Borderlands 4 is unplayable on Steam Deck, but what about ROG Ally?

Borderlands 4 from Gearbox Software and 2K is now available worldwide for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. It is quite a demanding game on PC going by its final system requirements. I was curious to see how it will run from day one on PC handhelds. The impressions below are based on only the opening hours. It is likely the later portions run a lot worse, but treat these as my initial impressions for Borderlands 4 on Steam Deck and ROG Ally.

Borderlands 4 Steam Deck impressions

Given the hefty system requirements on PC, I didn't really expect Borderlands 4 to be a good experience on Steam Deck, but I thought it might be playable with heavy upscaling. Even when setting everything to the absolute lowest settings using Ultra Performance upscaling, Borderlands 4 runs at between 6 and 20 fps. I saw up to 25fps during gameplay without combat with combat ranging from 14-20fps at best. I will say that I appreciate how Borderlands 4 already has 16:10 support, supports HDR on Steam Deck OLED, and brings up the on-screen keyboard for text entry with UI being very readable and visible, but the performance is not even close to being good.

As with most Unreal Engine 5 games I've tested, the TSR upscaling ended up being the best option, even though the end result is bad across the board. You can try the others, but I found TSR delivered the only output worth using visually, all things considered.

Borderlands 4 Steam Deck recommended settings

My recommendation right now is to not play Borderlands 4 on Steam Deck. Don't waste your time on it until we see some patches and official mentions for Steam Deck support. If you want to power through the poor performance with the absolute lowest settings, I recommend using the right trackpad set to mouse for precision aiming and also enabling the back buttons for the L3 and R3 (pushing into the sticks) inputs since you will be doing that a lot and it is much easier to use the back buttons.

Borderlands 4 ROG Ally impressions

For those playing on PC, Borderlands 4 does compile shaders on initial launch. When loading up my save on ROG Ally Z1 Extreme, the game defaulted to TSR with Quality upscaling at 1080p. I decided to first try it at the absolute lowest settings which is 720p with TSR at Ultra Performance. With these low settings and playing at 25W, it held between 30 and 45fps even in multiplayer. I had it drop in busier areas to the low 30s or high 20s though. I would say Borderlands 4 is just about playable on ROG Ally Z1 Extreme at 25W, but I'm curious how it runs on the ROG Ally X model with more memory. Right now, I only recommend playing Borderlands 4 on a PC handheld if you have a ROG Ally or better system and can play on turbo mode. Don't bother with it on Steam Deck. I will revisit this in a few months or when the game gets any major update. 

Borderlands 4 is now available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam and Epic Games Store). It will release on October 3 for Nintendo Switch 2.