Exactly. It’s not like you’d be playing a ton of stuff on the Deck at 1200p if you had this screen… but it’d be nice to have the option for older games that don’t need a ton of power at that resolution. And this screen barely costs more than the 800p LCD replacement screen.
I’ve used it before when playing non-docked (otherwise I have a Blue yeti condenser mic hooked up into my docking hub).
The people I was playing with said I sounded good and clear. I’ve used it both with Discord and with Steam voice chat and I’ve never had an issue.
EDIT: I saw your post about issues with it when using wired headphones. That very well may be, but I can tell you it works fine with Bluetooth headphones (I alternate on a couple of pairs of BT bone conduction headphones).
I said it elsewhere, but it’s almost like they looked at the market research showing Steam PC gamers would buy a gazillion Steam Controller 2s or Steam Deck Controllers if they made and sold either one, or both.
And then they decided to make something that was neither one of those things. It’s totally bizarre.
Why would anyone buy this? You can already do this streaming through the Deck or any of the other handhelds, if Game Pass is your thing.
Others here have probably mentioned it, but I’ve heard the Deck is fantastic in situations where you use a main powerhouse PC to run a game (especially at the Deck’s resolution of 800p), then stream it through your local network to the Deck.
I don’t do that, but I daily drive a Steam Deck and can attest that it’s a fantastic device handheld. It’ll play a TON of stuff at low/medium settings natively, and you have a big PC to handle the top tear graphics-card-melters, which you can stream from (in that scenario the Deck is fine as it takes very little of the load).
My only caution point is the small screen. It’s 7 inches diagonal, so small print in games can be tough, especially if you have 40s eyes like me. Otherwise, it’s exceeded wildly beyond my expectations.
I love mine so much that I didn’t bother replacing my old laptop after it died, I just bought a dock, pulled an old Bluetooth mouse and keyboard out of storage, and the Deck is my daily driver now.
I have fantastic experiences playing mine. I recently upgraded to the OLED and gave the old LCD to a friend, and now he’s addicted to PC gaming as well. We play stuff every weekend, opening Steam voice calls is built right into the UI and it’s a fantastic experience. If you are thinking about getting into gaming, or gifting one to a gamer, I can’t recommend it enough.