I was a console gamer in my childhood and teens (Split time pretty evenly between Xbox and PS), spent most of my 20’s as a PC gamer but now in my 30’s with two kids I’ve basically transitioned wholly into mobile “console type” devices. I got a Switch about five years ago and played the crap out of that but ran out of “interesting, to me” games to play and when the Deck was announced I signed up basically immediately to get one and it’s been my go to device ever since. I have a Series X and an okay-ish gaming laptop (It has a 3060 and can play most games at medium to high settings) that I purchased to try and get back into serious gaming but neither worked out, the laptop was too hot and noisy and I hate having to take up a TV to use the Xbox if I want to be around the misses. But the portability and comfort of using the Deck just outweighs anything else. I love being able to pull up Cyberpunk, throw in some earbuds and play anywhere without my kids having to see, well anything, in that game but still get my gaming time in regardless.

So yeah, at this point the Deck has completely changed how I game and I don’t see that changing anytime soon, the convenience it offers just outweighs any other form of gaming out there, in my opinion.

1 TB non LE, Samsung OLED panel here.

One of the bigger ones for me, is after finally picking a game to play make sure that you give it a fair shot (I’m talking about playing it for at least 30 minutes to an hour).

Too many times I would install something, get halfway through the tutorial only to put it down and never play it again. I’m now seven games knocked out this year because I’ve pushed myself to get to at least the point where the game really “starts”.

Quick example but I just beat RDR2 for the first time this year, although I’ve played the first act probably a half dozen times at this point I made an effort to push past that and the game opens up so much in the next area that I basically spent the next week doing nothing but playing it and 50 hours later I had it knocked out… Finally.

After about a year of owning the Steam Deck I bought an ROG Ally more so to see what I was missing than anything and ended up returning it in about a week.

To me it just didn’t offer enough over what the Steam Deck does to justify spending $600 on it. Not to mention, Windows is terrible on handheld PCs, it really puts SteamOS into perspective on just how good it is.

Oh and the joysticks on the Ally are pretty bad, the right joystick specifically was placed in an “Xbox layout” to where it’s lower than the left but for anyone with medium sized or bigger hands it puts it in a really bad spot where either you’re using the midpoint of your thumb to move it or you have to really bend your thumb instead so either you are very inaccurate or it’s very uncomfortable.

If I’m super lucky, the Limited Edition. What I’m expecting, the 1 TB OLED.

Checks notes Apparently 2.5 FPS increase at 30 FPS is the difference between playable and unplayable. Okay then.

Apparently Valve should just never make a new Steam Deck because there’s always going to be someone that just bought the last one. It would be completely unfair to them. /s