Steam Deck has a surprisingly great microphone

Valve is actively rolling out Steam Deck systems to people around the world. I’ve had one for a few weeks, and I’m still diving into many of its features. The latest feature to impress me is the Deck’s excellent built-in microphone. This should make the device a great way to play games online with friends — as long as those games work on Valve’s handheld. But popular games like Elden Ring already work, and this is what you’ll sound like to your crew if you use the Deck:

The Steam Deck has two mics built into the face of the display. You can see two tiny notches at the top of the screen if you look closely. The device uses these mics to both record your voice but also to detect and eliminate background noise.

Of course, the mic will sound different when going through the compression of Steam’s voice chat. The good news, however, is that you can run Discord in the background without much effort. I tested that, and I’ll be writing a story about that soon.

For now, I’m impressed with the Steam Deck mic. It sounds crisp and clear for communication, but you also won’t sound out of place if you end up on a friend’s Twitch stream, for example. It is yet another high-quality component that feels supremely well considered out of Valve’s hardware engineering and design teams.

And it’s one more reason this is my favorite gaming PC ever.