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!!!
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.
I found it interesting that they mentioned how long it took them to set up the Ally. Despite the deck being a gaming device first it took a TON of set up. Probably 3x the time OP spent since there’s decky plugins (each plugin with their own set up), cryo utilities, emulators to set up (even with Emu deck it takes an insane amount of time to set up), troubleshooting with the different proton versions to get it to work with games etc. As someone who loves tech tinkering it was an enjoyable experience but I still wouldn’t recommend the deck to a lot of people.
The dpad and sticks are also quite bad.
And a lesson for me the other way!
I listened to takes like yours and just assumed windows would be trash on handheld. I still see a lot of people parroting this false narrative without having first hand experience.
I’m super happy with my Ally. No desire at all to go back to a Deck.
I’m a PC gamer though. I know what I’m doing. I understand a lot of deck buyers are console gamers who need a more “guided” experience shall I say 😂
And that’s totally fine. Both are fine consoles. Just for different audiences.
I won’t be going back to Linux in a hurry though. So glad things “just work” now that I’m back on windows.
So if by “guided experience” you mean a stable client with seamless usability without f@ckery with different stores, launchers, input mishandling from game to game, with predictable sleep/wake behavior and performance controls that actually work, then yeah, guilty as hell.
You know that steam big picture exists? Different stores is a feature, not a bug. You literally can’t play those games, lmao. I have to click a different button.
Sleep wake is fine. You’re mistaken.
No input mishandling. Do you guys think we didn’t play PC games on windows before the deck existed? Lmao.
What a fuckin deranged take lol. Pick a lane for your opinion.
Yeah, I’ve tried going back to my Deck after having the Ally and I just can’t.
The display alone is so much better, not to mention the touchscreen on the Ally is actually functional.
Definitely not form factor. It’s huge and has poor button placement with the B button falling off the freaking side of the device.
You know, you just can boot Steam in big picture mode on Windows as well right. If you want you can have the same experience. But now you are able to play games that you cannot play on the Steamdeck.
I agree Chris Pratt.
I thought Steam Deck would try not to be the “best” device on purpose so that other options running SteamOS would be able to find their own niches like a better screen, more battery, etc to make them stand out more from the Deck.
The OLED just raised the bar significantly.