Another consideration is whether you’re a “patient gamer”. If you want to play the latest and greatest, then I have no idea. But, if you’re like me, then there are literally thousands of slightly older games you’d be happy to play.

If that’s you, then you can’t beat the Steam Deck for value. With game bundles, I often get 8 games for $10 or less. Even if I only play one, that’s incredible value compared with $80 new titles.

With a tiny bit of work, you can get Epic and GOG working on the Deck, too. If you’re a Prime subscriber, you’ll get 1-4 GOG/Epic games/week for free in addition to Epic’s weekly giveaways and GOG’s occasional giveaways. Some of those are AA/AAA games from a few years ago, too.

If you’re tired of AAA games entirely (like me), then the Deck is also likely the best since there are so many incredible indie games. I’d much rather play 20 unique 1-10 hour games than a single 100-hour AAA repetitive slog. And most can be had for $10 or less if you wait for a sale or bundle.

It’s also a great emulation machine for everything Nintendo that came before the Switch and everything else up to the PS2 generation, I guess? (Switch emulation is a bit of a pain to get working well, and for anything 360/PS3 or newer, they mostly have PC versions anyway, I think? I’ve never had a reason to emulate any of 'em so idk.)

The OLED has a great screen and great battery life, so I have barely touched my smaller emulation devices since getting it. Why use a tiny device with cramped, limited controls when I can play on a great screen with Steam Input (so I can easily write my own game macros, or use the back buttons on twin stick games instead of the face buttons so I never need to take my thumbs off the joysticks, etc.)

I guess if you actually want a device on the go, then something smaller might be better, but for longer trips the Deck works great in my laptop bag, and for short, mobile gaming breaks, I’ll just play Minion Masters or Space Cadet Pinball on my phone.