Time to ditch the PC and go with a Steam Deck?

[j1979]

I got the 64 GB version, then got a 2230 512GB from aliexpress for about 90. I honestly don't find the screen size an issue, and I need reading glasses to read small text on my phone. Only game I found unplayable so far due to text size is Elite Dangerous. Overall loving it so far, get to watch TV and game at the same time, definitely not as immersive at a 57" HD TV, but since I got it in June, ive not used my main PC for gaming.

I think it works well for either a casual gamer around the house or a serious gamer that needs to game while on a train or flight. best 400 euros I spent in a long long time.

[Rob_B]

I'm disappointed by the cyberpunk preset in game settings, I had to drop a few things to get it to run at a decent pace.

Everything else is great, portal and hl2 etc run amazingly with a really low TDP set. Control runs great (just started it, weird game) and I've spent many hours in fallout 4 on it.

[j1979]

I'm disappointed by the cyberpunk preset in game settings, I had to drop a few things to get it to run at a decent pace.

Everything else is great, portal and hl2 etc run amazingly with a really low TDP set. Control runs great (just started it, weird game) and I've spent many hours in fallout 4 on it.

out of interest, what FPS do you count as reasonable or decent? If im honest I can't tell the difference between 60 or 30. I always just limit to 30 in the main deck settings, seems to run a bit cooler and battery lasts a fair bit longer.

[Rob_B]

I tried 40/40 with cyberpunk but it wasn't having it with default settings. I'd have to check but pretty sure I dropped settings to hit 4p rather than drop to 30 as I do notice the difference

[Saracen999]

As I'm thinking about it again ( ) do owners have any views on the screen on the 512 versus the screen on the other two?

I'm not really bothered about adding an SSD, and certainly not about sticking an SD card it them - I'll cheerfully do either. Don't give a hoot about the different case and am not overly bothered about the price. For me, I think it's mainly about screen.

My usage is likely to be mainly indoors and in no more than medium light, and the colours seem better/brighter on the 64 & 256 than the 512. But ... traditionally, I refe the kind-of satin effect of anti-glare over mirror screens. Yet, videos I've seen certainly look brighter / clearer on the cheaper two.

I'm thinking, 256GB one, stick in an SD card and add the dock. Later, if need be, add an NVMe SSD.#

I don't mind paying for the 512 provided it's justified but I think, for me, the only real point is the screen and I'm not convinced it's better, let alone worth (with the extra 256GB admittedly) the not-inconsiderable price premium.

[Rob_B]

I've seen a few video comparisons of the screen. For me it doesn't seem worth it, you can get anti glare screen protectors which kind of give the same effect but not quite.

If you would go for the 256 then you might as well go 64 and upgrade the ssd as the 256 doesn't give you anything extra unlike the 512.

Grab a 512gb SD card, I'm running 256/256 and it's getting full far quicker than I thought. Horizon Zero Dawn is 70gb, Doom eternal is 80 (Doom is amazing at 60fps on this thing)

As for games, I've just finished Steam world Dig 2 and Little nightmares, recommend them both but Little Nightmares is fantastic.

[Saracen999]

I get what ypu mean about going 64GB and upgrading the SSD myself. It saves money. But, it's a trade-off because I then have to go find a suitable SSD, buy it, hope it's suitable and I haven't goofed, then actually spend the time upgrading it. Or, pay a bit more and buy it already done. To be honest, I'd rather go the lazy if slightly more expensive route.

My real focus is simply about getting the right (for me) screen. Which is hard, never having actually seen either (other than on videos). The dilemma is that I can see advantages to both. I like the exta crispness of the shiny one, but not the reflections. It's hard to know how to rate those two factors. The 512 is an advantage (at a price) obviously, but not enough of a one to swing the choice. Case differences? Pah. Don't care, as it won't get much use and seems cosmetic anyway.

Currently, I have both in my basket, as I decided on the 512, then undecided and decided on the 256. THen undecided on that.

And no, getting both, while a solution, is way more than I'm willing to spend even if I ccan return one. Laziness, remember.

I'll just have to watch a couple more vids, then either fish or cut bait.

Oh, and yup, on the SD card, not least because I already have a couple of suitable ones so I've ordered a 512GB Sandisk Extreme for the camera, and will use an existing Ultra on the Steamdeck.


PS. Thanks for the game suggestions. Doom Eternal is a large part of why I'm doing this, so .... good to know. Will take a peek at the others as I'm way out of touch on games.

[Jonj1611]

If you can afford to I would order both as you will always be wondering if you made the right choice. Which will outweigh laziness in my mind

[Rob_B]

Doom is really fun, I picked up a Steam code for £9.99 from cdkeys as it was more expensive direct but I think it's under £9 at the moment on steam directly.

1280x800 all settings on high and I'd say its a locked 60fps

[Saracen999]

If you can afford to I would order both as you will always be wondering if you made the right choice. Which will outweigh laziness in my mind

Yeah, but no.

Afford it? Um, kinda. Would it be the end of my word? No. But right now, I'm after a 3D printer (probably Prusa Mini+) and maybe an XBox Series X too. This stuff adds up, right quick. Then, there's the PC though, I'm thinking of delaying that a few months and hopefully letting the GPU dust settle a bit after the AMD launch.

But, while that little lot is a tidy sum, it is far from a bottomless pit. Two Steamdecks? Nah. I don't mind the cost of the 256, or even the 512 provided what I get is wirth the extra but, as the only significant differences are screen and the 512 not 256, the latter of which isn't all that much of an attraction to me, it really comes down to the whether the anti-glare screen is better, and by enough, to justify the price difference. Hard to know without seeing them, but I suspect :-

- I'd prefer the anti-glare but
- not sure I'd prefer it that much.

I'm going to have to exercise my DDG (Digital Decision Generator) .... i.e. flip a coin.

[Saracen999]

Doom is really fun, I picked up a Steam code for £9.99 from cdkeys as it was more expensive direct but I think it's under £9 at the moment on steam directly.

1280x800 all settings on high and I'd say its a locked 60fps

Yup. Love the Doom series.It goes back to Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple II in the early 80's for me. I've played most of the Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein series, and quite a few of the 'clones' (Heretic, Hexen, etc) up to about 10 years ago but have a few missing ones alreadsy from GoG.

[AGTDenton]

This might be a useful watch if anyone else was thinking about doing this.
Some handy tips

[Saracen999]

This might be a useful watch if anyone else was thinking about doing this.
Some handy tips

...

My guess is that just about every person that has, or is thinking about, A Steam Deck has had that conversation with themselves. I sure have. There are, of course, different reasons for getting a Steam Deck, and one of them is budget considerations. That vid certainly makes the point that if the focus is on gaming, but someone wants the ability to do a bit of lightweight web brwsing, maybe access email via a browser and either space or money are the limitation, then the SD is a viable option .... with a dock.

My usage, though, will be more narrowly defined, specifically to using it largely sitting up in bed (due to some health issues not just me being a lazy a$$), instead of full-function gaming laptop, simply for ease of use and not balancing a laptop on my lap/knees.

The result of my conversation with myself was that my usage was why I was looing specifially at the portability advantages, but not for lugging it on trains or flights (no much, anyway). But the other usage profile (restricted space or budgetary issues) are probably more commonplace. No doubt other usage profies exist too.

So my advice to prospective buyers is to try to be very clear with themselves why they're after a Steam Deck. After all, it might be as simple as "want one".

[Saracen999]

...

If you would go for the 256 then you might as well go 64 and upgrade the ssd as the 256 doesn't give you anything extra unlike the 512.

....

I've come across another wrinkle in usage options that might bear on that. Unless it's changed (or changes in the future) installing games that aren't in the Steam library will be installed on internal memory, not on either SD card or USB-connected external drives.

It seems to be a bit of a fiddly process involving either Linus-supported games or a Windows installation (still a biy sub--par, it seems) and as a result, is probably only gong to appeal to the moderately (or more) tech-savvy that don't waver at switching to Linus desktop mode and doing it there, which won't include those with a strictly console mindset (i.e. get out of box, game, never loo under the bonnet/hood) but the bigger drive is a serious advantage then, because those same people aren't as likely to want to start taking the device apart to change whatever is in the NVMe slot.

Which suggests that anyone wanting to play non-Steam games can't rely on the 64GB and an SD card, so needs to at least be willing to upgrade the 64 to a minimum 256, and preferable more.

Which begs a question .... anyone know if NVMe cards come bigger than 512GB, in the 30-size? I haven't seen any. Yet. A 1TB internal NVMe memory would be nice, if the Deck would support it.

Oh, the other thing by reading/viewing about this suggests is if buying an SD card and wanting to preserve best performance, be very careful about the spec of the SD card, or it could hamper performance. Budget cards will work (probably), but not at the best available speed.

[Rob_B]

I've got heroic installed for GoG and Epic, default is internal SSD but to change it to SD card you just change the path within heroic, not sure if it's different for other launchers (?)

22301Tb SSDs do exist, as for speed anything NVME should be fine as SD cards are limited to 100MB/s and they're not that much slower than SSD surprisingly. There are questions over the ampage of non stock SSDs but Ive not looked deep into that.

SD cards - buy a U3 and you'll be fine. Samsung Evos seem popular.

r/Steamdeck on reddit is a good source for what different options people are trying.

[Saracen999]

I watched one interesting (assuming it's right) video about speed that said, essentially :-

- make sure it's an SDXC card and has a little 1 in the on-card logo by the SDXC logo, and
- yup, U3 .... and
- application class A2.

IIRC, it was to do with the different ratings being relevant not just to large-ish files and sequential read/write but also to non-sequential and usually smaller files in random I/O.

Using Heroic is an interesting option and, for me GoG would probably be enough. I do much prefer to just install manually, at least on PC, mainly because I don't want my PC clogged up with game launch platforms .... one (minor-ish) reason I've resisted Steam for so long.

Also, while I have a Linux system it is very much from a user perspective, not a tech-head one. I mean, I installed it (Ubuntu) and as long as I can get it to install (via a package manager) the software I want (like Libre, browser and a few bits and pieces) I avoid digging into command line territory like a dose of the cl.... erm, you get the idea. I wanna use my Linux much like I use Windows.

I can get down and dirty if I need t, but I do it so rarely, these days, that it's .... unintuitive. It makes me work for it and I'm fond of just clicking things and have it done for me. But I know a fair few people with the level of technical savvy that they call me to get their TV channel guide to rescan, or to program recordings on their video (and yes, I mean VHS) recorder. Telling them to "install Heroic" is going to get a firm "uh, no" response. And that, I feel, is where a good chunk of a Steam Deck buyers are going to be at.

In short, it works for you, and I could no doubt get it to work for me (eventually) but it's still a bit of a niche solution for the general problem.

BTW, can you use it to directly load GoG games, or only via Galaxy? The re-directing to SD card is neat, though. Shame the SDXC-1 U3 A2 1TB Sandisk card I can my eye on is almost £200. 512 it is, then.