Soooo yeah, I sold my Steam Deck (which I love) in preparation to get an OLED but I was very curious about the ROG Ally, mostly for the performance and VRR, so I bought one.
Here’s a quick rundown of my experience:
- Took 2h or 3h just to get set up. Between Windows setup, windows updates, etc. it was very frustrating not being able to use the machine right away.
- After I thought I was mostly ready to install games, the machine was incredibly slow. Like, opening Explorer or Steam would take 30s+. Activity Monitor didn’t really show any high cpu processes. Just intermittent blips of 20% or 30% on some tasks but would go back down. Machine was unusable though.
- Googled for a bit and found there were lots of updates on MyASUS and Armory Crate. Two distinct pieces of software I had never used. Why two???
- After I updated everything and did a firmware update everything was speedy again, so I installed a few games.
- Started Sekiro as my first game since I had trouble hitting decent FPS on the Deck. The game would not respond to button inputs. And yes, I was in “game controller mode”. Quit out of the game and start it again: same thing.
- Decided to reboot Windows and voila, now it received button inputs. (sigh)
- The performance is indeed incredible. I was very impressed with VRR in particular.
- I then tried Guardians of the Galaxy. Crashed on the first run with no error.
- When I was finally in the game I was playing around with the power profiles / game modes / keyboard shortcuts using the Armory overlay or whatever it’s called. After changing a few settings the overlay froze. I was able to toggle it on/off but tapping the buttons did nothing.
- Force quitting Armory crate didn’t seem to work. Had to reboot. Maybe I had to force quit some other dependent service?
Anyway, I could go on but it was just frustration after frustration. I never thought I’d see the day Linux would be simpler and friendlier than Windows but here we are.
I returned it even though I liked the form factor, performance, screen, VRR, the quiet fans, etc. The hardware is great. Windows is a non-starter for a handheld console.
Let’s go OLED STEAM DECK!!!
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How much did you sell your deck for btw,(and mention if it’s USD or CAD)
Responded in other comments. 330€. Wish it was more but I see they’re going for less now.
Bummer. I thought setup was pretty easy. Definitely didn’t take as long as your’s did. Games have ran really well. SD card stopped working but that doesn’t matter to me because I never felt i needed it anyway. IMHO it’s a very good handheld.
How does it take two to three hours to set up? I can format a computer and restore everything in about an hour. I don’t understand, what’s taking so long? Windows isn’t that complicated.
I feel that some of these posts are just to get an echo chamber going. I got down voted for simply speaking my experience. But I guess since it didn’t align with the census I get a down vote. SMH
Also, I have had the Legion Go for about four days and it’s great
As someone who owns both and now has an OLED as well I will agree asus quality has fallen but some of this is…nit picky/trying to convince yourself to return it and ignores how cumbersome Steam Deck was for the first year of its iteration. Guardians runs like ass on the SD unless you cap everything on low…my ally chugs through Hogwarts and Red Dead at higher settings than SD does…as it should given the specs.
As for your software gripes…meh, Windows and Linux both have a set of pros and cons. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to go into Konsole to bend Linux to my will when I can just hit install on windows. Having to do bs like play with winetricks and proton to get games that run OOTB on Windows can be frustrating (looking at you Max Payne 1 and 2).
I think you’re just used to SD/current state of the handheld and couldn’t overcome your biases or perhaps you couldn’t recognize the value add of your specific preferences until you had both in your hand. That said. SD is the superior handheld especially on the go.
What I enjoy the most about Linux and SteamOS is that even if you have to finesse some things for finicky workarounds once you’re good the thing just works and SteamOS is fluid and intuitive (Valve is just awesome). The OLED is a beast and I love it. The Ally is great if I’m sitting down plugged in.
However, I’m selling my Z1E because I didn’t know the microSD reader is faulty on these devices which is a deal breaker for me. Got a legion go coming. If I like it my plan is to main my SD and rock the go for its specific use cases and keep the two to game with my son when he’s around.
Ditch the ally and gift the OG deck to my daughter. But the ally is just fine for those who want the freedom of Windows and I’d say the superior choice (if you value VRR because the OLED screen is so good it’s hard to discern image quality now imo making the case for 1080p harder to champion given price points) if they plan to play tethered for 90% of its use cases.
The Ally is better than the steam deck for newer titles since it is more performant and supports VRR (being able to play a game at 40-50 variable is a big upgrade over 30 fps lock) . For older stuff/emulation steam deck is better due to less power consumption.
I know this is a Steam deck subreddit, but I had the opposite experience. I sold my steam deck and really enjoyed the ROG ally. The only thing I absolutely miss is the awesome sleep and wake feature on the Steam Deck. It’s hit or miss in Windows, but other than that having 0 compatibility issues with games has been nice.
Yeah, I don’t really get all the hate. The powerful windows handhelds are great if that’s what you’re looking for.
But like you said, nothing other than the Switch beats the Steam Deck’s sleep/resume reliability. I literally used it mid-cutscene in a japanese game (loooong, unpausable cutscenes) because my daughter cried out for help from the next room. Cutscene resumed just fine when waking it up a while later.
That’s really the only reason I haven’t considered some of the mower powerful handhelds. I need the flexibility and battery life more than I need the extra framerate or compatibility (I don’t play multiplayer games, for example, so lack of anti-cheat support is not an issue for me).
If I didn’t have such a huge Steam library with lots of good stuff in my backlog, I probably would have just stuck with the Switch as my main handheld, to be honest.
But the Deck is just sooo good as a middle ground between the things I love about PC gaming and the things I love about simple/Nintendo handheld gaming.
It’s nice to have both
It’s the hard lesson people apparently need to learn the hard way. The Ally/Legion/etc. are Windows PCs with a controller attached. The Deck is a handheld gaming device. Every part of it has been engineered for gaming, from the form factor to the inputs to the hardware and software. Sure, it’s not the most powerful. There were already more powerful devices from Aya, GPD, etc. before the Steam Deck was even released. Nothing else, though, has nailed the whole experience like the Steam Deck has, and they just dunked on the competition even harder with the new OLED models.
Not to disagree with any of your points, but I do find it amusing how the Steam Deck has converted a lot of PC gamers to now praise the same things that they used to constantly dunk on console gamers for. That there is a lot of value in things being less complicated, having less set up, being more streamlined, and just being plug and play for gaming only, even if it comes at the expense of performance or control or tweakability or whatever.
Like 5-10 years ago it felt like if you even mentioned that you didn’t enjoy fussing with settings and troubleshooting to get optimal performance on PCMR people would act like you’re just too stupid to do it correctly. Obv the Deck is still different in that it really does a decent job of balancing both the tweakability and the “it just works” aspect, but I’m happy that there seems to be more appreciation now for the different conveniences to the gaming experience beyond just dick measuring raw horsepower.
This is an excellent point
I don’t think it converted anyone, the SD is fundamentally different, it’s a portable device, no one wants to troubleshoot on a plane with no internet. It didn’t convert any PC gamer, there are just different expectations for the device in general.