I have a Legion Go, which is basically a premium Steam Deck - playing similar games but on a nicer screen with a stronger GPU to drive it. I've been very happy with it - still playing nearly daily 2 years later.

All this hubbub about chip shortages has me wondering if it's going to extend the lifespan of these devices. Already in the Legion Go line, its successors are much more expensive but not much more performant. The line bifurcated into an entry level and a premium option, and both have a variant whose chip is derived from the same 7840 as the original model. That is, the Legion Go S and Legion Go 2 are both priced higher than the original, with a lower screen resolution and identical (or nearly identical) chipset. The only reason to choose one over the original is if you really need that extra RAM.

Like the Steam Deck, the Legion Go is still a perfectly serviceable device years later. The Deck competitors from Lenovo, ASUS, OneX, AYANEO, etc. are all built around basically the same chip that's a bit stronger but less power efficient than the Deck. The performance envelope hasn't really moved.

Tariffs and part shortages are making these devices a lot more expensive, but they aren't noticeably better than they were 2 years ago. In fact, Valve's upcoming Steam Machine has very similar specs, and was designed to outperform 70% of the devices currently gaming on Steam.

If prices are going up and performance is stagnating, people who already have gaming devices are going to be reluctant to upgrade. I expect these market forces are going to extend the lifespan of current-gen devices.

Most games take years to make. I wonder how many games currently in the production pipeline were banking on players having more performance available by the time the games are released, and how that is going to impact their reception.

The Steam Deck has been a really useful performance-and-feature anchor for computer gaming. Until hardware improves enough to justify a Steam Deck 2, I expect it will continue to maintain that position, improving the playable lifespan of all the other gaming devices in the market too.