I have both, and I definitely like them both for different reasons. I have had the Steam Deck for a longer period of time and it is a lot more user friendly with plenty of features that make it good for someone who wants to get into PC gaming as a whole. Though, because it’s a Linux machine, it can’t play absolutely everything. The Ally is a windows machine, so it can launch games that Linux machines can’t (in my case, games like Destiny 2 where you would get permanently banned if you try to play it on the Steam Deck). I also find some games just look a lot cleaner on the Ally than the Deck, like Baldur’s Gate 3 looks and runs pretty damn good on the Ally while it looks pretty blurry on the deck. Like I said though, I use them both and like them both for different reasons. I do find that I play with my Steam Deck a lot more though, simply because it’s the easier one to just pick up and play without too much setup.

It depends on what you want to do with it. The Deck is the better pure portable. It has features like sleep/resume and much better battery life, even on the LCD models. The OLED models absolutely blow the Ally out of the water with battery life.

However, if you’re going to be near an outlet or want to use it docked, the Ally can deliver much better performance than the Steam Deck. It’s potentially a better option if you’re looking for one device you can use portably some, but mostly are going to be near power.

After about a year of owning the Steam Deck I bought an ROG Ally more so to see what I was missing than anything and ended up returning it in about a week.

To me it just didn’t offer enough over what the Steam Deck does to justify spending $600 on it. Not to mention, Windows is terrible on handheld PCs, it really puts SteamOS into perspective on just how good it is.

Oh and the joysticks on the Ally are pretty bad, the right joystick specifically was placed in an “Xbox layout” to where it’s lower than the left but for anyone with medium sized or bigger hands it puts it in a really bad spot where either you’re using the midpoint of your thumb to move it or you have to really bend your thumb instead so either you are very inaccurate or it’s very uncomfortable.

Depends on the person of course. OLED SD looks amazing for someone who will use SD for mostly STEAM games. The support, QOL features and overall the device’s controller feel(touchpads and buttons etc.) much better while Rog Ally is stronger so can run more demanding games.

I personally think SD is better because I would prefer playing high demanding games on a desktop anyway. It just feels better and if there is indeed a good game, why not play it on desktop to enhance the experience?

There are many games that feel better to play on a handheld device so my aim is to play such games on my SD. Since Steam has a lot of games, I have been browsing a lot, bought a few and added a lot of games to my wishlist.

Is that the one with the VRR screen? Yeah problably, if you want to play the latest games and are near a power outlet.

I owned one for a short period of time and ended up returning it because it was constantly blue screening on me. Also because some games that performed perfectly fine on my SD ran like hot garbage on the Ally. Overall if you’re looking for a windows handheld I would suggest the Legion Go, ASUS has just not been the reputable company they once were lately and that stinks but competition is a good thing and I hope they don’t give up.