I’ll stick with the deck. I’d rather a Linux first approach and to support the people putting in the work.
Agree. Asus never really put much of an effort to support Linux, for example, for the big companies, fwupd, we only see Dell and Lenovo support.
GamersNexus proved that ASUS is a scummy company and the ROG Ally isn’t a great product
The Ally and Ally X are very different products, but yes…Asus is scum.
And Asus is still going strong with the shitty prebuilt GN reviewed yesterday that was the worst prebuilt GN had ever reviewed.
No touchpads. OOTB experience questionable and Bazzite is a community project, compared to first party support from Valve for the Deck.
And the display isn’t definitely better. Yes it’s 120 Hz, higher resolution and VRR, but the Deck’s OLED has proper HDR support and 90 Hz is probably enough for this type of device (as is the resolution, although I’d take a higher res screen as well for 2D games). The main thing that the Deck’s screen is missing is VRR imo.
I’m running bazzite on my steam deck and I love it, it gives me more compatibility with uh… alternatively sourced games. It may be a community project, but it’s brilliantly done
Oh Bazzite is great, no doubt about it.
But it’s not endorsed/supported in any way by ASUS so ROG Ally (X) compatibility isn’t a given. ASUS could release a firmware update tomorrow that breaks compatibility (very unlikely of course).
Veeery unlikely to happen, considering Valve is adding (has added?) support for the Ally to SteamOS.
Do you have any recommendations for learning more about Bazzite for such a use case?
Steam Deck is more than software and a slightly old APU, its also the controlls and build quality. Tbh I dont think any company can truly surpass the Steam Deck.
People have the wrong ideas. Steam Deck LCD was a pure test object anyway, where they saw that there was a market, which is why Valve also released the Oled version. Valve has left the hardware open so that you can also install other OS. Valve may also see competition there, even if the competition releases more powerful hardware. Valve’s hardware is still secondary and steam, which is installed everywhere, is still their core product. The better hardware the competition brings, the more power-hungry games people will buy.
Steam Deck vs … is just nonsense.
Plenty of comments have already addressed the touchpads. But the other thing that only the steam deck does right now, is the symmetrical joysticks at the top of the device. Personally, I find having the right joystick farther down on a heavy handheld absolutely brutal for ergonomics, and it’s the reason I never touch my Switch Lite
I’ll be honest, the Ally as a complete product is not appealing to me whatsoever. Yes, it’s much faster and better on paper, but it’s not better in reality. Admittedly Bazzite makes it a lot better, but it still has way too many drawbacks, compared to Deck. Even more so, it can be said about whatever MSI made
For me it’s just that the deck is a better low power device and has trackpads. I can play RPGs from the 90s at 3 watts for 8 hours on a single charge. The thing I’m most excited for in a deck2 would be even better performance under 10W.
Exactly this.
As someone that has both (and I did install Bazzite on the Ally) I have found myself still using the Steam Deck. Like many in my (admittedly fortunate) situation, I had a deck first then got an Ally later out of curiosity if the “more power” aspect would make an impactful difference in gaming on more demanding titles. And while yes you can get more frames/use higher graphics settings on demanding titles, I keep going back to the Deck because it’s just a better overall experience. Even with Bazzite on the Ally, there’s just this level of Jank that prevents me from using it as my main “console.”
A recent example: I finally beat Horizon Zero Dawn (original version ran great on the Deck and I played through the whole game on it) so naturally I fired up the sequel, Forbidden West. Since it’s a newer game it’s a bit more demanding and not officially a verified Deck game, but I’ve been able to get it to run at a mostly steady 30fps anyway. I was curious how much better the Ally would run it so I tried it for a day or two, and while I get more fps, the frame pacing and controller response and screen and speakers just soured the experience so I went right back to the Deck and I’ll be playing the rest of the game on that. I had similar experiences with other demanding games like Cyberpunk, BG3, Dragon Age, etc.
And yes I know that there is “tweaking” I can probably do to make things “perfect” on the Ally but I just want something that works when I want to just play a game, but allows me to go down the tweaking rabbit hole when I want to. The Steam Deck does that in all regards. And no, my issue with the Ally aren’t from a lack of knowledge (I’ve worked in IT for over 20yrs, I know what I’m doing when it comes to making a PC work) because I do often mess around with the Deck to “perfect” a respective experience with a game.
Maybe when Valve finally releases SteamOS for other hardware will I give it another go (though they can’t change the hardware itself), but until then, I’ll stick with the Steam Deck (and my big rig for the few games that are just too demanding)
Edit: and for the curious, I only got around 40fps on Forbidden West in the most demanding areas compared to 30fps on the Deck, and I put the two on identical settings, including graphics preset, resolution (720p on Ally, 800p on Deck because aspect ratio) and everything else. So the added power didn’t do enough to justify the rest of the experience.
I’m sure Valve loves the fact that more people are locked into the Steam store.
Steam is great, and there’s workarounds for using other installed games/stores, but… kinda feels bad that this stuff is so integrated into the Valve/Steam experience.
Don’t get me wrong, I use my steam deck… a lot… and I buy most of my games on Steam… I just wish GOG and Epic integration was a little more integrated, just so I don’t feel so locked in to one company. (yes, I’m aware of heroic launcher, and other options, but they’re still just hacked on extra steps that don’t always work)
There’s nothing stopping epic or GOG from distributing a flatpak for their experiences/stores, the question is where are they?
Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris both have Epic and GOG integration.
While I would love to have an official GOG Launcher on Linux, it would probably not work as well as Heroic’s integration.
I’m aware, I just like to gently remind people that the stores they want to shop from, seemingly don’t want their money. I view the deck as a kind of linux trojan horse for gaming, SteamOS on more devices could at least convince GOG that linux is worth supporting.
Epic has an axe to grind and I expect nothing from them.
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Why? I claim them all the time on my phone, and occasionally play them through Heroic. I’ve never installed EGS on any of my devices, but I’ve played a few through Steam’s integration.
A free game is a free game, but I’ll never buy from EGS while they’re so hostile to my preferred platform: Linux. I’ll occasionally buy from GOG, but honestly, their DRM-free schtick isn’t nearly as valuable to me as Valve’s investment in Linux.
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Epic is paying the devs, FitGirl and any other form of piracy isn’t.
So, they ignore Canada and refuse to support the people there. Greaaat.
Neither of the companies want to support Linux. Simple as that. Or else their launchers would work on Linux without needing third party ones. They don’t see Linux user base as big enough to be worth the effort.
yes, I’m aware of heroic launcher, and other options, but they’re still just hacked on extra steps that don’t always work)
I mean, this requires buying a windows powered handheld and then loading an entire OS on it.
So I don’t think people are locked to steam with it, but I’m honestly not sure.
GOG games work great with heroic because no DRM, almost as easy as steam games. Epic is a pain in the ass though because you need to be logged in to play them. They work offline for a time but every time I travel I have to reenter username, password, 2FA code and captcha. For whatever reason it just refuses to remember the device. Still Civ6 is good on deck and it was free on epic.
No touchpads? Not even a contender lmao
today’s best handheld
no trackpads, I rest my case.
Mm, yes, because I’m gonna spend $1100 on something far overpowered for its usecase
Yup. I got my Steam Deck for $530 or something at launch and I’m still loving it. If it breaks and I can’t cheaply fix it, I’ll buy their OLED model for $550 and still be less than Asus’ device. Yeah it’s less powerful, but it’s not half as powerful.
If Valve releases a faster Deck, I’ll probably get it because the first has worked so well and was priced well. I’m happy competitors exist, but I don’t need a top of the line handheld, because I can always play more intensive games on my desktop.
I paid $600 for a rog ally x on black Friday and they frequently enough go on sale that you absolutely aren’t paying $1100 for it. I also use Bazzite pretty much for everything on it (I have a windows partition but there’s on 4 games in my steam library that I didn’t manage to get working on steam OS). If you consider its use case to be more than just handheld gaming (media center docking etc), it quickly shows its versatility and use case.
I get exceptional battery life, great graphics with little to no tweaking, and while it’s not perfect I wouldn’t say the steam deck itself is perfect either.
I wish it had a differently styled D-pad. I don’t necessarily like the asymmetrical sticks (although the thumb sticks on it are some of the best I have ever used on a handheld of any kind). Once it’s got support from Valve out in the wild I’m pretty sure the rare input problem I have will go away altogether.
I really don’t like this article (it’s not very well put together and doesn’t talk about the Ally X in a way that’s fair to how good the steam deck is for its price point.
But I do really like the Ally X despite ASUS and their BS. Which I do think is something that should be mentioned more often here.
It won’t surpass the Deck for me until they put trackpads on it!
surpassed in what? sales? doubt! quality? doubt.
what is this AI Slob blog ad?
And in a week at CES Asus will likely launch a new model with official SteamOS.
