Top 20 games played on Steam Deck in the past month, sorted by playtime.
40 is a sweet spot between 30 and 60: feels much more smooth than 30, is much less demanding than 60. And by the way, 30 is acceptable too as long as it’s stable. Sure it will almost certainly feel less smooth than other options, but especially as you say you’re playing on console mostly… chances are you are already used to 30 fps. I, for example, feel the difference between 30 and 60 in Forza Horizon 5 (and the magic 40) but that’s not preventing me from doing well.
The one thing that I’m not sure has been mentioned yet, is that the Steam Deck targets 720p. The screen is small enough for that to work out fine.
The reason why 40 fps feels better is because even though its only 10 fps higher, the frame latency is half(25 ms) compared to 30(33.3 ms) and 60(16.6ms) on the two ends. So you work 33% harder for half the latency.
To put in perspective, the drop in latency (8.3 ms), is the same for example going from , 40 to 60, or 60(16.6) > 120(8.3 ms)
