Orange Pi Neo upcoming Linux gaming handheld prices have been announced and probably will be SteamOS ready
Orange Pi Neo upcoming Linux gaming handheld prices have been announced and probably will be SteamOS ready
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/development-q-a-orangepi-neo-01/156450/108
Gardiner Bryant had conversation with Manjaros lead, Phillip Muller and was told that Valve has the Orange Pi Neo in-hand and they’re testing it, probably to bring SteamOS support for the handheld
https://gardinerbryant.com/manjaro-announces-orange-pi-neo-pricing-its-shockingly-affordable/---
These prices are absolutely insane when compared to a Deck. WTF.
This has:
And that's before we get to the APU side of things, where other commenters here are expecting the Neo to outperform the Deck. Hard to say for sure until we have benchmarks, but it seems reasonable that this will be more powerful in general.
And what is the Neo missing compared to be Deck? The back buttons, which are nice on the Deck but I would not say are deal breakers. The ambient light sensor, which I didn't even remember my Deck had until I looked at the specs just now. And apparently the Deck has 2 microphones while the Neo just has 1... Honestly I have had mine for 2 years and I wasn't even sure it has a microphone at all. I don't see that the Neo has capacitive sensors on the sticks, but I never find a good use for those on my Deck anyways.
Now, this thing is not close to making me want to upgrade from my Deck. Just looking at it- the control layout is wrong. The track pads look like you will have to awkwardly stretch your thumb to reach them- similar to where the Deck has the Steam and Quick Access buttons. While I can play a ton of mouse-based games on the Deck for hours with no problem, the Neo looks like it will only be good for games where you use the mouse occasionally. Should be fine for navigating menus, launch screens, and setting up emulators, but not for playing games.
The other question is build quality. This looks like cheaper plastic. The buttons look cheap. The grips look top shallow. I don't know how easy this will be to upgrade or repair.
Imo this is a reasonable product at a reasonable price. Not perfect. But it has reasonable trade-offs compared to the Deck. If it can manage to be significantly more powerful than the Deck with similar battery life, I think we have a real competition.
All in all with you, just scrolled though the Manjaro page and saw that the Neo is advertised as having 2 mics
The higher screen resolution is not a good thing if you want to play games without being plugged in. It will take a lot more power to run games in 1080p than it will in 720p.
Why? They are pretty similar in price. Also Valve can afford to sell the SteamDeck at a massive loss, because they get lots of money from the games people buy to play on it. The orange pi neo is also significantly higher performance with twice as many cpu cores and a way stronger gpu.
Yeah idk what the author of that article was smoking when he wrote that headline: “…Orange pi neo pricing, it’s shockingly affordable”