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?
I would strongly advise passing on the steamdeck and just buy the Beelink.
Steamdeck is an incredible hand-held; however, without Steam OS, it would be crippled, and you are basically saying you need to put Ubuntu on it for work…
Steamdeck has the minimal tools to recover from catastrophe, but the process is pretty rudimentary and with a single USB-C it is a real chore.
Beelink would give you 45% of the Steamdeck experience (minus hand-held and trackpad support) just by installing Steam under Ubuntu.
You could do both… its worth it.
Okay, that’s an interesting opinion. What do you mean by 45% of the Steam Deck experience? And by ‘you could do both’, you mean buy both? lol
The Steamdeck is meant to be a PC that gives the user a console like experience. Part of that experience is the ability to play games with a controller, but not just any controller: a steam controller (trackpads + steam input). Without this, PC games are best played with a keyboard + mouse and that is not easy to do on the Steamdeck, nor what it was meant for. Often times, people overlook the importance of the trackpads and steam input, but this is the real hardware magic sauce that differentiates the Steamdeck from the RoG Ally or the Lenovo Legion Go, etc.
Yes, you could buy both; you can buy a Steamdeck for as little as $399 and a beelink for as little as $200… about the same price for a top tier Beelink that you wouldn’t need if you bought the Steamdeck; allowing you to drop to a lower tier beelink