I had an old MSI gaming laptop from 2016 which was amazing for me (I always had slow, 2nd hand laptops before) and now I’ve sold it and my PS Vita in order to buy a Steam Deck. I want to play Elden Ring, the Souls series, Sekiro and some indie games like Vampire Survivor. I also want to emulate games (Gameboy gen up to PS2 gen). Would that be a good investment or should I just go for a PC? I travel frequently because of my job.
I’ve sold it and my PS Vita in order to buy a Steam Deck
Sounds like you’re more looking for affirmation rather than asking a question. Also posting here is likely to get you the answer you’re looking for. So here it is:
Yes, you should absolutely buy a SteamDeck.
You can even use it as a laptop if you really want to.
No I’m broke. I had to sell it in order to get something new. I also sold my old laptop. And I still need 20$. I know not having money is not an issue for some of you guys but for me every penny counts.
I don’t understand why you replied to me with this. I didn’t say anything about money.
I got one for my wife last Christmas, but our 19-year-old daughter countermanded it, and has something like 15000 hours logged, while maintaining a near-perfect GPA.
So apparently it works.
Steam Deck is excellent for work travel. Easy to set up and play in bed at a hotel.
I’m in a long distance relationship and regularly go 4h by train
The Steamdeck is so worth it if you travel regularly
Sounds like a Steam Deck would be perfect for you tbh. Unless you are planning to play some rather intensive games, you probably don’t need a PC.
As a fellow traveler, a Steam Deck is an absolute game changer
Oh yeah I bring my steam deck with me on all my work trips (and fun ones too ofc). It’s makes work trips much more bearable.
It’s much easier to carry around compared to a laptop, less heat, you can use it on a plane all the time without being cramped, you can play it a few minutes, switch it to standby and then resume later whenever you have a few minutes more…
Yeah you’re constantly stopping and starting while traveling so the standby feature is clutch.
You won’t be getting 60fps in Elden Ring most of the time and as time moves on, there will be more and more games that won’t hit 60fps on the steam deck but can still be played. Starfield is a notable example.
If you aren’t bothered by that, go for it.
The deck is an absolute beast for indie games and the controls are incredibly good, so you can play stuff like factorio almost as well as with a mouse. If you fly often, factorio alone could make the deck worth it. They call it cracktorio for a reason, it just makes time fly.
I haven’t emulated much, but emudeck made it super easy (I’d almost say foolproof) for SNES and C64. Wii games are a bit of a pain because of the controls, but older stuff is generally fine.
I don’t have to play games on ultra 8k 4trillion fps. I could barely run Dark Souls 3 on lowest settings on my old laptop. So I’m happy if it runs well and looks okay
You will love the deck then
Well worth it given your use cases.
I’d definitely utilize Proton DB to figure out what games work well on the Steam Deck. The verified badge on steam doesn’t usually give an accurate assessment of what will play well on it.
I have had great times with my Deck, I picked up the 256 GB and upgraded with a 1TB MicroSD. I have to say, as hardware goes, it’s quite solid. It’s also very easy to get into the Linux backend and set it up for emulation and other side loading, and it does 6th Gen and back reasonably well, with a couple forward for the Nintendo line. I haven’t tried it myself but as I understand it, it’s a reasonably good build even for the switch. I’m not usually a device fanboy but I’m actually looking forward to the next iteration.
As for high performance, I can verify for Elden Ring, as with pretty much all of the modern titles, it runs at a steady 30 FPS 720p, with the occasional dip. If you fly long flights a lot, it’s great - just be cognizant of the low battery life and run on AC where you can.
What you have listed is perfectly fine for the steamdeck, you can load in plex and spotify as flatpaks and then add them as a non-steam program to broaden it’s useful ness when away.
Not OP, but do you know if I could do something like join a Google Meet while playing a game? Bit specific but it’d really be useful to me.
Definitely possible but you’d probably want a dock and a couple of monitors at the least. And your gaming performance would likely be compromised as videoconferencing is a relatively intensive task.
You can use Discord as there is a flatpak I would imagine meet would run as a web-app so open the steam browser login and go or make an electron/web-app from the page would be my goto.
Cheers!
Neat! (As a non-Steam Deck owner but eyeing with desire) I hadn’t thought about putting Plex on it.
Steamdeck will be a good remplacement for a gaming laptop and less expensive. Mine is 1 year old. You almost every games work well on linux thank to Valve and Wine, i don’t see any problems with your game. And you can emulate old game on linux but i never tried it.
There is some issue :
- you can’t play kenshi, city skyline. You will need a dock and keyboard.
- some game use a launcher that will block ya from playing it. Hence why some player decide to install windows. Blane the editor, not Valve
- The steamdeck handle well AAA title but it will drain its battery quickly. Elden ring can last 2h i think.
And IMHO, you should never install windows. Why ? To increase linux marketshare so video game editor work on their launcher and make them compatible with linux. And there is plenty gaming console on windows, lot pc on windows. Windows’s gamer have plenty options. So just for this one, we should accept the steamdeck as a linux gaming machine, for once.
When you say you can’t play Skylines, that’s just because you don’t like the control experience, right? I used to play it with a Steam Controller occasionally so I feel like I wouldn’t mind too much haha.
Yeah, it was slow i tried to lower the resolution but it was sluglish :( Maybe connecting to a bigger screen with a keyboard will improve the experience. did you see, there is city skyline 2 that is coming out soon ! this is a great year for gamers ! :D
I completed Elden Ring on the Steam Deck without problems and I assume the other Souls games would run even better. Vampire Survivor also runs fine, no surprise really.
It is awkward as a laptop, but for gaming it is really nice. It’s the closest you can get to a gaming console for PC games.
If your computing needs are light, you can definitely use a steam deck as a laptop, but while traveling it won’t be a great experience for general computing. As a game system, it’s amazing. I absolutely love my deck.
