HANDHELD NEWS – The battery life of Valve’s handheld PC has improved, and the image quality is dramatically better.

Although cloud gaming offers a premium experience, it remains relatively unpopular. However, it seems that the launch of the GeForce Now native app for Steam Deck is turning things in its favor. We need more data and user feedback to determine whether paying for GeForce Now on Steam Deck is worth it, but first impressions seem positive.

GeForce Now can’t replicate everything you can do on your handheld PC, understandably, but currently, none of these machines can compete with a high-end GPU. A GeForce Now Ultimate membership enables you to utilize the RTX 4080’s capabilities, as well as premium features like DLSS 4.0 and ray tracing, which aren’t available by default on Valve’s device. The device can run for up to eight hours, which would be impossible if you were running games locally.

According to The Verge, the Steam Deck with a GeForce Now Ultimate membership offers a gaming experience several times better than that of the device’s original hardware. One of the best examples of this is the striking difference in the visuals of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (the first image shows the native run and the second shows the GeForce Now stream). While you can observe this elsewhere, it’s also true that the GeForce Now library does not contain all the latest titles. However, you have to pay $20 a month to run the games, which is not a small price to pay.

If you have an excellent internet connection or an Nvidia server nearby due to low ping, Nvidia’s cloud service could be a good alternative to the Steam Deck because it supports streaming on a 4K display, which is also not possible with the Steam Deck. Using GeForce Now on a Steam Deck is all about versatility, but it’s not exactly cost-effective.

Source: WCCFTech, The Verge