This thing is tiny and coupled with XReal or Viture glasses it makes for a very portable, very powerful (Ryzen 7 7840U with eight Zen 4 cores and an RDNA 3 Radeon 780M, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD) game system that is much faster than many handheld systems without the weight and neck strain. In contrast, with the Steamdeck I found myself preferring a kb/mouse or pairing another controller and it was hard to find a comfortable position to play from without hooking it to a monitor.

Debian Xfce testing (Trixie) works really well though I had to install some packages such as joystick and blueman and a few steps to install Steam, the effort was well worth it. I did not want a SteamOS distro because I’d prefer Debian’s package management and I like the support and versatility this distro has.

Weak points of using the XReal is that the edges are a little out of focus and one might need prescription inserts (I do not). Otherwise, they are very lightweight and I can be comfortable anywhere. They are also great for watching movies plugging into a phone that has display port capable usb-c (though I recommend a dongle that allows charging the phone while viewing). The glasses also have 3DOF that can be used to move your view (as a mouse or joystick would) while gaming but that requires a driver . Coupled with SideBySide 3D mode on the glasses and in Minetest it’s very immersive!

Setup:

Packed bag vs Steam Deck case:

Bag Contents: