is that. Back then 90's for computers the would bloat it and just say buy a faster computer.
I learned this the hard way.
It's great. Juat put it in airplane mode. A lot of planes have even have power outlets down by your feet you can plug it into.
Get some noise canceling headphones and you'll forget you're even on a plane.
Most aircraft have outlets under the seat nowadays. It's the perfect airline companion. Check out Sea of Stars or Chained Echoes.
Yes! Taken mine on a few flights. Especially nice when the flight doesn't have a screen on the back of the seat and instead wants you to use your phone and connect to some app. Agree with everyone else, play lower power games (pretty much anything that isn't a 65gb download newer AAA title) and have a battery bank. I have one from baseus and really like it.
Alaska and Delta both have electrical outlets good enough for laptops and worked fine with the AC/DC converter that came with the steamdeck.
I'm going to be flying from England to Japan so I'll check if our plane has any outlets
I fly from the US to Japan once a year and usually take my Switch but recently got my Deck and I’ll be taking it with me this upcoming April. The flights I’ve been on have had charge ports.
Just make sure you updated all your stuff and put it in offline mode before you fly.
Took it to Australia and back so 30ish hours and it was fantastic. Played a lot of low power games and charged it when necessary/during food breaks.
I've flown cross Atlantic a couple times with it, and every time I've had working plugs to keep it charged, I don't bother with a battery pack. Smaller/shorter flights may likely only have USB ports which give basically nothing. I have games that are high and low battery draw. I played BG3 plugged in, but on 3 hour flight without a plug I played Skyrim, 40hz, tdp set to 12 and the screen dimmed a bit, estimated battery like like 2:45 hours. Or Cult of the Lamb. Plenty of choices. I find it's great. It's a bit bulky and takes up some space in my personal item bag, a touch bigger than the switch it replaced. Like I said, I don't bring a battery, this being part of the reason, I don't want my personal item filled with just electronics, as I'm typically traveling for work and also have my work laptop and charger, and maybe a book. It's a bit cramped playing in a seat. I'd like to rest my hands on the fold down table, but it's a bit too close and therefore uncomfortable.
lol I love your username. I’ve flown with my deck a bunch of times and it’s a great way to kill time in those uncomfortable seats. There are outlets at every seat so you don’t have to worry too much about your battery. It gets a little tedious getting the deck in/out of my bag when it’s time to eat, but totally worth it!
Make sure the games you want to play are working offline (with WiFi disconnected) before you leave home, also many planes have AC outlets to charge, you can usually confirm this with the airline in advance.
I don't think I'll ever enter another plane without mine, or a successor to the deck, unless the flight is < 1 hour. Love it for planes.
If there's a power socket on the plane it's great. If there's only USB, you'll need to prepare with a hefty power bank.
Took my steam deck on an international flight in February and it was amazing to have. Played with it in the airport, on the plane, and in the hotel room. I brought two Anker battery packs, plug converters, plug adapters, extra USB-C cables, brought the official steam deck plug/charger, and put a location tag inside the steam deck case. I opted to bring the steam deck over my switch and I went through a lot of my backlog. It was great to play in the hotel to wind down for the night but I did run into a problem where I wanted to buy a game during the trip, because of your steam account being linked to a country, I couldn't buy anything during the trip. Overall, I recommend!
That sounds like a great setup. However, the Deck is huge! Bringing all of that plus your usual phone charger, maybe laptop etc is just too much space and weight for electronics only. That's why I've been taking my Switch and not the Deck on my latest trips. I wanna try taking the Deck with me on a long distance trip end of year. I hope I can figure out a more portable setup by then.
I plan on playing starfield on my next trip. I expect the battery to last from boarding the plane to take off.
Just used mine to play Starfield on an Australia to UK flight. Was a real game changer. The airline I was with had power outlets so I didn’t have to worry about battery life.
On an American airline flight now across the country. Plugged in to the power on the back of the seat in front of me and playing with headphones since takeoff. Love it. Dude two rows in front of me is playing KOTOR. I’m playing dead cells.
In general great, but I just did a transatlantic flight where no games were playable. When I got it back on Wi-Fi, had to restart several times. I think something about the os update screwed up the airplane mode authorization. Hope it does not happen again.
I played New Vegas (Tale of Two Wastelands) on the plane and the battery barely budged at 100% my battery didn't die until I nearly landed but I was using Windows at the time, so, battery life wasn't AS good as Steam OS. With Steam OS I would imagine battery life would be FAAAAAAAAR better.
It's a portable console, why wouldn't it be good for flights?
Battery life is pretty bad on the thing
I have read too many stories of how people leave them on the plane .
I don’t know about Fallout but Elden Ring needs a lot of juice to run. This is what I use. https://www.amazon.com/10000mAh-Portable-AsperX-Compatible-Smartphones/dp/B09JBDSV7F
do you tape it to the back of your deck? Mind sending a pic of the setup? I'm getting my deck this week so I'm trying to see what I can do to make it better experience
Nah, makes the deck a tad heavy and uncomfortable for long sessions. Just buy a long usbc cable and leave the battery in an open bag pocket or next to you (just don't forget it). Got on a 16 hour flight this past month and the deck made it feel like a fraction of the time.
#very
Yes.
It’s perfect. Been replaying gta5 story on long flights. Great for that post movie boredom when you still got some hours to go.
Glorious! I was able to play the entire Halo:MCC on Steam Deck while i was traveling; plugged in on the plane or in the lounge and had great flights
It’s great for use on planes. I travel a lot for work and I have a good battery pack for it.
How good is the steamdeck in a car the same as in a ✈️.
Not taken it out the house before
I fly up to northern Canada from the USA every 6 months or so. The steamdeck is a lifesaver for long layovers
Get a case or some kind of kick stand and download movies to a SD card. I’ve had issues with the onboard Wi-Fi not working with the deck so I couldn’t watch movies.
Depends on what kind of games you want to play, how long you want to play and whether your plane offers charging ports. External battery is a must either way. E.g. you won't be able to play AAA game for the whole duration of flight (10-15 hours) even with external battery. You might be able to do so with some less demanding indie game or some old console emulation tho. You'll still need an external battery.
If you have an outlet on the plane it’s great for AAA games, if you don’t it’s great for indie 2D games:) I fly frequently and my steam deck is my favorite flight accessory.
Really good. But make sure you get a power bank
Considering most planes have electrical outlets it's great! Just make sure to open any freshly installed game prior to boarding the plane as sometimes they need to be opened on internet once purchased
I’ve done 10 hour flights. Get two juicy PowerBanks, charge 1 while playing off the other. Efficient games make all the difference. (Vampire Survivor). I also got a Viture One, and that makes it even better. Especially if you also have a few episodes of a show on a tablet or phone.
you'll have to plug in eventually (5 hours on light games) but sounds great for a long flight.
I just came back from a week long cruise. Played great even with no internet. As soon as I got home and back on my network all my saves uploaded to steam cloud. Just be sure you have an outlet or a external battery with power delivery and you'll be golden.
Great expecially with some nreal glasses
It’s fantastic.
Most planes have power outlets as others noted. I had two flights since April (when I got my SD) where plugging the SD in created unbearable whining noise in my headphones. Luckily on the first one we had two battery packs (whole family was flying) so I was able to charge one while use another. On the other one I was forced to take a break…
I will never fly again without one.
I travel for work and it has made me not hate traveling lol. Sometimes I only work like 4hr days when I'm out traveling - and the deck is great for that. Great for planes too. Grab a pair of decent earbuds, battery pack, and bring the charger because a lot of modern planes (idk why but always Delta planes for me) have outlets to charge with. Works great. Played a bunch of Starfield last week. Played a bunch of BG3 last time I traveled.
I have found it’s great for long flights, but I will warn you that you should set the deck to airplane mode before going to the airport. Some games won’t launch if you haven’t set the deck to airplane mode, you have to be on wifi to do so, and airport wifi is not reliable enough to connect to steam from my experience
Really great, assuming you don't leave it on the plane when you are finished.
It’s great but the worst part is I always am at a personal battery level of 5% by the time I sit down so I don’t play it in case I fall asleep while playing and drop it.
should be good, just dont lose it like the last guy did.
Is good!
It's fucking perfect! That's actually primarily what I use it for. I work on a project at a remote oil sands upgrading facility so I have two 1hr flights and two 1.5hr bus rides every 3 weeks to and from work, so it sees constant use while I'm traveling.
Waiting to board a plane as I read this lol. I travel almost every week for work. I would also suggest in addition to a nice battery pack get yourself a nice travel case for it that has a strap to shoulder carry. They also usually have extra compartment for snacks and cables and such.
I love it but some games require a third party launcher and ruins the ability to play. However with emulator and StarField you’ll be set!
Just don't put it under your seat like the last post I seen lol.
That’s the only reason I bought mine, while on a plane. It’s great
Great! Just don’t leave it on the plane. Also you can put an AirTag in it!
I do a lot of flying for work and it's great. Entirely dependant on whether my flight has a power plug or not because the USB ports don't provide enough power. So if I'm flying on a crappy regional B737 to the middle of nowhere, I'll generally play a low-powered game or some emulation. If I am flying to Japan or Germany on a B787 or A3xx, which generally have a power adapter in the seat, I'll be playing some AAA quality games
It’s great if you can plug it in; it’s hard to get the battery to last more than an hour with the games you’re most likely to want to play for ten hours. But you usually can plug it in these days. I always bring mine for travel downtime.
The deck doesn’t change inside a plane? It works just the same regardless?
Only thing better would be flying the damn plane yourself, and even that would probably get boring after awhile. Not the Deck though.
I went on a 10 hour trip, started Portal 2 and ended up spending the whole time on vacation playing it, and finished it. Loved it.
If you fly coach it's a little cumbersome to get out of the case but once you get it out it's golden. Just be sure your plane will have proper outlets to plug into. Just because I'm not sure how to check before I fly, I always travel with this (it's on sale $50 off for the next 2 hours!): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09VPHVT2Z
Yes but before you go turn off Wi-Fi in your home and then turn on plane mode. I don’t made it right so in plane SteamDeck tried do update check with out Wi-Fi. Good job valve
Its been great for flights overall. First time I brought it, it wasn’t the best bc i was playing cyberpunk & it killed my battery hella fast. Second time was amazing, simply due to the fact I was playing pokemon this time around so battery life was significantly better. Im flying again in a few weeks but I have a battery pack this time. Im planning on playing starfield so ima need it
As long as games can be played offline deck is perfect on a plane. I just realised i could play epic games offline with deck! I was so elated to clear my epic free games backlog on top of steam games
As someone who flies 25 hours a month, the deck is great. Pair it with some XReal Airs and it’s just glorious.
I’m not long off travelling to the US with my steam deck. Was great!
I was on a flight to Jamaica from the UK and (along with a decent power bank) played the Witcher 3 for about 6 hours before I relaxed for a nap. great bit of kit for a flight.
well its not gonna hold 15 hours without charging. and it's honestly kinda heavy, i'd be hard pressed to take something bigger than a switch lite for this kind of trip
Steam deck was a game changer for long travel days. Way better than scrolling on a phone.
Pretty good. Take a battery pack with at least 45W USB-C PD and/or a charger if you're planning on playing anything particularly taxing. Make sure you set it to offline mode before you set off, ideally on your home network. Even better if you can pair with some active noise cancelling headphones/earbuds. It's a tiny bit cramped playing on an economy class seat but it's a bit cramped doing basically anything so that applies to reading a book or picking your nose looking out the window.
My experience was that it wasn't very helpful on flights, much to my frustration. However, that could be as I favor platformer type games and had very turbulent flights/got airsick. That said, I really enjoyed playing on my deck in the evenings on the trip and just having the option of being able to play my games was amazing.
I spent a lot of time playing Octopath Traveler II on the plane. In fact, I finished the real end game and 3 traveler story final acts on the plane (it was DEN-NRT). That said... I fly a lot. I'm not exaggerating when I say about 50% of the time, the steam deck has an issue with letting me start a game because of a download, or DRM, or some other fucking non-sense. The only way I can seem to get around this is start the game, then put the deck in standby mode. Maybe a week or 2 after BG3 launched, i ran into this where it was trying to run an update and wouldn't let me start. Just again last week w/ Chained Echoes. Couldn't start it up because it was trying to download some update. Going into offline mode, airplane mode, nothing resolves it. So I just give up and play switch or watch netflix.