This was a great thread last year, but Christmas came and went and I never purchased or built a gaming PC.
Imminent teen birthday coming up, I signed up to STEAM and have had great fun playing some older PC stuff on the Mac Mini in Parallels running Windows 11.
Was wondering about a SteamDeck but the ASUS ROG Ally looks very versatile and in fairness I think could compete with some basic gaming PCs with the benefit of handheld gaming, more platforms and ability to use with a monitor with a suitable USB C peripheral.
It apparently fries SD cards used to expand/replace the internal SSD, but I have enough 2TB SSDs lying around that I could replace the 512GB internal quite easily.
Daughter 2 has the Steam Deck. She speaks very positively of it. It will access her Steam PC account so she can seamlessly swap her game (BG3 at the moment) between PC and Deck.
Unfortunately thatās potentially the problem, if I get something it needs to be this weekend unless I can think of a good alternative gift. Black Friday really scuppers things, a) from a delivery viewpoint, b) as Iām hesitant buying too early and missing a great deal.
Hmm, if I was receiving it I would rather wait a few days and have the steam deck. But then I am not that ageš¤£ maybe get them a steam voucher for some games (I assume steam do that. And then stick a photo of the deck in the card!
She was at the Golden Joystick awards recently with WotC, where they won seven awards for BG3! Party started mid afternoon and went on until 2am - much alcohol was consumed. The following day I texted her to say that Mum had left home and would be arriving chez daughter in a couple of hours time and āoh btw, howās the hangoverā. The answer was not printable in a āfamilyā forum.
BG3 is on my Xmas listā¦.along with the Lego Titanic, and a bottle of single malt!
Iām swaying towards the Asus at the minute - the Xbox Game Pass compatibility is appealing especially with 3 month trial - there are nearly 400 games available on there currently and at least 4-5 which are on a purchase wishlist which could be played for free currently.
That said, I donāt quite undertsand all these PS5/Nintendo/Xbox subscriptions. Recentl renewed the Nintendo one but managing fa,ily things is confusing on the site.
I nearly bought an Asus yesterday, but no one at Currys was remotely interested in engaging with me - āsorry, none on display mateā.
Went there again today, different staff and had an extremely helpful chat with a young chap who went āout backā and found the storeās demo model - lovely screen but fairly rapid battery depletion as we played with it.
I nearly purchased it except for the fact he told me there was a new Lenovo to consider which they didnāt sell but this gave me another option to consider as there were some potentially better features such as kickstand and detachable controllers!
Should I eventually buy the Asus Iāll be trying my best to do so when that young salesperson is around. Iām not often impressed with the people in Currys who so often just want a sale, but the young man who helped me there today was so helpful with no pushy sales tactics.
The Asus has a larger slightly brighter 7" 1080p display.
Itās got 16GB RAM/512GB SSD and an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor (cheaper processor version out or coming) and a healthy GPU. On paper it should better the SteamDeck for game performance/resolution but itās probably not cut and dry in practice. GPU manages over 8 teraflops (PS5 manages around 10 I think).
The display looks gorgeous in fairness, but battery life is poorer it seems which is not surprising if it is cranking up performance at higher settings.
Looks neat to me but some reviewers prefer the SteamDeck due to the trackpad which the Asus lacks.
Price wise, the Asus is around Ā£600 currently, marginally more than the new OLED SteamDeck with 512GB SSD.
The Lenovo Legion Go has some interesting features - Switch like detachable joypads and the right one can be used a some kind of vertical mouse for FPS games. It has a rear kickstand for table top gaming rather than handheld.
It has a larger 8.8ā 2560x1440 display and is probably more of a brick to hold.
The majority of reviews seem to imply that neither the Asus or Lenovo are as simple/well-designed to use as the Steamdeck for those who want a Switch like experience that just plays games.
A lot of the reviews cite Windows Home as the problem as it gets in the way of the experience and configuration/optimisation is more fiddly - Iām not sure that wouldnāt appeal to me though.
All 3 of these devices would seem to offer fantastic fun, probably more out of the box platform support with the Asus/Lenovo but Steamdeck would win for battery life if mobile gaming was the main concern rather than using a handheld console plugged in.
