I really get fatigued sitting in my chair playing steam games, I almost pulled the trigger on one of these the other day with the intent of installing moonlight, and sunshine to stream to my TV. Anyone have any opinions? I saw there’s 2 versions, does it make sense to get the pro version? Can I use my PS5 controller on it?
Edit: Thanks for all the input everyone!You all have given me a lot to mull over, much appreciated.
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Consider having a SteamDeck.
I used Steam Link, Mi Box, Shield Pro, Apple TV and Steam Deck for streaming indoors. Latency-wise Deck beats all by 3 miliseconds, APTV and Shield ties in second (all three have latency under 16ms [1 frame in 60fps]). APTV + Moonlight supports wireless gamepad rumble and all other Dualsense features, also HDR. Shield is hit and miss especially with newer controllers.
Deck supports every combination, plus you can stream your Xbox (or Game Pass Cloud) and PS5 to Deck if you have either.
I second this. A second hand 64gb deck is probably under 300€ if you are a bit patient and search local online used markets, while a new nvidia shield pro is around 220€.
Pretty much supports most controllers OOB, is literally a console that you can play less demanding games on, has a high resell value if you don’t dig it!
A used minipc could also achieve this, potentially with less cost then buying the Shield.
If you’re planning to use paid streaming apps with it too, that’s a different story and probably worth it.
Or you could even go the long HDMI cable + USB route.
The SteamLink experience within the Shield has only gotten worse over the years, and a LOT worse recently. Examples include:
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The app often fails to launch big picture mode, or launches it, but without focus, requiring me to go walk to my desk in the other room to fix it.
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Connecting to a PC with a game already-in-progress no longer puts the game in focus immediately, again requiring me to walk over to the desk and fix it.
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The app is prone to having the video completely freeze within any of the Steam UI, requiring a disconnect and reconnect. Like VERY prone. Like, it’ll take 5 tries at connecting and reconnecting to actually make it into a game.
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Some games that used to be able to play well remotely now have an unplayable amount of input lag.
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The app will occasionally get drop to si gle-digit framerates within a game, for which the only fix seems to be to completely reboot the Shield.
As a media player, I’m still overall happy with the Shield, and I know there’s a rather large community of custom OS enthusiasts for it, but with the degradation of Steam’s performance, and the slow addition of ad gabrage in the home UI over the years, the Shield is NOT sensible for a new purchase.
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Don’t forget moonlight also runs on the Raspberry Pi. https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-docs/wiki/Installing-Moonlight-Qt-on-Raspberry-Pi-4
And I had it running on a PS Vita, though the experience wasn’t great and I never used it very much.
It can be a good experience, depending on the kinds of games you play and your tolerance for input latency. Don’t go in expecting a miracle and you might be surprised how good it is.
The best experience I’ve had so far is with an Apple TV running Steam Link. My Xbox controller is also able to connect to my PC through the floor just fine, which i find helps a bit with the lag compared to pairing it with the Apple TV.
I have a pro that I use with a ps5 controller, sunshine and moonlight, but I connect the controller directly to my pc instead of going through the shield. Using the shield results in a different “feel” to the games and android insists on stealing the ps button input for android menu nonsense without any way (that I could find) to disable that and pass it through to the pc.
There’s lots of options for extending Bluetooth and usb to computers further away if yours isn’t close enough. I wouldn’t recommend this setup if you needed to connect the controller through the shield. I am sensitive to that sort of thing, but I think most people would find it pretty bad, especially if they have any experience using it with a console.
The rest works brilliantly (when connected with wired networking), I rarely use my pc directly for games anymore.
It was even better before they ditched streaming through GeForce Experience or whatever. Moonlight + Sunshine work, but I’ve never felt like there was a good Sunshine configuration tool, and adding games manually has always been too much of a pain for me to bother with.
I use the Shield Pro, and it works great for streaming Steam games. I’ve never used moonlight/sunshine, but Steam Link has worked flawlessly for me, as well as xbox controllers, PS4 controllers, and Switch controllers and their knockoffs. My only gripe is it only has the HDMI port for 4k/60hz (HDMI 2.1? Can’t remember the number) and can’t stream the 4k/120hz my TV can handle.
