Steam Deck vs. ROG Ally - help me decide

[Satan_Prometheus]

I'm interested in buying a handheld gaming PC because, due to some life changes, I'm not going to have much opportunity moving forward to play games on my desktop PC or consoles. So I'm considering the Steam Deck and the Ally, but both of them seem to have pretty major downsides and I was wanting to get the opinions of people who've used one or both to see which one I'd like to buy.

 

Steam Deck pros and cons:

+cheaper

+excellent gyro aim support and support for various input types through Steam Input

+better customer support (or so I've heard)

+easy to suspend and resume games

 

-I own a lot of games on launchers that aren't Steam and I don't know how easy it's going to be to get those running on Deck consistently (for example, I really want to play Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, but I have the Origin version - will this work?)

-Even some Steam games won't consistently work due to the Deck running Linux and Proton not being perfect

 

Ally pros and cons:

+better performance (at least with higher wattages, which is fine, I'm not going to be playing this for 2+ hours at a time)

+Higher-res screen with higher refresh rate and VRR

+Shouldn't have any game compatibility issues because it runs Windows

 

-no trackpads, unsure about gyro support

-more expensive

-no suspend and resume, apparently

-Is less free because it runs Windows

-Asus customer support is a meme

 

 

So I guess my questions for folks are this:

 

Steam Deck users (especially those with large game libraries with hundreds of titles) - what percentage of your game library is actually playable without major issues? Are you able to get non-Steam games to consistently work on the Deck or is it usually a non-go?

 

Ally users - Is gyro support on the Ally a thing yet? Also, have you had any issues with needing to RMA the unit? How did that go? Any driver/software issues that haven't been reported in the media?

 

Thanks for your feedback!

 

[WereCat]

The only thing Ally has going for it is the higher performance and VRR.

The bigger resolution and refresh rate is nice but you won't be able to take advantage of it most of the time anyways because the performance to drive that is just not there for most games.

 

Ally has better performance but it has way worse battery life in games that don't require that performance. Steam Deck sips power in non-demanding titles while Ally just burns trough the battery.

Steam Deck is limited to 15W with the most optimal power/performance being somewhere around 10W. The ROG Ally usually underperforms at this power level and it starts to gain up and outperform Deck at 15W+ so that means that in most demanding games it's better but it also will use more power and in less demanding games it will perform less (or the same at best) while using more power.

 

Steam Deck is more like a console (which you can turn into a PC handheld if you want since you're free to do whatever)  while Ally is just a PC handheld with all the quirks that come with it.

 

You can play GOG, Origin, Epic, etc... games on Steam Deck if you install Heroic Launcher.

[thevictor390]

As a Steam Deck user, the number of games that do not work is actually really small. However, the difficulty of getting some games to work can be pretty high. It can take a few hours of research and troubleshooting to get an obscure game going sometimes, and Linux itself has a learning curve if you have not used it before. You can run Windows as a last resort, even install it to a (high speed) MicroSD to preserve SteamOS.

[Satan_Prometheus]

13 minutes ago, WereCat said:

You can play GOG, Origin, Epic, etc... games on Steam Deck if you install Heroic Launcher.

I've heard of Heroic Launcher - how does that work? Do you just install that and also the other launcher and then sync them up somehow?

9 minutes ago, thevictor390 said:

As a Steam Deck user, the number of games that do not work is actually really small. However, the difficulty of getting some games to work can be pretty high. It can take a few hours of research and troubleshooting to get an obscure game going sometimes, and Linux itself has a learning curve if you have not used it before. You can run Windows as a last resort, even install it to a (high speed) MicroSD to preserve SteamOS.

I have been daily driving Ubuntu and Mint on my laptop for several years, so I'm fairly comfortable with Linux in general (I haven't used any Arch-based distros though).

 

Most of the games I'm actually more concerned about are more popular games that I just happen to own on other launchers (i.e., AC Valhalla on Ubisoft Connect, Control and Borderlands 3 on Epic, etc.) I don't play multiplayer games so I'm not worried about games where the anticheat breaks it.

 

Have you tried running any games on Windows on the deck? I was under the impression that using Windows on the deck was not a great idea due to a lack of official Windows drivers for the SOC.

 

 

[thevictor390]

3 minutes ago, Satan_Prometheus said:

I've heard of Heroic Launcher - how does that work? Do you just install that and also the other launcher and then sync them up somehow?

I have been daily driving Ubuntu and Mint on my laptop for several years, so I'm fairly comfortable with Linux in general (I haven't used any Arch-based distros though).

 

Most of the games I'm actually more concerned about are more popular games that I just happen to own on other launchers (i.e., AC Valhalla on Ubisoft Connect, Control and Borderlands 3 on Epic, etc.) I don't play multiplayer games so I'm not worried about games where the anticheat breaks it.

 

Have you tried running any games on Windows on the deck? I was under the impression that using Windows on the deck was not a great idea due to a lack of official Windows drivers for the SOC.

 

 

Official Windows drivers are provided by Valve, just not supported, and are not available in Windows Update so you have to install them manually. But they work well enough.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6121-ECCD-D643-BAA8

[WereCat]

6 minutes ago, Satan_Prometheus said:

I've heard of Heroic Launcher - how does that work? Do you just install that and also the other launcher and then sync them up somehow?

 

 

You just search and install it trough the Discover app (like an app store in the desktop mode) 

 

Then you can start adding your launcher accounts and it will install the games and add them to Steam for you automatically. 

 

You can also choose which Proton version to launch the game with. 

 

I use ProtonQt for the experimental features as not all games may run without them. 

[Satan_Prometheus]

Thanks for both of your replies! One thing I should say, that I feel like is significant, is that I don't really care about battery life as long as it'll last 30-45 minutes, as that's most likely the longest I'll ever be able to play at a time and then I'll just put it back on the charger.

 

But what I really want is a device that is guaranteed to launch and run all of my games out-of-the-box. I know that from a performance standpoint, either one of these devices is going to be able to do it, but it seems like the Ally is just going to have fewer compatibility issues, and I think that, to me, is the single most important thing.

 

 

[WereCat]

11 minutes ago, Satan_Prometheus said:

Thanks for both of your replies! One thing I should say, that I feel like is significant, is that I don't really care about battery life as long as it'll last 30-45 minutes, as that's most likely the longest I'll ever be able to play at a time and then I'll just put it back on the charger.

 

But what I really want is a device that is guaranteed to launch and run all of my games out-of-the-box. I know that from a performance standpoint, either one of these devices is going to be able to do it, but it seems like the Ally is just going to have fewer compatibility issues, and I think that, to me, is the single most important thing.

 

 

In that case just get the Ally then