There's roughly a billion videos on YouTube about how great a device the Steam Deck is, so I'm not going to sell you one. I'm also not going to tell you about its specs, because spec-for-spec it's already long been beaten by the likes of the ROG and the MSI Claw. What those other devices have in common though, and the sole reason I'll never buy one, is the fact that they run Windows. I'll have you know that I turn down job offers when the company forces me to use Windows. I literally can't do my job on Windows, and don't ever want to deal with its bullshit if I can help it.
And that's a nice segue into my favorite thing to do on the Steam Deck right now.
The Steam Deck is basically just a Linux computer with some console-like affordances. This means that I can install anything I like on the device through desktop mode. This already makes it one of my favorite handheld consoles ever. My other favorite handheld console is the original PSP and getting to replay those games from when I was a teenager is just the greatest thing.
To do so, I installed RetroDeck, put my PSP ROMs on the Deck's internal storage and I'm now playing Tekken 6, God of War, Killzone and LocoRoco. It's wonderful how easy it is to get started and replay these games, even though it's a little bit awkward without a PlayStation controller because of the button mappings. But nothing you can't get used to.
Another thing I love to do on my Steam Deck right now is streaming whatever is playing on my Xbox Series X through Greenlight. Recently Valve released an update for SteamOS that made a massive change to Wi-Fi performance and stability, which really helped Greenlight streaming as well. Before, I sometimes had to reboot the entire OS because streaming was just terrible. But now it Just Works and everything is fine across multiple play sessions so far. Now I can reliably play Forza Horizon 6 running on the Xbox, while my wife plays her games on the big screen.
RetroDeck and Greenlight are the things you get because it's an open device, not a locked-down console. A Steam Deck really is the machine that could; obviously it plays your Steam games, but you can also do emulation and remote streaming and both of those things are where I'm spending most of my time currently.