Solus Laptop with Steam or an used Xbox One Console?

bigrammy

Solus Laptop with Steam or a Xbox One Console?

Rather than wade through all the nonsense out in the wild about PC gaming vs Console I thought I would just ask here and hopefully get some Honest answers.

I have an Acer Aspire A315-22 Laptop with AMD A9 & R5 Graphics, 12GB Ram, 500GB of SSD Clean Installed with the Latest Solus OS (Budgie) and probably Hooked up to a large TV.

So I want to do some occasional gaming for myself and when the Grand kids come around. So should I use the above spare Laptop which I could use as a dedicated Gaming PC or should I just get a used Xbox One Console.

I like shoot em up games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare & used to really enjoy playing the “Live” (death match’s etc) all this was back when my Son was a small boy so I am not sure if this is still a thing anymore.

I don’t really want to swim up stream on this and would prefer everything to just pretty much work with minimal fuss. I am happy to pay for what I use so no need for super hacking and I don’t mind applying an odd patch once in a while.

I am clue less about Steam and how it works but happy to learn if it provides a decent quality experience and my hardware is sufficient.

Thoughts and advice most welcome.

murbert

bigrammy So I want to do some occasional gaming for myself and when the Grand kids come around

hdansin but in my experience trying to use an old laptop for light TV gaming, no one else in my family knows how to turn it on and use it

This is the sum, right here. Get the Xbox

hdansin

Not familiar with the performance of the A9/R5 graphics, but setting it up as a no fuss couch gaming machine might be a little annoying in terms of navigating launchers and whatnot. There are peripherals you can get, like a mini mouse and keyboard, but in my experience trying to use an old laptop for light TV gaming, no one else in my family knows how to turn it on and use it. I also had to mess around with the resolution to get games playable, and even then there was quite a bit of latency. I believe there are launcher options (including steam big picture mode) to look into that you can launch on startup to make it easier, but chances are you will have to do some configuring there as well. If you plan on only using Steam it will probably be fine, but the Xbox will be way easier to use because that's how consoles are designed.

With that said, the laptop wouldn't lock you into Microsoft, give you a lot more options in terms of the games you can play and where you can purchase them, and let you use alternative input options (such as a controller with gyro aiming, or even a mouse and keyboard). With the Xbox you would also have to pay for Xbox Live to play online.

As a fellow shoot 'em up player from time to time (mostly Halo), I've come to enjoy gyro aiming a lot and can't really imagine going back to regular stick aiming, so that makes the decision for me. But it depends on your preferences and how well your laptop performs outputting to the big TV. It might be worth it just to try the laptop, and if it ends up being more than you want to deal with you can get the Xbox. I've still got an old 360 I come back to from time to time for the nostalgia, and I'll probably play through the Halos on it with my kids when they're older.

bigrammy

hdansin
Wow Thanks for that detailed and very insightful answer ✋
I have quite a lot to consider clearly.
I have never even heard of gyro aiming but that probably explains why I used to get killed so often 😆
The Laptop hardware is roughly equivalent to the Intel i3 (https://versus.com/en/amd-a9-9420e-vs-intel-core-i3-1005g1) so not the most powerful in today's day and age. 😊
I have a Xbox 360 under the house some place but that is big, noisy and won't fit where it can't be seen & the wife won't want it show 😆 The Xbox One should fit under the TV in the cabinet hopefully.

hdansin

bigrammy I have never even heard of gyro aiming but that probably explains why I used to get killed so often

It definitely gives you a lot more precision, but ironically the aim assist in certain games on a normal controller can be so powerful that a lot of players do better without it. I use it because it's just so fun to aim by moving the controller.

If it's comparable to an i3 it probably won't be able to run bigger modern games. There's a lot of fun to be had with older titles and less demanding indie titles, but you would be pretty limited. I couldn't really find any info about the R5 chip other than the fact that it runs DX12.

bigrammy

Thanks for all the info hdansin 👍️
@admin I guess this thread can be closed or marked as solved but I can't see any option to do anything like that or even mark the best answer is this normal for a off topic. 😕

Harvey

Yes. Off-topic tagged threads do not have best answer option.