Gaming laptop or Steam Deck (512gb version)

Laptop would be cool to bring places.

Never owned a gaming laptop, so i don't exactly know what kind of performance you'd get out of one that is priced equally to the deck. I would go with the Deck, i think. Playing something such as Hades or Divinity OS would be perfect for a handheld like it.

Yes, but mainly to do other things than game on it.

Gaming laptop.

Steam Deck because I have a gaming PC and laptops suck for gaming on.

A decent gaming laptop would cost 3X what the Deck costs. And it would have like half the battery life. The Deck isn’t the most portable thing, but it’s far more portable that a laptop that will melt your thighs when playing anything more demanding than solitaire

The 512 is tough, because it's starting to get up there on cost. Still, as someone who has dealt with my Switch vs gaming laptops I'm still more drawn to the Deck form factor. But I wasn't a biter at $650 for the deck meself.

Desktop and steam deck. Laptops are hotter and louder than a old 360/PS3.

I am increasingly interested in a Steam Deck. I quite like the idea of playing in bed while my wife sleep or to take it with me when I travel for work (if I ever do that again…) perhaps it is time to go back to PC gaming…but I think I will wait a year or two to see how things pan out…

Steam Deck.

it just depends on your use case.

In terms of performance you can pack a serious amount of horsepower into a laptop. you will pay dearly for the option of course but its there if you want a desktop class experience but also need some form of portability (though usually laptops cannot run flat out from the battery).

Looking around at laptops that are priced similar to the Deck....well the deck is actually very respectable in fairness to it. the CPU in the deck doesn't look quite as good but it tends to have more ram, more storage and a stronger GPU.

Many laptops in the same price range seem to have a 4500U with 8GB of ram and a 256GB SSD for example.

but of course the screen in the laptop is bigger and it has a keyboard and trackpad for doing other things and more ports.

You know my choice...

But seriously if I was using the product to do other things besides games I'd consider a laptop.

If it's just gaming you crave... Steam deck all the way. Join the revolution!

It is never a good idea to join a revolution that is going to fail. 😛

Neither, I never need to play anything that bad where I'm taking it with me out of the house.

Obviously a gaming laptop. You can do multiple things like work, browse and play games.

Yes. Playing games starts to cook your legs and balls.

@omegamaster: although certainly more awkward without bringing a keyboard along, technically the steam deck can do those things too.

Get a laptop if you need to do productivity things on the go.

Get a Steam Deck otherwise.

Basically: do you need a real monitor with you at all times? Laptop. No? Deck.

@xantufrog: Yes, a lot of people are forgetting it can straight up act as a desktop PC.

Gaming laptop would be easier to get ATM, has Windows support, in general larger application beyond gaming. But the Steam Deck does have the benefit of being a handheld, which to me would be the main appeal. Seems like it should be a secondary device PC gamers would use, one that makes the games PC gamers already have on their Steam accounts available on a handheld device. But that's more up to the individual, like do they need to update their primary PC gaming device or if they are good there then get the device that expands the experience.

Right now though I can see a large appeal of the Steam Deck being a curiosity.

Right now though if I had any reservations it might be on whether I would want to have to deal with a Linux based OS I have no familiarity with. Aside from cell phones and tablets, this is a Steam built one, and I just have no idea what that is like, if it is idiot proofed, or does it boot up into a Linux desktop. I have had years of familiarity with Windows but trouble shooting Linux, like busting out some command line interface (if it even allows for it), seems daunting task to have troubleshoot a game and seems messy.

Given the short lived Steam console thing I don't think the larger gaming community really got much exposure of what to expect for Steam OS.

The Steam Deck can run windows. Lit a PC with a version of Steam Linux installed.

Can potentially do everything a laptop can do as well outside of gaming.

"We don't think people should be locked into a certain direction or a certain set of software that they can install. If you buy a Steam Deck, it's a PC. You can install whatever you want on it, you can attach any peripherals you want to it. Maybe a better way to think about it is that it's a small PC with a controller attached as opposed to a gaming console."

@uninspiredcup: Yeah, just wouldn’t be ideal to travel with like a laptop would be. I love taking my laptop when I go to coffee shops and vacations.

Laptop bigger screen, comes with windows, Go OLED screen, go higher resolution than 800p, its got a mousepad and you can use any controller you want

So does the Steam Deck.

It's going to be hard to find a decent gaming laptop for $500 my friend.

Plus all you'll need is a monitor and you can turn your Deck into a desktop PC.

Laptop for performance, but Steam Deck for price.

I'd pick the Steam Deck, tbh. I like its versatility and pricing.

@uninspiredcup: if it can, cool, though thought I saw an article that said that's being advised against but I didn't dig into the specifics and never inquired about it myself

For the price of the 512GB Steam Deck you can get an Acer Nitro 5 for $50-$70 more. I'm not sure how much more powerful the Acer would be since it would come with a GTX 1650 and we haven't been told what the Steam Deck is exactly capable of. All I know is that the Steam Deck is said to run games like Doom Eternal at Med-High settings very well assuming that is 60fps at 720p/800p. The Acer Nitro 5 with GTX 1650 can play Doom Eternal on High settings 1080p with 60fps average. If that is the case you'll get around similar graphical settings and performance but at different resolutions.

So to me it would be up to you if you really want the form factor of a handheld over a laptop and if you plan to often game in places where a plug outlet isn't easily accessible as gaming on laptop batteries isn't the best since for a lot of them the second you unplug it the device switches to integrated graphics or it uses only like 20% of the discrete GPU power. The battery on most can last up to 1 and a half hours at most if you game on the battery. Steam Deck is said to be able to game from 2 - 8 hours depending on the game and settings.

You don’t want to tend on the cheap end with a laptop.

Steamdeck.

A good gaming laptop is about 1800usd though

@ivangrozny: I thought PC gamers want nothing but the best?

@SolidGame_basic: It depends if you can spare 1800usd lol You can’t cheap out on laptop. You either get a good one or a mediocre one which will not be very good for anything. Steam deck is definitely cheaper than a laptop.

I went for the deck, but to be honest i see them as complementary. And if I didnt have any of them i would get the notebook first. But as i do have a one, I would prefer to get a deck over updating my current laptop.

Laptop. More bang for the buck, plus you can plug in a proper mouse and make it into a decent setup.

I guess it depends how much you're travelling and commuting, though, and what you're other systems are like. Would this be your main gaming setup? If so, I'd say laptop.

Laptop due to sheer practicality. People seem to forget that gaming is but ONE aspect of PCs. You buy a PC/Laptop for reasons other than just gaming. The Steam Deck is a mere console.

Deck. I'mma most likely get dis.

@Dark_sageX: it's actually not, no. It comes with a full desktop OS

@mrbojangles25: you can plug a proper mouse into the Steam Deck too

Id rather buy a GPD win max/3 by a chinese company than bless valve with that amount of revenue.

People saying that laptops are much more expensive than the deck, you're full of it. You can regularly find laptops on sale for around $700 to 850 and that have discrete graphics cards in them, good enough to run 1080p gaming for the most part medium to high settings. Not ultra though. No need to spend $2k on a laptop unless you want to.

I reserved the deck, but I also ended up buying an external portable monitor 15.6 inches so it can turn into a laptop when I need to.

They're people that are simply hoping the Steam Deck can give the Switch a run for its money. It literally won't. When this thing fairs to sell more than even 10 million units, I'll be laughing at these dummies along with other Nintendo fans. Normally I wouldn't care about this system. I'd just say "meh, that looks cool and all but it'll flop. Moving on..." But once those people started to use this against the Switch, I eagerly hope it'll fail.

None of that is what is going on. Why are you trying to push some bizarre narrative that people interested in the Deck want the Switch to die (and are deluded enough to think it will)

I'd take a laptop over the Steam Deck, but neither really appeal to me.

@xantufrog: He is overly protective of the Switch, there are other words to describe the behavior but I am going with that for now.

It has been pinned against the Switch, putting the Switch in a negative light, since this was first released. Most of the people celebrating that on here don't even like portable gaming, they just want to trash the Switch.

Once again, Nintendo fans are the least cult like of all the current fanbases. Real life supports that fact by the way. If that was the word you were going for.

If by "it has been pinned against" you mean "that one dude Hardwenzen has been using this to troll the Switch", then sure. Or if by pinned against you mean people have been discussing how much more powerful it is in other threads - well... dispute that. You can't.

But this thread isn't even about the Switch, and the most vocal defenders of this gadget seem to be PC gamers, and the topic/argument here is between those who are said defenders and those who are like "f*ck that, I want a laptop for my PC games"

Nintendo has nothing to do with this argument. Sony has nothing to do with this argument. Blaznwiipspman, who you weirdly chose to respond to, wants one of these and said so in his comment. He was talking about this vs the laptop... you're the one bringing up the Switch.

I priced out a laptop with comparable specs to the 512gig steam deck and it came out as significantly more expensive, which is how I justified pre-ordering the deck.

I look forward to you all impressions of the system. If it is good, I will bite.