In the more than a year of upgrading my Steam Deck since I purchased it, I had not anticipated replacing the thumbsticks. Perhaps that's why I still don't see much benefit in upgrading the thumbstick for most Steam Deck owners. However, now that GuliKit has released an electromagnetic joystick module for their steam deck kits, I thought I would at least give it a try.

I'm amazed at how easy it is to replace a thumbstick on a compact handheld; Valve has made handhelds of this size relatively easy to repair, and iFixit offers plenty of spare parts. [You can watch the process of replacing a thumbstick in detail on PC Gamer's TikTok account. It can be a daunting task, if only if you're not willing to point a screwdriver at a valuable component or deal with awkward connectors.

I use a second version of this GuliKit thumbstick. It is compatible with both Type A and Type B steam deck thumbsticks (you should check which type your device is before installing a replacement) and consumes less power overall than the previous version.

The important question here is why. Why bother changing thumbsticks?" i have thought long and hard about this since making the change and have come to the conclusion that it is only worth upgrading a few times.

The first is when there is already a stick drift or thumbstick failure that no amount of fiddling with the handheld's dead zone setting will properly correct.

GuliKit's thumbstick is definitely better than the original one included with the Steam Deck, and it uses what is called the Hall effect The GuliKit thumbstick uses what is called the Hall effect, which reduces the number of mechanical failure points in the thumbstick. This Hall effect thumbstick uses magnets to map movement, and since there are fewer parts in contact with each other, there are fewer failures over time or with consistent use.

The second is when a lower dead zone is being pursued and the original factory stick cannot be used to lower the dead zone setting without causing stick drift.

The advantage of the Whole Effect thumbsticks is that they have a smaller dead zone; the Steam Deck is set to 8192 by default, which is a fairly large dead zone and acts as a sort of safety blanket against stick drift. The larger the dead zone, the less likely mechanical variations in the stick will lead to drift.

This is the problem; while it is possible to have a lower dead zone with the original stick, there is a risk of drift with certain sticks and manufacturing methods. The default value of 8192 is a coverall to ensure that OEM sticks stay within manufacturing tolerances. With these Hall effect sticks, you can be sure to get lower dead zones without running into problems.

With a Hall-effect thumbstick installed, you can take the dead zone down to 2000 without encountering any problems. Eliminating the dead zone altogether is not recommended as it will lead to unwanted movement, but with these installed, the dead zone can be lowered significantly.

These are the only two use cases that can realistically be considered worthy of this upgrade. Since it is a niche upgrade, it seems better to spend the money on a Steam Deck SSD upgrade instead; there is a video on how to install the new Steam Deck SSD on TikTok if you are interested.

However, in the aforementioned situation, GuliKit is an excellent alternative. I had no problems installing it and haven't had any problems since. All the functionality of the thumbsticks is still there, but they are a little snappier and theoretically less likely to break in the future, due in part to the fact that you can buy a set of two Whole Effect thumbsticks for $30, $10 less than the official replacement parts (left and right) from iFixit, for anyone whose sticks have broken, I would recommend this instead of the real thing.