I’m leaning toward the OneXFly Apex because the Steam Machine just doesn’t make much sense to me. The pricing is still unclear, but it seems like it’ll land somewhere around $600 or more. For a device being presented as a core part of Valve’s hardware ecosystem, the specs feel outdated, by the time it releases, its components will be about four years old. Add in the VRAM constraint of 8GB, 16 GB of RAM, and only 512 GB of storage, and the value starts looking pretty weak.

On top of that, I still want a handheld. If I bought the Steam Machine, I’d also need something like a Steam Deck OLED, which is already about $650. Combine that with a $600 Steam Machine and you’re already at roughly $1,250, maybe more depending on the final pricing. Some people are predicting $500 to $800, which feels unrealistic for what the Steam Machine offers.

Meanwhile, the OneXFly Apex is around $1,400 plus $50 for the water-cooling module. For only about $150–$200 more, you get a single device that can act as both a handheld and a desktop-style system. You don’t get that flexibility when you’re splitting the job between two Valve devices.

I’ve also grown tired of internal batteries in handhelds. They can swell, they’re annoying to replace, and I’d rather have something like OneX’s external battery system and potential docking setup. And honestly, the hardware in both the Steam Machine and the Steam Deck is just dated at this point. The Steam Deck’s RDNA2 8-CU iGPU and the Steam Machines’s RDNA3 28-CU GPU with 8 GB of VRAM both feel underpowered. I just don’t feel confident buying into that hardware now when I can get a better handheld and console experience with the Apex.