Manufacturers have wildly oversold you on how much speed you need to run a game.
Microsoft is at least partly responsibile for this. Modern Windows loves to dominate your hard drive with background tasks that you didn’t ask for, to the point of leaving foreground tasks starved for I/O.
I find Linux to be superior in this area, and I often run modern games from a slow mechanical hard drive with no trouble at all. It’s unsurprising that your Steam Deck does just fine with an SD card.
Microsoft is at least partly responsibile for this. Modern Windows loves to dominate your hard drive with background tasks that you didn’t ask for, to the point of leaving foreground tasks starved for I/O.
I find Linux to be superior in this area, and I often run modern games from a slow mechanical hard drive with no trouble at all. It’s unsurprising that your Steam Deck does just fine with an SD card.