The announcement of the Steam Deck laptop became a sensation.
Table of contents
- Not a game console
- Pure portable PC
- Messing around with non-Steam games
- Gaming laptop is still better
But let's talk about prices first. The maximum version of the Steam Deck with a 512 GB SSD drive was announced at a price of $ 650 or 680 euros - 42 thousand rubles.
From the “hardware” - a system on a chip from AMD Zen 2 architecture with AMD RDNA 2 graphics and 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM.
If you are too lazy to read, we have a video. Brew tea, it will be detailed
And all this for 42 thousand rubles?!Such a portable PC looked like a fairy tale. And, unfortunately, for many, it remains a fairy tale to this day. Even in Europe and the USA, Steam Deck is not available for free sale. In Russia, the problem is not only with availability, but also with the price - the first batches were sold on Avito for 500 thousand rubles. Now you can find offers at best for 70 thousand rubles, and the average price is 100k and above. But if for 42 thousand rubles Steam Deck is really a good purchase, then for 70 ...
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Even on Aliexpress, the prices for Steam Deck, to put it mildly, are not humane
In general, the miracle did not happen.Well, in general, sales of “pieces of iron” from Valve have always been strange, remember at least the same Steam Controller. So why did they even get into this whole adventure? And what exactly is a Steam Deck?
Not a game console
People who have never held Steamdek in their hands often call it a portable console and a competitor to the same Nintendo Switch. Well, from a distance and from photographs, it really may seem so.
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Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch OLED
In fact, Steam Deck is a full-fledged PC.on Linux with a proprietary shell. The usual “desktop”, by the way, is also there, and opens without any “dancing with a tambourine” - just hold down the power button and select “Desktop” in the menu that appears.
Steam OS desktop. Typical KDE for Linux systems
With the help of Steam Deck, Valve, the ownerSteam has two goals: 1 - to increase competition against other launchers (Epic Games Store, GOG, etc.), 2 - to dethrone Windows from the PC gaming pedestal.
However, you've probably heard that you can put Epic Games Store and even Windows itself on Steamdeck.That's just a simple and convenient gadget "almost like a console"suddenly turns into that buggy PC where you have to set everything up manually, and on a 7-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 1280×800 pixels, it's oh so inconvenient.
Pure portable PC
I'm sorry, what? Connect it to a monitor, you say?Yes, you can. But why? Well, that is, why then Steamdek? There are desktops, laptops, barebones, whatever. The essence of Steamdeck is to be portable, and when connected to a monitor, by the way, it also does not always work stably. More precisely, not in all games. Again, are you sure you want 1280x800 resolution on a monitor or large 4K TV?
YouTube anti-aliasing is special and has nothing to do with it. It's just better not to display modern AAA games on Steamdeck on an external monitor or TV
Even so:many Steamdeck games actually work at 1152x720 pixels, and up to 1280x800 the picture is completed using one of four (you choose) methods, one of which is AMD FSR. On a 7-inch screen it looks very decent, on a monitor… Have you ever had soap in your eyes?
Of course, you can withdraw at least 4K from Steamdeck,that's just the performance of the hardware is designed for HD, not even Full HD! If the same Cyberpunk 2077 on the Steamdeck screen with the “Steam Deck” graphics preset looks very cool (at 25-30 FPS, really), then on the monitor screen ... Oh, you better not see it.
28 FPS is still not bad, even on a special Steam Deck preset, Cyberpunk 2077 drops regularly and up to 25 and even 22 FPS (seeFor more information, see the title picture for the article)
Well, that is, if the same Nintendo Switch withwhen connected to a TV, it increases the resolution in all games (although not more than up to Full-HD), due to the fact that the GPU starts to work at higher frequencies, this does not happen with Steamdeck. The maximum that can be squeezed out of it is Full-HD in relatively old games, especially if you also want a decent frame rate.
Messing around with non-Steam games
With the Epic Games Store and GOG on Steamdeck, however, noteverything is so bad (just much worse than with Steam itself). For them, in the Discover desktop application (analogous to the app store), the Heroic Game Launcher program is available, which can connect to EGS and GOG accounts. I don't know how official it is, but it works.
Games from EGS and GOG, however, can only be installedto the internal memory of the Steam Deck, although the portable PC itself also supports memory cards. But the memory card can only be used by the Steam launcher itself. At the same time, games now take up a lot: 60-100 gigabytes is already quite an “average game”, if we are talking about AAA projects. There are more, by the way. And no “indulgences” for Steamdeck, as for the same consoles (especially for Nintendo Switch).
Fallout 2 on Steamdeck.You can play, but it's inconvenient without a mouse
But okay, back to business.Games from EGS and GOG are installed, but not all of them are launched. From the same GOG, Fallout 2 launched without any problems, but Truckers 2 refused to launch. In Fallout 2, however, you could only play on the touch screen or on touch pads, simulating a mouse cursor. Not very convenient, but purely technically it is possible.
In EGS, I had more games thatrun "well, almost without problems." You just need to go into the settings there, specify the version of Wine (an interlayer for running Windows applications under Linux), and it seems like everything. Sometimes even the gamepad was supported right away and without any settings.
Here, in principle, it’s already not bad - that is, all theseWindows games for Windows launchers run smoothly on a portable Linux computer without any performance drops. But the fuss is still much more, whether it's just a Windows computer.
But if you put Windows, then Steamdek is alreadywill not be so fast and convenient, and even without that, a small autonomy (1.5 hours in Cyberpunk on special settings for Steamdeck) will still decrease. And anyway ... Why put Windows on Steamdeck?
Gaming laptop is still better
After spending a week with Steamdeck, I can't get offfrom mixed feelings. On the one hand, I'm really impressed with how powerfully Valve has worked on the ability to run Windows applications. Well, the fact that you can play Cyberpunk for 1.5 hours somewhere on an airplane (maximum - 2 hours, if right at all at the minimum settings with a resolution of 1024x768) - it seems kind of cool ... Well, if you do not pay attention to the impressive size , and the fact that in the economy class of the plane you will shove your neighbors with your elbows.
On the other hand, looking at your regular Windows laptopwith the RTX 3060, I understand that everything is better, simpler and more convenient there. It also has a terabyte storage. And the screen is FHD with a refresh rate of 144 Hz. Although, yes, this laptop cost 130 thousand rubles, but it was brought to my house two hours after the order. However, Steamdeck in Moscow today also costs about 130 thousand rubles, if you want it to be delivered to you two hours after the order, or at least the next day.
These devices have the same price in the Russian Federation, in fact, plus or minus the same
The person who gave me Steamdek for a test,I ordered it from abroad at the beginning of the year, and it arrived to him only recently. Everything cost “only” 58 thousand rubles for the 256 GB model, but a lot of nerves were eaten. As my friend himself says, it would be better if he just bought Stimdek from dealers, albeit much more expensive.
Of course (returning to the laptop comparison),standing in the subway, I will not play on it. But… And you try to play on Steamdeck while standing in the subway! So the Nintendo Switch, which I often carry with me, is not a small thing (and therefore I often take the Nintendo 3DS on the road instead - this is a real portable!). She was scolded at the start for insufficient portability and poor autonomy. And the Steamdeck is even bigger, heavier, and runs on less battery. And noisier, by the way, too. But here already with a laptop parity.
Moreover, the extreme location of the ABXY buttons and the D-pad does not allowIn this mode, it is comfortable to play all sorts of slasher games and in general games with active combat mechanics, where you need to press various combinations of these buttons.For example, to hold YB or AB at the same time, you have to slightly "intercept" the Stimdeck, risking dropping it.
All this I need ... Steamdeck - of course, far fromfirst portable PC. There were already all sorts of GPD Win, Aya Neo, and others. Its main advantage is the price, but this is in theory. In practice, the price depends on where you live. And even in Europe/USA, let me remind you, Steamdeck does not lie on store shelves waiting for happy customers. But the Nintendo Switch and numerous gaming laptops are lying.
Therefore, the good old gaming laptop is stillremains the preferred choice if you are a PC gamer. Traditionally, PC gamers love keyboard mouse control and high performance - and if the first one can somehow be implemented or emulated on Steamdeck, then there are problems with the second one.
Of course, while there are still very few Steamdecks in the world,there are all sorts of stories - they say, he launches Cyberpunk at 60 fps (in fact, it doesn’t launch, even with the lowest settings, at best with the most minimal graphics it’s 45-50 fps), and in the same “Zelda” with Nintendo Switch you can play at 60 FPS, like other Nintendo games (in fact, at 60 FPS they launched the Wii U version on the Wii U emulator, but the Switch emulation on Steamdeck is still inferior to the Switch itself, which is lighter, cheaper and works at times longer).
In fact, Steamdek is a good thing.But it has a very narrow scope. It should be necessary for you at the same time: the first is to play PC games and the second is in a portable format - standing in the subway or lying on the couch (well, so that the laptop does not fit the conditions). If you don't need the former, buy the Switch. If you don’t need the latter, absolutely any PC will be a much better choice.
Although, once again, if Steamdecks grew on trees, or at least just lay in Eldorado at a price of 40 thousand rubles, the conversation would be different.
Prices on Yandex.Market are generally quiet horror, of course