Two and a half months after our Steam Deck review, Valve has lastly offered the drivers you’ll want for audio should you select to put in Home windows on the gaming transportable. Earlier than immediately, you’ll have needed to pair Bluetooth headphones or plug in USB-C earbuds or a dongle to get any type of audio on Home windows in any respect. Each the audio system and three.5mm jack did nothing on Home windows earlier than immediately, and it blamed AMD for the delay.
However now, this pair of new drivers ought to allow each of the lacking audio options. It took some time for AMD and Valve to convey out the initial set of graphics, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and SD card drivers for Windows, too.
Is it time to put in Home windows in your Deck? Nope, I positively wouldn’t say that. Whereas Valve retains squashing bugs and adding neat features on the Linux facet of issues, Home windows was much more of a multitude to start out, and Valve’s been clear you’re largely by yourself should you go that course. I had all kinds of points with Home windows 10 some weeks again — and whereas the Deck now has correct TPM help within the BIOS so you’ll be able to set up Home windows 11, I can’t inform you if it’d be any higher.
Personally, I’d look forward to Valve’s upcoming dual-boot wizard so you’ll be able to add Home windows with out wiping the Steam Deck’s present SteamOS set up first. (You’ll be able to merely swap out the M.2 NVMe drive as a substitute and preserve the 2 OS separate that means, however watch out.)
For me, the larger deal is that Home windows merely doesn’t have the identical console-like trappings that make the Deck so good to start with, particularly how you may get an prompt window into your efficiency and battery life and fine-tune all of that on the fly.
In order for you Home windows, I’d in all probability look into a dedicated Windows portable instead, significantly as soon as rivals react to the Deck with extra highly effective chips and / or decrease costs.
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