Whats the current state of handhelds?

Tefal

Tefal

Tefal

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As title really what's the current state of handhelds pcs like the ally/steam deck? (Is there an msi one out soon?)

Both in performance and usability, example titles for me personally would be say BG3, wh 40k rogue trader, Gothic armada 2, rdr2, dune spice wars, coh3 (Darktide but I assume controler controls are poor for m&kb mp games) and assorted free epic games.

How is the screen for viewing on them is it awkward for games with text heavy interfaces?

Is there something big on the horizon that's out before April?

And how do you feel if you have one vs a sufacepro/15" laptop?

how do they pair up to tvs for casual gaming?
 
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PC World and Digital Foundry are two good YouTube channels for handheld comparisons.

For me they are still a bit too compromised to buy one unless you accept the poor battery life or game plugged in and use the Ally or Legion. May be some Chinese sourced handhelds that are updated more quickly to the AMD APUs. Such as the 8000 series chips coming out soon.

The Steam Deck is very close now though with the OLED screen tech for a modest game experience.

 
None of them are in an ideal place, the Ally has a few quality control/design issues, the Legion Go has some software issues, etc. the hardware on the Windows ones wasn't really designed from the ground up for a gaming handheld using an SoC with far more CPU performance than required while GPU performance is less than ideal. Not to mention Windows 11 works against having the best experience in terms of UI, disruption and impact on battery life which is already problematic.

I hope they persist though as a second generation of these devices has a lot of potential.

I have a Legion Go but don't use it so much as a handheld.
 
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Rroff said:
None of them are in an ideal place, the Ally has a few quality control/design issues, the Legion Go has some software issues, etc. the hardware on the Windows ones wasn't really designed from the ground up for a gaming handheld using an SoC with far more CPU performance than required while GPU performance is less than ideal. Not to mention Windows 11 works against having the best experience in terms of UI, disruption and impact on battery life which is already problematic.

I hope they persist though as a second generation of these devices has a lot of potential.

I have a Legion Go but don't use it so much as a handheld.
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1st gen is start and I think it’s a great concept.

I’m hoping they continue to evolve.

Ideally. Steam support third party devices like they did with steam machines previously as that would be the best route. Windows sucks for these but having hardware variety is what we need.
 
Personally I'd rather have Windows, but Windows 11 is just poor for this kind of usage :(

The Legion Go has a fairly decent screen but lack of VRR I'd say was a significant downside as often you are playing at framerates where that is at its most useful and stuff like OLED and/or HDR wouldn't go amiss.
 
I'm currently mulling over which one to purchase, steam deck seems to come out as the best, but not all my games are on steam.

Quite drawn to the Lenovo Go, but that has some downsides, issues. Might wait a while and most likely will end up with the Steam deck.
 
Tefal said:
As title really what's the current state of handhelds pcs like the ally/steam deck? (Is there an msi one out soon?)

Both in performance and usability, example titles for me personally would be say BG3, wh 40k rogue trader, Gothic armada 2, rdr2, dune spice wars, coh3 (Darktide but I assume controler controls are poor for m&kb mp games) and assorted free epic games.

How is the screen for viewing on them is it awkward for games with text heavy interfaces?

Is there something big on the horizon that's out before April?

And how do you feel if you have one vs a sufacepro/15" laptop?

how do they pair up to tvs for casual gaming?
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Text readability issues are largely game dependent. I've not played too many text heavy games on the deck, but haven't had major issues with those I have.

Performance leaves a lot to be desired and hopefully this will get better with the next iterations.

I'm also not really using it outside of the house. It just allows me to play from any room and very quickly switch between playing and doing other things which has made it my main device to game on now. If you're okay to game at a desk or TV all the time then you're probably going to leave it in a drawer and forget about it.
 
It depends how fussy you are. I've never been a gamer who's that bothered with high settings, and have just played through the ME Legendary Edition and Witcher 3 on a Steam Deck OLED. I'm now playing Guardians of the Galaxy on it, and have also been enjoying Victoria 3.

For the price, it's a fantastic machine and playing those games handheld is pretty mind blowing to me. You're obviously not going to get the performance on a 7 inch handheld that you get from a desktop or decent laptop, but those are likely to cost twice as much and I wouldn't try to play either of them on the tube.

In summary, as long as you can accept that you won't be running some of the most cutting edge games, or that you may be running games at medium or low settings, it's great and the price and portability trade off makes it more than worthwhile. If you want to be running the latest games at high settings, it's not for you
 
manic111 said:
It depends how fussy you are. I've never been a gamer who's that bothered with high settings, and have just played through the ME Legendary Edition and Witcher 3 on a Steam Deck OLED. I'm now playing Guardians of the Galaxy on it, and have also been enjoying Victoria 3.

For the price, it's a fantastic machine and playing those games handheld is pretty mind blowing to me. You're obviously not going to get the performance on a 7 inch handheld that you get from a desktop or decent laptop, but those are likely to cost twice as much and I wouldn't try to play either of them on the tube.

In summary, as long as you can accept that you won't be running some of the most cutting edge games, or that you may be running games at medium or low settings, it's great and the price and portability trade off makes it more than worthwhile. If you want to be running the latest games at high settings, it's not for you
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My main thing is I usually travel to Italy about twice a month 2 hour flight at least 2 hours in the airport and an hour on the train. I lug my old big saber 17" laptop with me but its way too big to use on the plane and the battery barely lasts 2 hours absolute tops.

It's sort of a toss up between getting something small and powerful but very expensive like a razer blade or one of these to help pass the time.
 
Tefal said:
My main thing is I usually travel to Italy about twice a month 2 hour flight at least 2 hours in the airport and an hour on the train. I lug my old big saber 17" laptop with me but its way too big to use on the plane and the battery barely lasts 2 hours absolute tops.

It's sort of a toss up between getting something small and powerful but very expensive like a razer blade or one of these to help pass the time.
Click to expand...

With all hardware, if you wait for the next best thing, you'll always be waiting. Everyone I know who has a steam deck is very happy with them. I'd say for your use case, the deck would be the best purchase.
 
Rroff said:
None of them are in an ideal place, the Ally has a few quality control/design issues, the Legion Go has some software issues, etc. the hardware on the Windows ones wasn't really designed from the ground up for a gaming handheld using an SoC with far more CPU performance than required while GPU performance is less than ideal. Not to mention Windows 11 works against having the best experience in terms of UI, disruption and impact on battery life which is already problematic.

I hope they persist though as a second generation of these devices has a lot of potential.

I have a Legion Go but don't use it so much as a handheld.
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I honestly think the OLED steam deck is by far and away the best. Any reason you didn't mention it?

It can basically play every single game in history, until you reach 2022-2023 AAA games. But then, most of those games (at least for me) suck anyway so it's not an issue. At that point, I'm not really sure what more I'd want from a handheld device.

Just as an example, i'm currently playing Persona 5 royal on my steam deck, at 1080p / 60 FPS on my TV. It actually blows my mind that I can play a PS4 game at max settings on a handheld device. It's even more amazing that Steam Deck's software is good enough that I can immediately finish playing on my TV, walk over to my PC, and carry on from when I left off (more or less) due to cloud-saves.

It's an amazing device.
 
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I picked the Ally over the SD mainly because more than half my games are not on steam. Replaced Armoury Crate with PlayNite and its a great little machine IMO. I do only really use it at home, but being able to link my networked hard drives to play games from (slightly longer loading but no issues when playing) means I also don't have to worry about it only being 512.
 
I have a steam deck but havent used it yet. One thing I struggle to comprehend the use case is, I would just use my PC if I wanted to play the game when at home etc and when venturing out not sure the best type of games to play handheld.

Would be good to see what games people play and in what use cases / switching been PC/Xbox/Steam Deck etc.
 
think you'll need to change game pattern to get the battery life you are after without plugging in. If you mix in some easier to run games typically indy or some older titles then the oled steam deck can hit over 4 hours battery life
 
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exhashdotdot said:
I honestly think the OLED steam deck is by far and away the best. Any reason you didn't mention it?
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Several games I play are not supported well on it, while playable certain features don't work or are glitchy. While it has a large compatible game catalogue there are still a lot of games that don't work well on it.
 
Tefal said:
My main thing is I usually travel to Italy about twice a month 2 hour flight at least 2 hours in the airport and an hour on the train. I lug my old big saber 17" laptop with me but its way too big to use on the plane and the battery barely lasts 2 hours absolute tops.

It's sort of a toss up between getting something small and powerful but very expensive like a razer blade or one of these to help pass the time.
Click to expand...
The OLED deck sounds like it would suit you well (I can't speak to other handhelds, I've not used them). It's small, plays 90% of what most people will want it to play, the controls are excellent, the screen is excellent, and to my mind the trade off between battery life, software, and power is most well balanced on the deck (but YMMV).

I was limiting frame rates to 45 and TDP to 8W on Mass Effect LE and getting 5-6 hours of battery out of the OLED.
 
DanF said:
think you'll need to change game pattern to get the battery life you are after without plugging in. If you mix in some easier to run games typically indy or some older titles then the oled steam deck can hit over 4 hours battery life
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Plugging in isn't too bad I don't mind carrying a battery pack +some of the trains and the airports have plugs (if can get one)

It certainly seems the cheaper option vs a compact gaming laptop. Taking advice from the general hardware thread for the price of a razor or a legion I could get the oled deck+maybe upgrade my desktop leave my saber in italy and have a reasonable pc either end and the deck for the journey. Vs 2.5k+ laptop

If I had an sd card/external memory can I move games into and off rhe deck as easy as j can on steam for the pc? Would add some versatility as well storage seems fairly limited na world where everg game seems to be 125gb plusses these days.


The ally seems to get better performance overall? But worse battery? Is that right? Does running Windows drag it down vs Linux?

Most of my games are steam anyway and as I've been out for mostly 4 years there should be plenty of older story games.

I understand on the ally front there's 2 processor options but no oled or mocroeld
 
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