You are sacrificing power for mobility and playability with the Steam Deck. I own both a Steam Deck and a gaming PC, and I use each for different games. These days, modern AAA gaming often can’t run on Steam Deck well, including some hits like Baldurs Gate 3 (in the 3rd Act, the rest is fine). However, 75% of my overall gaming time is on the Deck these days. The ability to turn it on and just start playing on the couch or in bed is fantastic, and the support for different control schema like gyro and touchpads make it incredibly playable.
A modest PC is going to push better graphics and higher refresh rates, and will also make some games actually playable, but this becomes a decent sacrifice in mobility and convenience.
If mobility is merely a bonus and your deck would be docked the vast majority of the time, I’d go PC, but I suggest seriously considering the convenience of portable play even within your home. The OLED screen is wonderful for years-old AAA games that go for 2 dollars on Sale, indies, and more. I’m absolutely having a blast with Crosscode and intend on moving over to Another Crab’s Treasure and Nine Sols next.
I honestly haven’t considered using the steam deck in my house outside of the dock. Playing on the couch is definitely an enticing idea. The prospect of poor AAA support isn’t a huge deal. Baldurs gate 3, the new dragon age, the new Warhammer game (if that’s considered AAA), helldivers, and the new god of war games are the only recent titles that have jumped out at me. I’ve really wanted to get more into indie games, theres so many that seem interesting and innovative, and with the pace of steam deck adoption, I feel like I wouldn’t be missing out on much with it. I’m still 50/50 on the decision. Gaming around the house has definitely given me something more to consider though!
The Steam Deck is how I prefer to play the majority of indies, so if that’s your goal, it’s great. Watch performance videos though of games you are interested in.
I played through all of BG3 with no issues. It was a pleasure. The only real graphics hiccup I had was when i stacked barrel after barrel of smoke powder in Gortash’s throne room and one shotted him.
Yes, a Steam Deck is a viable alternative to a budget gaming PC. But if you would want to buy a dock and peripherals and keep it docked most of the time I’d say go with the PC.
For me personally, the biggest plus of a Steam Deck was that I didn’t have to get peripherals (because my living situation is a bit complicated at the moment). And they’re dirt cheap, got a used LCD512 GB one for 320€.
edit: I own a laptop too. If I didn’t, I would’ve gotten a new one
I think a lot of people look to LTT for guidance on PC components and trust their conclusions even though they’re not as technical as something like gamers nexus.
I don’t think that is the case anymore. Saw a comment in an unrelated thread of someone talking up how LTT takes the time to make sure their sponsors are trustworthy in response to someone saying to not trusted whatever products youtubers shill in sponsored segments.
So there is a number of people who do see LTT as a respectable and honest outlet that takes their recommendations seriously.
With details you mean the actual tests and what not? If that is the case, I highly doubt it. LTT is even quoted/referenced/talked about by people like Dave from EEVBlog.
I can’t really judge the tests, I know too little about them. My point was rather that these tests are not really relevant to 99% of buyers. If, for example, GPU A is 3.5% faster than B, but costs 5% more, but also draws 5% more power, is that really a relevant information for a gamer?
I’d like a mouse with variable friction. Pair that with haptic feedback and you could make some very cool use cases, like simulating lock picking in RPGs.
Steam deck is definitely a viable alternative, but I’d still go with building a desktop if that is an option to you and if you do not need the portability of steam deck. $600-$700 will get you a pretty decent system (especially if you already have a monitor, mouse, and keyboard) that you can continue to upgrade in the future.
Yeah the 600-700 figure is just for the PC, I made a little room for a monitor, keyboard and headset/speakers as I would wind up needing those whichever way I went
Given that you also need to build a library of PC games, this could swing the needle towards the steam deck depending on what games you want and how patient you are to buy them. But because you can build that library over time, and PC games tend to be cheaper than console games and have much better sales, I still lean toward suggesting you build a desktop.
I’m not in a rush by any means. Between working full time and being in college, I don’t have a lot of time to play games. I have a handful of AAA titles I’m interested in, but indie gaming has been a pretty large draw for me towards PC gaming in general. There’s so many interesting and innovative titles out there that I simply haven’t had an opportunity to play on my Xbox
I think a desktop will pay off in the future when it’s time to upgrade again because you can at least reuse the peripherals, case, PSU, fans, hard drives, typically the CPU cooler, maybe GPU unless that is being upgraded, and maybe even the mobo+RAM depending on the upgrade path. I think the AMD AM4 platform is currently the best bang for the buck, but will almost certainly require replacing mobo+RAM on your next future upgrade.
It’s a bad look, and I won’t make excuses for them, but none of this really surprises me, either. I still like their content, and I already understood most of this to be the case by inference without it being spelled out like this. Their coverage has been good enough, and when I need someone to genuinely go hard on the nuts and bolts of a thing, Gamers Nexus is the better choice.
The laptop sponsorship thing is a perfect example. He straight up says he invested in them, which instantly makes the video revealing their latest model a clear extension of that sponsorship. Did I still keep watching? Hell yeah, because the laptop modularity looks awesome. Should I trust everything in the vid is presented objectively without bias?
Yeah, it does. This can sometimes require launching steam in Big Picture Mode first, then select the game you want. A bit annoying to take that extra step but Steam has upped their ps5 controller support lately.
But I play mostly from gog, and my Intel GPU doesn’t play nice with the steam overlay (transparency becomes black and everything becomes 5 fps)
Also it means I have to waste 15 precious minutes troubleshooting the game. Pad isn’t recognized, try via steam, add it manually, see if it works via xinput, and so on.
Either they will pony up the cash or resort to piracy. But in regards to the second option: All publishers and storefront loose without regional adjusted pricing for the regions.
Only complaint at this point is the desktop system blocks unfocused windows from capturing keypresses. (A sensible security measure).
But it prevents Discord from picking up my PTT keybind when not in a full screen game.
the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames
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