Wait, what? I have to buy a PC about every 10 to 15 years and it does't cost me "thousands". Last year, I bought one for about $700 and I can run every game at maximum settings with no issues.
Just wait for components to be on sale (it happens often) and you'll have a good pc for a very good price.
It's funny, Steam Deck is so much weaker than the typical gaming PC and will definitely not outperform an ~RX 6700XT at the same quality level but Steam Deck resolution vs at 1440p. Worse, Steam Deck shares 16 GB of RAM between CPU and GPU, so this guy is gonna have an even smaller list of games they can play on a docked Steam Deck vs a PC.
Also, Steam Deck can't be (read: processing power) upgraded, and doesn't have 3D-VCache, that's not good for CPU bound games. And then you might also be defaulting to Steam OS, which doesn't have full compatibility with Windows games, and have a complicated compatability file structure, which could complicate modding and 3rd party utilities.
So yeah, Steam Deck as a complete desktop replacement has more issues than you might expect. And the worst part is, absent docking portable HDDs, everything is an SSD, so welcome to the SSD $/GB world. TF cards have even worse $/GB.
#1 you're also restricted to whatever plays nice with the steam input system, and custom inputs are generally more tedious to use than a mouse and keyboard.
#2 that's the entire point of the Steam Deck.
#3 isn't the hallmarks of something "powerful", I'm surprised that you would consider 30 fps acceptable given that you know what 240 fps is like.
#4 it's not cheap. It's just at the right proce for the hardware. The only reason why it doesn't feel worse is because it's running at 1280x800p. The display is literally from the discard pile with its terrible colours.
#5 Windows could do the same if Valve tried hard enough. Suspend/Resume isn't that special and I've manually invoked it on desktop for all kinds of things before. >Task Manager.
#6 that's because Steam is doing the legwork to make things work for you. See what they did with Elden Ring's stuttering problem. I challenge you otherwise to access the game directories of any game running through proton. There's a whole emulated filestructure that you have to understand before modding the game on Steam Deck.
Power user stuff is outside the scope of gaming for most people.
Just stop chasing trends and play everything on a 5-10 year delay. Or better yet, just play indie. I save so much
money and my backlog is so long I don't even have time to play all of it.
I've just installed STALKER: Anomaly, a total conversion mod for STALKER: Call of Chernobyl. If you've never played the STALKER series before it is one of my favourite games of all time.
Operation Harsh Doorstop and Ravenfield are fun fps to casually dick around. I like them for their growing Steamworkshop mod scene, especially with Ravenfield.
Return of the Obra Dinn and Disco Elysium are two games on my backlog that saddens me every time I see it because I'd love to finish them but I just couldn't find the time.
Project Zomboid and Deep Rock Galayctic are fun times with people.
I was gifted Frostpunk and Outer Wilds. I haven't got around to playing it yet but my brother loved it.
Actually its quite the opposite usualy and games on conosles run well while on pc they can be a buggy mess.
Granted on pc they will/can look better but the optimization is mostly done for console players.