These days I’m mostly playing rhythm games and for those I much prefer the trackpads. Less finger strain, I can tap faster, less wear and tear for the buttons, less noise for my surroundings. And in other games with toolbars, even if they have console support, you usually have to sift through shoulder buttons to switch between your items. With the trackpads you can have a tiny macro pad right underneath your thumbs.

As someone with tiny hands who usually uses an extra small xbox controller, I still find myself loving the deck controls more, simply because there is more stuff to configure to my liking. Yes, I have some trouble reaching the shoulder buttons when my thumbs are on the pads, but so far that’s been less of a problem in the games I play.

The game doesn’t support the touch screen :( but will look for plugins in that direction, thanks

A good quality skin should be cleanly removable, so unless the phone skin is much cheaper, there’s not much benefit to practicing on the phone first. I wouldn’t worry so much.

Also sorry for randomly info-dumping that wall of text, oh god. I tend to do that when I’m obsessed with something haha ^^"

The screen protector you see on mine is the second one because I fumbled the first and it still has bubbles. So as someone who also struggles with screen protectors: it’s not the same.
Yes, it has a lot more pieces, some of which are quite thin and fragile and you need more patience to follow the instructions properly and the whole process takes a lot longer, which may seem daunting.
But the material is so, so much more forgiving than the average screen protector.

First of all, it’s not transparent, so trapping some stuff that doesn’t have much height like fine dust and fingerprints is not an issue, since you can’t see it.
This means that you don’t have to drop everything into place perfectly on the first try. Because a small amount of fingerprints is not an issue, you can fumble around with it a lot more. Because fine dust is not an issue, you can also take your time doing it.
Secondly, even if you do trap larger pieces of dust, unlike rigid screen protectors that create a huge penny-sized bubble dome around it, skins are meant to wrap tightly around complex shapes, so in my case I just have a teenie tiny bump exactly the size of the dust + skin thickness, which is barely noticeable.
The glue on my skin also seems different and more forgiving to ripping and reapplying. In particular, you can reposition things a lot of times before pressing down to fixate it for good. So you can e.g. fixate one side, then lightly drape the skin across to match the cutouts on the other side, then fixate that side, and then smooth out the middle parts.
Which takes us to bubbles. Whenever the flat skin doesn’t fit the 3D shape 100%, you’ll get a lot of wrinkles and bubbles and that is totally fine. With the hairdryer, you can melt the material into place and most of my bubbles disappeared completely. The few that didn’t turned into tiny creases at the ends. I think this is the only imperfection to expect. It’s really hard not to get any creases and you don’t get more tries here because you need to press down to smooth out the bubbles, so you can’t reapply.
But that’s it. Everything else can be repositioned until it’s perfect, so the only thing it really takes is patience.

Hey, I asked for them, so they are solicited!

Dang, I need to give it a try. I’ve been wary of RSI with the super fast games, didn’t know it was possible to have hard levels without destroying my hands.

Woah it’s all white :O
Was it a set or did you have to get custom case, buttons and pads separately? Wanted to do something similar as well in the beginning but I’ve never taken electronics apart before so when I read that it’s not that easy and there are risky steps, I bailed and got a skin instead haha

Looks sick, man. How’s Rhythm Heaven? Recently got back into rhythm games myself.

EasySkinz. They had some pretty good discounts during black friday when I got it

I’m also from Europe and got this one from EasySkinz. They’re UK-based. The material feels good and was easy to apply, can def recommend them. Customer support was helpful, too (asked them if the non-OLED skins were any different from the OLED ones and the answer was no, idk why they sell them in different categories).

Neat motif! Did you use heat? My skin came with instructions to use a hairdryer and the skin kind of just melted into place with some careful strokes. If you haven’t done so, maybe you can try that on an inconspicuous area?

It’s metallic blue when you look directly at it and turns more purple as you look more from the side

You may want to check out isthereanydeal.com to build your wishlist. It allows you to set the price thresholds at which you want to be notified and also supports other fully-legitimate (as in devs actively collaborate with them and get paid) stores than just Steam. Many of which sell Steam keys which are codes you can redeem in Steam to activate the game there.
You have all the benefits of Steam games such as no to little extra fiddling to play games on Linux, library and cloud save sync, Steam community and workshop content, playtime tracking etc.
The only real downside is that you’re not covered by Steam’s super lenient refund policy, which is actually quite good to have, since not all games run perfectly on Deck yet. If you buy from other stores, it’s usually hard to refund games that you’ve already redeemed. But if you’re fairly confident that it will run and you won’t refund it, you can sometimes find really good sales “off-season” this way.
Hope that helps :)

Stray. It’s an absolute feast on the eyes on the OLED deck’s screen. Something about the way it pulls off the subtle hue shifts in the game and the high contrast is just better than on 2 different PC monitors I’ve tried, my (arguably cheap) TV or even my (not-so-cheap and also OLED) phone. You just have to try and see for yourself to get it.

I’ve also gotten back into rhythm games. Been playing Project Diva and Thumper as well lately.

Before getting the Deck, I pretty much gave up on gaming because I started working fulltime remotely and I didn’t want to just continue sitting on the same desk after work and continue gaming there. It’s bad for my physical and mental health.

Since getting my OLED end of November, I’ve been playing an average of 3h per day despite fulltime work and spending holidays with family and friends… oops :D I think it will definitely go down once the honeymoon phase is over, but its impact is already made. Through it I’ve found a new way to fit an old hobby back into my life.
I’m also using it to watch stuff on TV in docked mode. The portable format is just perfect for it.

If you’re willing to go down this rabbit hole: I have a Planck keyboard. It’s super tiny, only weighs 300g and feels good enough that I use it daily for work (programming) even though I bought it for travel. Don’t get too discouraged by the missing keys. It does have a slight learning curve and in my case I also tweaked the software quite a lot to get exactly what I want, but if you’re up for it, it can be super rewarding. I got the pre-built Planck EZ but it’s discontinued but there are other Planck-style boards out there.

I went the easy route and got a Planck EZ because of the plastic case design where the upper part of the case is the plate. It’s super lightweight which was my no. 1 priority. I got mine used but if you plan to buy new, it’ll be discontinued soon, just a heads-up. I’ve seen some Planck-style kits on Aliexpress, some with aluminium, some with plastic cases, but haven’t tried them myself.

I use a Planck keyboard which weighs just under 300g with Kailh box switches and XDA keycaps. It’s labeled as a 40% keyboard so I was reluctant at first, coming from 65% myself. But since the keys are smaller, especially the space bar, it still has a relatively high number of total keys given the small form factor (there’s even space for arrow keys!) and having your layer switch keys right next to the space bar for your thumbs is very comfy IMO. I ended up liking it so much that I use it daily and now I’m wondering what to do with my main keeb. If you’re up to trying something new, you can have a look at some layouts. The keyboard looks inconveniently small but once you see the layer layouts, you’ll see it makes a lot of sense actually!

My first keyboard with standard Cherry MX browns last me a decade despite living with a hairy cat. Whenever I removed the caps, there was quite a bit of dust and hair, but it never got bad enough to affect performance and I cleaned it like once every 2 years? In the end, the reason I swapped it out was because the springs were worn out, not dust. Don’t know about water though.