Is anyone using a mobile gaming PC system like the Steam deck or similar? I am pondering getting one for my non flight simming gaming. Even a laptop can be a bit of overkill sometimes. I am curious what people’s opinions are if anyone is using them.
Thanks!
I can’t help you, but I also want to know.
I’m currently looking at the ASUS ROG Ally…
I have been looking at the Steam Deck, but my idea was less about gaming than about installing a custom Linux on it and using it for other stuff.
That is exactly the one I was looking at as well. Was mainly curious how well the whole over sized hand held game.system worked.
Oooof I must stay away from this thread, I must stay away from this thread, I must stay away from this thread, I must stay away from this thread, I must stay away from this thread…
Checked the price and found it very easy to stay away from it.
Considering I can get a completely standalone gaming setup (that I can plug into a TV or monitor and add a mouse and keyboard) for less than I can get a new graphics card, I’m pretty intrigued.
I just realized it‘s significantly cheaper to buy from Steam then from Amazon.
680 € on Steam vs 985 € on Amazon for the 512 GB variant.
I guess 680€ does not buy much of a Laptop, so yeah that might be a good deal depending on the situation.
I want so bad to buy a Switch because of that…
Cheap and with a vast game library
Ouch yeah almost a grand it wouldn’t be an option. Best buy had them here in the us for $700, so not too crazy for what it is.
LOL, not for the faint of heart…
A friend who is very active in flight simming (but not on this forum) thinks the Steam Deck is the future. Don’t know why. I see that thing and my eyes glaze over. I mention XBOX and his eyes probably glaze over. Nice to have options, anyway.
Colleague has one, swears by it. The philosophy behind this device is really intriguing because it doesn’t lock you in. It’s a linux PC basically, do with the hardware as you please, if you’re not a hacker, it comes with a pretty gui. Plus Valve is pumping money into cross platform virtualization like crazy. The performance of games like Witcher on this thing is ridiculous.
I can understand that cost/performance isn’t really all that stellar, but that’s the price you pay for such an open platform.
Steam won’t sell their handheld console in Norway, just like the VR Knuckles and the Index, Norwegian buyers must import themselves…
I have a Steam Deck, and I really love it! For context, I still live in my uni dorm and thus space is a premium. My real gaming and sim stuff is hibernating at a friend’s and my dad’s place until I someday find something bigger. Before getting the Steam Deck, I used to game occasionally on GeForce Now. I suppose you can imagine how it can be like to stream videogames on dorm internet. The superior services were also all of the subscription type, something I am hesistant to as I am never sure I’ll get the hours out of it in a month to make it worth it.
The steam-deck has been running most games I threw at it comfortably at minimal settings (which is fine for the display size and resolution). Even when docked and streaming HD to my screen it runs quite comfortably. To give some reference, games I’ve been playing recently on it were KSP, Satisfactory, Path of Exile, Cold Waters and Gunner, HEAT, PC!
I also have DCS on mine but this took quite some tinkering to get to work and being new to Linux made things quite difficult for me. It runs simple missions quite well, like free-flights. I’ve not been feeling masochistic enough to try and fly real combat missions on it.
The battery is quite reasonable. You can expect 1.5h of gaming for intense 3D titles to around 8 hours for more simple stuff. The controls customization is incredible. I would recommend it if you’d like to take it with you, wanna game on the couch a little or don’t have space for anything else. If it has to compete against your rig for your attention, there’s a chance it will collect dust. If you have some games in mind that you would like to play on a Steam Deck, I’d recommend you check this site: https://www.protondb.com/ to see if it runs and how much tinkering is expected. You will always have to tinker a little to get a non-steam game to run on the Steam Deck (unless it can run in Linux natively). If you want to know what kind of tinkering is expected, search a bit for protontricks and winetricks, which helped me to get any game running I tried. Some people have also outright installed Windows on their Deck but I heard its a relative perfomance loss when compared to running Linux/SteamOS.
Thanks for that very informative summary. It confirms my thoughts - If I wanted a mobile gaming platform I would get a Steam Deck in a heartbeat. As it is though…
Same for me. My PSP Go suffices for the moment, but when its battery dies, I will probably replace it with a Steam Deck.
My enthusiasm for the deck has increased greatly since I heard of this a few weeks ago: https://batocera.org/
An image for a 1TB SD card that contains many emulators and ROMs for basically every platform from the ZX and C64 all the way to PS3 and Xbox 360. Ready to play, no tweaking needed.
I am guessing some gaming nostalgia fans like @Johnny , @komemiute and @Victork2 would get at least as excited about it as I did when I heard about it (one octave up and 3 Hz bouncing)
About to check the list, but mighty skeptical about ROMs… It’s a big no-no to sell them.
Ok LOL, LMAO even. The list opens with Ninendo game ROMs. Not going to happen.
@komemiute it’s all free.
There’s plenty of ROMs hosted on the internet archive, perhaps they use a script to pull those, IDK.
But it’s open source so we could check how it’s done