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!!!
this isn’t a knock on anyone, but you can really tell who is the tinkerer crowd, and the who the “I just want a console” crowd is by how much they tolerate windows lol
I agree though that windows can be unnecessarily frustrating for pc handheld gaming though
idk if its better now (sold my steam deck) but it use to be just annoying on SD to have so many updates. But totally worth it as the experience now vs at launch has improved so much. I dont think any other handheld has received as much care as the deck has and thats a reason to get deck (great support).
with windows sometimes theres no issues, and other times its horrible lol. it so random. but the game perfomance is amazing so unfortunately its worth sticking with.
no amount of tinkering can make sleep work in windows
I just reread this. This person over here is literally saying that “real tinkerers use Windows”. Wa? What paralel universe have I landed myself in this morning?
Honestly, as a normal PC user, the fact that windows is considered “too complicated” absolutely boggles my mind. I admit, the setup was a bit of a pain, but it took a few hours of installing and then was done. When I’m in a game (which is the whole point of these devices) I can’t tell which OS I’m using, just that my game runs smoothly and cleanly.
Personally though, I do consider my Ally to be a console, simply because it’s gaming dedicated and portable (and I’ve never actually owned a console before).
as someone who has been running windows on the steam deck for a good amount of time, Steam os, atleast in how i used it, required way more tinkering than windows realistically did.
like, had hurdles maybe on steam start on wakeup for windows, dealing with glossc (thanks SDT, much better) , and went through maybe one botched update that was basically just a rare issue with portrait screens that messed up my screen for a bit.
personally, i think its really what you make it with these handheld PCs. Windows aint hard to mess with, but ive been using PCs since i was kid and even used damn Machintosh for a bit (macos8)
That said, i still prefer SD. why? Because for me, It offers a lot in all other categories. good battery life, efficient at low loads, trackpads are great. I do wish for more performance, but my games i want to play handheld leave me on steam deck mostly (Card games, Visual Novels, tactical and JRPGs). Only genshin imapct has me eyeing other handhelds, and its not due to compatibility, its due to performance.
The thing is: I dont mind Windows on a desktop PC. I guess I just found out that I have no patience for it in a handheld format. I need it to just work and be available at a moments notice.