I had barely played games for years, and got a steam deck just because it seemed like a cool linux device I could use both for gaming and tinkering. it has definitely gotten me back into gaming in a big way, the experience really is very nice.

Same here! I actually stopped playing when I moved entirely to Linux, and have been running on laptops without a good GPU solution since then.

I bought the SteamDeck because it looked like a cool product and I liked the openness ("it's just running Linux"), and I love it. And it got me back into gaming :-).

Yes! The Deck is the closest I've gotten to getting into gaming. I especially loved the "press the power button and your game is immediately right there" aspect of it.

I ended up selling it to a friend because I enjoy making things much more, but the Deck is such a fantastic device.

It's a great device, I mainly use it for emulation. The fact that it's properly an open platform is amazing.

This is my experience. I played some Xbox here and there and every once in a while fell down the Factorio hole but I wasn’t gaming a ton. I got the steam deck somewhat cause it was cool, and somewhat as retail therapy but now I play it almost every night. I love playing smaller indie games on it, it’s a great device. Compare that to my Switch 2 and I’ve played it about 1/100th of the time I’ve played on the Deck. The Switch 2 is nice and all, just the Deck is way more flexible.

Replaying my favorite GBA/DS/etc games again on the Deck was so much fun. Huge screen for my (older) eyes, ability to speed up/rewind/save slots, and other tweaks if I wanted were all a blast. I played back through some of my favorites as a kid and enjoyment and nostalgia were both off the charts.

I just wish my hands wouldn't cramp on hand-held devices. I've never been able to use handhelds for longer than thirty minutes.

Goes for console controllers too.