I love steam sales :3
I have 512GB LCD and 1TB OLED, I was too lazy to put up a listing for the LCD yet but does 350€ seem reasonable? It’s from the pre-order batch so it’s one of those early units (with the better fan)
Steam Deck was the best tech expenditure I’ve made in the last five years.
Honestly coolest piece of tech since the iphone.
I assume this means they’re trying to clear out the LCD stock and be OLED-only soon?
Been checking the refurb page for weeks now. I’m about to pull the trigger on this.
Any recommendations for a budget dock that I can buy from somewhere other than amazon? I’ve been boycotting amazon since pre-covid and I dont intend to break that here. I’d love to find something cheaper than the official valve one though.
Accessories like this are always the hardest thing to find direct from the manufacturer/on other platforms.
Same here with not wanting to further fund Amazon. All I can say is beware of eBay sellers, because I’ve ordered like four things from eBay and they still drop shipped from Amazon. Frustrating.
Any recommendations for a budget dock
I don’t know if it’s the type you’re looking for but I’m quite happy with my Genki Covert Dock. It does the job quite well, and the portability is nice to have.
This isnt quite what I had in mind, but I didnt even know form factors like this were an option! I think this exactly meets my criteria
Ah… damm.
Not… from not Amazon, no.
But maybe you can find this somewhere else?
Behold… I call this thing… the DockStand.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0BRXZDWDV?psc=1
Somehow, a kickstand, and a sort of bare bones dock, at the same time, that just securely clips on to the exterior of the Deck, no screwdrivers or adhesive required.
Currently under $25.
It has worked flawlessly for me.
It is …yeah, barebones, but quite functional.
Gives you an HDMI port, 2 usb A 3 ports, and an additional microsd slot, which only works when the power is run through the dockstand, and also … does not have a spring release mechanism, it is literally just a slot, and the properly seated card just sticks out a little bit.
Janky? Yes.
But also, cheap, and functional.
Particularly if you are like me and spend a lot of Deck time basically just using it as a big phone to watch videos on… the kick stand is good for that lol.
Like, you can find just kickstands alone, with no dock like capabilities… for about the same price.
I ended up pairing this with i think a jsaux replacement power adapter that also came with a 90 degree joint adapter mabob for the usb c power source… I had been using the power adapter that came with the deck so much that i managed to start destroying the cable.
Also, at least with my… I guess average sized hands for a dude? … I have never had a problem with the DockStand getting in the way of my hands and the controls while playing.
I have a cheap Ivoler brand dock and it’s worked really well. Not sure where to buy it besides Amazon though.
I would specifically recommend against buying from Jsaux’s website though, their website isn’t actually safe to buy from.
What’s wrong with the jsaux website?
Emails and other information used to buy from Jsaux’s website were being sold/passed on to spam advertisers some how. Jsaux denied they were doing it, and it’s possible it could be the company they use for payment processing or something, but it was definitely happening when using their site.
Gamingonlinux had a couple articles on it, but for some reason I’m having trouble finding them.
Wait I thought consoles are supposed to be getting more expensive for old hardware? Did Valve miss the memo?
Valve originally expected to lose money on every Steam Deck sold, but thanks to high volume of units sold and other factors this ended up not being the case. Even with tariffs affecting that bottom line, I think the Decks still ended up being more profitable than they ever expected and they can afford to do sales like this, even if they potentially result in hardware being sold at a loss.
Speaking of which, @Railcar8095@lemm.ee you told me 6 months ago to ping you if tariffs come into effect and the price of the deck doesn’t increase.
FYI lemm.ee doesnt exist anymore but maybe @Railcar8095@lemmy.world is the same person?
My dude Railcar, we are all waiting for your reaction on the price of the steam deck over here.
It’s me haha! But the tariffs war are on hold with the most outrageous frozen until November so…
And this is on a sale of the first version? I would be surprised about a permanent across the board discount, not this.
Sorry, but:
It’s me,
DioRailcar!Yep, yep, I’m never gonna get that baseline level of internet brain poisoning down to zero, am I. -sigh-
You fell for it, fool!
Ahhhhhh i need charge to my ham sandwich or something!
jfc jojo is a fucking fever dream
I assume they already have the hardware built and are bascially liquidating it. The 256 seemed a bit of a black sheep in the units, with most people choosing the 64 and upgrading storage themselves, or the 512 to maximize storage from factory + screen upgrade.
Mostly though just making a joke that valve is supposed to be following market trends and hiking the price regardless of actual conditions. The shareholders would be in shambles, if they had any.
It’s me! Do you have the comment by any chance or just remember by heart? As mentioned below, the tariffs are mostly in hold until November (or people start asking again about some files and a distraction is needed).
I vaguely remembered being told to ping someone over tariffs, so I did a search for tariffs within the community. The first post that came up was the one, and I found both your comment and mine pretty easily. Here’s the sopuli link to it.
Valve is paying the tariffs for now, like most businesses do, but as an overall tactic it’s unsustainable for the long run. And half of them aren’t actually in effect yet anyway because trump keeps pushing the dates back.
My guess would be that they are literally just doing a clearance sale on excess stock to free up some warehouse space somewhere.
Warehouse rent costs money, maybe they dont wanna pay it for nothing, or maybe that’re working on some new shit they need that space for.
New one was in testing a while back so maybe they want to clear everything to build demand up
Valve originally expected to lose money on every Steam Deck sold, but thanks to high volume of units sold and other factors this ended up not being the case.
Link? I thought they never confirmed whether they were making a profit on hardware or not
I’m not sure they ever said it explicitly, but they said that selling the original 64GB LCD deck for $400 was a “painful” price point, and there were hardware pricing estimates that guessed each steam deck cost Valve around $500-550 at launch. It’s been awhile since I looked at it, I’ll see if I can get some of the relevant quotes together.
Haha! Highly recommended! This is the version I bought when it first came out, and it’s still going strong. Battery life is pretty bunk, though.
If I didn’t have a Steamdeck already, I would buy at this price 100%
Lol, better deal than a Switch 2 if you like playing more than just Nintendo games!
(Also you can play almost every single Nintendo game in existence on it)
In fact, you can play more Nintendo games on the Steam Deck than you can on the Switch 2. Just not the newest ones (yet).
I’ve managed to get BotW working at basically just a bit worse than the performance level of a Switch 1.
Pretty much everything else is gucci, given that you run some games for a bit to allow a shader cache to build up.
Sure, but Switch 2 encryption isn’t broken yet, last I checked. Also the Switch 2 is beefier than the Steam Deck, I doubt the Steam Deck will emulate it well.
That’s what I meant by “newest.”
Yes!
That is all correct or likely correct as far as I can tell, I was not trying to dispute you, just trying to add in other relevant details/context.
Well, ok, with the exception of … other platform games being ported to the Switch 2.
Nah, Switch 2 is worse in that regard.
Nobody can figure out how to optimize such games to run well on a Switch 2. Nintendo has been very, very stingy with dev kits, practically nzo dev teams (who outright asked for them!) have even gotten them.
Elden Ring and CyberPunk 2077 already run better on my Deck than they do on a Switch 2.
Sure, absolutely. But those aren’t Nintendo games. 😁
Well thats what I get for being in like 5 simultaneous discussions on different parts of lemmy, lol.
EDIT:
Err, wait.
Did I miss/forget some context and you’re joking at me, or are you joking at Nintendo fanboys?
Nah, not mocking anybody. You’re good!
Honestly, one of my favorite parts of the Deck is being able to stream games like CP2077 from the PC to the deck with Moonlight/Apollo. Even if the Switch 2 could play it better than the Deck natively, it definitely can’t beat my desktop. 😁
Pirating Nintendo games is the morally right thing to do.
Correct, no notes.
Iwata died, Reggie left, they’re evil now, NOA being led by Bowser should be a tip off to this lol.
Would anyone recommend an LCD over an OLED model?
Over OLED? Probably not, but LCD is perfectly fine.
Unless you really care about OLED and slightly better battery, then a much cheaper LCD is a good choice.
Completely disagree. The OLED is better is almost every way. Just go and look at the long laundry list of significant improvements they made with that model.
Such as (except the screen)?
I’m not going to list them all. But the most important items are significant battery life improvement through both a larger battery and more efficient processor, slight increase in performance due to faster RAM, 90Hz vs. 60, and significantly brighter screen for outdoor use.
And most of these won’t make a difference for most people.
With the current promo the OLED is almost twice the price.A little better screen and battery are nice, but performance is basically the same, it’s within an error margin most of the time.
And 90Hz screen doesn’t matter that much when 40FPS limit is preferable most of the time to keep the frametimes stable.Those will make a huge difference for most people…
A little better screen and battery are nice
They are not a little better, they are both a lot better.
And 90Hz screen doesn’t matter that much when 40FPS limit is preferable most of the time to keep the frametimes stable.
That depends entirely on what games you’re running. Most of the games I play will easily run at locked 90FPS.
Oh the OLED doesn’t have any performance boost?
As I understand it, it’s the same engine under the hood, you’re paying for better screen quality and a slightly longer battery life.
It has slightly different internal and external form factors in … basically only esoteric ways that only come into play if you are doing certain kinds of physical mods or upgrades to it.
But yeah, the actual internal performance specs are the same, same chip, same shared RAM amount…
I think maybe the battery might have gotten a slight upgrade, either that or the power delivery / management may have gotten a slight upgrade / tweak, but I am not 100% sure about that.
A very minor one, but only in a roundablut way. Valve weren’t targeting a performance boost, but a battery increase. They went for a newer generation of their processor with roughly the same processing power and slightly more efficiency. The thing is, because of the added efficiency it can sustain high loads without throttling for longer. Between that and the minute differences in processing power, it happens to have a tiny bit of a performance boost, but it’s very very minor.
Not really. You can sometimes see a minor boost in some games, but nothing worth the price difference.
I’ve owned the first gen Steam Deck since the day it came out. (LCD)
No problems, greatly enjoy it.
I wouldn’t say I recommend it over the OLED, but they both work great. My OG LCD still holding up strong, but the OLED is definitely an improvement in both screen quality and battery.
I mean, I am an OLED Deck owner, and at this price point, if I didn’t already have my OLED Deck?
This is a fucking steal at this price, compare it to non OLED laptops of similar specs/capabilities, then just tack on the price of like a portable membrane keyboard or something.
Yeah sorry, didn’t intend to discourage anyone from the deal - it’s great hardware at an incredible price. If you’re indifferent on the screen or it’s not applicable to your use, you know who you are and should jump on it. If you can’t reasonably swing the dollars for OLED, you should also jump on it.
I still wouldn’t recommend LCD over the OLED, it’s undeniably the better configuration for handheld gaming.
Oh no need to apologize, I too very much prefer the OLED for my own most common use cases…
… but yeah, just wanted to point out that if you maybe want a pretty rock solid mobile gaming device ma bob that is also a laptop when you plug K+M into it, maybe also your existing desktop mon if you have one…
$320 bucks is a fucking steal, if you are maybe, price concscious, in these uh, economic collapse times, yeah, dont go for the premium model, black out your windows and play under the bedsheet like the good ole days rofl!
In a specific use case: absolutely. If you want to dock it a large percentage of the time and use it as a “PC games console,” plugged into power and hooked up to your TV / projector / monitor / whatever:
- You’re not going to care about the built in screen as much
- You’re not going to care about the lesser battery as much
- The huge savings over an SD OLED will help you get over the 1 or 2 FPS you’ll lose in most games.
If you’re that person, you should definitely go for it. And even if you find yourself playing handheld more than you thought you would, it’s still not a big deal.
The two main advantages of the OLED deck are a drastically better screen, and much better battery life in demanding titles.
Games that max out the Deck’s power draw (Cyberpunk, Bladur’s Gate, etc) will typically get about 1:30 of battery life on the LCD deck, and 2:30 on the OLED deck, which is a pretty huge increase. It’s less of an issue for less demanding games, and you can always get a high output battery pack instead.
I really appreciate the time frames on this. That’s really good to know. I mostly game sitting within reach of a charger, so it wouldn’t be a big deal for me. I think I’ll go for the Steam Deck LCD once I go for it.
Many people don’t need an oled. Like casual players or people with it hooked to the tv most of the time.
For the price? Yeah absolutely. I got mine really discounted and it holds up, my partner has an oled which looks great and I like the larger screen, but not sure if $300 more is worth it for everyone. You can get a solid case & screen protector, battery bank and upgrade the ssd for nearly that.
I had both and I find the OLED massively overhyped.
I have an LCD Steam Deck which I got used for around 300$ since I already have a Ps5 and the Deck was my first time trying pc gaming.
Because of how everyone was praising the OLED, I thought the screen would be bad, but it is awesome to my eyes.
The battery management is the annoying part of an handheld, but you also have it, maybe less, with the OLED.
If the prices were the same, I don’t see why someone wouldn’t get an OLED model, but it ain’t the case and I wasn’t be ready to pay more than 300$, so an used LCD was perfect.
