Valve Steam Deck LCD

I think people really underestimate the brand loyalty that valve has. They have consistently shown for 25+ years to strive for quality and I know I’m unlikely to get a headache if I purchase from them. Their hardware is really top notch, I have used a steam deck LCD for years and it was not until very recently that I had a single issue with a button that was easily fixable. Probably the purchases went down due to some people buying the steam machine. I’m surprised the article doesn’t mention that.

I bought two LCD models before the OLED came out and have constantly bounced between buyer's remorse (I only use one of them) and feeling okay about this decision. Currently, I'm feeling like it was a pretty wise move.

I'm happy I got into the LED from the refurbished sale, the price point made it attractive. I was not much into gaming but I've been having a blast, the lowest price point also was ok for me since I am 100% comfortable with DIY on the SSD. It is very much apparant I'm not Steam's ideal customer, but I'm happy I got it for about $249'ish? I hemmed and hawed alot thinking why am I buying a hand held pc for gaming but the switch 2 was sold out/to much work to reserve so I went for it and am really happy I did.

I bought a 64GB model for around €200 from someone who bought it for his kids, but these kids did not like it. I already did a lot of research on the device, plus i have over a thousand games in my Steam library, so this made it a very logical purchase. I ordered a 1TB disk from Amazon and installed within 15 minutes thanks to the IFixit documentation. It’s a very versatile piece of hardware if you want it to be. Game emulation is very easy. Open Office and Kodi work flawlessly. HDMI output can be done with a cheap chinese adapter. Bluetooth takes care of other devices. It’s BIOS is pretty easy and can boot from almost any device you can connect via the USB-C port. Even running Windows 11 is possible, because Valve supplies the drivers for it. I tried it just for fun. How to reinstall the (Arch) Steam OS is well documented. My kids love playing Lego City on it. I love playing Beat Hazard 3, Fallout 4, Skyrim and The Witcher 3 on it. Will i buy the Steam Machine? Depends on the cost and it’s possibilities. If it can run streaming media like Netflix easily, it could make a very interesting replacement for the current media pc we’re using.

While i have a LCD Steam Deck and i agree you can do almost anything you want on it, i do not think you should use it for a production environment. The design and supported OS is clearly intended for gaming the way Steam wants you to game on it. This works almost perfect. Couple of minor glitches here and there. But all Steam Deck verified games work perfect. As was intended. Of course i tinkered with it. Steam doesn't care and gives you lots of options. From installing Windows on the go to a sd card, to emulation software, to a full linux desktop environment. This is almost pure freedom, but it works far from perfect and is also not the intention. It's a superb tinker device. You can almost mod it to anything, overspec it, put it to other uses, etc. It's your call. It is like if Steam says "Hey you do you, go and have fun. We will not officially support it, but if you want to go ahead".

Huh, I have TWO of the top end LCD models, bought them specifically because Valve hardware tends to be limited run and I didn't want to be left in the dust when they moved on. Now the OLED is out, they're discontinuing the LCD models. Good thing I got two then! Feeling pretty vindicated about this. It's all a matter of perspective. Be happy you snagged one of the rare, discontinued SKU ;)

> How do the best integrated graphics compare performance-wise though A bunch of handhelds (Steam Deck , Asus ROG Ally) that can comfortably run even AAA games with 30fps+ on small screens (as an example Red Dead Redemption 2 runs with 50fps on my LCD Deck) with battery and thermal limitations would imply that desktop versions would be totally acceptable, unless you're looking at 4K on the latest big titles.

True! The Steam Deck LCD is a great retro gaming / emulator device and has outclassed many more focused competing devices for a while now.

It was released February 2022, that's only almost 4 years ago. 4-5 years is a good target for a refresh, I'll be somewhat surprised if there's not a new one in 2027, but any more frequently doesn't really make sense as the important components aren't improving in price/capability fast enough, and the initial release was and still is very capable rather than woefully inadequate. The motivations for upgrading are also different from a phone or more general laptop. I think the most common ranking of priorities for improvement would be: having various games run at all (mostly a software problem, Steam Deck already supports hardware ray tracing that various games now require), similar price range, better active battery life, physically lighter, and last would be higher graphical fidelity/performance. The things further down can't compromise the things higher up. Battery life advances being slow is kind of the killer. There's a point that they could prioritize selling to new owners over existing owners looking to upgrade, and having a more capable device would help with that, but I think the marginal increase is probably not very big. The Steam Deck estimated sales were at 4 million units earlier this year, but that's still a relatively small portion of the whole PC gaming market (132m monthly active users on steam alone by 2021). It has been a big success for them, but it still exceeded their expectations, so I think they also would be skeptical of any large marginal improvement o…

Is it? It doesn't seem to me that Intel can compete on performance per watt, which is what really matters in a handheld. From what I can tell, the APU alone can get to 45W in the claw, while that's the max power draw for the entire steam deck (LCD). Add to that the fact that MSI is not selling games to recoup the very aggressive price point of the steam deck and you just get a worse machine for more money