Steam Decks vs Rog Ally

[Mr Jt (Gog is king)]

If you like handheld pcs and you already own a steam deck(or if you are interested into buying a handheld device) are you actually interested in the new asus rog ally? If you don’t have a deck which one would you buy?
The Rog ally actually has a 1080 p screen and 120hz refresh screen. It’s also comes with windows which is kinda meh but since it’s a pc you can install linux on it

[Nathan]

It has better performance when you hit higher wattage than the steam deck but other than that, I don't see anything appealing.

[tfk]

Nope

[Jâbbérwôkkï]

It's interesting but, do you need to buy the external gpu dock to use with an external display (it is a proprietary port btw) or is there another option that would work?. Also, there's no easy performance tune menu like on Steam Deck, do you really want to go digging into windows on that small screen looking for them? There's no mouse/trackpads, lots of games are KB/M only so without bluetooth mouse or some other type of device there's no way to play them.

[Arachnid Soul]

I love my Steam Deck, but if I didn't own one already, I'd be open to getting the Rog Ally.

[tyl0413]

Ally just went up for pre-order in my country for the equivalent of $1000, no thanks.
Deck is much cheaper and has a much better OS and made by not a complete ♥♥♥♥ company, only wish it was sold in retail.

[Xedhadeaus]

I think it's fine?

I'm not sure where I stand aside from... I wish the Steam Deck had the screen and the power, honestly.

16x9 is just... better for most modern things. And the chip power is probably a good deal to hit higher end games if needed. But I do feel a lot of battery will be spent trying to hit that 1080p resolution handheld. Also, the lack of a lower end performance means that it'll basically be designed to catch people's eye more than casually enjoy semi demanding games on the go. Or that battery will die a lot faster.

That aside... the missing rear buttons, gyro, and touchpad, not to mention the mushy looking D Pad, make me reluctant to buy it. The amount of additional inputs the deck supports is genuinely the most sincere amount of forethought put toward games with no controller support, and I feel that if Rog cared about any of that, and not just checking the boxes and winning the graphs they think people cared about that they'd actually have made something to not just compete with, but flat out replace the deck at higher resolutions and for people who want to be sold a Windows handheld.

As far as Valve has come to push Linux as an attractive alternative for gaming on Steam. Once you take the curtain off, you're kind of stuck looking at file systems you don't understand, file locations that are everywhere at once, especially if you use proton, and being at the general mercy of whatever anyone decides to change... EA changes their launcher? Tough luck, game crashes nonstop now. This isn't Valve's fault, but as a buyer, you're not really looking to point fingers, because whatever decision you make will leave you pointing at yourself.

Also, as far as I'm aware, android emulation isn't really good on Linux? I know for almost everyone it's a non issue, but frankly, those old google play dollar deal games might genuinely be appreciated on a device far powerful and also much cheaper than a phone...

As the handheld hardware economy is, there will be something better. Who knows when. Give me those touchpads, additional rear buttons, and I'll honestly be tempted. Also... Stop trying to reinvent the D Pad... Playstation is good at it, Xbox is good at it too if you have the Elite controller dish on it, but it's simply in the wrong spot. Just do what people want and you wouldn't have to have reviewers try to appeal to everyone and sell it for you.

[ToysRsus]

With the Ally you get little gaming power until 10 watts, which translates into higher power consumption for low-level games.

Personally, I appreciate being able to practice Hollow Knight on the go for 4 hours on the Deck. With the Ally, such fun will probably not be possible, which then makes the Switch or a Deck additionally necessary.

On the other hand, we'll have to wait and see what firmware updates will do. And in the end, of course, it depends on what your own needs are. We are in the PC segment. Everyone has different needs and ideas about a mobile PC console. It's good if people have a choice. That's the only way to make everyone happy.

[Phantom Cat]

If I hadn't bought a Deck already, I probably would've bought an Ally. The Z1 Extreme model goes up to 8.6 TFlops. It's missing the trackpads though which are useful for games.

[BerzerkSlayer]

Originally posted by BlueCanine:

If I were to buy a handheld right now I would buy the ROG Ally, it's only $50 more than the top Steam Deck, but it is a lot more powerful and it has Windows on it instead of Linux which is a good thing because that means all my games would automatically be compatible with the ROG Ally from all the stores I use without needing to do any kind of tinkering at all.

yeah, I'll pay an extra $50 for better performance and game/store compatibility.

"I"LL SHOW YOU MY TRUE POWER!"

"DON'T TRY IT!"

*ALLY BURNING THRU BATTERY CONSUMPTION LIKE A KNIFE THRU BUTTER INTENSIFIES*

Besides, if you must get more performance, it's not that hard to OC the Deck so long as you follow a guide like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNEI7BTc87Q

[Waifu4Life]

The main issue right now is that it's hard to trust ASUS for anything they put out. If this thing cooks itself after 6 months of usage, doubt they'll help you.

[Gagdad⚫͗̃́̈̿̾̈͂̈́̏̏]

Originally posted by Waifu4Life:

The main issue right now is that it's hard to trust ASUS for anything they put out. If this thing cooks itself after 6 months of usage, doubt they'll help you.

L take. tech tubers are good at click bait panics in the way the present info to casuals, but not even they would say stuff like this

I wouldn't buy an Ally. Never use the deck i already have, it's a pointless toy

[Waifu4Life]

Originally posted by walter melon:

L take. tech tubers are good at click bait panics in the way the present info to casuals, but not even they would say stuff like this

I wouldn't buy an Ally. Never use the deck i already have, it's a pointless toy

These tech YouTubers know a lot more about the industry than you and I. So if someone like JayzTwoCents is ceasing sponsorship with ASUS due to producing one bad product after the other and not doing squat about it, then it's wise to stay away from this company for the time being.

[Gagdad⚫͗̃́̈̿̾̈͂̈́̏̏]

LOL watch that video again, and see what he actually spends 90% of it complaining about. it's that the used "influencer" stock of boards that they send for free to guys like him were not of the color and quality he wanted for his personal rig. tough break but this isn't actually related to you. He did the big drama thing over the now fixed AM5 issue. But when he signs up for Asus again you can remember that I told you so. Techtubers are not your friends, they exist for ad revenue clicks. but i guess the world needs the easily influenced so go ahead

[Drak3]

Originally posted by BlackDragon875:

If I hadn't bought a Deck already, I probably would've bought an Ally. The Z1 Extreme model goes up to 8.6 TFlops. It's missing the trackpads though which are useful for games.

TFlops is a bad metric to compare gaming performance. There's not much correlation between Flops and gaming to begin with, and once you're comparing between architectures and even significantly different chips within an architecture, it goes out the window.

I mean, the RX480 was a 5.8 TFlop card, and yet the GTX 1060 kept up and sometimes surpassed it while rocking 3.8 TFlops, and the GTX 980 was a 5TFlop card.

There's also the fact that you've got to dump a good amount of power into the Z1E to get good results. The 7840U and Steam Deck's Van Gogh outperform the Z1E at 10W by considerable margins, and the 6800U sometimes outperforms the Z1E and other times matches it. Van Gogh scales down really well, the other 3 aren't worth considering if you're targeting 10W or lower TDP.

[Gagdad⚫͗̃́̈̿̾̈͂̈́̏̏]

Originally posted by Waifu4Life:

Originally posted by walter melon:

Why you have to be mad? I'm actually exceedingly blessed, thanks for asking. So pure ad hom there. I'm going to take that as admission that a spark went off in your head when I described what he actually complained about. Good. I was trying to help you. I feel sorry for the people who do the blind fan/hate boy flavour of the month thing. Asus is still the same solid brand like it was before with some of the best engineers in the industry, definitely no worse than the others, and also not your friends.

Child please, I know your kind. Back in 2008-2011, the trend was to snuff your nose at anyone who's popular on the Internet, TV, etc.

Now I don't know if you're trying to bring it back or if you were never able to let go of that trend, but either way, you ain't fooling anyone in 2023, so just let it go.

Unrelated babble, too absurd to try to parse. This thread is about Asus hardware. Why do you think the Rog Ally might suffer heat damage in 6 months and Asus will refuse the warranty? Do you have any specific examples of hardware produced by them where this was a widespread problem? Any specific recent Asus products with issues that did not also affect every other competitor of the same product type? Any price gouging or useless gamer bling that is also not being done by every other competitor? Go ahead and rewatch the one video you saw on Asus to see if it's helpful here.