I’m looking to buy the steam deck or simply the Ally X and put Bazzite on it. Does anyone here have any experience with Bazzite on the Ally?
I’m not quite sure the Ally X is worth it as it’s about 25% more expensive then the deck and it seems to have a smaller screen though it does have VRR.
It seems battery life is pretty comparable but it seems the Ally X has better performance but, again, is it worth it? I do have a pretty powerfull PC at home (9700X with 6800xt) that I guess I could always remote play or simply go sit at the desk.
I don’t play any recent AAA games, the most demanding I would play would probably be Witcher 3 or Red dead redemption 2 (haven’t started yet).
I do however like to play games the likes of Banished or Factorio and I’m worried that’s not going to be possible without the touchpads on the steam deck.
I’m also worried about the longevity of the Ally X and access to spare parts and accessories.
If you’re not wanting to play real demanding games I would suggest the deck. It’s cheaper, has much better warranty, better input options, etc.
I’d really only consider the Ally if you actually need the extra performance and aren’t worried at all about the cost. if you do decide you want the Ally, I would recommend reading up on their recent warranty scandal stuff first.
Conversely, I have sent a steam deck in for repairs twice. The first time the shoulder button broke. They didn’t ask questions and fixed it for free. The second time I broke it, and paid for the repairs. Both times steam support was helpful and easy to deal with. I can’t recommend the steam deck enough, it’s worth every penny.
Thanks, I’m leaning towards the steam deck anyways.
IMO it feels like the Steam Deck was built with 3 goals in mind:
- Longevity
- Playability
- UX
And the competition feels more like
- Specs
- Gimmicks
Like, sure, better gpu and cpu and ram is great, but it’s kind of shit if the battery barely lasts or tge performance is worse because of lack of compatibility with Windows or the repairability is shit you need to buy a new device if it falls.
Ironicly it reminds me a bit of early android vs iphone. Where Iphone was built with real ingenuity and leading the market, while android was this mess of companies trying everything to “out compete” Apple. The irony being that tge steam deck is the open and inclusive one unlike the iphone.
Yeah, I guess so. I’m leaning towards the steam deck simply because of longevity, accessories, community and touchpads but the performance kind of worries me but perhaps unreasonably so.
If you play latest AAA games and latest AAA games only, ally. Youre gonna love the rgb when you play the latest fifa and ubisoft copy paste on minimum.
If you play whatever great stuff that’s been released these past 3 decades, whichever is cheaper and has the features you want. Personally I find the touchpads just insanely useful.
You answered your own question 5 times over go with the deck
I have the ROG Ally with Bazzite. Now, keep in mind that I don’t run performance tests on hardware or anything like that. I’m just a gamer that works in IT.
Bazzite works just about flawlessly on the Ally. Every game I’ve tried has functioned very well and I have had exactly zero crashes. The only complaint I have is that I have to manually set the audio to route to my soundbar every time I reboot, which isn’t a huge deal to me.
With that said, if I had room on a regular credit card instead of just my BBuy one, I would have gotten the steam deck just because I don’t like white compute gear and the deck is the standard at this point.
Thanks for your answer and insights into Bazzite on the Asus.
Anytime!
Didn’t the ROG Ally have a lot of problems? Have those problems been fixed?
Talking about melting SD card slots, needing to play plugged in to make any use of its power, and unstable frame times.
As far as I’ve seen the Ally did indeed have those problems but they have been fixed with the Ally X, it seems many people are very happy with them but it also seems that Asus RMA process is a bit hit or miss.
Yeah, I’ve been hearing some very shitty things about there RMA process since before they released their first model Ally. Wasn’t it their motherboard that fucked CPUs? And then they released a “fix” update to the BIOS that was still an alpha, didn’t actually fix anything, and voided the warranty if you installed it?
Yup, rings a bell.
My fellow human you are asking this question in a Steam Deck community, of course the people are saying that you should get the Deck. I’m going to be a little against the grain here and recommend you to get the Ally X.
Let me explain, most of the issue that people have with the OG Ally has been solved with the Ally X. It basically has a much better build quality than the OG Ally. With it’s 24 GB RAM it’s going to be much more future proof and the battery now is basically on par with Deck.
With Bazzite you can get better watt-to-watt performance with the Deck and the VRR works wonder when you’re streaming with Moonlight and Apollo because the stream will be much smoother.
However, if you have the money to spare, try buying both and see which one you like better and return the one you didn’t use.
Another option would be wait a little bit longer because the Z2 Extreme handhelds are coming in the next couple of months.
Yeah, it seems a lot of people are really happy with the Ally X, my main gripe with it is longevity and lack of touchpads. Playing RTS games like Banished (which I love) seems like it would be really miserable on a touchscreen instead of a touchpad.
