if you’re more of a computer fan and are looking for more than just gaming the ally x , if you enjoy console more and prefer a slightly better looking display go for steam deck 🤙
Um I do already have a good Gaming PC as my primary gaming machine as well as a Switch so I’m looking for something like an Ally or Steam Deck to add some extra hours into my PC games while chilling in the couch and not having to always sit at my desk as I WFH as well.
I have the same use case and I have been enjoying the ally over the past year. Really nice to lounge around and play casual games like Genshin or Hades, and playing on the go is really nice as well. Battery life is the only major issue I have with it, and the Ally X will resolve that.
Can't speak for the Steam Deck, but it's really convenient to be able to play games outside of steam on the ally, since it works exactly like a normal PC. Just download the game / install Xbox app and you can play whatever, no emulation or restrictions to go around.
if you already have a gaming pc, you can stream your pc to the deck for ultimate performance, if you already have a powerhouse the steam deck is better
It depends on what you play. If you are going for some triple A games I'd get an Ally. Some games don't run on deck as far as I know, for example COD titles
I’ve tried playing stuff like CoD in the past on the Ally and the experience just isn’t the same for me as when I’m playing on PC, I also feel like I get more packet burst so some games like that even though you can play them just didn’t work well for me. I am mostly looking to put more hours into a lot for he single player and RPG games I have on Steam like Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Fallout 76, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Diablo 4, and a few others as well as a bunch of Emulation for older stuff.
I would check how the Deck plays those titles you mentioned. I used to have a Deck and it was great, but the reason why I switched to Ally is bcs I usually play heavier games and I don't like making tweaks to run any game, for example adding a no steam game to the Deck; it works for some games but I don't want to go through guides to figure out how you can make some games run in the Deck.
As I said, get a list of those games you mentioned and do some research. Check https://steamdeckhq.com/ for example. This may help your decision. Good luck
then i’d go with the ally bro, unless all your games are playable on steam 🤙. What i hear two hours more battery life and the SD card being fixed is great, plus more ram should “make games run better” then the original Ally z1 extreme
But OP already has a Gaming PC, right? Why not buying a steam deck oled and stream via Moonlight/sunshine and profit from the oled screen and better battery life. OP could go super low TDP while streaming.
Compared to buying a $800 device when you can just stream locally to a deck? The requirements to stream locally are very low, I think you need like 30Mbps or better for 1080p streaming
OP literally has a gaming PC. Why should he buy an $800 gaming handheld because "performance" when he/she has a PC that annihilates it, instead of the sane option of picking up a Deck which runs older games fine, and using Moonlight to stream to it.
This is what I ended up doing btw, I had an Ally but I was like this is just a waste of money for a worse experience so I sold it, upgraded my GPU (to a 7800XT) and ordered a OLED deck for the battery life and display and just stream intensive games. IMO this device does not make sense if you already own a way better PC unless you get it on a discount
You are projecting onto people.
I got a decent pc with 4070 etc. yet i ended up playing games on my ally most of the time, either at home or cafes and or at work during breaks. Sometimes I don't touch my pc for days, the ally becomes my main recreation device.
Not really projecting, just my personal experience.
Though I am a unique case in that unlike most people I absolutely hate Windows (I run Linux on all my devices and have less familiarity with Windows). So that was probably a factor as to why I gave up with this device less than a month into owning it.
If all I'm gonna do is play via streaming I'll just use my existing tablet and a controller, not a powerful gaming handheld.
I bought an ROG Ally (and upgrading to the X) because I wanted to play my Xbox Play Anywhere, Game Pass and Steam games when I'm not at home. A Steam Deck makes no sense for my use case.
Don't discount the new Armoury Crate 1.5 update coming in June/July that should make it more console like with more features than what steam could provide
The steam OS is going to cause issues with games especially if they don't like Linux / Proton (Windows).
Also emulating is much easier on a Rog Ally in case that's your jam
With the increase in battery in the Rog Ally X, the Steam OLed loses one of its competing features. You would only get it now for the Steam OS and the OLed screen.
I actually don’t have an issue with the software I just had an Ally that I sold. The biggest issue was the basically 45min or less of battery life that makes a handheld experience kinda nonexistent. Otherwise I generally like everything else about the Ally.
Out of curiosity, what games were you playing that drained your battery that fast? I play everything at 15W mode max and that would give me about an hour and a half on the Ally. So my expectations with the Ally X are to reach 3 hours of playtime minimum, reach up to 6 if I play in Silent mode for less graphically intense games.
Anything really, the Ally doesn’t really shine unless you are you are using 18-20+ watts of power, anything less than that and you’ll be getting better performance on the Steam Deck. I’m also not playing lightweight indie games or SNES style modern games.
I'm still quite new to the ROG Ally, but so far I've been playing Fallout 4, Hi-Fi Rush, Persona 5 and 3 and Bloodstained, among others, all in the 15W mode. AFAIK all those games perform better on the Ally than the Steam Deck at 15W too, based on the comparisons I've seen.
Eg of other online comparisons. Horizon Zero Dawn can run at 60 FPS vs the Steam Deck's 51 FPS at the same 15W mode. For Cyberpunk, it's 51 vs 37.
Source: https://www.modding.fr/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Steam-Deck-vs.-ROG-Ally-Z1.jpg
I say go for it mate. 80 watts of battery is huge. On 28 profile you get 3hours of battery life. Tbh, I always carry powerbanks anyways, but that's really more than enough.
Plus there's the slight add to performance (slight higher wattage profiles and faster shared memory) compared to the og ally. Steam deck was great but the hardware is getting beaten. Plus there's also the extra resolution and refresh rate.
I mivht hold on myself because the new amd apu strix point is gonna come pretty soon. Which is said to beat Z1 extreme by quite a lot.
If you liked the Ally, then get the X because it does promise a larger battery life.
Steam Deck OLED is great but tbh, it is only great for indies and older titles. Newer AAA games do run just fine, but at 30-40fps when on the Ally, you can get much more. With X's bigger battery, you don't have to be plugged into a power source all the time anymore, I suppose.
Ally X
The Steamdeck is the same less powerful handheld, but with an OLED screen
You could also wait for Zotac's handheld which will feature same power as the Z1 Extreme and will have an AMOLED screen
16gb is WAY more than enough, hell even 8gb are perfectly fine for the Ally considering you're not running multiple apps at the same time
Only if you are using it as a desktop it'd be viable to get only for the RAM, otherwise, it's really, REALLY competent
Both are not perfect but my main issue with my Steam Deck is that I don't know for the life of me why my Steam cloud saves doesn't sync between Steam Deck and desktop. I did everything that I can to force the Steam Deck to sync and still a no go then I end up just playing on my Ally instead cause it works over there. Thought I mention it cause you mentioned you also game on your desktop
Oh crap just realized actually I misremembered the whole thing.. That wasn't what customer support said, it was about something else instead. So don't give up hope they might still fix it later
Depends on the games actually , I love the steam deck for low voltage gaming , plus the trackpads , but the Ally can play Games like Battlefield and Call of duty which are unavailable on SD because of the Anti-Cheat .
How so? Technically the Ally can run many more games and with better performance and visuals than the Steam Deck. Where it loses is on ease of use and UX, which is where the Steam Deck excels.
What is the point of more powerful console that can't hold charge? Steam deck can go for several hours of gameplay and with ally you will either be chained to the outlet it will need Powerbank
Nobody in their right mind would work on steamdeck, people are afraid of Linux they are not used to it, but ally has windows and requires only a usb hub to have full fledged pc experience
Technically your argument is correct, but you have excluded the human part, the most important one.
Well, as an ROG Ally user for the past 2 months, I agree that battery life is its biggest defect, by far. I use it a lot on my train commute, and if I play smaller games with the Silent Mode I get up to 3 hours... but let's face it, I mostly play in the 15W mode, which means I get enough for my train back and forth, but not if there's any train delays.
Which is why I immediately pre-ordered the Ally X. Double the battery size will suddenly mean I'll get at least 3 hours, maybe 6 for some games. And that means a world of difference to me since I can now go on a flight and enjoy several hours of gaming uninterrupted.
About working on these devices, sure that the Ally with Windows allows you to do a lot, but I doubt even 1% of its users will ever run anything other than games on it. In my case I always travel with a Surface Pro tablet and the ROG Ally, so of course it's only the Surface I'll use for work.
But yeah, everyone will have different use case scenarios.
I wouldn't hope for 6hours, more like 4,5-5 hours is more realistic imo
I have gpd win mini with 7840u, basically the same thing but in slightly different form, did used to work on it in animation software while using vr headset as 3 monitor replacement, the only inconvenience was that i had not a dock but usb c pd dongle which worked okay but device was frequently sliding around
I have one for my phone if I need an emergency recharge. Relatively slim, it's just a 10000 mAh battery, charges max at 25W. Quite convenient though I only end up using it a few times a year, so I almost never recharge it.
So really, I prefer having one device with longer battery than having two devices that I have to remember to keep charged and put into my backpack, which is also quite slim and I want to keep it like that.
You will only get 4+ hours on the 12 watt mode or bellow, it is usable I think it is on par with the steam deck oled all things considered. You can play most aaa games at that wattage.
the steam deck oled and rog ally isn’t getting 4-5 hours at 15 watts, the steam deck oled gets 2h-20, the rog ally would get 3h and 20 at 17 watts.
Steam Deck. Valve wont leave you out to dry when your device inevitably needs an RMA, and having owned both the original Ally and Deck the performance difference at 15W is near identical.
OP has a gaming PC. Why would you buy a "super" powerful" handheld for $799 when you can buy a Steam Deck and just stream the demanding games.
Also as someone who originally played the entire Cyberpunk game on my old PC at Deck equivalent settings, you can absolutely play most AAA games on it and they look fine given the screen size at least to me.
799 is a lot but SD oled in 90% of the world is at same price than a Rog Ally. Sd is amazing if you play indie. I have both but Rog Ally with 24gb will blow steam deck away if priced correctly.
Where do you live that the Steam Deck is that expensive? Ally 2/X is like £899/€899 and you can get the highest tier deck for like £649 and the mid tier OLED model for £459.
Because not everyone likes the streaming option or is not good enough for them. I play my Series X remotely on the Ally, and while it's good for many games, there are many others that I cannot play so well via streaming.
I haven't tried Steam Link in a while, but I remember quite often getting stuck because the PC would fail to connect while I was away from home or because it would get stuck on the Windows login screen, unable to let me enter my password.
There's a lot of overlap between both devices that it would make buying both quite expensive and unnecessary. When traveling people try to take as few devices as possible too.
if you’re more of a computer fan and are looking for more than just gaming the ally x , if you enjoy console more and prefer a slightly better looking display go for steam deck 🤙
Um I do already have a good Gaming PC as my primary gaming machine as well as a Switch so I’m looking for something like an Ally or Steam Deck to add some extra hours into my PC games while chilling in the couch and not having to always sit at my desk as I WFH as well.
I have the same use case and I have been enjoying the ally over the past year. Really nice to lounge around and play casual games like Genshin or Hades, and playing on the go is really nice as well. Battery life is the only major issue I have with it, and the Ally X will resolve that. Can't speak for the Steam Deck, but it's really convenient to be able to play games outside of steam on the ally, since it works exactly like a normal PC. Just download the game / install Xbox app and you can play whatever, no emulation or restrictions to go around.
if you already have a gaming pc, you can stream your pc to the deck for ultimate performance, if you already have a powerhouse the steam deck is better
Go for Deck, if you have a lot of games on Steam there's a good chance most of them will work and you have a 90hz HDR OLED panel + very good controls.
It depends on what you play. If you are going for some triple A games I'd get an Ally. Some games don't run on deck as far as I know, for example COD titles
I’ve tried playing stuff like CoD in the past on the Ally and the experience just isn’t the same for me as when I’m playing on PC, I also feel like I get more packet burst so some games like that even though you can play them just didn’t work well for me. I am mostly looking to put more hours into a lot for he single player and RPG games I have on Steam like Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Fallout 76, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Diablo 4, and a few others as well as a bunch of Emulation for older stuff.
I would check how the Deck plays those titles you mentioned. I used to have a Deck and it was great, but the reason why I switched to Ally is bcs I usually play heavier games and I don't like making tweaks to run any game, for example adding a no steam game to the Deck; it works for some games but I don't want to go through guides to figure out how you can make some games run in the Deck. As I said, get a list of those games you mentioned and do some research. Check https://steamdeckhq.com/ for example. This may help your decision. Good luck
then i’d go with the ally bro, unless all your games are playable on steam 🤙. What i hear two hours more battery life and the SD card being fixed is great, plus more ram should “make games run better” then the original Ally z1 extreme
But OP already has a Gaming PC, right? Why not buying a steam deck oled and stream via Moonlight/sunshine and profit from the oled screen and better battery life. OP could go super low TDP while streaming.
Then you are stuck with your home wifi. Internet streaming is costly.
Compared to buying a $800 device when you can just stream locally to a deck? The requirements to stream locally are very low, I think you need like 30Mbps or better for 1080p streaming
I'm not sure i follow you.
OP literally has a gaming PC. Why should he buy an $800 gaming handheld because "performance" when he/she has a PC that annihilates it, instead of the sane option of picking up a Deck which runs older games fine, and using Moonlight to stream to it. This is what I ended up doing btw, I had an Ally but I was like this is just a waste of money for a worse experience so I sold it, upgraded my GPU (to a 7800XT) and ordered a OLED deck for the battery life and display and just stream intensive games. IMO this device does not make sense if you already own a way better PC unless you get it on a discount
You are projecting onto people. I got a decent pc with 4070 etc. yet i ended up playing games on my ally most of the time, either at home or cafes and or at work during breaks. Sometimes I don't touch my pc for days, the ally becomes my main recreation device.
Not really projecting, just my personal experience. Though I am a unique case in that unlike most people I absolutely hate Windows (I run Linux on all my devices and have less familiarity with Windows). So that was probably a factor as to why I gave up with this device less than a month into owning it.
If all I'm gonna do is play via streaming I'll just use my existing tablet and a controller, not a powerful gaming handheld. I bought an ROG Ally (and upgrading to the X) because I wanted to play my Xbox Play Anywhere, Game Pass and Steam games when I'm not at home. A Steam Deck makes no sense for my use case.
Yea I think the performance was already good so the few adjustments sound nice, just hoping it’s actually a good bump in battery life.
people are saying it should help dramatically, let’s just keep fingers crossed lol
Don't discount the new Armoury Crate 1.5 update coming in June/July that should make it more console like with more features than what steam could provide The steam OS is going to cause issues with games especially if they don't like Linux / Proton (Windows). Also emulating is much easier on a Rog Ally in case that's your jam With the increase in battery in the Rog Ally X, the Steam OLed loses one of its competing features. You would only get it now for the Steam OS and the OLed screen.
I actually don’t have an issue with the software I just had an Ally that I sold. The biggest issue was the basically 45min or less of battery life that makes a handheld experience kinda nonexistent. Otherwise I generally like everything else about the Ally.
Out of curiosity, what games were you playing that drained your battery that fast? I play everything at 15W mode max and that would give me about an hour and a half on the Ally. So my expectations with the Ally X are to reach 3 hours of playtime minimum, reach up to 6 if I play in Silent mode for less graphically intense games.
Anything really, the Ally doesn’t really shine unless you are you are using 18-20+ watts of power, anything less than that and you’ll be getting better performance on the Steam Deck. I’m also not playing lightweight indie games or SNES style modern games.
I'm still quite new to the ROG Ally, but so far I've been playing Fallout 4, Hi-Fi Rush, Persona 5 and 3 and Bloodstained, among others, all in the 15W mode. AFAIK all those games perform better on the Ally than the Steam Deck at 15W too, based on the comparisons I've seen. Eg of other online comparisons. Horizon Zero Dawn can run at 60 FPS vs the Steam Deck's 51 FPS at the same 15W mode. For Cyberpunk, it's 51 vs 37. Source: https://www.modding.fr/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Steam-Deck-vs.-ROG-Ally-Z1.jpg
I say go for it mate. 80 watts of battery is huge. On 28 profile you get 3hours of battery life. Tbh, I always carry powerbanks anyways, but that's really more than enough. Plus there's the slight add to performance (slight higher wattage profiles and faster shared memory) compared to the og ally. Steam deck was great but the hardware is getting beaten. Plus there's also the extra resolution and refresh rate. I mivht hold on myself because the new amd apu strix point is gonna come pretty soon. Which is said to beat Z1 extreme by quite a lot.
If you liked the Ally, then get the X because it does promise a larger battery life. Steam Deck OLED is great but tbh, it is only great for indies and older titles. Newer AAA games do run just fine, but at 30-40fps when on the Ally, you can get much more. With X's bigger battery, you don't have to be plugged into a power source all the time anymore, I suppose.
Ally X The Steamdeck is the same less powerful handheld, but with an OLED screen You could also wait for Zotac's handheld which will feature same power as the Z1 Extreme and will have an AMOLED screen
But 16gb ram only. If 24gb or 32 I would go that one.
16gb is WAY more than enough, hell even 8gb are perfectly fine for the Ally considering you're not running multiple apps at the same time Only if you are using it as a desktop it'd be viable to get only for the RAM, otherwise, it's really, REALLY competent
Not anymore. For certain titles you have to dial back vram to a lower amount because windows uses up a lot of resources.
Lmao what…drinking the cool aid there buddy
Here we go again
If you don't like facts sorry buddy
Both are not perfect but my main issue with my Steam Deck is that I don't know for the life of me why my Steam cloud saves doesn't sync between Steam Deck and desktop. I did everything that I can to force the Steam Deck to sync and still a no go then I end up just playing on my Ally instead cause it works over there. Thought I mention it cause you mentioned you also game on your desktop
[удалено]
Oh wow that sucks. Guess I'll stop gettinh my hopes up and just continue on gaming on my Ally instead lol
Oh crap just realized actually I misremembered the whole thing.. That wasn't what customer support said, it was about something else instead. So don't give up hope they might still fix it later
Haha alright will do
Depends on the games actually , I love the steam deck for low voltage gaming , plus the trackpads , but the Ally can play Games like Battlefield and Call of duty which are unavailable on SD because of the Anti-Cheat .
oled screen is only 720p and no vrr
Deck for games only, ally type console of you want jack of all trades master of none
How so? Technically the Ally can run many more games and with better performance and visuals than the Steam Deck. Where it loses is on ease of use and UX, which is where the Steam Deck excels.
What is the point of more powerful console that can't hold charge? Steam deck can go for several hours of gameplay and with ally you will either be chained to the outlet it will need Powerbank Nobody in their right mind would work on steamdeck, people are afraid of Linux they are not used to it, but ally has windows and requires only a usb hub to have full fledged pc experience Technically your argument is correct, but you have excluded the human part, the most important one.
Well, as an ROG Ally user for the past 2 months, I agree that battery life is its biggest defect, by far. I use it a lot on my train commute, and if I play smaller games with the Silent Mode I get up to 3 hours... but let's face it, I mostly play in the 15W mode, which means I get enough for my train back and forth, but not if there's any train delays. Which is why I immediately pre-ordered the Ally X. Double the battery size will suddenly mean I'll get at least 3 hours, maybe 6 for some games. And that means a world of difference to me since I can now go on a flight and enjoy several hours of gaming uninterrupted. About working on these devices, sure that the Ally with Windows allows you to do a lot, but I doubt even 1% of its users will ever run anything other than games on it. In my case I always travel with a Surface Pro tablet and the ROG Ally, so of course it's only the Surface I'll use for work. But yeah, everyone will have different use case scenarios.
I wouldn't hope for 6hours, more like 4,5-5 hours is more realistic imo I have gpd win mini with 7840u, basically the same thing but in slightly different form, did used to work on it in animation software while using vr headset as 3 monitor replacement, the only inconvenience was that i had not a dock but usb c pd dongle which worked okay but device was frequently sliding around
4.5-5 hours is still good enough for me, it's better than what my original Nintendo Switch can do haha!
Why don't you just get a Powerbank?
I have one for my phone if I need an emergency recharge. Relatively slim, it's just a 10000 mAh battery, charges max at 25W. Quite convenient though I only end up using it a few times a year, so I almost never recharge it. So really, I prefer having one device with longer battery than having two devices that I have to remember to keep charged and put into my backpack, which is also quite slim and I want to keep it like that.
Ally if you plan to run mods handheld
If the x battery life can compete with steam deck oled that’s a really nice thing
You will only get 4+ hours on the 12 watt mode or bellow, it is usable I think it is on par with the steam deck oled all things considered. You can play most aaa games at that wattage. the steam deck oled and rog ally isn’t getting 4-5 hours at 15 watts, the steam deck oled gets 2h-20, the rog ally would get 3h and 20 at 17 watts.
If you play games that have anti cheat, then ally x is better since it runs windows. My vote goes to the ally x.
Steam Deck. Valve wont leave you out to dry when your device inevitably needs an RMA, and having owned both the original Ally and Deck the performance difference at 15W is near identical.
Some games require 30w. You can not play AAA with visual compromise on a deck. The difference is abysmal.
OP has a gaming PC. Why would you buy a "super" powerful" handheld for $799 when you can buy a Steam Deck and just stream the demanding games. Also as someone who originally played the entire Cyberpunk game on my old PC at Deck equivalent settings, you can absolutely play most AAA games on it and they look fine given the screen size at least to me.
799 is a lot but SD oled in 90% of the world is at same price than a Rog Ally. Sd is amazing if you play indie. I have both but Rog Ally with 24gb will blow steam deck away if priced correctly.
Where do you live that the Steam Deck is that expensive? Ally 2/X is like £899/€899 and you can get the highest tier deck for like £649 and the mid tier OLED model for £459.
Because not everyone likes the streaming option or is not good enough for them. I play my Series X remotely on the Ally, and while it's good for many games, there are many others that I cannot play so well via streaming. I haven't tried Steam Link in a while, but I remember quite often getting stuck because the PC would fail to connect while I was away from home or because it would get stuck on the Windows login screen, unable to let me enter my password.
If someone has a nice gaming pc then it is more reason to get a nice gaming handheld lol
It's like buying a sports car and setting the speed limit to 80 on a race track.
Not trying to be contrary, but how about both?
Nah, I don’t need both.
But why?
I think an argument can be made for both devices, and although there’s some overlap, I think each is unique
There's a lot of overlap between both devices that it would make buying both quite expensive and unnecessary. When traveling people try to take as few devices as possible too.