Valve made headlines in tech and gaming yesterday with the announcement of the Steam Deck. The device is a handheld PC that is similar to devices like the GPD Win 3 and that essentially packs the Ultrabook internals into a portable form factor.
The news on the Steam Deck comes after Nintendo recently unveiled the Nintendo Switch OLED model. Valve’s handheld is $ 400 for a 64GB model (with 256GB and 512GB options), while the new Switch model is $ 350. So would you buy the Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch OLED? Let us know via the poll below.
The two devices are very different proposals, but both are gaming handhelds that sell for a similar price.
The Valve device contains a quad-core AMD Zen-2 CPU, RDNA2 graphics with eight processing units, a 7-inch LCD panel, 16 GB of RAM and 64 GB to 512 GB of expandable storage. In the meantime, the OLED Nintendo Switch still has the Nvidia Tegra X1 processor, a 7-inch OLED screen, 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB of expandable storage and the familiar Joycon controls.
Valve’s machine is on paper the more flexible device on which the Linux-based SteamOS platform runs and offers the actual PC functionality (e.g. web browsing, streaming, apps). The Steam Deck also supports many games designed for Linux or Windows titles through the Proton Compatibility Layer. It’s also worth noting that you can actually install Windows on it.
The Switch OLED has a locked down ecosystem and is more of a dedicated gaming handheld. In fact, there is only Hulu and YouTube and there is no official web browser support. But what you lose in features, you gain in the games library, as the Switch has a ton of exclusive titles that you can’t play anywhere else.
So which one would you buy? Let us know via the survey above and leave a comment below if you have more on your mind.