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!!!

  • Jenaxu@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    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.

    • rkaycom@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      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.