In my opinion, the fact that so many of these competing devices run windows just ruins them out of the gate. The fact that you can cleanly suspend and resume games on the Deck is its best feature by a mile, and I’ve yet to see any windows-based device manage to even come close to doing that reliably.
SD doesn’t really do it “reliably” either, in my experience. Half the time it powers back on with massive frame drops and crackling audio until I restart the entire system. And I know it’s not just me.
I’ve seen momentary stutters (like 2-3 seconds worth) until it catches up, but I’ve certainly never had anything as bad as you describe. What sort of games are you playing? Wonder if some of them just perform better than others.
As great as these competitors seem to be, I can’t help but feel that SteamOS (which valve still hasn’t released) continues to be a defining feature of the Steam Deck - its… really a joy to use.
I hope they do release it. I was looking into getting the Legion Go back when it launched but all the reviews between it and the Ally made me realize how much I rely on SteamOS-specific features.
Don't have a SD and haven't really looked to hard into the experience. What are the SteamOS specific features you mention? As a gamer on Linux who is eventually looking to get a SD I'm curious.
Game suspension in sleep mode is the big one. I don't know how, but it seems like they've perfected a way to suspend any game when the system goes to sleep and then pick right back up where you left off when you wake it again without any hitches. It works just like the Switch or any other handheld, except it's a PC and it's doing it with games that aren't made to be suspended like that.
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