Whats the current state of handhelds?

[DanF]

yeah just from my understanding of watching reviews etc, some of the others use a more powerful apu but accessing this power nukes the battery harder, couple this with being on windows as well with some games being less efficient and battery life can be much lower

steam deck is just plug and play for most games, some need a little setting up if they have other launchers. If you go the emulation route as well those games can appear in your library menu making everything feels nicely integrated to a frontend setup for the decks controls

check out some games on here to see how they run (there's a mod to get these ratings in to the steam deck library)

https://www.protondb.com

most of what you listed are gold or platinum so will run fine. I've played a few gold rated games with no issues. With the screen being so small having some settings turned down isn't really an issue either

 

[mountaincow]

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

If you can, why not just grab a deck since it's a safe choice and then you'll know if current handhelds suit you well enough. I'm a cheapskate so if I wasn't sure and in your position I'd get a cheap LCD deck. You can always sell and pick up an OLED or something else if you feel like it's worth it.
I have an LCD deck and will definitely be getting the next version, since I use it most days instead of my tower, I know it's worth it for me.

 

[mountaincow]

@Tefal Don't forget the trackpads on the deck. I wouldn't bother with another device that didn't have them. Much better than joystick if you're used to mouse and keyboard IMO. You can rebound them to anything else you want and create touch menus if you need too.

 

[exhashdotdot]

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

If most of your games are steam then the deck is a no brainer.

 

[Rroff]

@Tefal Don't forget the trackpads on the deck. I wouldn't bother with another device that didn't have them. Much better than joystick if you're used to mouse and keyboard IMO. You can rebound them to anything else you want and create touch menus if you need too.

The Legion Go has a trackpad on one of the controllers and you can detach one of the controllers and use it kind of like a mouse (though it isn't great IMO for that).

Personally though there is a lot I like about my Go and I wouldn't change it for one of the others, these devices are very much "generation 1" with a lot of improvements which could be made - the Ally and Go are a bit crazy in that the CPU is considerably more powerful than required (which is nice for my uses to be fair) while the GPU is relatively underwhelming. Personally I'm quite often in a situation where I'll have a keyboard/mouse available and often a monitor but it is handy to have my own device, the Go saves lugging a full sized laptop around, and more powerful than my GPD Pocket, and with the kickstand I can just use it like that.

One negative IMO with the Go is the M.2 is 2242 and they could have easily made it 2280 and you have to be careful what you put in due to potential problems with heat if you upgrade the M.2. a small but nice improvement would have been having a small access hatch to the M.2 with 2280 format for easy swapping out, though the back isn't that bad to get off it would have been far easier with a single screw hatch.

 

[mountaincow]

The Legion Go has a trackpad on one of the controllers and you can detach one of the controllers and use it kind of like a mouse (though it isn't great IMO for that).

Personally though there is a lot I like about my Go and I wouldn't change it for one of the others, these devices are very much "generation 1" with a lot of improvements which could be made - the Ally and Go are a bit crazy in that the CPU is considerably more powerful than required (which is nice for my uses to be fair) while the GPU is relatively underwhelming. Personally I'm quite often in a situation where I'll have a keyboard/mouse available and often a monitor but it is handy to have my own device, the Go saves lugging a full sized laptop around, and more powerful than my GPD Pocket, and with the kickstand I can just use it like that.

One negative IMO with the Go is the M.2 is 2242 and they could have easily made it 2280 and you have to be careful what you put in due to potential problems with heat if you upgrade the M.2. a small but nice improvement would have been having a small access hatch to the M.2 with 2280 format for easy swapping out, though the back isn't that bad to get off it would have been far easier with a single screw hatch.

I've not used the Go. That's good that it has a trackpad.

 

[Rroff]

I've not used the Go. That's good that it has a trackpad.

Most people including many reviewers miss it has one because it is barely 3cm long and wide and doesn't stand out from the controller body. Personally don't find it that useful but a handy fallback if you are doing something that doesn't work well in Windows with touch functionality.

EDIT: I've not checked but I don't think you can use it like the Deck with a custom image overlay and remapping zones to function as buttons (I believe it is a separate raw input device though so it could be repurposed in that way in software if someone was determined to do so).

 

[mountaincow]

EDIT: I've not checked but I don't think you can use it like the Deck with a custom image overlay and remapping zones to function as buttons (I believe it is a separate raw input device though so it could be repurposed in that way in software if someone was determined to do so).

That's a shame. I'm hopeful that Valve will come up with some kind of genetic API that supports trackpads. I'm not too sure what work would be required, but it would be awesome if they could.

 

[Rroff]

That's a shame. I'm hopeful that Valve will come up with some kind of genetic API that supports trackpads. I'm not too sure what work would be required, but it would be awesome if they could.

I'd assume on Windows anyway the trackpad would appear as a separate raw input device so software could simply register for input from it and convert the X and Y values into custom button mapping. For devices other than keyboards or mice (for security reasons) any software can register to receive background updates of the device state (RIDEV_INPUTSINK flag) and then convert that into input a game or other application would recognise so any game could simply be mapped to regular keys without having to understand the trackpad itself.

Not sure how that would work with cheat detection in some games which might be fussy about where button states are coming from though.

EDIT: Slightly more complicated could be stopping the trackpad inputs being processed through as normal mouse input as IIRC only the top level window can tell the OS to ignore those inputs.

 

[mountaincow]

I'd assume on Windows anyway the trackpad would appear as a separate raw input device so software could simply register for input from it and convert the X and Y values into custom button mapping. For devices other than keyboards or mice (for security reasons) any software can register to receive background updates of the device state (RIDEV_INPUTSINK flag) and then convert that into input a game or other application would recognise so any game could simply be mapped to regular keys without having to understand the trackpad itself.

Not sure how that would work with cheat detection in some games which might be fussy about where button states are coming from though.

EDIT: Slightly more complicated could be stopping the trackpad inputs being processed through as normal mouse input as IIRC only the top level window can tell the OS to ignore those inputs.

Like I said I don't really know what's stopping it from working with steam input. If a trackpad can just be recognised as a mouse then it seems to me that it's probably that they don't want to open up remapping mouse and keyboard to controller input to everyone that uses Steam.

As seen in another thread here, there's some recent activity exposing people for doing this to exploit controller aim assist in multiplayer games. I don't think this is a good enough reason since people who want to exploit these things will through any means, but I'm not Valve. Long term this support should happen.

 

[Tefal]

So think I'm going to go with the steam deck, the ally having it seems a bit more performance/resolution but more overall issues and higher price.


Just one last thing am I right that the 512gb steam deck has the glossy oled screen and the 1tb steamdeck has an etched matte screen? I can find a lot of people talking about it but the steam page doesn't actualy mention the screens being different just some unique themes/keyboard for the 1tb on.


I want the glossy screen

 

[DanF]

yeah 512 is the glossy version and should be Samsung panel

 

[mountaincow]

So think I'm going to go with the steam deck, the ally having it seems a bit more performance/resolution but more overall issues and higher price.


Just one last thing am I right that the 512gb steam deck has the glossy oled screen and the 1tb steamdeck has an etched matte screen? I can find a lot of people talking about it but the steam page doesn't actualy mention the screens being different just some unique themes/keyboard for the 1tb on.


I want the glossy screen

It does actually state this, but I get being confused when the terms people use are glossy/matte. The "matte" version is the one with "anti-glare etched glass" which is the 1TB OLED or the 512GB LCD.

 

[Rroff]

Dunno if there is a specific thread for it - couldn't find it quickly - but the MSI Claw is NOT getting good reviews from people who've had extended hands on with it.