We tried a modded Steam Deck & it’s absolutely gorgeous

Valve’s Steam Deck might rule the roost in the world of gaming handhelds, but its plain looks can turn some people off. Enter Megamodz, who can now pre-mod the Steam Deck for you, and it’s fantastic.

Gaming handhelds are all the rage right now, and Valve’s Steam Deck currently rules the roost when it comes to beating the competition in almost every single way possible. Sure, there are options like Ayaneo, Lenovo, and the Asus ROG Ally on the market, but none offer the same silky-smooth experience as the Steam Deck.

Most interestingly, the Steam Deck uses SteamOS, allowing to make using it an absolute cinch when compared to jumping through various hoops using Windows 11. But, since the Steam Deck has become so popular, there are now dozens of options on the market to help customize your unit, to eliminate Valve’s rather plain-looking matte black finish. The problem? The Steam Deck is not the easiest thing to take apart.

Enter stalwart controller modders Megamodz, who are now directly selling modded Steam Decks that you can pre-customize, and arrive on your doorstep as if it was factory-fresh, absolutely hassle-free. So, after getting an email from Megamodz about testing their pre-modded Steam Deck service, we went to modding a unit of our own.

Configuring your Deck

Customization was a pretty simple process, where you can kick off with the amount of storage you want to include if you don’t want to mess around cracking the Steam Deck open to replace its SSD. Then, you can either choose from the standard screen, a premium anti-glare variant, or even a DeckHD screen, which the site says will be coming soon. Here, you can also select hall-sensing joysticks, so you will never have stick drift on the device, too.

The premium options do add to your bill, but we’d say that the prices are fairly reasonable outside of the SSD configuration, where a 1TB drive will set you back $299.99. For reference, you can pick up a Steam Deck SSD of your own for around a third of that price, and $200 for installation and flashing an OS seems like too much.

Luckily, the rest of the physical modifications to the Steam Deck shell are fairly straightforward and reasonably priced. We chose a dual-tone colorway, which would mean that you would have to usually pick up two sets of Steam Deck shells, but this process made it easy to get a good idea of what your deck would look like. We opted for a dual-tone clear purple and grey Steam Deck since 00’s nostalgia is seemingly all the rage right now. Once we finished the customization, it was then all down to waiting for the device to show up.

All in all, the total cost of the 1TB modded Steam Deck came to just over $900, which is a lot more than Valve’s MSRP. But, you can choose to slice this down to around $600 by choosing the 64 GB MMC drive, and picking up a 1TB microSD card, instead. This makes it a real, actual contender for where you should spend your money. Just don’t pay for the pricey SSD upgrade.

Factory-fresh feeling

Once the Steam Deck arrived just a few days later, it was as if the device was factory-fresh. It all ships in Valve’s official packaging, and most of it is sealed, too. There was even a UK power plug included for us, which is a nice touch, considering Megamodz is based out in the US.

Once you unbox the Steam Deck, and zip open the included carrying case, we were greeted with a thing of absolute beauty, a pre-customized Steam Deck, and we didn’t even have to mess around with it ourselves to make it look good.

The clear purple plastic felt appropriately high-quality, with no visible gaps, or traces that the Steam Deck had been modded, aside from its looks. Every single face button, trigger, and back button felt great to use. Third-party casings and shells are always a bit hit or miss, especially since we had a bad experience with a DS Lite repair years ago, which never really felt the same as the stock version.

Here, it’s no worry at all, and the custom Deck was perfect, and even fully up-to-date, too. After hooking it up to our Steam account, we downloaded some of our favorite games to really give the console a spin. As expected, Armored Core 6, Cyberpunk 2077, and Baldur’s Gate 3 all worked flawlessly on the device, thanks to its robust ecosystem of premade settings and configurations.

Should you buy it?

The Megamodz Steam Deck is just a prettier Steam Deck, but the added benefit you get of having a console personalized directly to you is not to be understated. While you can save a lot of money doing the mods yourself, the process will require a skilled hand and heaps of patience.

You will be paying over the odds if you choose to take their storage upgrade options. So, instead, just stick to the base variant, and pick up an external MicroSD card. For $600, getting a customized Steam Deck is worth it, especially if you are willing to pay a slight premium for the personalized touch.

You can pick one up for yourself at the Megamodz website.