Steam Deck punches way above its weight. But it does so much thanks to its lower resolution. Though in the format 720p isn’t bad at all. It’s what the switch uses as well.
Skip all the Chinese alternatives, they require far more tweaking / researching than you’re fit for (judged solely by this post).
Really I’d break it down to games and game types you want to play. If you want say Genshin Impact then it’s a lot easier to go with the ROG Ally. There are other Asian games that also don’t play nice with Linux. Multiplayer titles also tend to be finicky with Linux. The ROG Ally is also strong enough to dock to a 1080p screen for titles like Valorant or CSGO. If that is appealing.
If you’re playing mainly older games then the deck is the obvious choice, it’s a beast when it comes to emulation and has much better battery life in that setting than the ROG Ally. It’s also arguably more plug-and-play especially if you play mostly steam games.
Running Windows on the Deck isn’t very good, it kills the decks battery advantage and the lower performance becomes more obvious. Same running Linux on the ROG is also missing out on what it’s actually good at and Linux won’t improve the battery life much.
Like others have said. It’s because steam deck runs steam os that makes it better than the rest. It’s a catered os for the device. It was after I jumped in I realised how robust it is. Every game in integrated works on Linux no issue I even took windows off my desktop pc. Best reason is also community. Steam deck has plenty of online support whereas the other ones are a bit more saturated
Since Microsoft’s parity issues, I decided to buy Divinity Original Sin 2 to support Larian. I like the stand they made (as opposed to how CDPR did with Cyberpunk), and figured they deserve the cash.
While the graphics could be better, and that it’s at times difficult to focus on such a dialogue heavy game, I noticed that I’ve already spent 20 hours with it and have barely escaped what could be called the tutorial area (fort joy).
I love it. I’m playing 4 custom characters, all necromancers, two melee oriented, two ranged, and it’s a total crap fest of a party, but I’m making it work real well.
Fort Joy is the best and largest part of the game, enjoy it! I guess Fort Joy resembles wher Larian wanted to go with the game, the last 2 acts are not even close in comparison
Screen is not the best, but everything else is superior. SteamOS is much better than Windows, IMO. Though I don’t play multiplayer games and I’ve read some anticheats don’t run on Linux. The only multiplayer game I play from time to time is Fall Guys and it works. Emulators are actually where Linux shines and especially Steam Deck - there’s an app called EmuDeck that sets up all the emulators you could think of and makes it work really easily. For Epic and GOG games I use Heroic Games Launcher and it works well, I played Spider-Man and Fall Guys from Epic and most of my library is on GOG.
Steam Deck has better software support than ROG Ally. Also, the latter only sports standard analogs, and SD offers two trackpads (which are great, btw).
On the other hand, ROG has more raw power and a better display. I don’t know anything meaningful about the rest you mentioned.
As for the OS, Linux seems better suited for these kinds of devices. Proton runs almost anything and offers a great experience, and on top off that, you can still use it as a daily PC with the use of peripherals. But I’m probably somewhat biased, as I know and love my SD.
The steam deck has better performance when you set it to low power consumption, but the competitors have better performance when set at higher power consumption. If you play a lot mouse based games, the trackpads are very nice. Emulation works great on the steam deck and it is possible to play epic games (I don’t use epic so idk how good it is).
I don’t have any of the competitors, but the screen quality seems fine to me. If you hold it at a reasonable distance you can’t really see the pixels. Compared to my switch it is definitely heavier and bigger, so its not very comfortable to hold up because of its weight, so I just rest it on my lap or a table when using it. A small annoyance with the screen is that the resolution isn’t a standard ratio so a lot of games have black bars on the top and bottom.
Watch YouTube reviews of the devices. I would not bother with comparing screens. I usually do this as well but in the long run you want the best overall device. The Deck doesn’t have an 1080p OLED but I also wouldn’t want it to have one because battery would be so much worse.
Don’t look on CPU and GPU. You can’t compare them because the machines aren’t running the same OS. It’s like comparing ram, gpu and cpu on an iphone and compare directly to an Android phone. It’s irrelevant. The actual experience is what matters, it’s the device you will look at, not the spec sheet.
Edit: oh and btw. If you want to put a screen protector on the Deck, get either the cheapest one and upgrade the internal ssd or get the middle one and buy a 512-1tb ssd. If you arent going to put a screen protector you can buy the deck with anti glare.
Still I’m not convinced of Steam OS compared to Windows 11, since I would like to play also Epic games and maybe some emulators
You can actually play games from Epic Games and other stores on Steam Deck with Lutris or Heroic Games Launcher (or a few other options) and you can install emulators on it too, it has a desktop mode, so you’re not locked into only Steam stuff. Also, you can put Windows on the Steam Deck too as an option if you prefer, I don’t know many people who have but the option is there.
Thank you. And do most of Epic games run well? I’m not interested into latest triple A games and the best of the best performance and resolution, but I would like to some of them being at least playable. What do you think of the Chinese alternatives of the Steam Deck?
I don’t have a steam deck, but I use Linux and often play games from the epic store through the heroic launcher. I haven’t had an issue with a game not working. Worst case scenario, I just had to switch proton versions, which heroic makes really easy.
They should for most. If the games are on both Epic and Steam you can check protondb.com to get a general idea of how well it will run, for any games that are only on Epic, I’d recommend doing some quick searches to see how much luck people have had getting them to run on steam deck/linux. Most games for me have worked perfectly fine with similar performance as Windows, and installing Windows on the Deck is still an option for the games that don’t.
As for the alternatives to the Steam Deck, I wouldn’t go for them over the Deck personally, but I have never used them. I would think the games that have been optimized for the deck would run better on the deck than the alternatives due to its popularity. I might consider them if they were a good bit cheaper than the Deck though and it was a good deal.
Edit: I should also note that I play on a Linux Desktop, not the Deck, but aside from the specs difference the games actually working or not would be almost exactly the same between the two because of how Proton and Wine work.
I’ve been playing Super Mario 3D Land on the 3DS, and Kittens & Yarn on the Switch. (A little bit of Qube Cross, too, depending on whether it or Kittens & Yarn is more frustrating)
While I do I wish I could reasonably afford BG3, I’ve been having plenty of fun with Dave the Diver regardless. Was waiting for the upcoming QoL update but decided to just go ahead and deal with the annoyances, such a gem of a game. Hard to believe how much fun and varied content they managed to cram in there and have it work well together.
But I played Coop with some friends over the internet and it was pretty easy. Only thing is good communication (verbal) with other people to sort of level set what ya’ll going to do because if you happen to play with someone who’s just dead set on being an agent of chaos… then you might not have a great time since they can at any point directly affect the world. You may want to do a pure hero/villain run but the other people might have other ideas. Plan ahead, don’t rush, and communicate.
The biggest thing, is scheduling with the other people. My friends it might be once a week for maybe 2 hours… which means we’re looking at least 2 years on a coop, lol.
BG3 like everyone else seems to be, the System Shock remake, and I started replaying Half Life 2 and Dishonored recently. Just got a Steam Deck so it’s been fun being able to play all of my Steam games wherever I want.
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