Microsoft did tablets sooner, but Apple’s IPAD got the credit for doing it right.
Likewise, the Steam Deck most definitely isn’t the first to attempt portable, handheld PC gaming,
but it’ll be remembered as being one of the first that you’ll actually want to use.
Moving to smaller and more compact devices always comes at the cost of less computing
power and more limited heat dissipation, but combining an older cut-down processor
design with cutting edge graphics tech, the Steam Deck just about managed playable performance in
almost every game, which is kind of impressive considering these games were never intended
for a battery-powered, small-form factored PC. And I know the Steam Deck’s been a great success
as it’s birthed a wave of imitators. And some of these actually improve on the Steam Deck in
several ways! This is good news for all of us as it’s ushering in an era of even more compact and
flexible PC gaming alternatives for us all. And at a surprisingly reasonable price-point. Thanks
Valve. With graphics cards costing what they do these days, this new era can’t come soon enough.
Obviously, Nintendo’s been doing portable handheld gaming for decades already,
and with great success. And mobile phones have games as well, though none I actually want to
play. Yet PCs have lacked their own truly portable platform, and I only really woke up to this when
the Steam Deck came along and did it right. Because before the Steam Deck, if you wanted
portable PC gaming then it came with considerable compromise. I’d have suggested you used a laptop.
But you can only really game on a laptop if still sat at a desk of some sort. I don’t
know if you’ve ever tried gaming on a laptop on a train or bus, but it’s an unpleasant experience
for all but those rare few games and applications which can be controlled keyboard-only. You won’t
have a fun experience using the corner of your laptop as a makeshift mousepad.
Having the controls built into the Steam Deck serves 3 functions: first, it lets you control
far more kinds of games than a laptop can. Second, it being self-contained does away
with the trailing wires and bulky peripherals. And third, you no longer need a flat surface
to use it since you’re already holding the device so you can use it almost anywhere.
Normally with new hardware, I’m looking for something to solve an issue that I have with
existing stuff, but the Steam Deck created a product I didn’t know I wanted and it created
new possibilities. Having a handheld gaming device has changed the way I play games, when I choose to
play them, and I even prefer to playing some kinds of games on my Steam Deck than on my main, far
more powerful desktop PC. Especially when in bed. So before I talk about the competition,
let’s quickly discuss what the Steam Deck gets right, and what could be improved about it.
I’ve already discussed this, but it gets the form factor right. It’s got all the controls
you need to handle most games already built into it, and enough kinds of controls to brute-force
virtually any gaming interface out there. Performance-wise, it is good ENOUGH. You
can never have too much power, but you can certainly have too little and the Steam Deck’s
specs successfully help it to skim above the minimum specs in most games and I’ve found its
performance to be absolutely fine, given its screen and controller-based gameplay.
And the Steam Deck’s battery life is also good ENOUGH. Unless you’re running demanding games at
uncapped framerates, you can squeeze several hours out of any experience, and I can’t say how long it
lasts in less demanding titles because I’ve never actually run out but I’d guess about 4-5 hours of
non-stop play. Which gets me a decent chunk of the way through most journeys that I make.
But you know the Steam Deck’s biggest strength? It’s that it’s made by VALVE. And I’m not just
saying that because I’m some kind of massive Valve fanboy. I might be, but that’s not why
I’m saying it. I’m saying it because Valve is in a unique position, unlike other companies that may
be making handheld gaming devices. Because Valve isn’t selling the Steam Deck to make a quick buck-
I don’t think they’re making much money on it at all. For all I know, they might be making a
loss. They’re making the Steam Deck to get people to use Steam as a method of buying and playing
games. THAT’S where Valve makes their money, and so in order to incentivize this, Valve is making
the Steam Deck as affordable and as appealing as possible, and as compatible with as many different
games as they can. Which is a win for consumers. I like that the Steam Deck is made by Valve, because
I know they’re in it for the long-term, both with the hardware and the software support, and they’re
not just looking to profit from the initial sale. I don’t think it even matters to Valve if people
buy the Steam Deck, or if they buy an alternative device instead, so long as they’re buying and
playing Steam-based games. As long as they’re doing that, Valve doesn’t lose! Valve probably
even wants to encourage other devices to use their own Steam OS! That’s their end goal here:
to nurture Steam: their digital distribution platform. So Valve is in a position and with
the resources to achieve something that few companies are able to do. And they’re
selling the Steam Deck at such a low price that even people such as myself, who don’t have a
real need for a handheld device, can still find uses for, and to justify getting one.
So those are the Steam Deck’s strengths. But it isn’t perfect.
The thing that’s easiest to criticize about the Steam Deck has to be its performance,
because while it can run most games, it can’t run them EASILY. Many newer games require significant
compromises to their settings in order to be playable. But the problem here is more difficult
than people give it credit for. The solution isn’t as simple as giving it a processor with
more cores and to double the graphical processing units- because the real limiting factor with the
Steam Deck is how many watts of power it’s allowed to consume, how quickly it can cool itself down,
and how long we want its battery to last. It’s a balancing act. A compromise. If you let it consume
more power, it’ll run the games faster, but the battery life suffers. But I wouldn’t even consider
more performance to be the number 1 improvement I’d want from the Steam Deck right now.
Instead, I’d like it if the fan was improved, because right now, the Steam Deck’s fan
does spin up and can be heard- not that it’s a problem if you’re using earbuds,
and it comes with a 3.5 mm port which is always handy. The device has many nice built-in features
and buttons. But its touchscreen is AWFUL. There’s no defending it. I get frustrated
enough simply typing my name on this thing so it rules out any sort of on-screen typing experience
from being anything but truly dreadful- unless using some kind of novel input method like this
one seen here. But that’s only needed because the touchscreen is so terrible in the first
place! And when I’m holding this device, while my fingers sit naturally on the trigger buttons,
when gripping the device my fingers strain to reach up to the buttons above them,
and often leads to me accidentally triggering the buttons on the underside instead. My hands
are quite big- but as a point of reference, on a PlayStation controller I find the top shoulder
buttons easier to reach than the bottom ones are. So it definitely sits differently in my hands.
But I guess the biggest downside I’ve had with the Steam Deck is its Operating System. Which is
strange because it’s also one of its greatest strengths. For gaming, the Steam OS is ideal,
as it ensures the best controls, best performance and game support that you can
get out of this device. You’d give up a lot of this up by switching to Windows instead.
And that’s why I haven’t switched to Windows on my Steam Deck. It would mean giving up the one
thing I love about the Steam Deck so much, which is how easy it is to pick up and to play games on.
Having been presented with that choice, I’ve opted to keep the Steam Deck as a simple gaming platform
for me. But some kind of dual-boot, quick switch between Steam OS and Windows would be awesome.
Which gets us onto the competition and the ways in which they lose out to,
or surpass, the Steam Deck. First of all: forget about the
handhelds that stream their games. If they lack the internal hardware to run stuff,
I fear they will become obsolete the moment the online services go down, either momentarily or for
good. I want a system that’s self-contained. Apart from Steam which I realise is online.
I’d also ignore the ones that are based on mobile phone tiers of hardware,
which may be good for emulating older games but fall short of the demands of PC gaming,
which in my opinion gives up one of the core strengths of Steam Deck-tier hardware.
There have been many Steam Deck alternatives to come to market in recent months,
but I’d like to talk about the ASUS ROG Ally, which I think would be the one I’d consider
if I didn’t have a Steam Deck already, and it contains things that most people would
see as being improvements over the Steam Deck. For a start: its hardware is newer, more powerful,
and can consume more power. If it had the same screen as the Steam Deck then all of this extra
power would go into improved performance- but because its screen is a higher resolution and
refresh rate, a lot of that extra power is used to drive those things instead, and the battery
life will suffer. It’s great if it’s plugged in though, and that extra power will help greatly
to get games looking acceptable on an external monitor of some kind, in a way that the Steam
Deck’s more limited performance can fall short. And despite being capable of consuming more
power than the Steam Deck can, the Ally still manages to cool itself better! I
was under the impression that the Steam Deck was limited by how much it could cool itself,
and that its fan was loud because it was already pushing up against the limits of
what was possible to cool within a handheld device. Yet the ROG Ally’s hardware manages
wins all-round in this regard. That’s great news for the Ally, and an aspect that will make
it more pleasant to use than the Steam Deck is. Though the most pleasant surprise about the Ally,
to me, is how affordable it is, despite higher spec-ed components. The Steam Deck’s 64 GB model
is significantly less at just over half the price of the Ally, but if you value extra performance
and a more premium handheld, then the Ally still feels like it’s giving you a LOT for your money. I
simply wasn’t expecting so much for $700, and with an even cheaper model on the way. So well done,
Asus. And THIS, I believe, is the right way to go about creating a handheld that’s more than just
a poor imitation of the Steam Deck! I feared they were going to price it well above this,
as some kind of ‘premium’ device. And some handhelds have, which I feel is missing the
point of what made the Steam Deck so appealing in the first place: i It felt like it was
costing the price of its components, but with its added convenience of being a standalone
gaming device, being thrown in for free. And the last notable difference with the
Ally is that it uses Windows, rather than the Steam OS by default. Which probably makes it
better suited to what I thought I wanted from a portable device… although it using Windows does
mean that its experience is ‘slightly’ less polished for gaming than that of Steam OS.
But this may all change! Because Microsoft, now aware (and caring!) of how rubbish their operating
system is on handheld devices, has expressed interest in improving, meaning that one day
I may not have to make a choice between a good gaming experience and general PC functionality
on my Steam Deck. And if this is the case then it’s good news for everyone apart from possibly
Valve and I fully support anything that makes handheld PCs more accessible and practical to use.
So what can I say? PC gaming has successfully moved to a smaller form factor than ever before.
The line between desktop and mobile blurs even more. The Steam Deck showed it was possible,
the ROG Ally offers a surprisingly competitive and more powerful alternative,
and I expect to see further advancements coming thick and fast, now a solid baseline
in terms of performance and experience has been established. Several big names are behind it,
and who knows? Maybe we’ll even see Microsoft developing their own
hardware for it. Though just like with tablets, I doubt they’ll be remembered for pioneering it.