The reason you don’t hear audio with HDMI is because HDMI can carry audio, so the Steam Deck automatically selects it. You should be able to go into Setting -> Audio and then change the output device back to Speakers.

General advice seems to be that they should loosen with time and stop sticking.

I have WiFi 6 (not 6E) and OG Steam Deck (not OLED) and without physical obstruction my SD easily hits 600Mbps/75MBps. I’d suggest you have a look at your setup.

If you are abolutely sure your WiFi is setup correctly, you might be hitting SD write speed limits or maxing the APU when it comes to decomression/decryption.

Yeah, that’s true, I experience this since I have 1 Gbps down and 600 Mbps over WiFi.

However, for most people this doesn’t matter because they don’t have an internet pipe big enough that can saturate their sdcard write speed.

The only time this really matters is if you’re moving a game from SSD to sdcard. Then it’s just pain.

Technically it is different. SSDs are better. BUT in practice, the performance is mostly the same, the biggest difference is in few more seconds of load times. Negligible. If your top consideration is price, then just go with a 64gb one and a sdcard. It is fine.

If the person you are gifting this to is tech savvy, then 64 GB is even better option because they can pretty trivially upgrade the SSD on their own time. By far, the best bang for your buck option is buying the 64gb and upgrading the SSD. If the person you are gifting this to has ever built a PC for themselves or opened a phone or did any other small electronics repair, then they’ll be capable of upgrading the Steam Deck by themselves.

If you can spring the extra for the 256 version, especially if the gift recipient is not tech savvy, it is worth it to do so.

Additionally, look at the refurbished units from Valve. They’re used, but come with warranty and are very much like new. Very good option if you’re on a budget.

Also, don’t ignore the direct used market. With the new OLED version, a lot of people are dumping their ‘old’ Decks, there are some nice deals to be had.

Yes, but saves are not on the SD card. They’re in compatdata folder. Before you do anything, backup the saves (or if you don’t know where they are, the games subfolder in the compatdata folder). Then move the sdcard, run the game once and copy over the saves.

The saves are definitely under compatdata, under drive_c and then following the Windows file structure. If all you see is a symlink just follow it and it will show you where the actual files are stored. You should be able to see the destination under the properties of the symlink.

I bet you used one of those tools that move compatdata to the same device as game files. I think Cryo utilities can do that

You can adjust a ton of input settings if you go into controller settings aka SteamInput. Did you try that?