Steam Deck

I’ve said it before, but what makes the Deck unique is the holistic experience it brings. Like a really good chili, it’s a culmination of all the ingredients, particularly the below;

• SteamOS out of the box
• Steam Input in combination with the extensive inputs on the Deck itself
• The ability to easily change core hardware settings via the options menu to influence performance or battery life
• The extensive third party support via software and peripherals (cases, skins, accessories)
• Price point
• Well documented upgradability (SSD replacement, thumbsticks, etc)

I’m all for better screens and hardware, but they always come at a cost to battery life. Not that the Deck has a huge battery life to begin with, but the reason it is passable is due in large part to the hardware it comes with.

The Ally may be beefier spec wise, but at detriment to battery life. Not to mention the Windows OS and lack of inputs (both trackpads and two extra back buttons).

The Legion Go at least accounts for the input selection and has a unique controller setup, but I’m curious to see the battery life to performance ratio. Again, Windows will still be a detriment overall.

Really what it comes down to in the handheld space is finding something that has no compromises from the Steam Deck and an overall increase to performance without affecting battery life so negatively that it becomes a glorified docked laptop.

If I never got a Deck to start, I may have jumped to the Legion Go on account of not having realized what SteamOS brings to the table, and being enticed the beefier specs and control scheme.

However - after having a dual boot setup on the Deck with both SteamOS and Windows, I find myself more and more trying to get games working on the SteamOS side versus the Windows side. This is due to the overall “streamlined” experience of just booting up Game Mode, selecting a game and going off to the races.

Conversely, when I’m on Windows, I can get games operational and semi streamlined via playnite and Glosi, but it still feels clunkier and more obtuse. I pretty much only use Windows for games that I have a single player server running on for some emulated MMOs and that’s about it. If I could get the servers running properly on SteamOS, I’d make the switch in a heartbeat. It’s just trying to find a way to get them running on it with the associated databases/libraries that won’t get it wiped upon update to newer versions.

This is the smallest obstacle, IMO. You could get rid of (or leave a small dual boot partition of) Windows, and use one of the good Linux distros tailored to a Steam OS-like experience, like Chimera or Bazzite, and just keep ticking along without missing a beat.

I love my Deck, but I'm already researching the process of eventually transitioning off of it simply because the screen is too tiny for my 40s eyes, and I don't get to use it handheld as much as I'd like. This upcoming wave of Deck-like handhelds with 9 and 10 inch screens will be looking very good in this upcoming year.

suspend will always be broken on windows.

even distro like Ubuntu can't s0 properly because of hardware issues.

valve specifically fixed this for the steam deck and no one else has bothered.

If they actually put trackpads on them then Windows wouldn’t be as much of an idiotic decision.

Lenovo does this with theirs and Windows is still an idiotic decision. It's not a console-like experience when Windows throws the user out of the custom launcher to nag about Windows stuff. Windows handhelds exist way longer than Steam Deck and even among the better-earning people, very few actually bought them. It's just no fun to use them.

So I might be the only one who does this (never seen anyone else mention this setup), but I like to do mouse navigation with stick+gyro. So no track pad wouldn't bug me in this respect, but I would still like to have a track pad for virtual menus and scrolling.