PES 2021 Handheld Performance Steam Deck v Rog Ally X v Legion Go

[sleevel]

Steam Deck LCD owner here considering an upgrade to Steam Deck OLED but also considering Rog Ally X or Legion Go (or others). Specific to PES 2021, which handheld has the best performance?

 

[Tom]

I love my Deck to death, but performance-wise it's the worst of the three, so I'd imagine any game is going to perform better on the other handhelds. However, I'd always choose the Deck over any other device because of the OLED display, its ergonomics and the SteamOS backbone.

 

[sleevel]

Thanks for your input! It seems many of the PES 2021 patches are now incompatible with SteamOS because Wine cannot emulate a required function of the CPK Protection Toolkit verification process and EA FC 25 (if it’s worth playing) is also incompatible with SteamOS, so I see some advantage to a Windows native handheld.

I’m also somewhat confused that when I watch videos of people playing PES 2021 at 4k from YouTube on my iPhone 16 Pro Max, it looks absolutely gorgeous, yet on my Steam Deck LCD, even at high settings, it appears grainy and dull. It feels like the Steam Deck is rendering just enough to look good at 800p and the recorded videos are rendered at an insane resolution then scaled back down. This makes no practical sense but I have no better explanation of how the rendering quality of the same game could vary so dramatically.

 

[etb10dmk]

Like @Tom mentioned, I enjoy my Steam Deck 1TB OLED to death, just for the fact that besides the native SteamOS there is a vast ocean to be explored. I even purchased another 1TB microSD card just for the EmuDeck alone to have all those console games in there besides the main original 1TB games from Steam storage, so I can experience the entire potential of it. The community is huge and active, plus Valve is also awesome providing all the time great support if there's some problem, and lots of updates to make new games more compatible. The OLED screen is awesome, the best purchase I ever made in terms of handhelds...

The other two I don't know about them that much besides the fact that have better specs and compatible with windows, but in other hand very awful client support. My two cents on this will be, if you'll into playing just PES 2021 or FIFA you'll waste your money on Steam Deck so could be better to play them on PC, but if you have a library with a plethora of games on Steam and if you're also into playing retro gaming from consoles until PS3, then you'll hit the big Jackpot...

 

[sleevel]

I love handheld because even at home, I can play it on the couch or sitting in bed, not to mention my daily train commute and occasional plane ride, so my focus is strictly on handhelds. There are some very powerful (and very expensive handhelds) like the newest MSI Claw 8 and Onexfly F1 Pro which seem like they could kick some serious ass on PES 2021, at 1200p resolution and upwards of 144 fps, though I don’t know how long that battery would last.