The Ultimate Steam Deck Accessory

last week Linus Tech tips posted their ultimate steam deck builds but they forgot one important aspect of it turning off the outside world [Music] [Applause] today's video is brought to you by thermaltake and the tower 500. turn heads with the distinct vertical chassis design of the tower 500 the wide open interior means unparalleled versatility for your dream build with support for eatx ceb or even EEB motherboards and space for more fans and cooling options than you can possibly comprehend you can not only make your build look incredible but keep it cool too and thanks to three tempered glass side panels you can enjoy panoramic views of your PC's inner workings how's your build in luxury with the thermaltake tower 500 click the link down in the video description to learn more welcome back to craft Computing everyone as always I'm Jeff and that's just as uncomfortable as LeVar Burton has said it is before now it's no secret that I am a big fan of virtual reality but one thing you might not know is my Affinity for augmented reality or head mounted displays uh which I've been collecting for a number of years now oh missed one a very long time now I've owned the steam deck for the last two months and I've actually had the eye on Neo next for a couple weeks longer than that and both of these devices have replaced my primary gaming PC not because of their incredible performance or graphical Fidelity but because of the convenience form factor despite their limitations now both these devices have 720p screens are limited to somewhere between 30 and 60 FPS performance in most modern AAA titles and have battery life limitations and severe control limitations especially with keyboard Centric PC games now I've said for a long time that convenience and consistency are much more important than all-around performance in PC gaming and devices like this are going to prove that more and more every single day but most of the downfalls of these PCS you can work around you can increase their storage capacity you can lower the TDP setting to eke out some more battery life but there's one thing that you cannot work around and that that is the small screen size now sure if you wanted to walk around with a portable monitor like this you could totally do that but you're also compromising the form factor and you'd might as well walk around with a full fat gaming laptop if this is the form factor that you're after the problem with plugging these into a portable monitor is they're not powerful enough to drive 1080p AAA games and I don't know if you've seen a portable monitor that scales up 720p but it's not a pretty picture at all so enter the hmd or head mounted displays that I've been collecting for the last number of years first up we have this oversized pair of headphones in the avagon glyph with a pair of 720p DLP projectors designed to shine light directly into your eye holes now I don't say that unironically this will literally burn your retinas with how bright it is it has a moderately large field of view for the size of device but it is one of the most uncomfortable devices that I have ever put on my face uh seriously the hard plastic rests directly on the bridge of your nose you have to get it close enough to your eyes to actually get the image in focus and parallaxed properly and even then it's actually uncomfortably bright on the plus side you can cosplay as low bot if you don't want the projector shining into your eyes for input this uses a single micro HDMI port and does have a built-in battery that is chargeable over a micro USB you can also use the micro USB for consistent power to keep these powered indefinitely next up we have the Zeiss cinemizer which is a pair of OLED screens inside your own personal Cinema now these also have built-in headphones but as you can see they're just a wired set of earbuds and probably some of the lowest quality earbuds I've ever used in my life this one is a tethered device that comes down to a belt pack which is also your battery and I O can action so built into this is a mini HDMI port as well as an AV Audio Jack if you wanted to use this to fly a drone or use any other kind of composite video input now the Zeiss cinemizer is significantly more comfortable than the avagon glyph but field of view is still a significant concern in fact it's like I'm holding my cell phone about this far in front of my face it's not a large screen by any stretch of the imagination now again the XY cinemizer is just 720p but it is 60 FPS and it is a pair of OLED displays so the picture is actually a fairly decent quality however I am just left staring into a black empty smartphone screen so it's really not the best overall experience and again the headphones on this are absolute junk next up we come to my most expensive head mounted display purchase and also my most disappointing in the Epson bt30c now this is also a pair of 7 20p displays however it is using a hybrid OLED and projection technology so there's a pair of OLED projectors that are shooting into a parallax display and then shining the light back into my eyes what you end up with is a transparent display that I can see through but also see the world around me which is absolutely fantastic also if you don't want to see the outside world they include this nice pair of sunglasses that is still semi-translucent but it allows you to use the glasses Outdoors for instance if you wanted to plug this into a smartphone and fly your drone with it which is very popular in the Drone community and now for the very long list of downsides to the bt-30cs and it starts with this tethered USBC cable the cable is built into these glasses so if you damage this at all there is no repairing or replacing it secondly it connects over USBC but it uses what's called DisplayPort alternate display mode that is a mode that is only supported on very specific devices mainly Android handhelds or laptops but the thing is it's not even fully compatible with any DisplayPort alt mode device I found a number of devices that have that mode on them but will not work with the Epson bt30cs secondly it has the same 720p resolution as the other hmds that I've reviewed so far but this one is only 30 Hertz so if gaming is your intended use case this is definitely not the best solution next there's no built-in audio solution there's no headphones attached to this and and in fact the only way to get audio is to attach a wired pair of headphones to the little control dongle here that does nothing but control brightness and sound I think that's a feature that could be controlled from the device you're using skip this entirely and give me a little set of downward firing speakers in the temples that would be a much more elegant and useful solution to running three or four different cables up to your head and finally the price these are 550 dollars so if they fit your use case and you're looking for an all-in-one device boy this will tick a lot of boxes but at the same time it's also the most expensive device on the table here by a long shot so so far you're probably thinking wow that sounds very expensive and like a lot of compromise for a device that is basically holding the steam deck at arm's length and you'd be right but that's until I found these this is the unreal air augmented reality glasses these come in at just 379 dollars but unfortunately you can't buy them in North America yet they are exclusive to Japan and the UK unless you surf on eBay and then you can find an international seller who will sell it to you at retail price affiliate links down in the video description out of all the devices here these ones look the most normal I mean they're large sunglasses but they don't look cyber Punky they don't look like I belong in a CD project red video they look like large Oakley sunglasses that's thanks in part to the removable USBC cable and the hidden speakers inside the Temple of the glasses giving you both video and audio with a single cable that runs back behind your ear this is also the most technically impressive head mounted display I've come across yet first up this is a 1080p 60hz display and is using a very similar projection technology to the Epson bt-30cs it is using a hybrid OLED projection Parallax display that is still fully transparent so I can see through the image but I can also close it off entirely if I want to immerse myself into my own personal Cinema now I can't see [Music] also probably most impressive is the field of view on these glasses now there's a lot of claims by head mounted display and virtual reality headset makers that say it's like looking at a 140 inch display that's six meters away from you so they give metrics that you can't possibly judge for yourself these do the same thing they say it's like a 210 inch Cinema display sitting out in front of you but unlike the rest of these displays it's actually a really really large display at a fairly close distance whereas most of the other head mounted displays are akin to holding a cell phone up in front of your face and getting about this level field of view these have a very impressive wide display in fact if I go up to my living room and I look at my 75 inch TV from across the room this fills about four times as much view as that TV does it's a really really impressive and immersive display now unlike the Epson bt30cs you can actually see part of the image that's projecting into my eye because the projection is coming from the top and then being parallaxed back whereas the epsons is projecting from the side and then parallaxed inward uh but what I'm looking at right now is an incredibly immersive clear 1080p image off of my steam deck now even without the shade on the front of these glasses this display is incredibly bright and even the blacks are super super black thanks to the OLED projection so playing but still being able to see everything around you man there's just no explaining how good this display looks now the intended use case for the unreal air is to plug it into a smartphone and use as an augmented reality display for your smartphone unreal has an application that you can download where you can manipulate different applications launch different full screen apps read email view news watch videos all from your smartphone tethered inside your pocket the really cool thing though is unreal understands you're going to want to connect these glasses to more things than just your smartphone so they allow you to unlock them to connect the USBC ports to any DisplayPort alt mode connected device so things like the steam deck the eye Neo next or even a laptop with a USBC Port are all supported out of the box so to be very clear these are not a virtual reality to display this is not a completely immersive turn my head and everything turns with me but this is akin to strapping uh about uh 40 to 50 inch display kind of at arm's length from me uh and that's really what it looks like inside the glasses I know you can't see a thing that I'm doing right now but I'm playing Borderlands 3. that's cool headshot headshot headshot as far as use cases for this uh this is the device that I've always wanted to take onto planes with me uh because using your laptop you've always got someone who wants to shoulder surf you you've always got someone who wants to know what you're doing what you're playing what you're watching uh this is a device that you can literally turn off the outside world with uh you know like like I said I'm playing Borderlands 3 right now and I don't care if anyone's looking at me at all because they can't see what I'm doing they can't see what I'm playing but I have one of the most immersive displays inches in front of my face and it's something that is still light and portable enough that I couldn't fit in my carry-on bag along with something like a steam deck or put it into my laptop bag and it's not really going to be a burden at all now I mentioned 720p scaling to 1080 looks really really disgusting on most modern 1080p panels however on these glasses there's so little space between the pixels that it looks still absolutely fantastic so whether your Source material is 720p or 1080p you're going to wind up with a great looking image with no screen door effect whatsoever inside of these glasses now Borderlands 3 runs at about 40 to 45 FPS in most cases on the steam deck uh and it's it's not the smoothest experience but again considering we're playing completely on a handheld device this is more than acceptable if I was on an airplane in a hotel room uh or even I've used these sitting beside my wife at night when I can't sleep and she's dead asleep and I don't want to disturb her with pulling out the steam deck and uh having the brightness set to Max as far as responsiveness goes this is about on par with a pretty decent 60 hertz gaming monitor I mean you're obviously not going to get 144 Hertz but consider the device that I'm playing with right now you shouldn't expect 144 Hertz but latency is almost non-existent which is one of the most impressive things about these glasses there's also little to no motion blur at all there's no greater great latency to speak of there's no uh ghosting it is a very clear and very responsive image because the source of this is just an OLED panel as far as ergonomics go this is a very lightweight and very comfortable device to wear uh I've put this on my face for no joke about two and a half hours at a time before and it is just as comfortable as wearing a pair of glasses there's really no fatigue that happens on my face uh the unreal air comes with three different nose bridges of different lengths so depending on how high your nose sits in comparison to your eyes it'll it'll help you get the screen aligned in just the right position to be very comfortable for you I will say however that even with the shortest nose Bridge installed on these glasses the screen does get ever so slightly cut off in the bottom corners for me and I know when Rhett tried them on he gave me the same uh same conclusion uh so I don't think this is quite meant for faces of people who are six foot five with very long and Tall faces uh but your results will vary when it comes to the overall fit and finish and ergonomics just like any other pair of glasses or headphones might as far as other adjustments go there are three different positions that you can put the temples into there are different angles that you can adjust and the glasses do conform really well to the side of your head and like I said I've had no problem at all wearing these for very long lengths of time if if you're someone who is prone to VR sickness or motion sickness this also might not be a great solution for you as your eyes are doing something different than what your brain is telling you that is if I turn my head most of my image is staying static and some people that will cause some illness some sickness some dizziness uh in me it's not an issue at all I have no problem moving my head around and still seeing the image for what it is and not getting sick at all but it is something to keep in mind especially if you plan on using this on a plane that it may not be a great device to strap to your head now these glasses are absolutely great and are the head mounted display that I've wanted to exist for a very long time but they're not without a couple criticisms number one is it seems that even when connecting to DisplayPort alt mode devices there's a little bit of post-processing thing that happens what I mean by that is sometimes the glasses will lag out for a second at a time and then kind of catch themselves up and that is independent from the hardware because I've viewed the screen on as well as the glasses on and I will see the screen rendering perfectly and then the glass is occasionally kind of run to catch up also at least with the steam deck the audio seems to have a lot of issues syncing with the display now probably eight out of 10 times it's a perfect result I plugged in the glasses I turn on the steam deck and everything just kind of works occasionally though the audio will just go all garbled on me it'll stop playing properly it'll be laggy and garbled and it's just not a great experience and I'm hoping this is something that can be addressed in firmware sometime in the future at the moment the unreal error is still a low production device ice it is still only being sold in a couple different regions that being Japan and the UK so I'm hoping better support comes when production is ramped up and more and more of these bugs are realized and reported so it's not a perfect device yet but it is so far in front of the other head mounted displays and such a good looking display for something like the steam deck that at 389 dollars if you are someone who travels a lot and is looking for that next level of gaming portability this is definitely a device that should be on your list now overall conclusion would I recommend you go out and buy an unreal air for your steam deck honestly the level of immersion and the size of the screen that you get for the cost again these are just 389 dollars even not in your native Market it's really an unbelievable deal when you consider something like the eye and Neo next costs about eleven hundred dollars for a thousand dollars you can get a steam deck and an unreal error and have a massive gaming screen directly in front of you wherever you go in a package that well is about three times larger than your cell phone or can slip very easily into most laptop bags so yeah I would absolutely recommend if you are interested in having a gaming monitor or even a productivity monitor as a secondary option when you're traveling go give these a look as always if you're interested in the unreal air or any of the other devices that I showed off today I will have eBay and Amazon affiliate links down in the video description go give those a look on your way down there make sure to drop this video a like And subscribe to craft Computing if you haven't done so already follow me on Twitter at craft Computing for daily Shenanigans like this and if you like the content you see on this channel and want to help support me and what I do consider joining the patreon link is also down in the video description that's gonna do it for me in this one thank you all so much for watching and as always I will see you in the next video cheers guys that is really tasty this video just went by really quick [Music] here for today is from ex Novo Brewing it is the pre-prohibition hazy clocking in at 6.7 percent this beer that I first tried over on our Talking Heads live show every Wednesday night at 6 PM Pacific time for the latest in beer and Tech news right here on YouTube uh and John and I were both confused as to why it was called a pre-prohibition hazy because those are very contradictory terms so this is a hazy IPA with Citra and nectarone hops and again I was a little confused as to why they were calling it a pre-prohibition hazy because pre-prohibition beers were completely different than well the latest hazy craze I think what we settled on is this is kind of a blend of a hazy IPA and a Cree mail which is a Prohibition style of beer and it lends itself very very well to the style of modern hazies which are a little bit juicy a little bit a little bit thicker but uh not necessarily the the Dank IPA grassy you know kind of style of a Northwest IPA it's a very very interesting blend of two very different beers and it actually works really well this has a very creamy mouth feel it's very smooth uh there's some tropical Citrus notes in there but it's more like like melon and blood orange than it is that the typical lemon or pineapple that you get out of a Northwest IPA like I said it's a wonderful blend of styles of beers and something I would like to see more of from breweries today that are trying to do something different or unique with a hazy IPA definitely worth picking one up if you find it well it's really fun is I can play Borderlands on like a 80 inch screen in front of my face and still find my beer

Channel: Craft Computing

Views: 149,537

Keywords:

Id: ZLVJvlja3FM

Length: 23min 12sec (1392 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 04 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/ReviewsVR]

Great video! Thanks for including it! I have been waiting for a video comparing multiple display glasses. This was a great review and very realistic of what the Nreal airs can do!

[u/Rhomagus]

This is the vid that got me to make my purchase.

[u/Orthodox-Waffle]

I've been playing elden ring through steam link app and it's fucking crazy to have a giant portable screen for that.

[u/rushmore69]

Though I wish it worked full screen when in Deck mode, it does at least work great in desktop mode.

Was hoping the new scaling feature would fix it, since that was a main reason for the new feature, but does not work for me.