Hey all, I want to upgrade the setup that I use on my RV. I use a Raspberry Pi 3 for basically watching videos and some retro gaming. I want to be able to play more resource-intensive games, although definitely do not require anything AAA in the highest settings - I’m talking about Starcraft 2, Shieldwall, TABS, Humankind… basically anything that runs fine on my 4-year old System76 Gazelle, that has a GeForce GTX 1650 card.

I thought I had to upgrade it to a mini PC and I was looking into some Beelink ones with good GPUs, but then I realized the existence of handhelds like Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally. What appealed to me is their lightness when compared with a mini PC. Right now I have a Command strip on my Raspberry Pi and I just stick it to the wall; I was trying to avoid mounting yet another thing on the shabby wooden beam of the trailer where I have the TV screen mounted. Also it seems that the mini PC fan could be noisier than what I’m used to with the Pi, and the handhelds would be better on that front as well.

However, the Pi and the Beelink seem to be better suited for connections - by that I mean the external USB drive where I keep my movies and series, the joystick dongles for our pair of GameSir T4s… if I understand correctly, the dock is what provides this sort of connectivity to the Deck, which means I can’t just hang it in any way, it would have to be sitting on the dock, mounted somehow to the wall. That is doable, but I’ve read as well that connecting USB drives is not very straightforward (I do plan to install Ubuntu on the Deck and use the software I want, not the interface that comes with it).

I also plan to do some light browsing/working on it when I bring it home, but I’m not too worried about it because if it handles gaming, it handles those.

Am I wrong in any of these things?