Steam Deck launched in February 2022, which means that this portable console has been on the market for more than two years. Valve was very brave with this product and the truth is that it ended up being quite successful. In time, when marked a clear turning point, and it was the real spear that opened the market for the arrival of a large wave of portable consoles from other manufacturers.

Overtime was overcome other more advanced models like the ASUS ROG Ally which has a much more powerful CPU and GPU and a higher resolution screen. Those two years have made the Steam Deck one of the least powerful portable consoles you can buy today. but it is also one of the cheapest within its category.

Hardware matters, but it’s not everything in a portable console. The Valve model has an advantage in use Steam OSa specialized operating system optimized to offer low resource consumption that performs much better than Windows 11 on a device of this type, and its Radeon graphics processor based on the RDNA 2 architecture offers a balanced experience with a screen resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. .

Steam Deck in 2024: hardware and performance

Before answering this question, we need to take a deep dive into the specifications of this portable console, viz what performance it is able to offer and what can we buy for a similar price. By putting it all into context, we can get all the information we need to draw a realistic and accurate conclusion.

Steam Deck Key Specifications (Original Model)

• 7-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1200 x 800 pixels.
• Refresh rate 60 Hz.
• Custom AMD APU with 4-core, 8-thread Zen processor.
• Radeon RDNA 2 GPU with 512 shaders.
• 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory at a speed of 5,500 MT/s in a four-channel configuration.
• Storage unit between 64 GB and 512 GB. The 64GB model uses eMMC, which is slower than NVMe SSDs.
• 40 Wh battery with a range of between 2 and 8 hours depending on the game in use.
• Compatible with Wi-Fi 5.
• Steam OS as an operating system.

This configuration is quite limited for playing very demanding games. Titles like Alan Wake 2 and Starfield can only be played with acceptable fluidity 720p with low quality and using FSR 2 in quality mode or balanced modedepending on the requirements of each degree. It should also be taken into account that the 16 GB of memory is shared between the CPU and GPU.

For less demanding games, the performance and gaming experience is much better. For example, if we use previous generation games or indie titles We can easily achieve 60 FPS with medium or high quality. On the other hand, the Steam OS experience is very good and the Steam Deck offers total fluidity.

All of this means that this is not a console designed to play today’s most demanding titles. AMD FSR 2 plays its part and improves performance, but when used at low resolution and with such aggressive settings, the number of pixels is reduced so much that we not only lose a lot of sharpness, but Graphic errors also appear in the imagesuch as flickering and fading of the smallest details.

On the other hand, the issue of storage must be taken into account. The 64GB model runs much slower than the others because it uses eMMC instead of an NVMe SSD and its maximum speed is only for sequential reads reaches 300 MB/s. For comparison purposes, I remind you that a Steam Deck with an NVMe PCIe Gen3 x2 SSD would already be almost 2000 MB/s in sequential reading.

Unless we plan to use it for light games only The 64GB storage version isn’t worth it if we don’t have an SSD available and are willing to open it up to connect said drive. The 512 GB version is currently priced 398.65 eurosthanks to the temporary offer that Valve launched a few days ago and it comes with a carrying case, a very good price for what it offers.

General user experience and operating system

Valve has done a great job with the Steam Deck both in terms of ergonomics and controls, and the inclusion of Steam OS as an operating system has been successful. The build quality of the console is good, yes two touch zones just below the analog sticks, which make it easier to control games that are designed to work with a mouse, and the screen quality also borders on a good level.

Steam OS features excellent optimization, interface and design and is undoubtedly one of the big differentiators from Steam Deck. It is not found on any other portable console and is so well tuned that it already has a certificate of compatibility with over 15,000 games on Steam. This means that these games will run smoothly on Steam Deck and that the experience will be at least passable.

The screen’s resolution and small size mean that image quality and sharpness at 720p are good. In that Radeon RDNA 2 GPU resolution from the Steam Deck it runs pretty loose in many gamesbut as I said before, it’s already starting to show clear signs of exhaustion with some of the current triple-A titles.

Its quad-core and eight-thread CPU meets the minimum we need to move current gamesand since the console generation is still a few years away, this requirement won’t change, so we have nothing to worry about in that sense, that is, we don’t need an 8-core, 16-thread CPU to play acceptably on a portable console.

So is it worth buying a Steam Deck in 204?

The truth is that everything it depends on what you need, your budget and your ambitions. Generally speaking, the 512 GB Steam Deck with IPS panel is a very interesting option at the price it is currently at, but the problem is that there are other alternative options that have also dropped a lot in price and are better, such as the AYANEO Air Plus , which can be purchased on sale for 445 euros and is far higher on the hardware level.

Looking at the components that the AYANEO Air Plus comes with, we see that it has a Ryzen 7 6800U, an APU that has a Zen 3+ processor with 8 cores and 16 threads, which translates into higher IPC and better gaming performance, over the difference in cores and threads. It also comes with a much better GPU as it includes the Radeon 680M it has 768 shaders.

AYANEO Air Plus is stronger, has 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory and has a 1 TB SSD storage unit. Its screen is of the IPS type and has a resolution of 1080p. It doesn’t have touchpads and it doesn’t have Steam OS, because as I said it is exclusive to Steam Deck, but it is able to offer much better performance in games and is a better choice if our goal is to play. challenging triple A degrees.

In this case and considering the price difference between the two, I would go straight to the AYANEO Air Plus, I’m clear on that and Personally, I wouldn’t buy a Steam Deck right nowI’d wait for the Steam Deck 2 launch first, which honestly shouldn’t be too far off, or at least not as far off as it might seem.

I know what you’re thinking and what about it Steam Deck with OLED panel? This model improves the user experience by integrating a higher quality screen and its refresh rate up to 90 Hz. It also has Wi-Fi 6E, but in terms of performance it is almost identical to the IPS model. Its price is 569 euros in the configuration with 512 GB SSD, a number so high that it comes very close to the ASUS ROG Ally with the Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip available for 599 euros.

Before buying Steam Deck OLED I would go for the ASUS ROG Ally with the Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip. If you are lover of retro games and you plan to primarily use emulation, remember that there are alternatives to Steam Deck that offer a good experience and are much cheaper. I could give you many examples, but the most famous are the Anbernic and Retroid consoles. Both brands offer very interesting models for less than 100 euros.