It's rather interesting to me how nobody puts any value on the Deck trackpads in comparisons like these, and yet they are basically essential if you want the device to be able to play anything but console-optimized games / games that are built for gamepads first.

Playing something like Skyrim on one of the alternative portables can certainly be done, but being able to comfortably play games like Against the Storm, Anno, Civilization, Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Homeworld, Northgard, OpenTTD, Stellaris, etc is where the Deck really shines and where all the "alternatives" fall completely flat.

Edit: Not to mention that trying to run Windows without any kind of direct mouse input is really painful, and all the "alternatives" keep doing exactly that.

So, modest but capable hardware, and accessible pricing, enabled by scale and software sales. The modern handheld market might have had its roots in the revival of pocket PCs, but it's by far at its strongest when it's most console-like.

This is "the point" from the article, which is that we expect a portable handheld to provide an experience like a console portable handheld would, rather than a PC in a small form factor. My two cents is that I've found the Steam Deck's "sleep" function to be very much like a console's, and it's not something that Windows does very well.

Yeah, reminds me of the original Gameboy. Weak hardware, terrible screen, great battery life, awesome first-party support, stupidly robust. Sold a hundred million or so. Up against the Game Gear and Atari Lynx, which although basically miniature consoles, had an unquenchable hunger for batteries and crap games. Complete turkeys. All of Nintendo's other, very successful, handhelds continue the same idea; yes, a Switch is really underpowered compared to the newest Playstation, but that's not it's niche.

Yes; you can pack more powerful hardware into the space that a Deck, or a Switch, or even your phone, takes up. But is the amount of fun you get from that device increased in reasonable proportion to its increased cost?

I have both the Deck and the ROG Ally. The Deck feels like a complete product and is great to use. The Ally is impressive when pushing over 100fps on relatively demanding games, but the overall user experience is garbage. Windows is a terrible platform for a handheld. I dual boot it with Arch now and can run gamescope session for the Deck experience, but I just recently figured out how to use ryzenadj for TDP control so I could see anything near full performance. The buttons don't work for navigating the Steam UI when in game. Audio requires a UEFI override. It's still a better experience than Windows but nothing compared to the "it just works" console style Deck experience. The Deck hardware is more ergonomic and has better designed controls too. Trackpads are incredibly overlooked.

I mean yeah, they just jumped in with random devices, tried slapping more powerful hardware in and windows. They want that quick buck off the back of the Steam Deck success.

I'm honestly surprised Valve hasn't made an open source de-Valved SteamOS similar to what Google does with Chromium for these other devices. Valve likely isn't making much from hardware sales alone, with most of the value for them coming from the Steam store being a mobile gaming storefront as well as moving users away from Windows where Microsoft is looking to compete with them. Getting competitors to run Linux distros with a user interface designed for mobile consoles would boost the amount of Linux gamers which would make Valve less dependent on their competitor Microsoft, make developers more keen to support Linux, and spurn further development for Linux gaming tools. These other manufacturers will without a doubt support Steam as a storefront since Steam is such a dominant force in the PC gaming market so users of these other devices would still be in Valve's ecosystem

Is killing the point? Just make it all better. Get rid of DRM and subscriptions to play your own games, let people use LAN and their own servers for multiplayer.

I think the biggest single factor they point out is the software side of things, in combination with the other factors such as hardware/price. Although the Deck ain’t beefy, it’s got enough juice to do a lot at a battery rate that isn’t terribly abysmal, especially for lighter indie titles and emulation.

The other factor here is outside support and adoption. There are tons of options for third party customization, such as skins, buttons, pads, cases, etc. Not saying these don’t exist for the competition, just not at the same scale. Kind of like finding support for a niche android phone versus an iPhone.

I had an ROG Ally which I just returned. Currently waiting on the Legion Go now and see how the reviews are.

There were a few reasons why I picked the Ally over the Deck such as the screen and power but the main thing really was windows for GamePass. I already use it with my Xbox so just being able to natively play so many games was a value I couldn’t beat. Cross saves also work well so I could play something at home and then take the Ally with me on the go seamlessly. I think the Deck is great but personal factors made the Ally a no brainer.

My biggest complaint with Windows is how there’s no Big picture mode for the Xbox app. Steam on windows does better than Microsoft on its own platform. I hope there’s a fox for it at some point. Sleep is also really annoying but wasn’t that big of a deal breaker. Otherwise windows hasn’t been so bad. I’ve been enjoying using it as a desktop as well coding or watching Netflix etc. I know that goes against the grain in this community but there is definitely a place for Windows handhelds in the market. Now let’s hope Microsoft sees that and makes some changes so it works as flawlessly (at least 90% cmon) as the Deck does.

For some people yeah. I just want a portable Windows PC that I can game with so something like the Ally is perfect for me. I also play a lot of games on Game Pass.