isn’t the Deck also just like… better than those devices? like obviously they have more compute power and whatnot but everything i read about the ASUS one was that the extra hardware power meant nothing when everything was bogged down by Windows and other issues
The main problem with any sort of discussion like this is that “better” is going to mean different things to different people.
Is the one with longer battery life better?
Is the one with more powerful hardware better?
Is the one with trackpads better?
Is the one that can play non-Steam games with less hassle better, even if its UX is overall clunkier?
Is the one with a smoother UX better, even if you might not be able to play every single game you own on it?
Deck is going to be better in some ways for some people, and the Ally (et al.) will be better in some ways for other people. At the end of the day, the entire market segment is better for all of us because competing devices exist. Trying to turn this into a zero-sum turf war is only going to be detrimental to everyone. (Not saying that that’s what you are doing, just speaking in general about what tends to happen when comparisons like this get brought up.)
The OS makes the steam deck better than any other handheld since all the others just ship with windows and I cannot imagine using windows on a gaming handheld like this. Yes I would love it if my deck had USB4 andother fun up to date hardware, but the OS is the best part about it for now anyway.
The OS makes the steam deck better than any other handheld
Agreed, but with the addition of “for me” at the end there. What makes it better for you and me is going to be a drawback for someone who only plays, say, Destiny 2, Fortnite, or things that are on Game Pass Ultimate.
Yeah, that theoretical person is going to have an absolute garbage time navigating the OS itself, but that’s what they have to put up with to be able to play the games they want on a handheld PC. They might very well find that trade-off worthwhile, and it’s not for us to tell them they’re wrong.
Thats what remote play is for. If you wanna play those games seriously then maybe just keep using your computer.
The Ally is better at all the things that don’t really matter, in my opinion.
in my opinion.
That being the key phrase.
My opinion pretty much aligns with yours, but the point is that no one can make sweeping objective statements about which is better (like this article and so many others try to do) since different things matter to different people. A variety of different options in the market is only a good thing.
Sure I understand and agree with you. I was just elaborating.
Performance on the Ally is incredible. I benchmarked the CPU against my 5900X desktop and the Ally won (single threaded)!
It’s all down to the awful software experience. Every time I pick it up, there’s something annoying about it. Armoury crate has crashed, the battery died while it was sleeping, it doesn’t recognize controller input, it hasn’t detected a game is running and is still in power saving mode, it’s being finicky about the USB-C adapter and throttling (only the included adapter seems to work, anything else, including 100W and PPS etc. adapters say they aren’t powerful enough), the RGB lights are freaking out, it needs a restart. It’s just perpetual troubleshooting and annoyance.
When it works, it’s amazing. The whole experience is gorgeous. It’s super fast, the display is smooth, etc.
Combined with the microsd card overhearing issues, I just don’t think it’s a good purchase. I’ll definitely be sending mine back.
How is the sleep/resume functionality? I’ve heard mixed reports about Windows-based handhelds ranging anywhere from “it doesn’t have anything like that” to “it works perfectly fine just like Deck/Switch”.
That is pretty much the killer feature of the Deck for me, and as far as I’m currently aware, that’s enabled by it using Linux/SteamOS. If I can’t sleep/resume a game on a handheld, I’d be much more inclined to just play on my desktop and reap the benefits of improved performance and graphics.
Me too, I always ask about this, and this is always suspiciously missing from every single review. I assume it just doesn’t work, otherwise we would have seen someone mention it, the steam deck’s reviews all mentioned that since it’s one of (if not the) most important feature for a handheld. For example (just rewatched it to be sure) LTT’s review doesn’t mention that on the ROG, but on the Deck the quote is
[About the sleep and come back to game feature] An Xbox, sure, but I would like to see a Windows PC do that.
So even back then they acknowledged that windows was not capable at that time of doing that (remember they had other handhelds at the time), but they never brought it up on the ROG review, which is very suspicious, almost as if Asus is trying to find a fix and preventing reviewers from talking about it. But that might be too much time hat on my side.
I don’t typically trust LTT reviews anymore. Omissions like that - and no follow-ups for it - lead me to believe they’re just advertisers in tech people’s clothing.
ETA Prime can likewise be a bit light on criticism at times.
Ya, I’ve had it work once or twice where it just comes back and the game is able to resume. Generally though, the system is either dead or shut down or hibernating and not usable. I generally don’t even try and use the suspend option. I save and exit out of the game to avoid messing up my save games.
It absolutely does not work as well as the Switch. It’s one of the various constant annoyances of using the Ally.
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I was talking about the Ally, not the steam deck.
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This sounds like the PC experience to me but handheld. If it’s windows it’s an automatic deal breaker for me.
Steam deck definitely went the switch route. Simple user experience. Lower end spec so games can standardise towards it.
I just can’t believe that they expect people who bought the Ally to interface with the regular ass Win11 desktop without touchpads. Sure, horsepower and a better display is cool, but not at the expense of battery life and heat. I hope it’s successful so we get revisions and incentive for others to get in the game, but it it’s not quite there for me.
I’ve reached the point where “better” mostly means “smoothest experience.” That might include not crashing and low overhead. That almost certainly includes a smooth and predictable UI. That means a well thought out system design that balances performance considerations with size and weight, battery life, controller layout, and little things like fan noise.
Honestly, I’m fine with my Switch. It was my first handheld, and I appreciate the variety of games as well as the convenience. I ordered the steam deck because I have a massive library of unplayed or unfinished games on steam, and it seemed like the right way to go for that. I have a windows PC that is still sitting wrapped by movers and never unpacked.
For my “It just works” low water mark, the Deck looked like my best bet for non-switch gaming, and maybe now I can get past the first town on RDR2.
Forbes blogger misses the point completely. News at 11.
Here’s the thing, horsepower means nothing if that’s the only thing the device has. People don’t want just raw performance, there are other soft factors in play, like comfort, convenience, build quality, easy of use, etc. The simple fact that the competitors come with Windows and have no trackpads is already a major turn-off, this by itself makes them inferior products, since Windows notoriously bad with touch-screens, especially when said screen is as small as 7", then there’s the windows updates… Ughh…
Then the compatibility issue. Sure, in theory Windows should be more compatible, in practice… try to run some really old games, like the author casually mentioned. Many will run better with Proton then on Windows itself, if you can make them run at all. Linux already have two excellent library managers, Lutris and Heroic, that make installing non-steam games easier than in Windows, without the need of several resource hogging launchers constantly on the background, so it’s a moot point.
Sure, some multiplayer games don’t run because of the anti-cheat software, but then again, is this really such an issue ? My answer is a big fat NO ! Why ? One word: Gyroscope. Or the lack thereof. Of all 3 devices mentioned in the article, ROG Ally, AyaNeo 2S and Steam Deck, only the deck has it, and guess what, it’s pretty freaking hard to aim properly with sticks in shooter games. Without a gyro, the Ally the 2S players will always be at a disadvantage, which makes the whole endeavor an exercise in frustration, so why bother ?
All in all, a pretty bad, even trollish article. Pretty much what I learned to expect from those Forbes bloggers.
have no trackpads
Exactly. The Ally is available in my country (and with discounts I can get it cheaper than the equivalent Steam Deck even), but no track pads is a huge huge minus. I play a lot of games that use a mouse, why’d I want something that has inferior mouse support?
This alone is the reason I won’t consider it. We’re talking about PC games. The mouse is important. Gtfo with joysticks only.
The Ally and AyaNeo 2S both have gyroscopes, although the Ally suffers from a profound lack of first party software support and so far users are having to use two layers of input mapping software to get practical use out of them.
Moreover, more performance in a portable device is often a trade-off. The board will draw more power, reducing battery life, and it will often generate more heat, requiring more ventilation / fan power which might also further affect battery life (and potentially, its lifespan). You end up paying more for a worse experience, imho.
The new Ayaneo needs a battery that’s more than twice the capacity of the Steam Deck in order to be able to even compare to the Steam Deck in autonomy… if Valve launched a revision of the deck with an updated battery it would be a huge improvement, likely doubling its runtime, it’s much more efficient than the competition in its power usage.
I’d much prefer games start being designed for low spec devices. What I want is more innovative gameplay and interesting mechanics… if the game wastes immense amounts of power for easthetic reasons, it doesn’t make me want to get a portable powerhouse of a console, what it makes me want to do is skip playing that unoptimized game.
Lol Forbes.com is definitely where I go to read about gaming handhelds.
I love how the author went from “these units are technically better than the deck” to “I guess if the deck had the same build problems as these other handhelds, they’d be more forgiving”.
Better specs mean dick if your build quality is shit.
Hard disagree. Steam Deck is good because it fills a niche that no other handheld PC fulfills. You can’t really nitpick when there isn’t really any competitors.
The Deck isn’t the most powerful, its display isn’t the best, it isn’t the cheapest. What people like the author seem to miss is that the Deck wasn’t marketed to be the most powerful, or the best display, or the cheapest. It was designed to balance all these design considerations, such that even though it’s not best at anything, it’s not bad at anything either. That’s really the allure of the Deck for me, that I don’t really need to work around any limitations
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I kind of agree but you also have to consider the industry that Valve is in and the plethora of anti-consumerism taking place right now.
Valve could have made the Steam Deck with a proprietary OS. They could have locked you into big picture mode and/or locked the bootloader like so many Android and Nintendo devices. They could have done everything in their power to ensure you can’t install GoG or Epic games. They could have glued the SteamDeck together and serialized all the parts together so you could never replace any of them.
And you know what? No one would have batted an eye because that’s what society has come to expect in this day and age, and far too many fucking people will tolerate and accept it.
Instead they went out of their way to build it on a FOSS OS, even going so far as to add the “exit to desktop” right into the GUI. They obviously don’t actively promote other platforms but they also do absolutely nothing to stop you from installing them, or making literally any changes to the device that you want.
Instead they made every single component available for purchase from a third party retailer, who also includes detailed tutorials and diagrams.
Now could they be better and lower their commissions and refuse to allow DRM? Sure. But at least they put those commissions to good use developing pro-sumer hardware.
for me where valve is “the good guy” is having replacement parts available day one and having a decent enough queue system that might not of been perfect but helped to keep the scalpers at bay. then add in them not trying to lock it down, like letting you chose your own boot animation and making it easier to do when someone first did it, and it makes a great case for the device to me. all of that instills confidence in me to buy it.
valve isnt perfect, and no corporation is your friend, but thats a refreshing change from nintendo and sony and microsoft who try to lock the device down as hard as possible.
The Steam Deck receives five star support, promise me that about any of the alternatives and then you speak.
Everyone’s already mentioned the touchpads and SteamOS, but I’ve also not found any other device besides my Steam Deck that runs games as capably at 10W / 15W. That’s important for me in a handheld. Too bad the screen doesn’t support VRR or it’d have been perfect.
I do love my Deck and use it all the time. It is also the most frustrating piece of kit I’ve owned in a long while.
I’ve always been concerned about the build quality too. Mine is well looked after, only 7 months since new, and I keep it in the case when not used. I noticed literally yesterday theres a crack in the upper front portion of the deck housing, directly middle above the LCD. How?!
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Oh yes the software is the frustrating part for me, far more than any hardware issues. For many of your reasons. I should have clarified. The hardware I fucking love, apart from that goddamn crack in the middle of the air vents :(
But despite the issues I still love the thing, and it is absolutely the best Game Boy Advance I’ve ever owned too which helps
SD for the win!!!
