How Do You Decide Between Steam Deck and Gaming Laptop in 2025?

[itombac 0]

I’m new to the PC gaming space (mainly a console player until now), and I’ve been doing a lot of research on portable gaming options. With the Steam Deck OLED getting great reviews and gaming laptops becoming more affordable and powerful in 2025, I’m stuck trying to decide between the two.

I’m mainly interested in playing indie games, older AAA titles, and some modding (Skyrim, Fallout, etc.). Battery life and portability are important since I travel a bit, but I also like the idea of having a bigger screen and potentially using it for other stuff like light video editing or work.

I’ve read through some performance comparisons and Reddit threads, but they often focus on one device or specific use cases. I’m curious what you all think, especially from a game compatibility and long-term maintenance perspective (driver issues, OS updates, storage upgrades, etc.).

Questions:

• How reliable is the Steam Deck for mod-heavy games?

• Are there any drawbacks to using a gaming laptop purely for gaming (e.g., bloatware, thermals)?

• Do you find game compatibility/support better on one over the other?

Appreciate any advice or personal experiences. Thanks in advance!

[mine18 2]

I don't own a steam deck, but here are my two cents on the matter

1. This depends on how mods are applied, id say generally speaking the steam deck is fine for modded games, but you may have to jump through extra hoops, games which have mod launchers (dedicated or otherwise) should work just fine 99% of the time, steam workshop is made by valve so that's fine, anything else is up in the case

2. What you mentioned are two valid concerns for gaming laptops, although thermals can also be a concern for the steam deck, If we're talking purely gaming outside of the quality of the hardware itself and it not being upgradable I don't think there's any major drawback besides IGPU/DGPU shenanigans, and the aforementioned thermals and bloatware.

3. That would depend on what you play, you can check ProtonDB for an aggreggated compatibility list for games on Linux, broadly speaking most games work fine, the only games with issues are generally games with anti-cheat because despite having linux/steam deck support for years now, most devs don't enable them out of fear of hackers, some DRM games and games which use windows stuff like Windows Media Video (WMV) for cutscenes can have issues, but again your mileage WILL vary on that one.

If you don't already have a Desktop PC for gaming, this is a 50/50 decision since laptops could be an alternative to a desktop pc, you say you move a lot so that is a valid situation but how often would you need to do work that can only be done on a PC and not your phone? Also keep in mind the weight that gaming laptops can put on your bag, which can hamper portability.

You can do some of this work on a steam deck too as long as you're patient and it doesn't need too much performance (assuming you don't mind squinting at the screen if you don't have any kind of external screen), as for me since I already own a desktop so the Steam Deck will be far more useful in it being more portable, having a more seamless experience (assuming the games work fine), and longer battery life.

Edited Wednesday at 06:03 PM by mine18
acknowledged the "moving" part of the comment