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Put a shit ton of hours into fallout 3 and new Vegas... might have to check the show out.
Seriously considering buying a steam deck. I'm itchin to play fallout 1 and 2.
My colleague brought his to work and I got to say I'm very impressed. Despite being wider than my ROG Ally it's surprisingly lightweight and the weight is well distributed. The TDP maxes out at 15w which should be more than sufficient for Fallout 1 / 2 / 3 / New Vegas, you can even go below 10w (lowest for ROG Ally) which is great for older retro titles since they use 5-7w to stretch out your battery life.
Just my 2 cents on handheld gaming devices - I found the use cases to be quite specific (traveling for work, gaming on the plane, gaming before bed, lightweight titles). I had a blast with my Ally a few weeks back while on holiday - played on the plane, while waiting for the family to get ready before heading out, some lighter games after dinner. Handheld gaming excels in short burst gaming for light to medium gaming since you're trying to balance performance with battery life.
For anything more intensive like playing newer AAA games a full fat PC or console is the way to go. Bigger screen and you can crank up the graphics without worrying about battery life.
Idk if this is true for the Ally's too but I'd assume so... but you can dock the Steam deck like a Nintendo Switch to connect it to your TV and connect a bluetooth controller and use it like a console
You could totally have it docked like a Switch, as long as the dock supports a HDMI to TV, a couple of USB ports for mouse, keyboard and controller and you have a banging console experience. You can even take it a step further and run everything off Steam Big Picture mode so interacting with Windows is minimal. I did toy with replacing my gaming PC with my ROG Ally but the latter is severely limited in CPU / GPU / storage options, and the external GPU dock for a RTX 4070 is too expensive.
If you get the itch to build a PC you can also build a Mini-ITX console roughly 75% the size of a PS5. Parts are generally more expensive for a smaller build and you will be limited when it comes to dedicated GPUs, but AMD's Ryzen APUs (built-in GPUs) are catching up in performance to Xbox or PS5 levels. .
Re the Retropad, I like the concept as a simple plug and play console for older titles, everything prior to PS1 should be fine. But the UI for 60,000 games must be a mess to navigate through, and with these China AIO emulators there are bound to be thousands poorly categorized repeats. The UX can really kill the experience.
@LeDave you asked about the ROG Ally in a separate thread - my thoughts on the Ally are above.
Steam Deck has insane battery life with performance capped at 15w which is plenty good for older AAA, you can even go below 10w for retro games to drag that battery life out. Lots of accessories, Discord support and 3rd party apps for quality of life improvements.
ROG Ally has a great screen, controls and performance-to-battery ratios. The screen is amazing and makes my regular 60hz work monitors look like shit. Windows isn't fully optimized for handhelds but if you're familiar with the OS it's easy to work with, and I find it easier to get games / movies off the high seas using Windows.
No experience with the Legion Go.
There are other handhelds from China brands (Ayaneo, AYN, OneX) but I would avoid those too. The handhelds are quickly released and forgotten so firmware and BIOS support is almost non-existent. And god help you if you need hardware support if they even entertain the request, you're out of pocket to ship the device back to China or they might ship you parts and you have to DIY the repairs.
I'd avoid the MSI Claw and any Intel based handhelds for now as they are horribly optimized.
The ROG Ally with the Z1 Extreme is a great buy, even better if you can get an open box from Best Buy. Returns are a breeze if you don't like it too.
Edit - if you're looking to play older games on emulation the Ayn Odin 2 is a fantastic product. Runs on Android, well built, great battery life and it could run some Switch games (Yuzu) before the emulator got shut down. Everything below that will run fine (PS2, N64, 3DS, Dreamcast).