Link: https://jsaux.com/products/transparent-cover-series-for-steam-deck
There was a huge delay in my shipping of this thing (got caught up in customs I believe), but I finally got this thing in the mail yesterday and had to set it up.
The mod in question is both a front and back plate replacement for the Steam Deck to make the plastic transparent. The back plate is sold separately if you only want that.
The back plate is incredibly easy to install, as the deck is designed to remove the back plate easily, but the front plate requires a lot more work and quite frankly is pretty scary to do. So I want to talk about the product, installation difficulties, and the decks support for disassembly/repair in general.
But before I get too far into the nitty gritty my overall take on this mod is: It is a bit of a risky mod that I would not recommend unless you are confident in your ability to do this kind of thing (or overconfident), or are at least willing to accept some % chance you will destroy your Deck. However, it is a fucking rad mod.
Whats in the product
So with my order of this thing, I got not only just the front and back plate itself, but also a full set of tools necessary to dissasemble the deck as well as some trays and screw holders to keep track of components and store screws in. None of these tools are special (the deck is not made with special screw heads for example), but it is very nice to just have the full set of tools needed in case you don't have them.
The tools they give you aren't of the highest quality (several of them were quite sharp!) but they are more than usable for this project and work quite well. They also include a link/e-mail to a video tutorial that will walk you through all the steps of disassembly and reassembly. It's not perfect (they use a pretty bad text to speech voice over), but it is more than enough to get the job done.
The only real complaints I have with what is in the product: The glue cutting tool for the screen (clear plastic rectangles) are just hard to use and easy to destroy. I presume you could basically use any plastic card in place of them, but would have been nice to have a slightly better tool. Additionally, it would have been nice to include some sort of solvent or cleaner for the glue on the screen.
However for $36 it is quite impressively put together and designed for people who aren't super familiar with electronic disassembly. Most of the struggle with this product is really on the Deck side and on the screen removal.
Disassembly Experience
So in order to install the back plate, all you have to do is unscrew 8 screws, pry off the existing back plate, put on the new one and rescrew the 8 screws. Easy and simple!
The front plate requires a full disassembly of the entire deck, both to remove all of the buttons (which requires the removal of various circuit boards to get to) and to remove the screen, which is glued onto the frame.
The disassembly of the circuit boards and removal of the screws is time consuming, but is actually not so bad if your careful about it. It's actually quite commendable to Valve for how accessible the vast majority of the deck is to disassembly and reassembly. Pretty much everything is held together with screws, with glue only used in a few places to increase stability. Most of this glue is easily (and safely) un-stickable.
Removal of all the circuit components (minus the screen), probably took me in the range of an hour and a half to do. (Following the video and with interruptions).
The real scary and hard part of this whole mod though is the removal of the screen. The screen is held onto the front of the deck with glue, and to remove it you will need an external heat source (hair drying) to soften the glue.
This is probably the scariest part, as you don't want to accidentally melt anything important in the deck. The mod very smartly has you do this step near the end when there is almost nothing left if in the deck for you to accidentally damage, but it is still scary!
Even after you soften the glue it is still a struggle to get the screen out. You essentially have to slip the plastic glue cutter tool underneath the screen and use some elbow grease to destroy bond of the glue and lift the screen out. This both is very tiring, but also results in a lot of bits of glue left on the screen and the frame that are a pain in the ass to clean.
I probably spent an hour alone just getting the screen out and cleaning it (and having to get it out another time because I didn't clean the glue well enough and it was a little bit not flush). The glue strips provided with the mod though are good and easy to use and well designed to make it hard for you to apply them in the "wrong" way.
The reassembly of the machine is pretty straightforward, it just is the reversal of the disassembly. That aspect probably took half as long as the disassembly, and at least for me it worked the moment I turned it on without needing any extra fiddling.
Steam Deck Repair Accessibility
So obviously, this sort of mod is not something that is intended by Valve when designing the deck, but this experience provided an interesting experience in understanding how hard it would be to repair/replace aspects of the Deck.
Overall, I would rate the deck as being quite capable to disassembly and repair. Certainly far more than any of its competitors (I can't even imagine being able to do something like this with a Switch).
Of course its not as easy as a custom built computer, but you have to accept that there are compromises made when you are building such a compact device towards ease of disassembly. The important thing is that it is possible to dissasemble the thing without any special tools and that makes it repairable if you need to.
The only place where I think the deck could be better here is the Screen. I'm sure there's a good reason its glued in place, but it's just a shame because if there's one part of the deck that is likely to need repairs the screen seems like a high priority target! Cracked or busted screens are such a common occurrence in electronics it feels like they should be a lot more accessible.
So that would be one area that it would be nice to see improved in a Steam Deck 2 or whatever, but overall I am generally impressed with out accessible the decks insides are.
