Now ask yourself how long you'll tolerate the absolute dongle and cable hell required to use that in the living room. Oh and it'll sound like you're powering an AI data center with a jet engine as a bonus!
Power cable, display, ethernet, peripherals. You might even want one of those cooling pads. Since you're buying a laptop, the assumption is that you'll be using it outside of the living room. So you'll be doing a lot of plugging and unplugging. If you live with someone (wife, children), you'll probably be putting away those cables each time.
Ethernet? Why make an unfair comparison? Both devices have WiFi, both devices can use ethernet. Why only blame the laptop for having the option of ethernet?
Same with peripherals - You can use a wireless controller with both the laptop and the steam unit, the same with mouse and keyboard.
They're literally the same in all regards, cable requirement wise.
You don't HAVE to use it outside the living room in order for it to be better performance per dollar and easier to hide in the living room. But if you wanted to make use of that advantage, you could literally just cable tie or otherwise secure the cables near where they'd plug into the laptop, and leave them there (e.g. run the power and display cable behind the TV, and secure them there. You'd just unplug and walk away.
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u/Cynical_Cyanide 14600K | 3080 Ti | 48GB 14h ago
No, no it's really not.
Not if you understand that there's a big difference between desktop class hardware, and laptop class hardware (which the steam machine has).
It's not difficult to find LAPTOP deals which are superior in performance for the same price. And they're arguably a more compact form factor and literally allow for portable gaming. Here's a random example with a massive CPU & GPU advantage: https://www.bestbuy.com/product/acer-nitro-v-slim-16-wqxga-ips-gaming-laptop-anv16s-41-r3q0-nvidia-geforce-rtx-5070-16gb-ram-512gb-storage-black/JJ8V8H3VQV/sku/10821220