Ladies and gentlemen… A new modder is born. Welcome. You can collect your Ender 3 at any participating Microcenter.

Deck mate.

Buying OLED, keeping LCD. I still have my atomic purple GBC from childhood. It’s the only Gameboy in my collection I never modded. I will be doing the same with my first Steam Deck.

Into the breach is a pretty good strategy game that runs well on the deck. You might like Darkest Dungeon as well. I haven’t tried Cities Skylines on deck, but I initially played it all on an OG steam controller, so I know it plays well in handheld. You might like Factorio. Kind of related to city builders.

I’ve used mine with a kickstand (Killswitch), Bluetooth keyboard and mouse a few times. I used it to apply do jobs, edit my resume, and do light CAD work with Onshape. I’m slightly farsighted, so using a seven-inch screen two to three feet away from my eyes is not a problem for me. As long as your use case is compatible with steam OS it might be fine i.e. web based or available in a flatpak. The onboard trackpads can be used without a mouse after you get used to it, but if you need to type or edit text you definitely need a keyboard at the very minimum.

This is a very subjective question. I guess it depends on how important gaming is to your lifestyle. Is gaming just a hobby to spend some time, or is it your highest priority, and everything else in your life is in service to gaming? That second one is kind of the extreme, but maybe you can see my point. The OLED is, while yet unproven, very likely to be a considerably more enjoyable experience than the LCD. That said tons of people have gotten tremendous enjoyment out of the LCD deck since its release. Maybe you’d prefer to spend less on gaming, and more on other things, like “other purchases, or eating out.” No one knows your personal priorities except you.

To speak to your specific question about OLED screens having never experienced them. This is also a tremendously subjective topic. My personal experience was that I honestly couldn’t really tell the difference when I was younger and didn’t sit still long enough to appreciate experience (early to mid twenties), but now that I’m in my early thirties and things are slowing down a little bit for me, I think it makes all the difference in the world. I now avoid using LCDs like the plague. I also have considerably more disposable income than I did before, so I don’t mind spending several times more on monitors, headphones, chairs, etc. than I did when I was younger. Like I said, completely subjective.

If CMOS reset didn’t fix it, you’re almost certainly going to need to open an RMA ticket with Valve for support. Unless you happen to have a CH341A lying around and you’re proficient in using it. Even then, it sounds like the memory’s borked. RMA it.

In my experience 16” is definitely too big for economy seats. They sell 13” oled portable monitors that I’m very curious about, but have yet to try. That’s probably as large as I would personally go for in-flight entertainment. I’m slightly farsighted, so I usually prefer smaller screens that take up less of my fov. YMMV. Personally, the steam deck’s screen has been more than ample for me and my strange eyes when on a flight. I’ve even used my steam deck to do work with it resting on a table with a kickstand. I’ve never felt the need to use a portable monitor with it unless I needed multi monitor.

Even if your decks get shipped before you can cancel them Valve has a return policy (I think it’s a week or two). Just request a return as soon as you get them, and you’ll get your money back.

My strategy for this is to uninstall all but the two or three games I’m playing at the time. Only have one long game that you’re progressing through installed at a time, and have one or two quick any time games like vampire survivors or slay the spire for when you don’t have the time for the long game. For me right now my steam deck has vampire survivors, 20 minutes till dawn and persona 5 on it, and that’s it. Once I finish persona, I’ll uninstall it and then install death stranding.

I’ve done the whole 20 games installed thing, and every time I boot up my steam deck I get choice fatigue, and end up playing nothing. I find this much more satisfying, and I actually enjoy game time.