So, I kinda feel like buying before Summer Sale ends, but I have mainly one doubt. That is, does it make sense to buy now?
I remember reading news about the next installment of Steam Deck right after it came out. I really wouldn’t like it if I bought and next year something new came out and my device would already be outdated (not from a specs point of view, I know it isn’t particularly powerful or anything). For the same reason I usually prefer consoles over gaming computers, since generations have more or less a fixed time length (I hated last generation’s mid-gen upgrades) while new CPUs and GPUs basically come out every year or so. But this is another story.
So, do you know anything about the next Steam Deck? What’s your advice for someone in my situation?
Personally, I think I could put up with the next Deck coming out in, say, two years. But before that?.. I don’t know, I’m afraid I would feel like I wasted money.
I don’t think we’ll see a Steam Deck 2 anytime soon.
Is the Deck the best handheld on the market in terms of performance? No.
But if you ask me, it provides the most polished experience with SteamOS and probably has the best price to performance ratio, especially when on sale. If you want to check if your favourite games work on the deck refer to ProtonDB.
Plus you’re not limited to PC games, the Deck is also very good at emulating games. Mario Kart 8, Zelda Breath of the Wild or some PS2 classics like the Burnout series - it will do them all.
It all comes down to your expectations but if you want one, buy it now. Or buy it on the next sale. I got mine in May and I don’t regret the purchase whatsoever. Love to use it for quick couch gaming sessions, on the balcony or when travelling.
Also kinda unrelated but referring to your view on PC parts: yes new generations are released pretty quick compared to consoles but a build using components that are a couple of years old can still be equally powerful to a PS5 for example.
Had the same doubt a few months ago, pulled the trigger and have been a happy person ever since
The current steam deck isn’t going to be obsolete just because a newer model comes out. I’m happily playing through the new System Shock right now, and there’s a gazillion things in my steam library that I can install and run any time I like.
At some point there will be a faster, better deck, but this one is going to do me for a while. It is, in that sense, like a gaming PC. The lifetime of it isn’t determined by the manufacturer in the same way, because you can choose when it’s worth paying more for a better experience.
Like a gaming PC the first question you need to ask is “what’s my budget”, and the second “what would I like to be able to play”. When you have those answered, you can decide whether the current sale price offers value for money. There is always going to be more power available for a higher price.
I’d say it’s one of the best consoles (if you want to call it a console) in relation to emulation. If you have very obviously legal copies of your console games they run incredibly well on the steam deck. Installed yuzu and configured it and got SSBU working 90%, multiplayer (even local) doesn’t work, at least the last time I tried it
Battery isn’t the best so it seems like it’s made more for steam link instead of natively running the game but my internet isn’t good enough so I tend to play on the couch tethered to a charge cable
Buy it now you aren’t going to see another steam deck version for another three years probably.
If ever.
Steamdeck 2, never a 3
Valve have said they aren’t planning on a new Steam Deck until there’s substantial technology improvements, so I wouldn’t expect to see one for at least a couple of years yet.
Lawrence Yang from Valve said in an interview not to expect a next-gen Steam Deck for a few years still, so I think you’ll be using it untill at least late 2025 before a Steam Deck 2 succeeds it.
They invested heavily in custom CPU/GPU silicon, there’s no way SD2 is releasing any time soon. Especially that this combo was bleeding edge for battery/performance AMD has more R&D to do
Go for it. It’s incredible. Get the middle one. Anti glare doesn’t make sense built in. Get a screen protector for that.
Why it doesn’t make sense ? I hesitate to buy one too.
Because on the most expensive Steam Deck the screen has anti glare. Anti glare screens have somewhat reduced sharpness. That in itself isn’t a problem until you start thinking about a screen protector. Not getting one? Then no issue.
But if you want to protect the screen you start getting in this wierd place with no good choices. A regular screen protector will mess up the anti glare and you get the reduced sharpness on top. And if you get an anti glare screen protector you now have X2 reduced sharpness.
Better going with the mid range Deck, get better inbuilt storage compared to the base version which somewhat matters when you start tweaking the Deck. And now you can buy any screen protector. No headache. On the Deck you can also dedicate disk space into virtual ram which is great. Not so great on my 64gb Deck tho. I would’ve wanted a 256gb one for that reason alone and now I’m on the fence about buying a 1tb ssd and start opening it up. I wouldn’t have bothered if I had a 256gb model.
Thank you for those explanation, I ordered the 256go.
