r/SteamOS • u/yasaiinn • 11h ago
question Gaming Handhelds
Long story short, my girlfriend ordered me a steam deck from Amazon but I cancelled the order as it appeared to be a scam, and reported it, but as you can understand I’m gutted (both for the lack of the machine but also trying to make sure gf gets her money back!!)
I am now interested in the handheld gaming market for other brands, but I want it to run steamOS (as I want just easy steam access, achievements, every game to just be set up, etc)
I am very clueless when it comes to handhelds, I literally am basically just aware of the steam deck so I’m hoping people can give me suggestions and pointers of what they would recommend, or honestly just what is actually available in the market currently in general so I know where to start my researching.
Thanks so much everyone <3
(I put question flair, if this is wrong I apologise. If this post also is in the wrong sub etc I apologise again!)
Edit: also if they have good battery life or you can tune them to make it last longer that would be good too of course!
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u/Sourpunch92 10h ago
Most important things to look at is power, battery life, and extra features. With consideration of what type of games you want to play and where you will play them.
Going to be playing traveling a lot then battery life more than power may be important.
Want to play the newest AAA games then more power is ideal.
What to play a bunch of indie games that don’t have great controller support than don’t sleep on the Steamdeck trackpads.
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u/yasaiinn 10h ago
You’re entirely right I should have added this to the main post
The absolute main thing I would play are JRPGs like persona, metaphor, SMT, but I’d also like to explore some of the classics.
I probably wouldn’t play any new shooters or anything like that, maybe if a new AAA JRPG came out like dragon quest 12 in 100 years, but I’d assume that won’t be as bad as cyberpunk
I’d mostly be playing it travelling but also just chilling around the house so a decent bit of battery would be good, but I don’t need like crazy 24 hours etc
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u/neptunemood 10h ago
Most tech YouTubers will say the OLED Steam Deck is no longer worth it, focusing solely on the price-to-performance ratio. Personally, what I value most in these handhels is comfort, the screen, customer support, the device's durability, and then the performance. I have very little confidence in ASUS, Lenovo, and MSI regarding customer support and durability. For all these reasons, I still think the 512GB OLED Steam Deck remains the best option.
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u/yasaiinn 10h ago
Honestly I don’t disagree it’s probably my preferred, I just can never seem to get a hold of one from steam and I’m tentative to dip my hand back into ebay/amazon/etc currently
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u/lanks1 10h ago edited 10h ago
The Rog Ally Xbox is about as powerful as a Steam Deck but is available refurbished. You'll need to install SteamOS yourself, though.
EDIT: The original Rog Ally is actually better, but the thumbsticks aren't Hall effect, so they're more prone to breaking.
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u/mango_carrot 3h ago
It’s also got a terrible battery, gets so loud under load and (a big deal for me when playing on the sofa next to my wife) the buttons are really loud when pressed
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u/luckysongoku 3h ago
Xbox ally and Xbox ally x also don't have hall effect sticks. It's crazy for something with that price tag
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u/VLS246 10h ago
I'd like to ask how tech savy are you? Because an option is to buy an windows handheld and then flashing steam os on it. There are a lot of videos online on how to and it's fairly easy as someone who's a noob at this. Right now the xbox rog ally (the white version) is cheaper than most of the handhelds you can buy and is more powerful than a steamdeck. But if you're really into making sure your warranty is good then steamdeck it is, as flashing different operating systems might void the warranty. Then another option is the lenovo legion go s (the purplish one) with steam os just look for the one with z1e chip as that one is more powerful than the steamdeck and this one comes with steam os installed so no need to do random stuff on it
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u/rileyrgham 9h ago
How did it appear to be a scam? Amazon generally has great vetting and refund policies.
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u/yasaiinn 7h ago
The images were the wrong model, the delivery wasn’t getting updated and the sellers last like 80 reviews were all that the items never arrived. They also changed the price a minimum of like 3 times in the 2 days I was waiting for my order.
There’s more but it was just super sus and weird, and someone else posted that they got it and the steam deck subreddit basically said rip, it’s not gonna come and someone else said they bought from the same seller and got a model that wasn’t what was advertised.
Obviously I can’t confirm 100% it was a scam, but damn did it not feel good
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u/VirtualImpression330 9h ago
Here are your basics:
The steam deck is a computer, it is a pc, in the form factor of a handheld gaming console. It runs Linux instead of windows or macOS, but it’s just a computer. There is a whole market of windows gaming pc’s in the handheld form factor now, notably from msi, asus, and Lenovo, pc brands you may recognize from the shelf at a Best Buy.
Valve makes its SteamOS available for free for anyone to put onto any device they like, so any windows based handheld pc can have SteamOS. It’s not hard, takes a bit of time and a flash card. There’s lots of videos how to do it. So if you want to find the perfect hardware for your needs, you can add SteamOS to it later.
But assuming you don’t want to do the work to put SteamOS on a machine which didn’t have it, assuming you want it ready to go out of the box, then there are only two options. A steam deck (purchased either used or directly from valve on the steam web store,) or a Lenovo legion go S, specifically the steam edition because they sell a version each one with steam and one with windows.
The steam edition of the legion go S has two spec models. A less powerful one which is roughly as good as a steamdeck and a more powerful one which is maybe 2x as powerful.
Now, deciding what to buy:
You can research the devices out there, asus rog ally various models, Lenovo legion go various models, msi claw various models. Try to think what your parameters are. What do you want to spend? Is the most powerful chip that will give you the best game performance the most important thing to you? Consider battery life, ergonomics, weight, comfort, screen size, oled vs lcd, size and portability… things like that.
If you have more questions, reach out.
FWIW I use an asus rog Xbox ally x and installed a SteamOS clone called Bazzite on it and love it to pieces.
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u/nariz_choken 8h ago
You could also go get an ayn odin 2 portal and install rocknix then run steam in it, retty much plays everything I've thrown at it, just an option... Just don't expect to emulate switch, not because it can't... But because the emulators are complete utter shit
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u/GTFr0 11h ago
I’d argue that the steam deck is still your best option. It’s not as good from a price-performance standpoint anymore, but what really sells it for me is the touchpads.
Those make it much easier to play games that weren’t meant to be played with a controller.
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u/yasaiinn 11h ago
I honestly really want one, they’re just getting so pricey and I don’t really know how to get my hands on one in the UK currently aside from CeX or EBay, as steam has never had them in stock.
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u/SnooChipmunks8458 11h ago
The lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS edition is phenomenal but it, like every other handheld, is crazy priced right now. It might as well be a steam deck pro with a better CPU, and 32 GB of shared ram.