I’m a recovering Xbox gamer who grew tired of the monthly cost for the ability to play my purchased games online.
Purchased a pre-built gaming PC (couldn’t build it myself for less) and it’s been working well. Had to re-buy my primary game Forza Horizon 5 on Steam and I plan to pre-order FH6 on Steam and spend a lot of time on it. PC is in my room, Xbox is in the living room.
I’m considering buying a cheap used Steam Deck for occasional travel, playing the occasional Halo MCC at my friend’s house, and using it on a dock in the living room to phase out the Xbox.
I can buy a 512GB LCD version for around $200-250 or a used OLED for under $350.
I’m comfortable buying used electronics and understand the deck isn’t the most powerful thing around, but I just don’t want to regret it if FH6 plays horribly. I guess I can wait until it launches and read reviews, but then I miss out on months of time with the deck and still have to use my Xbox in the living room.
Here you can find reports on FH5 running on deck. You can also see here how it runs in 2026 after multiple patches. Personally I’d cap the fls at 50 and the cpu at 1300 and run the game with the frametime curve being a flat line.
When playing on the deck, one makes graphical setting sacrifices but avoids making the biggest one, which is giving asus and MS money for the absolute dumpster fire that is the allyX. Those things are failing at RRoD levels, so I’d be even more wary of buying it second hand. Try the legionGO, it’s expensive but a far better machine than any ally.