1 yr. ago • 45%

There Are Too Many Handheld Gaming PCs To Choose From Now

www.inverse.com There Are Too Many Handheld Gaming PCs To Choose From Now

Since the Steam Deck solidified handheld gaming PCs as a category, alternatives from Ayaneo, ROG, PowKiddy, and Lenovo have flooded the space with a raft of options. Competition and device choice has become oversaturation.

25 comments

Imagine competition being a bad thing. Is anyone complaining that there are too many laptop choices?

Steam opening SteamOS to other handhelds would be huge, though. Windows is painful.

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- There's too many cars. Wouldn't we be happier if everyone drove a Ford?!?
  
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- There are SteamOS-like alternatives for other handhelds though, like ChimeraOS and Bazzite, and in many ways they even work better (due to faster updates, more software/frontend options etc).
  
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- I mean it is tho. It’s just not easy to get working when your system uses Nvidia graphics.
  
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  No handheld uses Nvidia.
  
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  So the handhelds that aren’t on par with Steam Deck don’t pan out? Competition is still good.
  
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This article is so dumb there is like 5 different ones out calm the f down inverse

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- There's just one company that makes 15 versions...
  
  They're not complaining there's too many companies
  
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The Steam Deck wasn’t the first handheld gaming PC to market...

No one is talking about them for a reason.

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- I had a OneXPlayer 1S. It worked pretty ok. Windows on handheld sucks. Support sucks. Form factor wasn't the worst but was definitely nothing to write home about.
  
  I know about the others. Looked into them before the Deck was a thing and none of them were for me.
  
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Competition is always better for the consumer. More OEMs in this space tells developers loud and clear, we want games to be playable on Steam Deck and other handhelds.

Competition also drives prices down. Its a win win.

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- It would be nice of devs to start adding presents for handheld PCs like cdpr did with witcher and cp2077
  
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- And makes things find niches.
  
  e.g. the Ally that has stronger hardware with it's own ul and downsides. Maybe we get even mode variety. With gimmicks and focus on certain things.
  
  The best future is one where not everyone has one device, but peolle ask "which of these devices fullfill my personal needs the best?" and have a variety of choices with different strengths and weaknesses.
  
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  It could be something like a handheld preset with low med high within that. So like medium portable settings would be different than medium normal settings, so people with older handhelds can use lower presets and people with newer ones can use higher presets
  
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This is a FUD panic article. Trying to invoke the steam machine debacle to make the steamdeck fail is a poor tactic.

Confusion and inconsistency alongside varying prices and compatibility made the steam machines fail.

There is one* SteamDeck. Valve only advertises The Steam Deck.

We’re not getting an Asus deck or a Gigabyte deck. And I’ve heard people in the wild talk about the deck in a positive light. The Steam deck is never going to be like the steam machines.

*one in the sense that there is one model without drastic changes in design. Although the Glare-resistant screen is an outlier, most consoles have tiers of storage and even a pro/normal variant model.

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How dare a customer have options. It will ruin a companies ability to charge whatever it wants

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- To be fair, that is a big part of what killed the steam machine. There was no consistency so nobody had any faith in it.
  
  But that's very different from Steamdeck where's there's a definite "This is what a steamdeck is" reference. If you don't have faith in the billion of options you just use the one Valve actually made with it in mind.
  
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  Not having a reference model wasn't great, but SteamOS was a dumpster fire until they started over with the Steam Deck.
  
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Too many choices is better than too few choices IMO

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Choice is great for the consumers, it means different options for different folks. You want Linux, you got options. You prefer Windows, same scenario. This can be applied for every other aspect; screen, size, controls, offline play, etc.

Lots of options doesn't mean you have to buy each. Personally, I'm happy to see such a thriving market of devices.

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Really? I only see one acceptable one.

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This is to be expected though. When a product is massively successful, a lot of companies will rip it off and create knock offs to generate some income. I'd love to see competition from some real competitors though. For now, the steam deck is unmatched

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- I have a Deck and I've really enjoyed it.
  
  That being said, I've heard good things about the ROG Ally. I don't really know if it's better or worse because the Deck does what I want, but the folks who have it seem to like it better than the other handhelds out there that are full of problems.
  
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The ROG looks pretty sweet. Haven't seen one in person yet.

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