Steam Deck OLED vs ROG Ally - Which One Should You Buy?
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- čas přidán 22. 11. 2023
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As someone that uses their Steam Deck as a backlog killer for games that released from 2018 and back. I've been happy with the decks performance. So much so, I picked up a Oled version because It fixes my 2 main issues with it. Battery life and screen quality.
Steam OS has only gotten better due to constant updates and support.. which I haven't seen on any other PC handheld.
That’s what I do with my laptop, it’s a low spec ryzen5 2500u and a 1050, I use that for pretty much any game from roughly 2016 and prior, I use a series x for newer stuff, I wish it was the other way around lol, don’t have 2 grand for a desktop so the series x is ok for now.
Then you havent looked at anything about ROG Ally cause they constantly are updated lol. There is a new update for it almost weekly
but vrr and freesync on ally is the goat for low tdp, literally 40fps in ally is smoother than 55fps on deck, the dips is especially noticeable on deck
@@Twist3d420nah the support is not as good.
Steam running through a translation layer and performing this well is extremely impressive
This is a VERY good point, SteamDeck is on that “proton/WINE/etc” layer… the ROG Ally is 100% native. Completely overlooked that one.
@@alejmcwhy does this matter?
Just returned my legion go, you guys put it in perspective for me, I can use my gaming laptop when I’m on a vacation but for flights or just relaxing the steam deck is going to be the right choice, going to order the oled version, thanks
I prefer the Deck simply because of battery life. Yes, the Ally performs a good bit better but what's the point of a handheld if you can only play it for like an hour and a half at the higher power-draw settings? The other power draw presets do increase battery life significantly but at that point you'll be getting similar performance to the Deck while still getting not as good battery life, especially compared to the OLED model. The only time I use my Ally instead of my Deck is if I'm at home sitting by the charger and at that point I'm not actually taking advantage of the portable nature of the device. And that's not even mentioning how much more intuitive SteamOS is compared to Windows and Armory Crate, at least in my opinion, along with other improvements like the trackpads. That said, I like both and they have their use cases, but I would choose the Deck in a heartbeat simply because I can actually use it as a handheld device far more.
Exactly how i feel
1 hour, 3 hours, these are PC handhelds. Until they can get them to 4 to 6 hrs of battery life, it's going to be a plug and play for a while. And just because a screen is OLED is a weak reason to want a system. I wouldn't want to be limited to what I can play, or just to Steam's launcher when they don't have a lot of games like Fortnite, Dead Island 2, Alan Wake 2, Rocket League to name a few. But to each their own, I'm rolling with the ROG Ally. Portrait mode screens are going to limit your gaming experience. Period
@@MARR3Nsteam deck oled runs 3-12 hours. Seems good enough to me.
@com.7869 12 hours maybe playing an old gen game or indy game, same as Ally and Legion Go due to it not being a less power demanding game.
@@MARR3N No duh d*psh*t. Did I say it was going to get 12 hrs on a modern game? No I didn't. On a demanding game the old deck and ally get about 1.5 -2hrs at 15 watts on newer demanding titles. The new OLED model gets about 2.5-3 hours which is substantially better. As evidenced by digital foundry's testing video. I love how when you people try and defend the legion go and ally you just make sh*t up that people don't say.
I loved my Ally! It was beautiful, ran games like a beast, and had arguably one of the BEST LCD panels in its class. Unfortunately for me the battery and SD card issue was the reason I returned my unit and bought a steam deck OLED. I work as an aerospace mechanic, and often times may not have access to power due to remote locations.
I own both deck and ally, have the oled coming tomorrow. I totally agree with you. I love playing on the ally, in bed, right next to a wall plug. 😂
The deck oleds improved battery life makes it a preferred handheld especially when I travel.
Also, valves support for the deck is second to none. Asus treats the ally pretty much like yesterdays news.
@@stvnoahc7249 at that point you’re better off just buying a gaming laptop with 4090 instead of Ally
Got my OLED Deck a few days ago. Still crazy playing a game at 90FPS/Hz at max brightness on this beautiful screen, getting down to 60% or so battery, going to check my remaining battery time and it's like 4-6 hours depending on the game. As I don't get these machines for AAA games (even if they could run them flawlessly) I mostly use them for emulators and to catch up on my large indie/smaller game collection. Like recently, Knuckle Sandwich, Death Must Die, You Will Die Here Tonight, Star Ocean Second Story R, Signalis, Lunacid, etc. That kind of game. It runs all of those beautifully and the battery lasts an absurd amount of time. Reminds me of when the GBA SP was new and you could get 10 hours of battery before it would die. Hell, I even pop into some MMOs like FF11 or FF14, or really old stuff like PSO Blue Burst, which at max brightness was reporting 9+ hours of battery life. Nuts.
But more than any of that, I'm glad this market finally exists and that it has real competition. For a long time there, there was nothing at all, then we had the Win GPD and similar devices, and I think one of the early Aya Neos, but those always felt like extremely compromised devices, novelties at best. I actually use my Deck all the time and its versatility is wonderful. I can't wait for native dualboot support, because I wouldn't mind running Windows on it. Again, since I don't run anything very heavy, I wouldn't be missing much in terms of power lost vs the Ally.
I hope this market continues to thrive and these manufacturers continue to push each other and we can look back at the big discrepancies between devices/build quality/features of right now and laugh at them being early growing pains as we get more capable, functional and smartly built handhelds.
I returned my Oled because i couldn't see much difference and a better battery life is not worth extra 60$
@@kr1me2000 You... couldn't see much difference? Impressive!
@@kr1me2000 the battery life is like double, the touchpads and buttons are better, the screen is 90hz instead of 60hz, the speakers are better, the wifi and Bluetooth are better, and you're telling me you didn't notice a difference I think I'm smelling Cap right now I'm not sure you actually bought the OLED
The buttons were actually worse, speaker no difference.@@CJTheTokay
Exactly this. ROG Ally nutriders will tell you it's the greatest, but what's the point in a portable machine with an hour of battery life?
The steam OS is an incredible package , ease of use and interface is exactly what you need to appeal to a wide audience and get first timers in. Then the layers of customisability from there is great. Also think steam will at least continue to support their device. I think a year from now Asus will have totally lost interest/treat it like their laptops.
Great to have competition in this segment. I'm sure the existence of the Ally and other competing handhelds is partially why we get OLED on the mid-spec deck. When Switch 2 comes the $400 LCD will probably get upgraded to OLED.
P8
Just got my OLED Deck in and I'm super happy with it. The screen size increase is so much nicer for everything especially using the desktop and of course the colors and black levels are top notch. I'm surprised how noticeable the weight difference is. The thumb grip on the sticks is vastly better, which was a big negative for me previous. All the buttons feel a bit nicer and easier to press in. I'm also super happy to finally have 512GB instead of just 64GB. I still have my 1TB SD card that didn't even need to be formatted, it just works.
Great to know about the SD card working
Hol up so I can get 1TB out of the box and throw in SD cards for more space? I'm gonna hold multiple SD cards. But still the download times are impressive. It can load a 50 GB game while I shower.
I love the competition finally happening in this relatively new space! I just feel like it's a preference choice at the end of the day. If you prefer linux or want a cheaper entry with a screen that pops, get the Steam Deck OLED. If you want windows or a VRR screen for the type of games you play, get the ROG ALLY. I love my ALLY, but at the end of the day it's just a situation of what's more important to you
Yes, the Ally is better at 25W, but at that wattage, you get like 1h of battery. So the portable factor ceases to make sense.
VRR is obviously a plus, but with some fidling you can just lock any frame rate and have a great experience, as long as there are no big drops. The safe bet is always just locking to 30fps (outside the heavy stuff like Returnal, UE5 games, etc).
Get the Steam Deck OLED lads, unless there are games you HAVE to have Windows for.
Who cares about that , everyone these days has massive power bank man. This argument should end right there. The is good to play old games.
@@DownUnder43 Yeah sure buddy, keep telling yourself that. I'm sure everyone is eager to the comfort of having a bulky device that needs to be connected with cable to play another bulky device.
What a gaming experience.
@@DownUnder43 Yes....then the Ally gets at least 2 hours of battery and the deck gets at least 5...
@@DownUnder43 a very small percentage of people own power banks i only know one person who does
Exactly this. Portability is measured by battery life. And the deck oled is the way to go
I've had the OG Deck, Ally and now the Deck OLED.
The OLED may be lacking some power but good lord that screen is excellent. It's also much nicer to hold (lighter) and battery life is stellar.
I would say the OLED deck is the better handheld but the Ally does have that turbo boost provided you're plugged in.
I'll take the OLED but hey isn't it really nice to have a choice?
Nah, the rog is far better. It plays every single game at much higher framerates, while the deck doesn't.
See that’s what I needed to hear I have a c2 and I don’t think I can go back to LCD and the ally seems awesome but how’s the battery life on it been a while since I watched the reviews
@@matthewmontgomery7764while you will get a nicer saturation of colors and deepest blacks. If you dont plan on doing alot of HDR gaming. The Oled is a little hyped. Not to say it isn't great. But compared to the Ally or Go its not a huge jump
@@matthewmontgomery7764 I have a C1 and an Ally, it has good black levels. It's not like a cheap IPS panel or anything. All my other devices are OLED or miniLED, and the Ally holds its own.
@@matthewmontgomery7764I have a Samsung s90c oled, and honesty the rog screen is great it’s not something that’s a problem for me .
I have to be honest I've had my 512gb Steam Deck for about 1 year and I love it. I would say 80% of my favorite steam/emulated games ran well on it. But not being able to properly play games like Call of Duty, Fortnite, Destiny, Minecraft, rainbow six siege, and many other games kinda sucks. Also emulating PS3/XBOX 360 games isn't the best experience on the steam deck because it's not powerful enough to handle most titles. But I purchased an ROG Ally and all of those problems went away. I was able to play 100% of all of my favorite Steam/emulated games with no problems even PS3 and 360 games run way better because the ROG Ally is a lot more powerful than the Steam Deck.
I feel exactly the same way. The Ally alleviated so many of those issues that I had with the deck. Something that also bothered me was having to run a lot of games I play in 16:9 on it's 16:10 screen, and having the letterboxing issues, especially since my deck had bad screen uniformity issues with it's backlight bleed. And nothing could fix that. The Allys 16:9 screen took that all away. But the OLED Deck would also fix that, but then the Ally just being so much better with emulation performance and just being able to push some 3D indie games to higher frame rates.. it just won me over.
It would be interesting if we could battery life normalize the performance metrics. Some sort of frame per minute of battery life or something.
VRR is pretty much the only feature they shouldnt have omitted in the OLED Deck
I think it’s more a limitation of the screen hardware like the way the oled display is made or orientated that dosent allow it Linus was saying it’s extremely similar to the switch oled display so that might be a limitation hopefully they sell enough of these that for the next one there like okay we have the customer base for it more bispoke parts
Indeed, having VRR would've made the Steam Deck OLED a must buy for me, but as it is now, with the price being almost on par with the ROG Ally, i'm very torn what to go for.
no. then rog ally beats the steam deck
@@matthewmontgomery7764 It's because of the interface. The MIPI interface on the screen they went with doesn't support VRR. I think this is another reason Linus suspects that this is basically the same display as on the OLED Switch.
They didn't ignore it, it just wasn't possible with the available hardware for the given price range or something like that, and they had to choose between VRR and OLED, so they, rightfully, favored OLED.
What about the legion go? Please review it! Would love to know your thoughts
I prefer the steam deck, and am looking forward to the OLED, but its awesome we have so many options for handheld gaming now, when before it was pretty much just the switch
I have all 3 even though I love how the Steam Deck feels holding it all my favorite games that are not that even demanding run like crap on the Steam Deck. LegionGo has a big screen which is huge for me bc I have shit eyesight. But, I reach out for my Rog Ally everytime I'm sent outta town with my job. It has its issues for sure but, it runs all my games solid when I get dips I barely feel it bc the VRR kicks in and, the sound stage on those front-facing speakers is the best in any handheld so far.
Just got my SteamDeck OLED. Absolutely love it, and SteamOS is pretty damn amazing. I'm definitely a fan going forward.
Except for its limited game compatibility.
I am one of those weirdos that went 100% windows on their Steam Deck. One of the reasons I haven't bought an Ally though is the wonderful trackpads on the Deck. I just really wish the deck had a little more CPU power for emulation is all.
Steam Deck control mapping is 10 levels ahead of anything you can do on a Windows handheld.
Good luck playing any "piano" games on an Ally. By that I mean so many keys it may as well be a piano.
I can’t recommend the rog ally to anyone. It has had so many issues for me that an eventual fresh install of windows had to be performed to fix most of the problems I encountered. The deck just works much more seamless out the gate. If you want a reliable experience, just buy the deck.
As long as you never leave SteamOS, the Deck is seamless. It's when you dive into the desktop mode that things get wild
@@kylerclarke2689 this is true as the deck in desktop mode bricked one of my sd cards lol.
OLED for me. The 45-60 minute battery life made it not worth it to me. I also didn’t like the back buttons which felt like plastic rocks, and the angled corners dug in after a while.
I need help :) I've been out of gaming since 2013 and PS3... Thinking of either buying a RTX 4070 Ti Super next year or PS5/Steam Deck now... Any ideas? I don't have that much time to play games nowadays. Not sure, however, I'm willing to sit in front of PC even more to play. I'm interested in PS5 games but also multi-platform single player games (Resident Evil 2/3/4/7/8 and, perhaps, Yakuza/Judgement/Like a Dragon series). Any advice? I have a powerful PC, but no GPU still, as I work with audio.
I used to only game on PlayStation. Then I realized I only had it because of the exclusive games but, I really played multi platform games 95% of the time. Sold it, built a PC and have been playing on it ever since. Don’t really miss PS exclusives. I also have 6 wives and 11 kids, work 9 days a week, etc. so I just bought a Steam Deck for when I just want to chill in bed, on the couch or I’m not in the mood to sit in front of my gaming PC. I’d say go for the deck.
Also, the Steam Deck 2 might be coming in late 2025 or in 2026.
VRR, going over 15watts, being able to play any game ever released for Windows, performance is a step above the deck, and it can make a huge difference in some games, Game Pass is game changer! Plus its smaller than the Deck! Ally all the way!!! Big ups to Asus for putting in the work with support as well (still not as good as Valve but not far off)Sold my Deck and never looked back.
How's the sleep mode on it? That's the only thing holding me back after hearing mixed things at launch.
Its 100x better than when it first launched. At first many issues waking, but no more, it sleeps and wakes without issue. First bios would have issues waking and also battery would die. Thats no longer an issue.@@jcarreno94
The only real issue right now is the SD card slot, many still have issues with it killing cards. I ended up just swapping the internal drive for a 2TB.@@jcarreno94
@@jcarreno94 It's terrible, I've had numerous crashes when leaving it sleeping too long. The best thing I found is putting windows in hibernation mode, but then your game clock keeps running. Apparently I played 150 hours of Star Ocean last week...
lol coping so hard to justify your purchase
I just ordered a asus ROG ally. The steamdeck I’ve heard is hard to use if you want to do anything besides play games plus with the zen4, RDNA3 and VRR it really seems like the better deal. Another big reason I went with the ally is because of the processor which is much better than the one in the steamdeck. It’s over twice as powerful single thread and has twice the cores. So I think that will play a part in how long this handheld holds up. We shall see.
I thought about getting a laptop. Best Buy has two on sale right now that are within $200 of the ally but the reason I didn’t is because with a laptop I have to sit up to play it and I already have a gaming PC that’s more powerful than any laptop you can buy so I figured if I am going to get something else it will be a handheld. Plus the z1 extreme processor is more power than the cheap laptop CPUs.
Bad move.
That's a fair take, but I would temper expectations with the whole "twice the single core performance"
I'm going to sell my Ally , bad battery+ drop frames + heating . I regret it
Im just curious, what games were you playing?@@driftnew
@@1bdmonster569 I played resident evil4+ village+ re2 and other games AAA ..
Do you think parking the Rog Ally cores to 4 cores 8 thread and clocked to 3.5/4Ghz like the SD will allow it to allocate more watt to the GPU and peform better at 15w?
The opposite should be true. At very small amounts of power having fewer cores is better, as fewer cores with a proper amount of power will perform better than more cores that are starving for power. The APU with more, starving cores would likely take away power from the GPU to then give that power to the CPU so the cores aren't starving. I believe I remember seeing some power tests that showed just that; at very low watts the Deck was giving its graphics processing more power than the Ally was at the same wattage. That's also a good portion of the reason why the Steam Deck can go as low as 3 watts whereas the Ally bottoms out at about 9.
It is quite interesting that the steam deck can at time out performe the ally... this must be that each component of the z1 apu is more power hungry and thereby some part,(probably gpu) is power starved. How is the performance difference if cpu boosting is turned of which has been (nativly) added to armory crate?
Wow turbo mode blows it out of the park and as a streamer sells it for me. Can I set the ROG Ally to change modes automatically based on docked or not? And then on a per game basis?
yes you can, you can also set each game... so if you want to play only one game always at 25 or 30w you can set it
I have both and like the Ally way more. About to get the Legion Go next month
I sold deck after getting the ally because I never thought the deck again
Got my oled steam deck. Coming from a switch massive upgrade with graphics and variety of games I can play. Only thing is the battery life really suffers unless you're willing to throttle the deck. Its just about passable for a proper portable in that regard but only just. I imagine the more powerful handhelds are going to be pretty impractical when it comes to portability and battery life.
18 watt is the sweet spot for the Rog Ally though. Also simply turning off cpu boost makes the gap in performance much much wider.
18 watts might be the sweet spot but you gotta make the benchmark fair. 15 watts vs 15 watts.
Not to mention overall tdp consumption should also be taken into account for this. 15 watts on the ally can net around 60-80 ish minutes. While the deck oled is at minimum 2 hours 20 minutes or 30 minutes.
That is where most people are gonna look at when they decide on what they wanna buy
@@dio8070 agree..... Again with so much cpu power turning off cpu boost really helps at limited tdps on the ally. So think of it this way the Rog Ally has 2x as many cores clocked at substantially higher frequencies. The GPU will run at much higher clock speeds at any given wattage with CPU boost off. Not so much different than tweaking the deck per game. If they repeated this test at similar wattages with that one simple setting change it would net much better performance for the ally. Once that setting is changed you would be surprised that you could then set the custom tdp to 12-13 watts and have similar performance to steam deck at 15 watts. At that point yes the steak deck OLED would have a larger battery and still have an advantage. In my personal case though my kids have Xbox game pass so the cost savings for me ( I've bought two out of the more than a dozen games that I currently have on the ally. Not so easy to do on the deck. If I was a PC gamer only then I would think differently. I've played and finished $200.00 in games already and I'm playing starfield and another $200 in games I have spent $0 on where I would have had to buy them on steam ...... Dang
My son has the steam deck lcd and it is a fine piece of kit but he's 11 and his game choices are not mine lol. I exclusively play the ally as I rarely have time to sit at a desktop to play a game. I fly quite a bit for my profession and the Ally has been great for me.
While that is true, the amount of performance you get for 3 watts more on the ally is surprising. It would have been great to have 18 and 30 watts as comparison points.@@dio8070
@@dio807015 watts is more like 1.30-1.45 minutes.
You are talking about the 25 watt power profile witch is basically just 1 hour.
Ease of access/set up and ability to use and play goes to steam for sure. ROG ally is more powerful but the user experience, set up and constant needing to update is not fun. Also not having some sort of mousepad on the handheld itself makes it difficult to navigate
Windows 11 isn’t user friendly on a smaller screen IMO. I sold mine and bought oled because of deck verified games and the overall UI and interface
Team ROG Ally! I have 4TB 990 Pro on mine (with a heatsink) It's insane!
Everything i wanna buy, I watch first the reviews of the DF guys. Most of those other youtubers are leaning more to the product wich they like. The DF guy's are real and honest.. so keep up the good work 👏.
Couldn't you just program windows on the Ally to start up in the beginning in big picture mode? That's basically what my PC does
Really struggling to decide between the 2 here - I have a huge Xbox and PlayStation backlog so don’t want to have to repurchase these games… with the ally the tinkering and battery life are a big concern as I imagine I will be mainly playing on the way to and from work (train journey).
With the steam deck I know there are apps which you can you to stream from your home console but would this work if not on the same network and could the steam deck handle them?
Would the benefit of being able to download these games to the ally mean an improvement in performance to the steam deck where I guess I would have to rely on cloud streaming or re purchase again. And would the ally battery last long enough to enjoy this benefit?!
Or would dual loading windows to steam deck be the best option?!
Got a steam deck OLED and a Lenovo Legion Go. Both superb. I use the Legion Go for gamepass titles and the steam deck OLED for emulation and everything else. I had a Rogue Ally but it had so many hardware issues I returned it. Apparently DF don’t think the Legion Go exists.
Anyone else checking their Steam OLED Shipping Status every 2-3 hrs to see if it has moved from “Packaged”🙄😅
Mine moved from packaged to shipped 3 days ago now and im still waiting, hopefully it arrives tomorrow. Im in the UK though and they're shipped from Netherlands, probably why its taking a while.
@@Saxon_hoo UK too….i thought shipped from Lux?
@@Saxon_hoosame here
I ordered on 18th Nov, still says packaged, i'm in uk too, what date did you order your oled?
Bro literally 😂😂
I went with the steam deck mainly because I use Steam more often anyways. And I have a desktop PC and windows has been nothing but bloatware to my PC. I don’t want to deal with that operating system when I eventually get a new rig.
ROG Ally is awesome docked for big screen real gaming when traveling. Also is awesome on handheld mode. Deck is great, I have both and took my Ally on my Thanksgiving travel. Loving it. Have a good battery pack for either one. Both have limited battery usage
Sorry but the Ally and OLED deck are in different leagues in terms of battery life.
@@meshen85 ok, however they are on different leagues when docked. Deck is pointless to dock
@meshen85 lol battery life isn't a problem with my ally. I paid $70 for a battery pack, that's it.
@meshen85 on the deck there's a lot of games that won't work at all
@@trabuco81 Not sure about 'pointless', but yes they are in different leagues there. I wasn't arguing that point though anyway.
I went with Rog Ally. Got it in a Amazon’s promotion for € 590 euros to get handheld who can be improved with an external GPU but if it was at the normal price I would get Steam Deck Oled.
give the Ally a 100W power supply and if you’re ever just playing in bed on a charger my god, the Ally can hit up to 45-50W and the performance is just alien… I love the Deck but the Ally running those frame rates in my hands actually gave me that feeling of “oh my god this is what’s possible”
1. If steam deck is sold in your country: get the Steam Deck OLED
2. If the games that you want to play are not compatible with steamOS: Get the ROG Ally.
3. If steam deck is not sold in your country: get the ROG Ally. I've seen several SD owners have problems trying to service their SD but very few places offer repair. If they wish to fix some things themselves they have to import parts with big shipping fees.
My opinion: wait for the ROG Ally refresh which will fix most of its flaws and issues, like the SD Oled fixed its flaws.
no. no. no
@@onlysublimesuggest something better
Thanks for your suggestion 🙏
Having different devices, I have to say if you can go with a smaller laptop or small form factor PC for the more intense titles and OLED Deck for portability and indie games, that’s the better combo. It really depends on your use case but to me handhelds should be about portability and battery life while a laptop, or custom PC will is about performance and will last much longer down the line. The ROG is a sweet little machine but it’s also going to struggle in a year and be replaced and with a laptop or custom PC you’re set for a little longer.
i think lasting longer down the line wont be much of an issue, the optimization of games right now is horrendous and i can only imagine they will get better over time so less demanding hardware for better looking games, i mean COD for an example, its like 100GB for 6 multiplayer maps and 15 guns its truly awful, if a deck can run elden ring at 40-50fps i dont think it will be made redundant anytime soon, however more power is always better.
How is it going to struggle in a year when it already outperforms competitors?
Can you guys please do a video taking a look at Lenovo’s Legion Go? I would love to know your thoughts. I have both of the devices in this video and aside from the Go’s Legion Space (which I’m sure will be polished over time through updates) I’ve very much been enjoying my time with the Go over them. The massive screen, the detachable controllers, fps mode, etc. I don’t know, I think there’s enough to talk about to merit a video on it.
They have a heavy bias for steam deck so its not different from rog ally
@@absurdh3roThat would be unfortunate. At the least it’s weird for a big gaming channel to omit any reports or even a first impressions video on a new handheld from a major computer brand, especially with how relatively new the handheld pc market is.
I've tried both but ultimately purchased the ROG Ally. Not dissappinted one bit.
I can’t take John’s opinion on the matter serious lol he literally said he’s only held a ROG Ally. Held. I don’t know if that’s enough to form a legitimate opinion between two products.
I think raw gaming performance is the only metric where the Ally can pull ahead of the deck.
Every other aspect and I actually think other handheld devices on the market are just here to showcase how much more thought and design process was put into the Steam Deck.
None of these devices are powerful enough to provide a good experience in the latest of games, they just aren't designed to get you there for this price range.
If you are sucker for using Windows with a touch screen, well..
Raw gaming performance, screen, dock ability, form factor, controller, being able to play not just steam games are all better on the Ally.
(Screen was better than deck lcd, but even with the deck oled, the Ally screen is still really good in comparison)
@@fresco_dinero5155you can play non steam games on the Deck. Screen is miles better than the Ally minus the VRR
@@fresco_dinero5155 I think these are all highly subjective, except for the only plays steam game part, which is simply not true.
With both devices you get a full fledged operating system you can do anything with, only a selected few multiplayer titles are not working, where the developer refuses to support Linux on purpose.
@@H4GRlD no there’s whole swaths of games not compatible with Steam os, LINUX and proton. There’s applications that just straight out don’t work. What’s the point of having a gaming handheld pc that can only use 1/4 of the available launchers and games out
@@fresco_dinero5155 While I still think you are way off with your ratios for the supported / unsupported titles, many people are more than happy with playing their "older" games, or ones with simpler graphics on a device like this while on the go or even at home on the couch. And when I say older I mean games released maybe before the last 1-2 years. Most of these new shiny AAA games are for eye candy, a large chunk of gamers are playing with 5-10 years old stuff.
On the other hand I had no issue playing Diablo 4, Baldurs Gate 3, Elden Ring, the list goes on.
The experience was far from perfect, but this is related to performance bottlenecks not compatibility.
I have a gaming rig with an RTX 3090, so for these kinds of titles I prefer using the PC and if I really want to play it on the deck I just stream the game, since these are mostly single player ones.
The only game I would play occasionally and I cannot do it is Fortnite STW, Epic just s**** unfortunately. 😔
We have Heroic Launcher and a bunch of community driven alternatives that support the zillion of custom crappy launcher software from Windows on the deck to circumvent these annoyances. If you are curious about compatibility just check proton db.
So I want a handheld that replaces my switch because Nintendo is just not my store for games. I’d tend to mir Indy like games but wouldt rule out aaa titles. But I’d like to have the Konsole more like a livingroom Konsole but at the same time take it for trips. Would the steam deck meet my docking expectations?
I chose both! If could only have one device though, probably the Ally since great mini gaming portable PC that is also portable and play PS3 and AAA titles better than the Deck. If mainly want a handheld though, the OLED Deck. Battery life and handheld experience is WAY better on the OLED Deck.
For the my first handheld I brought the ally and I’m very happy with it no regrets
I have the ROG ally and recently ordered a steam deck OLED. Really both have its pros and cons, what I can really say is that it depends on your needs. If the games you like to play are from Epic, EA etc then get the ROG ally as it just windows, if not get the steam deck.
Ultimately, the only real question is what games will the buyer be playing on the device? If they plan on playing games that have anti-cheat software, then the deck is just not an option at all. If they don’t play those big major release games, then that’s when choosing between the two as an option.
I have the og steam deck and wished I could play eafc on it. I see people talk about dual booting windows on their deck and trying it out but it ends up running poorly or having to jump through a bunch of hoops to just get it to launch
Doesnt run poorly, only issue I had was an inaccurate brightness slider caused from a recent SteamOS update, so its assumingly going to be fixed soon. Try installing it on your deck instead of relying on the opinion of others, took me 10 mins but only because my steam deck was brand new so making a new partition to install windows on was really fast @@vincentchandara6438
And by "inaccurate brightness slider" i mean the brightness doesnt match the slider it goes up or down at slow speed instead of instantly so you have to "jiggle" the slider at the highest brightness and wait a few seconds for it to catch up. Weird bug but it doesnt prevent you from doing anything
Guys, please, i need recomendation between the two. In my country, steam deck oled and rog ally have the same price. Which one should i choose? Or should i skip these two and go for legion go?
I went with the Steam Deck Oled. Just couldn't pass up that screen... holy crap am I glad I did! The thing looks amazing.
Paying that much when I can just get a laptop 😂 Valve are being smart following Nintendo; optimization is king
Fun fact: the steamdeck is a console/pc mix. You can switch to desktop mode on a Linux front end. Which allows similar freedom as windows does.
Well, no, because most games that have anti-cheat can’t run on Linux.
So most online multiplayer games, MMO’s, Gamepass games, etc. can’t run on the SD.
Also if you use mods for single player games it’s a nightmare trying to get them to work on steam deck because they don’t play well with Linux
Source: (own both devices for different use cases)
What matters to me is battery life and on top of that bigger screen Oled with a sweet spot of 90 fps is nice especially with Fsr 3 coming soon
I'm still very torn about getting a Deck. I actually want to use it for less intense games, pixel art and as a regular desktop pc. Its relatively cheap and flexible, which is why I would buy it... but right now I'm still unsure if its worth it, since my budget is like 700-800 Euros.
For more performance-hungry games I'm going to use my Ps5 anyway.
TBH at this point I don’t see a reason to use the Steam Deck if you have an Ally. Ally can play everything Steam deck can and more. Without as much tinkering. For me battery life is not an issue as I play mostly on my couch to keep the TV free.
Hopefully the deck can sell 5M units this time. I’ll always choose windows to play all my games with play nite rather than only some on the deck. Anything to motivate sony to make a real handheld.
As an owner of the SD, Ally and the latest Legion Go, Lenovo's handheld is my favourite! They advertise their handheld with the FPS mode but let me blow your mind....Consider it the 'RTS mode' try and play RTS games or parkbuilders on the SD or the Ally, it's doable but oh so crappy! The Legion Go's right controller transforming into a vertical mouse is a gamechanger! Also performance is on par with the Ally only the screen is SO much bigger, I can actually read everything comfortably! Give the Legion Go some love! It really deserves it!
Definitely took my Ally back and copped a LG. I’ve been having a great time.
I already finished 5 games in Rog ally. Legion Go is late for the party. Maybe next gen.
@@MicaelAzevedo I finished 25+ games on ally, even more on SD lol what does that have to do with anything?:p try the legion go, after that screen you really can't go back to the Ally's, it looks like a toy tbh :p
Personally bought the Legion Go for its larger screen and dual multifunctionality as a mini windows tablet ^.^
Update: Sold it - seems handheld gaming is not for me lol
Just depends on what you want to do with it. The ally is awesome because of flexibility and compatibility out of the box. Whilst windows sucks at this form factor, it does have its advantages namely the ability to play games from any launcher out of the box, the ability to add mods with no issues and transfers games without having to download them again. Additionally after the initial set up, you don’t really need to do anything with windows and can just go straight to armour crate and launch what you want easily.
If you don’t care too much for the other launchers, want a more streamlined experience and are happy with what’s on your steam library then go for the steam deck can’t really go wrong with either.
Honestly, I never really saw what was so difficult about the initial setup on the rog ally. The touch screen and screen keyboard worked fine enough to complete the process. I really only hated how long windows updates take, that was the longest process during my experience
With AW2 I got to see that unified 16 GB RAM is not a good option for windows machines. It should've been atleast 24 GB. That's where Steam Deck has a massive advantage. Next gen demanding titles, once optimized for Steam Deck, will run better in such cases. In Windows, the resources are always split, while Valve has command over the entire pool.
set down the thesaurus lil bro
You can install games from third party launchers even on the steam deck, while it does indeed require some effort, it’s not hard to do.
@@jal.ajeerathe steam deck doesn't have enough horsepower to play next gen games. The rog ally just needs more ram
Video= do you want a Honda civic that goes 180 km/h or a Mecedes that goes 185 km/h with double the price?
Brain-dead comparison. The Ally is shown here to be 40-60% faster. More like a car that tops out at 50kph vs 90.
@@kylerclarke2689why not add that the car that can go 90km/h has to go that max speed to be faster than the car that can go 50km/h and the that the car that goes 90km/h needs gas ever 50 fifty minutes if it goes it’s max speed 😄
One huge benefit of the Ally over the deck is just that 16:9 aspect ratio. Always been one of my biggest issues because I plug it into a TV a lot and very often need to go into the settings to change the aspect ratio because it changes by itself a lot of the time but not all of the time especially with certain games. It would be SO nice if the deck was just 16:9 for seemless docking
I personally prefer the extra screen space of 16:10. It’s noticeable. You can always just force it to be 16:9 in the settings and leave it that way permanently I’m pretty sure.
I’m like 70% sure you can do that in the settings of the steam deck somewhere, but I’m not totally sure, but if you can, that would solve your problem.
@joker6558 yeah but then you can't take advantage of the full size of the 7 inch screen. Ally has a 7 inch screen that is 16:9 so it's not smaller at all its just a much better ratio for easy docking
@@johnsducks9816it's roughly 4% smaller
Ah yes. The old “two very different things” that “crossover” and which “are comparable”.
😂
Being months late and thinking a lot about this purchase I ended up going with the Steam Deck OLED. For me it came down to the low voltage performance and great battery life (considering what the Deck is doing). Once I get my hands on it I have a feeling I’m going to love the Steam ecosystem with the community store. I’m thinking the community store is an unsung mvp of the Steam OS ecosystem.
The battery life on the Steam Deck Oled really makes it unbeatable. If you want super high performance on the go, a good laptop is the move. In a mobile form factor, the Steam Deck wins all around.
If the Steamdeck is what you call good then you have no standards for battery life
@@alumlovescakethey mentioned the OLED model specifically. I currently have an LCD steam deck and the new OLED model on my thanksgiving trip (OLED arrived while I was loading up the car and needed to swap ssds). The OLED has SIGNIFICANTLY better battery life. It smokes any other handheld PC and it isn’t even close.
@@alumlovescake The thing lasts like 6+ hours with your average game. What in the fuck are you doing where you are playing video games more than 6 hours a day without coming home at all? I could fly across the US and spend nearly the whole flight on it.
@@Wylie288 What are you playing that makes it last that long?!
Most gaming laptops offer the same battery life as the ROG Ally, but they are heavier and require a desk for most gaming scenarios. Its just not a real alternative.
What ally bios and amd driver did you use?
Despite battery concerns I need the 60fps more than anything else so I think I’d go with the rog. Idk though the steam deck has a bit of beef to it, but still the rog just does it a bit better, albeit for like an hour and a half tops lol.
Ngl your probably looking at under a hour and half considering the overall tdp consumes more on the ally.
Ally’s good
@@dio807018w is definitely the sweet spot though for demanding games when unplugged. Actually I find myself using 25w when plugged in as it gives a nice performance boost without the high temps.
@@dio8070 really?! Woooow man that’s REALLY gnarly lol, why put it out there, like Alex said if you have to be plugged in why play a handheld at all.
because i live the van life... pc in a truck take to much place@@fullauto86
deck oled is my fav. i stream AAAs at home from my pc (so power is no problem), has quick resume, and the built-in steam controller 2.0 is godly -- ally is a behemoth on the go, sound quality is insane, (bring charger) -- legion go; amazing screen and power, has joycons, mouse, and scroll wheel. all devices are great in their own ways.
Steam deck bc of battery. Had both and I returned the Ally after a week. Gets low on battery in half an hour
Who runs the Ally at 720p? I don't. I run most games at 900p
Hey Richard, did you test ROG Ally with VBS (Virtualization-based Security) ON in Windows? If so, could you test it without this feature? It is turned ON by default on ROG Ally. It has been proven that it reduces performance on Windows 11 during gaming, often severely! (10-15 FPS less). This could make all the benchmarks and comparisons inaccurate.
Proven by who?
@@waltuhputurdawayit’s easy to benchmark it’s not rocket science
Imagine having to stop your OS from sabotaging itself
@@badmoose01 true hahaha That's why Custom OS rules for gaming
@waltuhputurdaway By Microsoft themselves. I can't paste a link here.
I hate using remote play on the Rog Ally compared to the steam deck. On the steam deck it just works and on the Rog Ally it hangs when I exit a game.
I think the most difficult part of trying to compare these two is that one of them will play Steam and the other one will do Steam and Xbox game pass . I have a sneaky suspicion the interface is probably nicer on the steam deck but I have Game Pass ultimate so I couldn't pass on having access to that at the end of the day I'm sure they're both excellent devices and we're all just happy to play
You can easily add Xbox Cloud gaming and it surprisingly works really well. I’ve owned and played both but if that’s your main concern you aren’t out of luck. The other benefit with cloud is you get crazy good battery life.
@dannyw9314 I did end up going with the rog but I hadn't thought of the cloud gaming aspect. I'll have to try it on the Rog thanks for the tip
maybe but cloud latency sux@@dannyw9314
Can’t they some how enable 16w or 18w on the steam deck oled now it has a bigger battery I’m not sure how many more fps that would be but surely giving us the option to throw an extra 1-3w would help the performance even more and not effect battery life too much either
The Steam Deck is a genuine handheld. The ROG Ally is basically a HTPC, you always need it plugged in, even at it's best it's battery life is subpar. You need be tethered to a wall!
Let me add my use case, as a 99.9% Mac user… just bought the ROG Ally and it fills a hole regarding old and new windows games that would never make an appearance on macOS, in handheld mode to boot.
Parallels Desktop and CrossOver have come a long way and quite nice, but don’t get me wrong, over the years mixing a mostly work/design environment with gaming feels bloated first. Having a dedicated device Switch style for that is nice (although totally a luxury at this stage).
Now, the one thing that I did not expect, connecting an Apple Studio Display to the ROG Ally (useful for playing those old school RTS games) just freaking works, the Camera, Mic, Audio Output, connected peripherals, everything just works. It outputs 5K no sweat (on the desktop that is, gotta lower it for games of course)… that just made my day when discovering it and it’s a perfect “Windows Gaming Handheld Emulation” companion console.
If I already had a windows PC, I would have totally gone Steam Deck too though I believe.
I haven't seen the whole video yet, but ultimately, I think that there's only one answer to whether you should get the Ally or the Deck, and the right answer is different from person to person. That answer is whichever platform has the features you care about the most.
I initially wanted the Deck but when I heard about the Ally, I opted for that (I have the Z1 Extreme variant) because I wanted something more powerful and the Ally seemed more futureproofed with the Z1 Extreme in comparison to the Deck.
But the Deck also had some features that I wish the Ally had, which was a dedicated trackpad that can simulate mouse input because, while I enjoy playing most games on my Ally, my experience playing point and click games on it was clumsy and awkward.
I dont know how people play games without vrr in 2023. Its like when we were arguing against 60hz lcd panels in like 2005. And it took most people until like 2018-2020 to figure out 120hz+… steamdeck players are still like “40hz is fine”… like no its not… it fucking sucks
I had a steam deck but the experience was way too poor. I am weary of all of these handhelds now.
Considering the shader cache/steam works files stuff fills up my 64gb drive drive with just 3 aaa games to the point where I can’t even open them due to the storage being too low and there isn’t a straightforward way to deal with this. I’ve just had issues with this, it’s not a nice experience and that with other issues like games crashing (forza 5, Spider-Man miles morales), games in videos not loading, games restarting when waking up from sleep and sometimes the screen not even turning on from sleep and even having to do a hard reset just to get it to open again. It is like having to fight with a device to get a subpar experience.
Shader cache stuff and steam works/proton redistributal files filling up the main drive is still an issue and there isn't any official way to combat it and it has been almost 2 years since it has been released. Selling a product with such a massive design flaw and not really fixing isn't great. Tbh I am weary of buying any other vavle product, because of my experience with this device
5.5-6 out of 10. You don’t spen £400+ on a handheld to deal with this garbage. Imo I don’t like it nor do I think I’m going to buy any other form of hardware from valve from this experience. Personally I wouldn't recomend it due to the amount of fiddling and bugs. Though I think these devices might be ok when the third generation of these handhelds come out. For now I'd just recomend people to ignore it unless they like being early adopters.
64 GB......that's your issue. First thing I did was throw away the 64 GB SSD and install a 1TB SSD. Over 100 games and a year later, I have not had any of these issues.
Bro it’s a pc who in their right mind would get the 64gb steam deck and not upgrade, everyone knows how big steam games are, you brought that on yourself the steam deck is great most people praise it for a reason
@@CJTheTokay bro, I bought an sd card, 512gb, never installed a single game to the hard drive, the space still got filled to the brim with shader cache stuff. Steam shouldn’t have sold a device with such a glaring flaw.
@@oo--7714for some reason your the only one I have seen mention this though 🤔
@@CJTheTokay You know there are multiple videos on youtube complaining about shader cache on the 64gb model right, this isn’t an isolated incident and you know it. lol 😂
I've got a Rog Ally on my wish list. It comes down to preferences, for me it will mostly be a chill lay back on the couch or in bed, more awkward with a laptop, but would be plugged in so battery doesn't become an issue.
I would go Steam Deck if I would be utilising the battery more, and for the sweet OLED, but as a plugged in couch sitter, I think the Rog Ally would pull ahead from better performance in turbo mode. That an VRR on the lower power device would ultimately give a smoother experience as well. I'd take less quality in display that has any drops within VRR smoothed out at 40-60 fps, then forcing a cap at 30fps with a nice OLED display.
Rog is the way to go. VRR is truly a game changer
@BigWisper haha that and valve seem to be allergic to bringing their products to Australia. I could do it but it's just a pain where I could just walk in a store and buy an Ally. But I'd still do ally anyway for my use case haha so no loss.
They are both great devices. Steam deck for ease of use and the ally for its versatility, vrr, and more power.
It’s a bummer to hear the roadblock to stronger handhelds is really the battery, cause that technology simply is not having big break throughs like GPUs and CPUs are
Played my friends Deck. The low performance is very noticeable and the 800p is also very noticeable. So I’m not sure anymore about SD regardless of OLED
Bro wtf when they couldn’t argue that the ally is a better device they started comparing it to a laptop 💀
I have both. Some games don't play well or at all on the Deck. Yes it has extra battery life and a friendlier OS, but what's the point if one of your favorite games isn't playable.
How about Steam Deck Oled vs. Rog Ally vs. Legion Go? Happy Thanksgiving fellow Tech Geeks!
I had the Legion, loved it. It did mess up on me, M2 stopped being recognized so it wouldn’t boot. Took it back and taking a stab at the SD Oled. If it doesn’t hold up, sending it back and going back to LEGO!
So glad to see soo many options in the hybrid PC market! I will wait to see what the next gen Switch can do, then draw my comparisons and buy the best one put by then; if the Switch 2 fails to deliver on any of my major expectations for it (1. Being a powerful hybrid and 2. Being backwards compatible).
Can't get the SteamDeck in Australia easily, Rog Ally, is available off the shelf at retail stores, which means better warranty, easy exchange if DOA, and so on. Until Steam get a better distriubtion channel, it'll be the Rog Ally.
I have both, for my hands the ally feels better even ok ergonomics, sd im only using it for pixel indies for the battery
I’m going to guess steam os is basically windows debloated. So I have to ask if these tests are done with windows optimization and if they are not done with windows optimization how much of a difference can we expect if it was included as well. With enough attention on debloating windows and its benefits may be we can get an official deblaoted windows install. Worth the attention by you tubers
Ally still number one for me. That being said the battery difference is massive. If you're on the go then the steamdeck. But i chill at home and take huge advantage of the ally
There’s also the processor. 4 cores RDNA2 vs 8 core RDNA4. I think that’s going to matter on some games!
I really need help i want to play ps4 and ps5 games as well as steam and xbox games. Ive been bouncing back and forth on ally extreme vs steam deck oled. I would like something easier to get to my other games that arent steam. Does anyone have any advice on this?
I've had the original 512gb SD but sold it after I got my Ally. Now I'm considering the SD Oled but I'm concerned about the lower performances. I'm seeing many videos showing kind of "similar performances" between SD and ROG Ally, but everything seems just much more fluid and smooth in the Ally.
You only see it because a lot of outlets are not running on the recent drivers, my frames are a lot higher than shown during these benchmarks at 15w.
@@hazori9551 yea also 15W performance is really good now
The Ally has a much better chip inside it, that's why and with every new bios, driver update etc it's getting better and better. I've been replaying the Witcher 3 900p resolution FSR 2 at Ultra/High presets averaging around 40-45fps at 18w tpd. I wasn't able to achieve this before. Forget playing Witcher 3 on Steam deck with these settings, always had to play it on medium, looked blurry and with no VRR it just made it a bad experience. The only thing holding the Ally back is the battery, for me personally it ticks all other boxes. Don't get me wrong I love the Steam deck and the Oled one looks amazing, but it all comes down to preference. I get solid hour and half of play time with the Ally before plugging it in which I think is still reasonable and still quite an accomplishment when you're pushing out higher resolution, higher graphical settings and most importantly higher refresh rate and FPS.
FSR 2 - balanced
@@ay5471 that’s impressive.
Battery life with ally sucks but you can always use a power bank.. I’m using a 25k mA 65W and I can get much longer playing time even at 30W
Getting Ally soon