I just got my steam deck RMAed after 1.5 years. Guess what was the first thing I did when It turned on.
I had some performance problems. Suddenly, steam deck lost about 60% of its performance in games. My troubleshooting didn't help. After that, I contacted steam support. We were talking for about a week, but nothing helped, so they agreed to send me a replacement.
I have to say… The fresh vent smells even better than I remember.
They sent a full replacement after 1.5 years? Damn that's some good support.
Because shit shouldn't just break after 1.5 years
Apple will sell you a laptop with dead pixels on the screen and refuse to replace it unless a certain minimum number are dead. I was furious.
I used to work for a company that made an ultra low budget android tablet. We had dead pixels on like 10% of them. Our LCD provider would tell us the same thing. Unless there are at least 3 dead pixels, they aren't taking them back. We changed our LCD provider ASAP, but we sold probably 1-2K of those POSes. That's probably 100-200 $50 tablets with dead pixels.
But at least our tablets were $50 pieces of trash, not $2000+ MacBooks.
Wow, I'd expect that from a knock-off monitor company, but Apple? That's crazy.
They mostly do that these days. Not many monitors have dead pixel policies.
I hope this was your reaction https://youtube.com/shorts/0fG5QzT5sKs?feature=share
I had a 3 day old Macbook Pro have the screen shatter when opening it. The store said it would be covered then the repair center said it would be $2000 which was only $600 less than the entire laptop. Took like 3 hours on the phone and finally the freaking store paid out the repair center. Thinkpads from now on lol
True but not all tech companies are so forgiving. Most laptops I get have their warranty expire after a year, and I doubt they'd replace anything without charging something.
I feel like "forgiving" isn't quite the right word to describe a company that makes shit that breaks after less than 2 years...
Is that a widespread problem with decks? I feel like for the most part they're lasting ok. There's always gonna be an occasional dud when manufacturing something, especially when it's as complex as a computer.
This is anecdotal, but mine has been fine. Pretty great hardware IMO, especially for the first version of something.
Welcome to V1 of a brand new hardware platform.
You could always go with higher quality brands, like Tesla. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Tesla-car-reliability-lower-than-the-average-in-a-study-debut-as-Lexus-takes-top-spot.693018.0.html
Just kidding, let's go with Apple's two year average. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2752739/more-than-a-quarter-of-iphones-break-within-2-years.html
Valve seems to be pretty consumer friendly. I also have a good experience with a faulty Index getting replaced.
We're all getting nose cancer in about 2 years.
Then we can pick up a Steam Deck 2 and get double nose cancer. Fun times for all.
I need to request off work for Monday - my brother died of double nose cancer.
I had to RMA mine at the beginning of the year for pretty much the same issue. It would throttle the CPU to like 400MHz in any sort of gaming workload no matter how light. I reinstalled the OS, reset the BIOS, battery storage mode, even unplugged the battery and plugged it back in but nothing fixed it. Valve sent me a brand new unit in its place. Valve's RMA is top notch. Mine was only around 6 months old at the time so 1.5 years is awesome that they're still doing it.
At least we know all the returns aren't just being scrapped now that they're selling official refurbished units. That's where all of the RMA units are going I suppose.
Yep, the same thing, but I think it was something with the GPU. It was always at 100% and ±230 MHz. When I turned on “Manual GPU Clock Control”, but let the slider at 1600 MHz, GPU clock went up, but GPU utilization went down.
Yeah, that looks like the same issue mine had. I read that it was an APU firmware/BIOS bug. Hopefully the newer units have patched firmware to fix this. In my case it started happening after I let the battery completely die and didn't charge it up for a month, so I've been more careful about keeping mine charged up now.
I actually had that problem a couple of days ago and was able to fix it myself by using the steam OS "main" channel instead of stable. The main channel is probably close to alpha. After that I could go back and it stayed fixed. So it seems that the new software indeed solved this problem.
That's a little concerning but glad to hear they made it right. Kinda sounds like a thermal issue of some kind maybe...
Definitely not a thermal issue, the temps barely climbed and the fan never ramped up. It seemed like a TDP lock of 1W or so but only on the CPU as the GPU core would happily boost up still.
Weird...
Mine is about half a year old and I still love the smell. Does anyone know what it is?
Probably oils from the plastic mostly, maybe some of the coatings on the PCB.
Oh...still safe for inhalation? 🧐
VOCs definitely aren't great for you.
The dose makes the poison. Get plenty of fresh air and you'll be fine.
Thermal paste, perhaps?
Hopes and dreams in physical form!
My joystick started squeaking after 14 months and the buttons started to register twice while pressed once. Steam support told me they are willing to fix it for like 200 USD, but no warranty after 1 year. It was a pleasant conversation but I hoped to get it fixed for free (I know its unreasonable after warranty) Glad to see they still making some exceptions. Good for you!
I decided to buy my own buttons and replace them for a fraction of the cost.
I'm guessing they RMA'd this particular one because I think it is a firmware bug. Hopefully a firmware bug that has since been fixed in newer hardware revisons/BIOS updates. My old one ran into the same issue after 6 months and Valve basically offered an immediate RMA when I described the issue.