I’ve wanted to get into PC gaming forever but I’ve been a console gamer my entire life. For context, I go to a University out of province (Canadian) and I travel home for summers and breaks so transporting a PC every summer just isn’t realistic. I already have a Macbook as a laptop and have considered switching to a gaming laptop but since I need to use it every day and around other people it kind of just doesn’t make sense. Already own a PS5 but the deck is interesting to me because it seems like I could play the PC games, especially online games because I refuse to pay for a subscription service, I’ve always been interested in without having to sacrifice a chunk of my room to a PC setup and then not be able to use it a lot of the time. Also, I could bring it home during the summers which I can’t do with my PS5 either. At the same time, it feels a little silly to slam down a good deal of money for a Steam deck when I do have a PS5 which will run my games better with a library that isn’t transferable. Most of the time if I have a choice between PS5 or Steam Deck for AAA games I’ll end up choosing the PS5 simply because it’s more powerful and I want the best experience, but I can see myself playing any indies and online games on the deck. Thoughts?
There’s trade offs but for your use case you should go for the deck. Add a controller and a bluetooth kbm and you can also use it on your TV instead of the PS5. Now don’t go expecting the same performance - this is meant to be a handheld optimized for battery life with a gorgeous OLED screen (at 800p). But you will have the best of all worlds because now you have the best handheld, a console connected to your tv AND a full fledged desktop PC.