That’s an awful lot of words describing a device which is still worse than the Steam Deck as a portable gaming tool purely by virtue of running Windows. I feel like all of these companies trying to cash in on the Steam Deck’s success just don’t understand what makes a portable gaming device useful to the majority of players…
The article doesn’t specifically say it runs Windows, but it claims it’s an upgrade to the GPD Win 4, which runs Windows, so I think we can assume.
I understand this is lemmy and comments like this are to be expected but does it have to be for every post that is related to windows ? In general, I agree that windows has quite a few drawbacks compared to Linux but for gaming pcs, once the initial setup is done, you can just launch a game and it just works without any tinkering. I don’t understand the argument that people should throw away a whole OS and switch to a different one and lose the ability to play a bunch of games in the process. Doesn’t context matter when discussing the pros and cons of something? Or is there some massive drawback to windows for gaming handhelds that I’m not seeing ? Or is there some magic sauce in Linux that makes every single game playable without tinkering ?
Or is there some massive drawback to windows for gaming handhelds that I’m not seeing ?
The ability to suspend and resume cleanly, that’s literally it. The Steam Deck manages it basically perfectly, but no windows handheld ever has or likely ever will, it’s just a limitation of Windows. That’s (to me, and to a lot of other people) the most important feature of a hand-held gaming device.
Edit: Look at every successful (or even moderately successful) mainstream handheld device in the past… I don’t know, 20 years? The NDS (and derivatives), PSP, PS Vita, Switch… all had the ability to suspend gameplay at the push of a button and resume it cleanly at any time. It’s hugely important to anyone actually using a portable device as a portable device, and not just as a way to sit on the couch and play games rather than sitting in front of their PC.
Got it. I think I see what you mean but I’m not sure if I just got lucky or if the games I play have accounted for it but I am able to just suspend and resume without issue on my windows handheld. Unless we have different definitions for what we call suspend. When I want to suspend, I usually pause the game and push the power button once and leave it like that for hours and then come back and push the power button again to turn the screen on and resume playing. I’ve done the same thing on a steam deck and it works similarly there as well so I’ve not noticed any difference. Unless you mean the ability to somehow take a snapshot of the running games state and store in on non volatile disk and completely power down and turn it back on to resume. If steam deck can do that out of the box, that is indeed impressive.
What you’re talking about is what I’m talking about, too. In my experience, though, (with two different Windows based handhelds, one of which was a GPD Win, though an earlier model than the one being discussed in this article,) it works sometimes. I’d say it had maybe an 85% success rate, but that other 15%, it wouldn’t resume, or if it did, the game would crash, and a 15% chance of losing my progress is just not something I’m willing to deal with. I’ve had 1 case with the Steam Deck where it did not successfully resume mid-game, total, since getting one just under 2 years ago.
I’ve looked at reviews of a bunch of other similar products but this ended up being a major complaint about all of them. Which one do you have, out of curiosity?
I’m running a rog ally and the latest update has changed sleep from hit and miss to consistently good. I also bought it because the price was 1/2 of a comparable laptop(secondhand market) so handheld form factor wasn’t a selling point to me.
I have a rog ally and legion go but I only use the legion go for portable gaming so that’s the only one I’ve tried suspend/resume on and it has worked for the two games that I’m currently playing on it.
Haters gonna hate but the non-symmetrical placement of the analog sticks sucks for portable gaming devices. It feels wrong.
Depends on what kind of games you’ll be spending the majority of your time playing. If you buy one of these primarily for emulation you might want the face buttons there.
Best option would be for them to be modular so you can move them around as needed.
Yeah, kind of a weird opinion unless you’re only playing FPS games I guess? Two sticks to move and shoulder buttons to shoot so the face button aren’t as useful…
The PlayStation controller is the only one with the joysticks at the same level and the controller feels wrong because they’re at the bottom position…
wii u pro with symmetrical top sticks was such a weird controller to look at. never had one in my hands though. can’t say if it feels good to play on
Oh that’s right, I forgot about that one! Actually very comfortable
Might be a stupid question, but why is everybody head over heels about mobile game consoles? First the Steam thing, I believe ASUS has something like this in the works, now AMD. Why?
Who likes playing their big games on a tiny screen? I wouldn’t want to play Cyberpunk on a mini monitor while I have a 4k Display at home…
What am I missing? Because it’s cheaper than a PC?
What am I missing? Because it’s cheaper than a PC?
PC require you to sit and stand in a specific place in your house, even notebook are impracticable if you want to change room (still in your house). Handheld, as their name imply, you get the “whole” gaming in your hands and you can sit, lay or hang down “bat like” anywhere in your house.
It’s not about have the best option, rather have a suit case scenario for specific needs.
So it’s more for casual gaming, the advantage over a phone is having physical buttons. That makes sense, thank you. I thought they would be used as the primary gaming machine which baffled me.
Nah, the advantage of these over a phone is that you can play actually good games on these.
Mobile games sucks.
I think playing shooter games like cyberpunk with a controller is annoying but there are a ton of amazing non shooter games that I can play on the train on my way to work. Currently I am actually playing emulated switch games, but I have a few AAA on there as well and lots of indie.
I don’t think I would like to play a big title on a small screen, that would be like watching Dune on your phone. But for smaller Indies it actually could make sense, like puzzle games. But I guess I’ll stick to my PC.
I think it’s the convenience and portability that most people like, including me. They don’t have to be played in handheld mode. They can be connected to a monitor and optionally even support external gpus. That’s how I play big titles, docked, with an egpu and a monitor. But when I need to, I can just take the device with me to play smaller titles like sea of stars and mass effect legendary edition on the go
My Razor Kishi pro v2 makes my phone better than any of these windows handhelds.
Convenience, simplicity (when implemented right), and support for the full PC version of games with mods and all
Also, support for docks and stuff
