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.
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.
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
IMO 40 with some drops is your best bet. My experience is that the drops are mostly during exploration and not in combat. I don’t think I’ve been killed because of drops.
Forcing 30 adds noticeable input lag.
Visually, it’s technically not impressive once you get the performance where it should be, but I think the design looks really good. There are spots, especially in some of the castle/dungeon like areas, where you can look over a ledge and recognize all the stuff you just climbed and battled through that really give the whole thing a beautiful sense of scale.
As a fellow traveler, a Steam Deck is an absolute game changer
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…
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.
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.
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.
