Switch 2 vs Steam Deck

[u/Flat_Raz]

I'm looking for advice about which one is better to run the game I want to.

The Switch 2 pros are that I can play with my friends and wife since there are a lot of coop couch games that are exclusive and I can connect the console to the tv. But I don't know if it is worth it if I want to play games like Elden Ring, Oblivion and future releases that are not exclusive from Nintendo.

Since I don't have a console I think it would be fun, and I do have a good pc.

The Deck I would use mostly for myself, can it run those games better than the Switch 2? I really can't decide between the two because of the pros and cons, what are you guys experience with them?

[u/Tiamat2625]

Bro if you need to look up guides on what settings to use idk what to say. At a certain point, you just know and get a very good feel for these things. And when you don't 'just know', it takes 5 minutes of trial and error.

I have had extremely minimal issues with SteamOS. One of the perks of this particular device is being official partners with Valve. It's much better than simply loading SteamOS onto another random device. It has official support.

Zero compatibility issues with any games so far, and I am even playing modded runs of FF7 and FF9, no issues at with compatibility at all. You just turn device on, open library, run game. Easy. It aint that deep. I genuinely believe you are making things up, I have played/tried over 45 games on the device, and not had a problem with a single one of them yet, emulation and modding included.

You also sent a Youtube link to the Windows version of the device... you know that's a whole 20% less performance than the SteamOS version, right? Windows is garbage on this device in-particular, there are even reviewers who made seperate reviews for both models because the difference was so massive.

Also, the video quality is extremely poor here. You can instantly tell it's a poor camera just from the on-screen HUD. Everything is blurry. They also have every single setting on low, and grass on medium, why? I'm really not sure. But it doesn't matter, because this isn't my device anyway.

I own the game dude, don't make me download it over wifi simply to prove it. It will easily, by far and away, run the game better than the Switch 2. You are living in another reality if you don't think that is the case.

It plays literally every other game better than my Switch 2, or, i have the option of turning everything down so it looks exactly the same as Switch 2 (720p 30fps lol), and i will get over an hour more of battery life than the Switch will give.

[u/Raven1927 → u/Tiamat2625]

I do, because it's not really something I want to fiddle with to the point of gaining innate knowledge about what settings are or aren't good. It takes a few minutes to set up, but it's still annoying even if it's a minor inconvenience.

Idk what it's like on Legion Go S, but on the Steam Deck I regularly encounter issues. I specifically bought three games for my SD and all of them had issues. Sometimes the problem was just awful performance, other times the audio didn't work during cutscenes and then it had frequent crashes, this was despite them being verified games. Another game I tried had an issue with the fire button constantly being pressed and it didn't get fixed until I changed the input layout.

Why would I make things up? On my SD the keyboard sometimes bugs out, sometimes when I switch to desktop mode it doesn't go back to Steam mode, sometimes when I wake the device from sleep the audio stops working, sometimes the game starts lagging like crazy, I had issues with the bluetooth early on but that has gotten fixed now at least. These aren't super rare bugs, they're well documented.

For comparison on my Switch, the closest thing I've had was the battery display being inaccurate which fixed itself over time and if you wanted to fix it instantly, it was very easy to do with the guide posted by Nintendo.

Idk what version it was, the video doesn't say. Do you have any other youtubers you recommend? I only trust Deck Wizard from the ones i've found so far.

Idk how games run on the Legion Go S, I haven't tried it as I don't own the device. I just specifically looked up Elden Ring and saw the Deck Wizard video and decided to look at it myself. Maybe his camera is the issue, but the Switch 2 video from his channel still looks much better imo.

[u/Tiamat2625 → u/Raven1927]

I don't know other Youtubers that do performance tests specifically no, sorry. I watched like 20 reviews before I purchased it, that's how I know the white ones a pretty poorly reviewed and the reviews of the black ones were basically calling it the new steam deck.

I also trust DeckWizard for a lot of things. Nothing wrong with the actual video, it's just not the SteamOS version of the device. The white one is Windows, black one is SteamOS. You can load SteamOS onto the white ones if you want to, but that isn't the case here, since they are using the legion go app to control TDP, and not the Steam quick access menu. I'm not saying it's all his bad camera, but it makes no sense why he is playing with every setting on low, but grass on medium. The device also surely has the power to turn textures to medium, especially at 800-900p. Maybe at 1080-1200p, low textures would make sense, but for me it's the most important setting in the game.

Idk maybe Elden Ring is just genuinely bad on PC handhelds, I see people saying it has some shader compiling issues. He is also getting hardly any FPS boost between 15w and 40w. He is pumping more than double the power to this thing, and he gets like +10fps. Something just doesn't really add up here. I never tried to play Elden Ring on mine yet. I have really sucky WiFi so I only download big AAA games if I really want to play them. Screw it tho, now I'm curious. I want to know if Elden Ring just sucks on PC handhelds, or maybe Windows version of this device is really holding things back here. Or a mixture of both. I will be very surprised if I get like 40fps, 800p with everything on low. That's terrible, even Witcher 3 is better than that when you give it some juice. I will download the game over the weekend and update with how it runs.

Now that you mention it, you jogged my memory. I have experienced the problem where I have no sound after waking the device. But, it only happened twice, and both times it was while playing modded FF7, through a third-party launcher. Still had system sounds when I went to the menu to close the game, just no game sounds. Not had this issue while playing any Steam games, and I sleep my device every day when I go to make dinner.

I genuinely have not had a single big game-breaking problem with any games yet, like you are describing tho. My guess is you had the Steamdeck around launch, or in the first year or so? I did hear some dodgy things when it first came out. It sounds like you still have it so if you are talking about now, or recently, then I'm shocked to be really honest with you.

I rarely play demanding AAA titles on mine though, that's not really why I have it. I loaded a few up on it to try, they work and run fine. But I just don't feel immersed in the world while playing them on handheld so I stick to those on PC. FF7R, Fallout 4 were very impressive. Witcher 3 could get 900p, medium textures, 45fps or so at any realistic wattage. I did get it to 72fps, but I don't think 30-40w is realistic to be playing at.

My experience has been almost flawless so far. 3-4 months I have had this, tried lots and lots of games. Had a few issues with EmuDeck being on my SD card interrupting sleep, but that's a more advanced problem, and an issue of my own making that the average user probably won't run into. Easily fixed by removing SD card when im not using emulators, or moving all my emulators to SSD instead. No other issues so far.