Oh, the irony of including Apex Legends in these images. I still miss playing it 😭
The fact that it’s not just using steamOS like lenovo is very interesting to me.
Probably using SteamOS requires conforming to Valve’s standards and maybe they don’t want to.
Probably for the best to have more diversity as well.
What could be those standards? Minimum spec requirements?
Nice. Always good to see more handhelds that run Linux.
I like how the Game Gear lost hard to the Game Boy, but now their design is the standard for handheld consoles.
The Game Gear ate batteries like they were Tic Tacs, and it needed 6 of them at once. I don’t think it’s the design that held it back. It’s the power usage, and the lack of Tetris.
It was also gigantic compared to the Game Boy. Between that and the fact you needed to carry an AC power brick or 12v cigarette lighter adapter (or both) pretty much all the time unless you were swimming in AA battery money, you ended up carrying the thing around in what was basically a damn purse, like this one (more pictures on linked page):
And that’s the smallest of the several first-party SEGA cases for it!
Needless to say, despite its technological superiority to a Game Boy, I didn’t play mine nearly as often as I would have had a owned a Game Boy instead, just because it was so cumbersome to take places.
That’s the whole point though. These PC handhelds are also gigantic (as is the switch at this point).
They are, that’s true. I think there’s three big differences, besides battery life. First is we already have small phones that can play simple games and provide entertainment, so we don’t need an additional something like the Gameboy. Second is it’s marketed towards adults mostly, which are going to have an easier time bringing it with them wherever they are, unlike kids who would have to take it to school or wherever. Third is the game selection is massive and uses your steam library, which you probably already have a lot of games for.
And that’s a big reason I don’t own a Steam Deck.
I would be much more likely to buy one of those tiny retro emulator handhelds. (I haven’t done that either, but that’s for an entirely different reason: decision fatigue.)
Some of those retro emulator handhelds run Linux, to boot. I did a playthrough of Stardew Valley on my Anbernic SP.
the lack of Tetris.
Columns was… also a game where things fell vertically…
Columns was not an interesting or addictive as Tetris. It also didn’t come with the console.
Tetris and the Gameboy being sold together was a massive boon to both of them.
Yeah. To be clear, I was (also) pointing out how underwhelming Columns was. It was fun, but it’s a long way from being Tetris.
Good point about Tetris bring an included game - that had to help, too.
Columns
Hilariously, that style of game is also more popular than Tetris clones now.
I had family with a Sega Nomad. I thought that thing was a unit and I was so jealous of it. Now everything’s significantly bigger than that. I remember how anything over 4.3" 16:9 phone display was too big to be portable. PC Handhelds go up to I think 10 inches now with GPD Win and the lightweight one soon being a Switch 2 is 7.9" 16:9 display
Had a nomad too. Thing was awesome. It was a tank but super fun.
The Nomad + a car charger made long car trips a breeze. That was a damn good investment on my parents’ part.
I wonder why they choose to go with Manjaro and not Arch directly.
They asked chatgpt and it told them that it is more stable.
Orange Pi has been working with Manjaro on a steam deck clone (with touchpads). Make Zotac bought/licenced their design?
I would bet that for Zotac, they still want a support/integration contract and maybe Manjaro have setup to actually have a business plan now. SteamOS, maybe going to Valve for support is more expensive or they’re not staffed well enough to onboard Lenovo, maybe Asus and any of the actual big PC vendors
Yeah, with Arch the install and initial setup is the hard part, but they do that for you so I don’t get the point of going with Manjaro.
The snowball effect has started rolling.
Zotac only makes and sells nVidia cards, it’s surprising to me that they chose an AMD chipset for their graphics on this
It is surprising but it makes sense. Years and years of people saying nvidia’s notorious on Linux, even the creator of Linux going as far as saying “fuck you Nvidia”.
Two decades ago it was AMD (or rather ati) that was absolute shit on Linux. But they really got their shit together
HX370 running Manjaro Linux.
Hurray, one more un-innovative Steam Deck clone.
I’m cool with that, more choices is better, even if they’re fairly similar.
Yup. Most smartphones are very similar, yet I am happy it’s not just one Samsung out there.
I agree, but as a mobile dev I wish they’d leave the OS alone instead of “optimizing” it, creating new exceptions to the rule and edge cases in the process…
This one looks like my wife could actually hold it too.
The deck is great, but it’s definitely bulky and heavy.
As a SteamDeck owner I must say it doesn’t feel heavy at all and the weight is really well balanced, but yes it’s quite bulky compared to a Nintendo Switch or Switch Lite for exemple.
It looks larger than a Steam Deck to me? Especially looking at the bezels, assuming the screen is the same size.
As long as it brings down prices of others, competition is good.
I mean it’d be a lot cooler if they made something that actually brought something new to the table…
Hey at least this one seems to have trackpads
Wider adoption of handheld PCs is nothing but good news for gamers. Especially if those PCs are running Linux.
One thing about these handheld is that i feel like they’re price competitive with miniPCs and laptops with the same CPU/GPU
This and any other that will come with Linux out the box, guaranteed hardware drivers exist for everything so then it becomes about as appealing as a Steam Deck minus the price advantage Valve can do as a software store vendor. I already run a Legion Go with Bazzite.
What I’m waiting for now is a PC Handheld that weighs less than a Steam Deck that is solidly priced but is performance competitive with the Z1 extreme devices. At that point I would actually feel comfortable recommending them to people on the fence. The weight, price and minimum performance to be able to play at least Switch 2 level games. I think that’ll be the UDNA generation of AMD APUs
