A couple weeks ago this question would be a no brainer and I would go with the steam deck but as of recent the price diff makes it hard to choose. So in Canada the 512gb steam deck is $559 and $689 for the OLED. While the Ally is down from 900 to 600 for Black Friday. This price difference makes me want to go with the Ally but I also know the steam deck is better in many scenarios. The problem I have is my gaming pc stopped working a couple weeks ago (it’s about 9 years old so I knew its time was up). The ally can technically replace my pc in terms of everyday pc tasks if I hook it up to a monitor but I can’t get that from the deck. I’m wondering if the deck is worth it alongside a brand new pc build or if I should just stick with the ally.
If you plan to connect and use as a PC I would get the ally. It has windows which I’m assuming you used. The ally was awesome while I had it (returned it because I had some life events coming up) and that was at launch.
I however am pretty comfortable with windows and none of the reasonable complaints on windows didn’t bother me as much. The screen is gorgeous even for an lcd panel and it runs things amazingly if you don’t mind being tethered (I would mainly play at home in bed or on the couch where I can be semi present with my wife lmao).
I purchased the oled deck and it comes today which I’m very excited about . I returned it when I initially got it because I didn’t check my expectations and it was rough at launch with an OS I was completely foreign to .
Kinda 2 different use cases it seems for you it seems (pc replacement or gaming primarily). Whatever you decide I don’t think you’ll go wrong. I would just next look at if you are playing does the performance while tethered bother you? Do you want more battery life? What kind of games do you plan on playing and go from there.
Getting a single device route will definitely be cheaper I would imagine for you