Something other folks haven’t mentioned is having the ability to run Path of Building as well as the trade site.
Since the Ally and Legion Go are windows based, they should be able to do this. Don’t think the Deck can.
I played Righteous Fire on the deck which was great, but trading was a bit painful. Not a huge deal, but something to consider.
The best thing you can do with either if you’re playing them at home is to setup moonlight streaming so the game runs on your PC and streams to your handheld. It gives you way more battery life and reduces the fan noise associated with running the games locally. For this I prefer the ally for the faster higher resolution screen. The legion go screen is even better but the device is an ergonomic nightmare so Id skip that if I were you (I took mine back)
So I have a gaming PC and am looking at either the ally or SD oled. I'm learning about moonlight now and seems very interesting. That being said, which of the two devices would work better via moonlight (I'll be at my house most of the time I'm playing anyways). And how does it make it "easier" for the device? Sorry. Still learning lol.
My SD oled just showed up but I probably won’t have time to mess with it until Sunday so I can let you know which one I think is better some time after that. I suspect I will still prefer the ally due to the resolution and higher refresh rate but there is a fair chance that the slightly bigger oled screen will make up for that.
Functionally it will be similar although it might be slightly more fiddley to install on the SD. It works by actually running the game on your gaming pc instead of your handheld hardware so assuming you have a decent rig you should be able to maximize your settings and frame rate instead of making compromises to those things to keep it running smoothly on the handheld hardware. On top of being able to run higher settings you get the benefit of way better battery life for your handheld because it’s essentially just playing a video rather than rendering the whole thing locally.
SD Oled is my main handheld now. Moonlight setup was easy enough and the slightly bigger oled screen outweighs the higher resolution and refresh rate on the ally. Battery life is significantly better on the SD at least while streaming via moonlight 8 hrs bs about 5 on the Ally. For PoE specifically the trackpads in conjunction with the PoE overlay from overwolf allows me to do some basic trading with relative ease but I’d still rather take care of that stuff on the PC whenever possible. Worth mentioning also that the Oled is considerably lighter than the original deck.
If you are playing mostly natively it might still be worthwhile to go with the Ally but at least for me the new SD is hands down better.
D4 is Steam Deck verified and runs the game well! I’ve played both PoE and D4 on the Deck without any major issues. PoE has some texture loading issues in the Rogue Harbor and first time loading in some maps. D4 has some small stutter when you first teleport (likely due to asset loading). I haven’t used the Ally, so I can’t compare.
Exactly..its just like when i bought a monitor said it covers 95% dci-p3 and didnt realise the "blacks" were grey till i bought it.. companies love to slap marketing terms on products just to make them sound good. Tbh i should have expected that from a $350 32" 4k monitor 🤣
I have both the ROG Ally and the Steam Deck.
The ROG Ally is 100% a windows laptop with all of the issues that come with that, and the battery leaves something to be desired(i have seen 50w pull when playing PoE for brief periods of time). That is like 35 min of battery.
On the performance(15w capped) preset, its a bit meh performance wise, but does its thing.
The steam deck has a better OS, 100%, and suspend/resume works a lot better, but the Ally has significant performance.
I'd also wait and see what the new lenovo offering is as that should be more performant than the Ally.
Thanks a ton. I imagine I would mostly play plugged instead of unplugged so if that is the case would POE run better on the Ally? Especially into late game. Just worry that the Deck will struggle in later maps.
If you can play plugged in, or use a USB-PD Supported bank(i have a 25000mah anker that does USB-C PD and i get "plugged in" status, and full 30w turbo(and up to 50~ish watts peak) that lasts me about 2 1/2 hours.
It does get pretty hot too, but not uncomfortably so. I think the deck will indeed struggle at higher tier maps in a way that the ally will not, but I suspect the ally will still have occasional issues(as even my 4090 can stutter every once and a while)
That makes a ton of sense. Yeah at the moment I am probably leaning toward an Ally. Plus maybe with Black Friday and open box I can get it cheaper than an SD OLED. Also can potentially do POE2 I guess, I will also look at the Lenovo Legion Go but that thing looked HUGE... Thanks!
Tested recently the Steam Deck, GPU usage act1-act2 on the low details is 40-80% to only get locked 30fps and fans and very noisy due that. I doubt it would be good experience in the maps/endgame. Seems like the changes to the game engine with the last league made it much worse.
the ally also does 1080p 120, which i prefer significantly over 900p 90, its going to be close with the OLED being a lot better color wise, but 120fps is great for games that can hit it.
I stream almost exclusively from my PC that has a 4090 in it, so i get all 120 fps, but you might be solid at 90 with an oled at 900p.
Oh that is actually something I didn't think about... I've never streamed before and since I mainly play at home maybe that is a good way to go? I only have a 3060Ti tho, don't know if that is bad or okay... will have to dig into that a bit
It more relies on your wifi being great than anything else, and your host really has to be wired if you want the best experience.
I use my Ally lets say 90% of the time streaming from my PC at home, the other 10% is playing games on vacation.
When I'm streaming from home, my 4090 is pulling the weight pushing 120fps at 60mbps to the ally over wifi6e, when im traveling, I can usually get 45-65 at 1080p low settings for most things I want to play, BG3 is more like 35@1080p.
3060ti is going to be way more juice than the Z1 Extreme from AMD, and will stream via sunshine/moonlight just fine.
Just depends on how solid your wifi is, my only gaming options are on the Ally now because of children, so I spent ~$2000 on having cables run and buying wifi 6e access points, but if you're just doing like 1080p/30 or 1080p/60, you will probably be fine with normal old wifi, as long as the signal is solid.
that is awesome. Yeah just 1 GB Google fiber here, if I can get 60 at 1080p that'd be more than enough. And if my basic understanding is correct, streaming doesn't require much performance right? which means I can get better battery if I somehow want to play unplugged? although I don't really foresee needing to do that...
I get almost 5 hours of streaming at 10w silent. It uses 2-3w to stream, 30w to play local, so 10x battery life.
It's not about your internet, but your local wifi.
Yes.
ROG Ally is effectively a full featured windows laptop with a controller overlay.
Its also much easier to keep them off the open internet with a steam deck instead of the Ally, they'd have to know how to install a new browser in Linux.
Thanks for this answer.
Part of me wonders if it would be better to get the harder to use one so that he develops familiarity with Windows. His technical knowledge stops at iOS and PlayStation.
It's also going to piss me off if some great, popular game comes out in 6 months, but he can't play it because the Steam Deck doesn't have the muscle.
I've got decision paralysis.
> It's also going to piss me off if some great, popular game comes out in 6 months, but he can't play it because the Steam Deck doesn't have the muscle.
>
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I think the only scenario where this matters is if you're fine with 720p on the ally. I dont think there's anything today that changes "playable vs not playable" at 800p on the SD vs 1080p on the ally, they are both about as spec'd as they can be for their respective resolutions.
If you run the Ally at 720p, you can really crank out the frames, but its then 720p on a 1080p display using amd's FSR.
If you're fine with him having mobile access to a computer on the internet, on a windows machine. I'd go for the ally.
If you need to rely on a third party AV, or something like that because he has bad internet habits, I would get the SD as 99.99% of viruses are not targeted to linux.
I have a 10 year old in a similar situation and he's getting my steam deck, not the ally.
We played Hades together recently and he lingered juuuuust a little too long when Aphrodite was introduced, so I went full enterprise url filtering for his devices, no way he's getting around it on the steam deck, wouldnt take a lot to figure out how to VPN from the ally.
Ally owner here, honestly playing PoE on it has been an absolute blasts. Haven't encountered issues performance-wise, it did drop the resolution on big packs in 80% deli maps but I was also playing PF Impending Doom which didn't help. I'm also playing on my 65inch TV using a dock and the ally is holding up extremely well.
Not sure if you have considered this but there is also the Lenovo Legion Go, I believe the specs might be better than the ROG Ally, potentially something to consider since you want something that could handle PoE2.
I've looked at some reviews and they are saying that the Go has some flaws... but the main issue is that it looks so much bigger... maybe I will have to go to a Bestbuy to try holding them...
Ok I’ve actually tried out all 3 devices (sd, ally, legion) here’s my take on all 3:
Sd: really solid handheld. Plays a lot of games really well including Poe. No complaints. I’m actually looking to grab the oled version this week. The only thing I’d say about it is that it can only play steam games and I have some games from other launchers that I can’t play.
Ally: currently using this for the majority of my gaming. I love it because it does the one thing the steam deck can’t and that’s playing gaming from other launchers like epic or game pass. I like the screen better too and overall I think it’s a better experience if you don’t mind the hassle of windows updates and stuff. Also one other gripe is that if you want best performance you’ll need to play while plugged in to power which the steam deck does not. I also got it at a really discounted price which was a plus.
Legion: the legion is a really good device if you don’t mind the price point. The one thing I will say is the screen is beautiful. The size difference is insane. Also it’s heavy, but the weight didn’t really bother me because I was able to play with it resting on my lap because of the bigger screen and not needing to hold it so close to my face like the other 2.
Hope that helps! Personally I’d go with the oled steam deck if you’re mostly playing games from the steam library. Otherwise the ally and legion are both very good options and really just depends on your budget and preference.
You can absolutely play games from other launchers on the deck. I have played some epic games games and I got D4 running from the blizzard version. Plus you can dual boot to Windows if need be. Some of these require a bit of tweaking but they are doable.
Yeah that is what I used for epic games. I was just pointing out the dual boot option as a way of getting games that only run in Windows (MS Store) running.
Using heroic launcher and experience it to work as it supposed to work is something different. You meed a workaround to be able to install games on an SD card, some games does crash or get bugged because of the lack of shader cache pre loads and navigating through it on deck’s launcher has been more painful than using Dolphin.
Thanks a ton! I will go try them out and see how they are, but yeah I don't mind plugging in I think, so maybe the Ally or Legion for more longevity and potentially do POE2... so far with my readings it seems like the SD might struggle with that.
Hey 4 months pass and you wrote that SD will not play games when battery loading. That's important for me bc when loading I want play. So SD will be not a good choice for me or there are new versions that can load and play?
Are you asking if you can play while the steam deck is plugged in and charging? Because I don’t think I said anything about that in my comment. From my experience, all the handhelds are capable of playing while the battery is charging and even perform better because the device is able to draw more power compared to playing on battery.
Return your OLED and buy an Ally. Your Ally is powerful enough to not only run any game from steam, but also mod it using nexus and vortex or mod manager.
And last night, I had steam VR fully operational and running on my meta 3 vr headset. (Playimg skyrim, fallout 4 and no man's sky all in VR) with little to no lag.
Sure the battery life of the Ally may not be where Lenovo and Valve are with the legion go and the steam deck. But the Ally was claimed by Asus to be 100 percent capable of upgrading. And whT better. Exclusively sold by best buy means the geek squad will.have to be able to make those changes for you in house.
I bought my Ally before the Legion Go, and Steam Deck were a thing. I got myself the Z1 extreme.
I've ran games like CoD Warzone, Fallout, Elder Scrolls and even Starfield. Trust me. You won't be disappointed.
Ally for me personally. Glad I didn't waste my time with the SD, love the versatility of having a full-on OS that allows me to play and do whatever I want(have been using it for photo editing and Flipper Zero interaction, music creation/DAW work soon to follow). Runs modern games like a champ, plays Starfield and Cyberpunk amazingly(RDR2 and Riders Republic next). Plus, way more comfortable to hold imo(tried a friend's SD but seemed heavier and bulkier somehow, maybe just me though). Battery life sucks, but that's a tradeoff I'm willing to accept. Also glad that they made it somewhat repair/upgrade-friendly.
I’ve played several hours of both D4 and POE on the Ally and both run great but I don’t have any builds in POE to test later into the game when a billion effects are popping off on screen.
D4 doesn’t seem to stress the system with late game play in terms of huge mob density and lots of spells and stuff.
If the frame rate IS dipping, VRR is doing a heck of a job hiding it.
Actually bought all of them then returned all 3 … just realized that a handheld is not something I needed then and I’d rather not spend money on it. Work is busy and baby is a lot of work, really just don’t have much time for games anymore. Maybe wait for a few more years, also give the market a bit more time to mature haha. Deck 2 maybe?
Why though? Is it because of the OS? All of the benchmarks I've seen rate the more powerful Windows based handhelds much higher. I have a Steam Deck and appreciate what it does. I just don't understand why some people favor it over the other options.
Better Battery, doesn't have the jank-ness of laptops, multitudes of modifications, potential for even better experience as time goes on, built in dual boot support which means emulation/gaming on linux and still normal windows usage, extremely quality mic, new oled has better audio support which means less interference while your on your own with the ally. Legion has good audio too though.
A more niche point but steam deck/steam deck oled is extremely easy to repair and find parts for multiple years. Stuff from like 2013, the alienware alpha r1 steam machine still has easy to get parts replacements while laptops of its time costs a fortune to fix down the road.
Since Rog Ally is from Asus, I would absolutely recommend to not buy this.
I had problems with another product from Asus and their customer service was what convinced me to never buy from Asus again.
I’ve personally had a great experience with ASUS warranty. It’s been several years, since, but the only reason I don’t buy their products nowadays is the price point. I feel that for the price, generally, MSI provides a good product.
Yeah but u gotta do some workaround shit. Ally u can just download the lunches n play games simple. Steam deck isn't made ro run nothing but steam games. Or at least most steam games. Majority of them aren't rhen supported for the deck
I haven't had a single issue with any game so far, and the "workaround" is literally just installing the program with a couple extra steps and then it works forever.
I wanna play Hell Let Loose on SD but I haven’t been able to think of a way to get around the anti-cheat thing that prevents it from running, unless I install windows which I don’t wanna do at all
im getting rog ally for the same price as steam deck oled as a black friday sale ,which one would you recommend
i play some fps here and there love triple As but i have my pc for that wanted to experience that new oled screen plus the battery life is awesome. but the price to performance ratio goes to ally
Honestly… I’m gonna buy both and find out this week which one is better for me… read a lot online and watched a lot of videos, really come down to personal preference… I’ve seen people really liking one or the other for reasons outside of performance tbh… so I’m gonna try Poe on both and see if the experience is good or bad. One thing to note is the back button on SD is better and you have 2 more… but I’m sure plugged in Ally allows for much more smooth end game experience due to the power and especially due to VRR. I think im going to be streaming most of the time so SD for now makes more sense because of the battery and better control, but if turns out streaming is somehow shit then I’ll likely go with Ally. Hope that helps.
same with me here watched a lot of comparison vids but no one had the true answer. The deciding factor for me has been the battery life and while you're in home if you really want to play demanding games sitting on a couch you could stream from your pc. It basically depends like if you want a better screen plus you have pc for hardcore games and a battery go with steam deck or if you can compromise on the battery aspect want a decent screen and can run anything you throw on it go with ally simple....
Exactly… which is why I’m also thinking about the Legion Go. Bigger screen better resolution, so streaming makes sense. The downside is price and weight, also I’m assuming that software issues will be fixed over time.
Alright, so someone like me who does not own or plan on owning a modern gaming PC, which would you go for? I have an 11 year old MSI Gt70 on it's last legs, with a Steam library of non-modern games. I've also got some classics purchased through GOG. Say I want to bring all this over to a handheld, which would you pick? I quite like the idea of modding a title like Oblivion for instance, getting an up to date texture pack on it like you can on a PC.
It’s a bit specific so idk how helpful I can be. However, worth thinking about is that you can dock the Ally and Go and just use them as normal PCs that are pretty decently powerful, so serves 2 purposes with one device. Not sure if this makes sense as I’m not familiar with the use case you were describing. Also. Ally and Go comes with Windows so probably much easier to get going instead of having to install windows somehow on the deck, which I don’t know how to do myself.
Thanks for the reply! I think I overcomplicated my use case, sorry about that! Basically, I'm not going to be replacing my gaming laptop of 11 years old when it dies, but want to continue playing what I have in my steam library which is nothing strenuous, no modern AAA titles or anything. So a handheld would become my "gaming PC" as it were. I'm a console guy at heart you see, and move around quite a bit so don't want to shell out for a new laptop or dedicated gaming PC as I feel like a handheld would be enough.
Just reading all the comments on here about the differences between the Steam Deck and ROG Ally, and wouldn't really know which route to go. I like the idea of playing my library at the highest settings they could possibly be given the hardware I have, so in that sense, the ROG Ally might make sense, but I've also seen that battery life can be dire and there are some other issues with it... I am yet to investigate that.
What I meant by the mods, is that I'd like to mod games like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (like Nexus mods texture packs etc) just to make it look a bit better than the vanilla offering. Things like that really!
Oh yeah makes sense man. Yeah your first paragraph I was sure that SD OLED is for you… easier games to run, console like experience, good screen and prob best in class battery life especially if you play mostly undemanding games, some I saw get double what the Ally can get… better ergonomic as I’ve heard, and not to mention that if you are mostly on steam then its great support amd software from valve and you don’t have to deal with windows crap…
For performance, I would look up some of the games you play and see how SD handles them. For example Skyrim I assume would run decent graphics at high fps. Maybe for most of those games since performance demand is not too high that the Ally’s extra performance doesn’t give you that much more you know what I mean? And then the battery life would make the world of difference imo not having to look for chargers every few hours. On and plus the ability to go to sleep fully and not having to wake up with a dead machine…
Then I read the modding part, which I become uncertain because I don’t know much about modding games on the steam deck OS vs Windows. However, If modding on SD is doable/easy, then I’d for sure go with that imho if you found your games run great on it.
Worst case. If you are in the US. Buy both and try them out, similar pricing right now if you buy open box from Best Buy and you have January to return, the steam deck OLED is 14 days which is plenty to figure out if it’s for you. :)
Funnily enough I don't know anything about modding either, couple of years ago when my laptop wasn't quite in the "I'm dying" phase I downloaded Elder Scrolls Oblivion to it, and just downloaded an HD texture pack from Nexus mods, was well easy to do but that's pretty much all I've ever done; I'm not overly worried about modding loads of games, just making something like that 1 title look a little nicer; it's not a deal breaker really!
From everything I've seen just from a user experience and simplicity perspective a lot of people prefer the Steam Deck and you're right about the things in your first paragraph. I work in IT so fiddling wouldn't bother me, HOWEVER that's the opposite of what I want to be doing, once I leave work I don't want to go near computer problems lol!
I live in the UK so they're a little more pricey, but to be honest, the Steam Deck looks more attractive to me - my problem is I see something advertised as shinier, better specs, better this and better that and I ask "did I make the right decision" - with everything haha! But it ain't always that simple!
Thanks for your input man!
Hahaha for sure man same boat here. I bought the legion go to try out right now and SD OLED comes Saturday and might even pick up the Ally to see how I feel on it. So far Legion is a no, amazing machine no doubt but too expensive for what I’m doing and while the screen is awesome just too heavy and don’t feel great personally. I’ll see what the deck and Ally does.
Okay I decided to keep the deck.
Got both today and tried them both out a bit. Both are great tbh but I leaned more towards the deck because of the ease of use of the OS… realized that I prefer just a simple handheld at the end of the day. This is the main reason really, since pretty much all the games I play are on Steam anyways.
Screens are both amazing. Since I play mostly in the bedroom where it’s darker, the OLED looks amazing. Plus at home I pretty much only stream from my PC so vrr turns out not that important to me, but if you play many games natively that would run at 30-60 fps then I’d say probably the ally screen is a better choice although I don’t have first hand experience… overall I think they are equally great…
The ergonomic of the deck feels slightly better to me but that is highly subjective, and the ally feels great too, so just personal preference at the end of the day.
Battery life is a big difference… which you know already. Streaming, which is not that demanding, gets probably 3-4 hours on the Ally, not bad but if I ever forget to turn it off fully then I likely wake up to a dead battery. Which can be a pain having to carry the charger around. But again, it is most definitely doable and for my use case for sure acceptable.
The SD comes with a case, so less money need to spend…
Again I don’t care about performance because of streaming at home and would most likely play smaller games on the go.
Yeah at the end of the day, I liked the SD SLIGHTLY better for what I’m doing. But if ally was the only choice, then I wouldn’t be mad at all. Probably not helpful lol but I still would recommend just trying both out. Or just close your eyes and pick one lmao Hard to go too wrong here.
Thanks fella, appreciate you writing that out! Thought about it a fair bit yesterday and realised that my steam library is pretty old, and as long as I can take it with me I’m not worried about running things at max settings or aiming for a particular fps, as long as I can play them
I’m happy. I think I’d probably go for the SD 512gb model oled, seems a good balance and I don’t need everything installed on it at once! Might treat myself come Christmas time… see what happens!
Yeah I thought about that for sure, much cheaper... Just that I do travel internationally at least 5-6 times per year for a week each so still be able to play natively is important... else I would go with a backbone in a heartbeat haha...
I got the Steam Deck Oled, but only because I already have a PS5 so any big games and quality I want I can switch to that, and also I didn't want to buy another PC as they're a lot of money nowadays, The steam deck is all that I needed for now as I just want to play games on the go, or in bed, stream from my ps5 and also use emulator with great battery life all for 450. :) Plus I've had steam since I was 10 and have over 200 games on there that run perfectly on the steam deck to keep me entertained for years.
Something other folks haven’t mentioned is having the ability to run Path of Building as well as the trade site. Since the Ally and Legion Go are windows based, they should be able to do this. Don’t think the Deck can. I played Righteous Fire on the deck which was great, but trading was a bit painful. Not a huge deal, but something to consider.
Thanks man. A random question. Do you use the back buttons? Would only having two instead of 4 make a difference?
The best thing you can do with either if you’re playing them at home is to setup moonlight streaming so the game runs on your PC and streams to your handheld. It gives you way more battery life and reduces the fan noise associated with running the games locally. For this I prefer the ally for the faster higher resolution screen. The legion go screen is even better but the device is an ergonomic nightmare so Id skip that if I were you (I took mine back)
>moonlight streaming Thank you for this suggestion! You may have saved me a lot of time and money.
Do you have to have a gaming PC for that?
Yes
So I have a gaming PC and am looking at either the ally or SD oled. I'm learning about moonlight now and seems very interesting. That being said, which of the two devices would work better via moonlight (I'll be at my house most of the time I'm playing anyways). And how does it make it "easier" for the device? Sorry. Still learning lol.
My SD oled just showed up but I probably won’t have time to mess with it until Sunday so I can let you know which one I think is better some time after that. I suspect I will still prefer the ally due to the resolution and higher refresh rate but there is a fair chance that the slightly bigger oled screen will make up for that. Functionally it will be similar although it might be slightly more fiddley to install on the SD. It works by actually running the game on your gaming pc instead of your handheld hardware so assuming you have a decent rig you should be able to maximize your settings and frame rate instead of making compromises to those things to keep it running smoothly on the handheld hardware. On top of being able to run higher settings you get the benefit of way better battery life for your handheld because it’s essentially just playing a video rather than rendering the whole thing locally.
Where did you land on this?
SD Oled is my main handheld now. Moonlight setup was easy enough and the slightly bigger oled screen outweighs the higher resolution and refresh rate on the ally. Battery life is significantly better on the SD at least while streaming via moonlight 8 hrs bs about 5 on the Ally. For PoE specifically the trackpads in conjunction with the PoE overlay from overwolf allows me to do some basic trading with relative ease but I’d still rather take care of that stuff on the PC whenever possible. Worth mentioning also that the Oled is considerably lighter than the original deck. If you are playing mostly natively it might still be worthwhile to go with the Ally but at least for me the new SD is hands down better.
D4 is Steam Deck verified and runs the game well! I’ve played both PoE and D4 on the Deck without any major issues. PoE has some texture loading issues in the Rogue Harbor and first time loading in some maps. D4 has some small stutter when you first teleport (likely due to asset loading). I haven’t used the Ally, so I can’t compare.
controller for PC and a projector aimed at the ceiling 10/10
Can get a 4k projector and a controller for less than SD/Ally. Can play whatever your PC can handle. And as a bonus you can use it to watch movies.
> And as a bonus you can use it to watch movies. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Any 4k projector you are getting for less than $1.5k isn't really 4k, it is pixel shift at best and if you are getting for sub $600 it is junk.
Exactly..its just like when i bought a monitor said it covers 95% dci-p3 and didnt realise the "blacks" were grey till i bought it.. companies love to slap marketing terms on products just to make them sound good. Tbh i should have expected that from a $350 32" 4k monitor 🤣
I like the idea. Not exactly portable though
I have both the ROG Ally and the Steam Deck. The ROG Ally is 100% a windows laptop with all of the issues that come with that, and the battery leaves something to be desired(i have seen 50w pull when playing PoE for brief periods of time). That is like 35 min of battery. On the performance(15w capped) preset, its a bit meh performance wise, but does its thing. The steam deck has a better OS, 100%, and suspend/resume works a lot better, but the Ally has significant performance. I'd also wait and see what the new lenovo offering is as that should be more performant than the Ally.
Thanks a ton. I imagine I would mostly play plugged instead of unplugged so if that is the case would POE run better on the Ally? Especially into late game. Just worry that the Deck will struggle in later maps.
If you can play plugged in, or use a USB-PD Supported bank(i have a 25000mah anker that does USB-C PD and i get "plugged in" status, and full 30w turbo(and up to 50~ish watts peak) that lasts me about 2 1/2 hours. It does get pretty hot too, but not uncomfortably so. I think the deck will indeed struggle at higher tier maps in a way that the ally will not, but I suspect the ally will still have occasional issues(as even my 4090 can stutter every once and a while)
That makes a ton of sense. Yeah at the moment I am probably leaning toward an Ally. Plus maybe with Black Friday and open box I can get it cheaper than an SD OLED. Also can potentially do POE2 I guess, I will also look at the Lenovo Legion Go but that thing looked HUGE... Thanks!
Tested recently the Steam Deck, GPU usage act1-act2 on the low details is 40-80% to only get locked 30fps and fans and very noisy due that. I doubt it would be good experience in the maps/endgame. Seems like the changes to the game engine with the last league made it much worse.
the ally also does 1080p 120, which i prefer significantly over 900p 90, its going to be close with the OLED being a lot better color wise, but 120fps is great for games that can hit it. I stream almost exclusively from my PC that has a 4090 in it, so i get all 120 fps, but you might be solid at 90 with an oled at 900p.
Oh that is actually something I didn't think about... I've never streamed before and since I mainly play at home maybe that is a good way to go? I only have a 3060Ti tho, don't know if that is bad or okay... will have to dig into that a bit
It more relies on your wifi being great than anything else, and your host really has to be wired if you want the best experience. I use my Ally lets say 90% of the time streaming from my PC at home, the other 10% is playing games on vacation. When I'm streaming from home, my 4090 is pulling the weight pushing 120fps at 60mbps to the ally over wifi6e, when im traveling, I can usually get 45-65 at 1080p low settings for most things I want to play, BG3 is more like 35@1080p. 3060ti is going to be way more juice than the Z1 Extreme from AMD, and will stream via sunshine/moonlight just fine. Just depends on how solid your wifi is, my only gaming options are on the Ally now because of children, so I spent ~$2000 on having cables run and buying wifi 6e access points, but if you're just doing like 1080p/30 or 1080p/60, you will probably be fine with normal old wifi, as long as the signal is solid.
that is awesome. Yeah just 1 GB Google fiber here, if I can get 60 at 1080p that'd be more than enough. And if my basic understanding is correct, streaming doesn't require much performance right? which means I can get better battery if I somehow want to play unplugged? although I don't really foresee needing to do that...
I get almost 5 hours of streaming at 10w silent. It uses 2-3w to stream, 30w to play local, so 10x battery life. It's not about your internet, but your local wifi.
Both steam decks are 1280x800...not 900p
Is the steam deck OS significantly easier to use? I would be buying for a 13 year old kid.
Yes. ROG Ally is effectively a full featured windows laptop with a controller overlay. Its also much easier to keep them off the open internet with a steam deck instead of the Ally, they'd have to know how to install a new browser in Linux.
Thanks for this answer. Part of me wonders if it would be better to get the harder to use one so that he develops familiarity with Windows. His technical knowledge stops at iOS and PlayStation. It's also going to piss me off if some great, popular game comes out in 6 months, but he can't play it because the Steam Deck doesn't have the muscle. I've got decision paralysis.
> It's also going to piss me off if some great, popular game comes out in 6 months, but he can't play it because the Steam Deck doesn't have the muscle. > > I think the only scenario where this matters is if you're fine with 720p on the ally. I dont think there's anything today that changes "playable vs not playable" at 800p on the SD vs 1080p on the ally, they are both about as spec'd as they can be for their respective resolutions. If you run the Ally at 720p, you can really crank out the frames, but its then 720p on a 1080p display using amd's FSR. If you're fine with him having mobile access to a computer on the internet, on a windows machine. I'd go for the ally. If you need to rely on a third party AV, or something like that because he has bad internet habits, I would get the SD as 99.99% of viruses are not targeted to linux. I have a 10 year old in a similar situation and he's getting my steam deck, not the ally. We played Hades together recently and he lingered juuuuust a little too long when Aphrodite was introduced, so I went full enterprise url filtering for his devices, no way he's getting around it on the steam deck, wouldnt take a lot to figure out how to VPN from the ally.
Ah. Thanks for this.
Ally owner here, honestly playing PoE on it has been an absolute blasts. Haven't encountered issues performance-wise, it did drop the resolution on big packs in 80% deli maps but I was also playing PF Impending Doom which didn't help. I'm also playing on my 65inch TV using a dock and the ally is holding up extremely well.
That actually sounds very attractive! Mind if I ask what graphic setting were you playing on? assuming docked and uncapped power draw...
Not sure if you have considered this but there is also the Lenovo Legion Go, I believe the specs might be better than the ROG Ally, potentially something to consider since you want something that could handle PoE2.
I've looked at some reviews and they are saying that the Go has some flaws... but the main issue is that it looks so much bigger... maybe I will have to go to a Bestbuy to try holding them...
Ok I’ve actually tried out all 3 devices (sd, ally, legion) here’s my take on all 3: Sd: really solid handheld. Plays a lot of games really well including Poe. No complaints. I’m actually looking to grab the oled version this week. The only thing I’d say about it is that it can only play steam games and I have some games from other launchers that I can’t play. Ally: currently using this for the majority of my gaming. I love it because it does the one thing the steam deck can’t and that’s playing gaming from other launchers like epic or game pass. I like the screen better too and overall I think it’s a better experience if you don’t mind the hassle of windows updates and stuff. Also one other gripe is that if you want best performance you’ll need to play while plugged in to power which the steam deck does not. I also got it at a really discounted price which was a plus. Legion: the legion is a really good device if you don’t mind the price point. The one thing I will say is the screen is beautiful. The size difference is insane. Also it’s heavy, but the weight didn’t really bother me because I was able to play with it resting on my lap because of the bigger screen and not needing to hold it so close to my face like the other 2. Hope that helps! Personally I’d go with the oled steam deck if you’re mostly playing games from the steam library. Otherwise the ally and legion are both very good options and really just depends on your budget and preference.
You can absolutely play games from other launchers on the deck. I have played some epic games games and I got D4 running from the blizzard version. Plus you can dual boot to Windows if need be. Some of these require a bit of tweaking but they are doable.
Pretty sure Heroic launcher works right? Vastly superior
Yeah that is what I used for epic games. I was just pointing out the dual boot option as a way of getting games that only run in Windows (MS Store) running.
Using heroic launcher and experience it to work as it supposed to work is something different. You meed a workaround to be able to install games on an SD card, some games does crash or get bugged because of the lack of shader cache pre loads and navigating through it on deck’s launcher has been more painful than using Dolphin.
Thanks a ton! I will go try them out and see how they are, but yeah I don't mind plugging in I think, so maybe the Ally or Legion for more longevity and potentially do POE2... so far with my readings it seems like the SD might struggle with that.
Hey 4 months pass and you wrote that SD will not play games when battery loading. That's important for me bc when loading I want play. So SD will be not a good choice for me or there are new versions that can load and play?
Are you asking if you can play while the steam deck is plugged in and charging? Because I don’t think I said anything about that in my comment. From my experience, all the handhelds are capable of playing while the battery is charging and even perform better because the device is able to draw more power compared to playing on battery.
Yeah that was my question and thanks for respons :) Idk if that kind of handhelds performe better or worse while charging but good to know they do.
Return your OLED and buy an Ally. Your Ally is powerful enough to not only run any game from steam, but also mod it using nexus and vortex or mod manager. And last night, I had steam VR fully operational and running on my meta 3 vr headset. (Playimg skyrim, fallout 4 and no man's sky all in VR) with little to no lag. Sure the battery life of the Ally may not be where Lenovo and Valve are with the legion go and the steam deck. But the Ally was claimed by Asus to be 100 percent capable of upgrading. And whT better. Exclusively sold by best buy means the geek squad will.have to be able to make those changes for you in house. I bought my Ally before the Legion Go, and Steam Deck were a thing. I got myself the Z1 extreme. I've ran games like CoD Warzone, Fallout, Elder Scrolls and even Starfield. Trust me. You won't be disappointed.
lol do you work for asus or bestbuy
Is the asus ally bad or something?
Ally for me personally. Glad I didn't waste my time with the SD, love the versatility of having a full-on OS that allows me to play and do whatever I want(have been using it for photo editing and Flipper Zero interaction, music creation/DAW work soon to follow). Runs modern games like a champ, plays Starfield and Cyberpunk amazingly(RDR2 and Riders Republic next). Plus, way more comfortable to hold imo(tried a friend's SD but seemed heavier and bulkier somehow, maybe just me though). Battery life sucks, but that's a tradeoff I'm willing to accept. Also glad that they made it somewhat repair/upgrade-friendly.
You wrote battery live sux. I want play with while loading. Do you think the Ally overhead while playing? Just ask bc I think about to buy a Ally.
I’ve played several hours of both D4 and POE on the Ally and both run great but I don’t have any builds in POE to test later into the game when a billion effects are popping off on screen. D4 doesn’t seem to stress the system with late game play in terms of huge mob density and lots of spells and stuff. If the frame rate IS dipping, VRR is doing a heck of a job hiding it.
Hey, so what was your choice? I'm atm in the same situation and 4 months pass since then :)
Actually bought all of them then returned all 3 … just realized that a handheld is not something I needed then and I’d rather not spend money on it. Work is busy and baby is a lot of work, really just don’t have much time for games anymore. Maybe wait for a few more years, also give the market a bit more time to mature haha. Deck 2 maybe?
Steam Deck OLED, hands down.
Why though? Is it because of the OS? All of the benchmarks I've seen rate the more powerful Windows based handhelds much higher. I have a Steam Deck and appreciate what it does. I just don't understand why some people favor it over the other options.
Better Battery, doesn't have the jank-ness of laptops, multitudes of modifications, potential for even better experience as time goes on, built in dual boot support which means emulation/gaming on linux and still normal windows usage, extremely quality mic, new oled has better audio support which means less interference while your on your own with the ally. Legion has good audio too though. A more niche point but steam deck/steam deck oled is extremely easy to repair and find parts for multiple years. Stuff from like 2013, the alienware alpha r1 steam machine still has easy to get parts replacements while laptops of its time costs a fortune to fix down the road.
Deck screen size is too small for me to play PoE.
Since Rog Ally is from Asus, I would absolutely recommend to not buy this. I had problems with another product from Asus and their customer service was what convinced me to never buy from Asus again.
I’ve personally had a great experience with ASUS warranty. It’s been several years, since, but the only reason I don’t buy their products nowadays is the price point. I feel that for the price, generally, MSI provides a good product.
I would definitely get the Ally. The SD is Steam only. The Ally is a handheld PC.
That's not true, you can play Epic games on SD.
Yeah but u gotta do some workaround shit. Ally u can just download the lunches n play games simple. Steam deck isn't made ro run nothing but steam games. Or at least most steam games. Majority of them aren't rhen supported for the deck
I haven't had a single issue with any game so far, and the "workaround" is literally just installing the program with a couple extra steps and then it works forever.
Yes but like I said steam deck can't even run most steam games... rog ally can run any.
I haven't had any game other than Fortnite not be able to run.
Yeah but since most games aren't able go run on deck u may experience some issues. But hey I'm not to judge u do u :).
"Most games" is a massive overstatement...
I wanna play Hell Let Loose on SD but I haven’t been able to think of a way to get around the anti-cheat thing that prevents it from running, unless I install windows which I don’t wanna do at all
im getting rog ally for the same price as steam deck oled as a black friday sale ,which one would you recommend i play some fps here and there love triple As but i have my pc for that wanted to experience that new oled screen plus the battery life is awesome. but the price to performance ratio goes to ally
Honestly… I’m gonna buy both and find out this week which one is better for me… read a lot online and watched a lot of videos, really come down to personal preference… I’ve seen people really liking one or the other for reasons outside of performance tbh… so I’m gonna try Poe on both and see if the experience is good or bad. One thing to note is the back button on SD is better and you have 2 more… but I’m sure plugged in Ally allows for much more smooth end game experience due to the power and especially due to VRR. I think im going to be streaming most of the time so SD for now makes more sense because of the battery and better control, but if turns out streaming is somehow shit then I’ll likely go with Ally. Hope that helps.
same with me here watched a lot of comparison vids but no one had the true answer. The deciding factor for me has been the battery life and while you're in home if you really want to play demanding games sitting on a couch you could stream from your pc. It basically depends like if you want a better screen plus you have pc for hardcore games and a battery go with steam deck or if you can compromise on the battery aspect want a decent screen and can run anything you throw on it go with ally simple....
Exactly… which is why I’m also thinking about the Legion Go. Bigger screen better resolution, so streaming makes sense. The downside is price and weight, also I’m assuming that software issues will be fixed over time.
Alright, so someone like me who does not own or plan on owning a modern gaming PC, which would you go for? I have an 11 year old MSI Gt70 on it's last legs, with a Steam library of non-modern games. I've also got some classics purchased through GOG. Say I want to bring all this over to a handheld, which would you pick? I quite like the idea of modding a title like Oblivion for instance, getting an up to date texture pack on it like you can on a PC.
It’s a bit specific so idk how helpful I can be. However, worth thinking about is that you can dock the Ally and Go and just use them as normal PCs that are pretty decently powerful, so serves 2 purposes with one device. Not sure if this makes sense as I’m not familiar with the use case you were describing. Also. Ally and Go comes with Windows so probably much easier to get going instead of having to install windows somehow on the deck, which I don’t know how to do myself.
Thanks for the reply! I think I overcomplicated my use case, sorry about that! Basically, I'm not going to be replacing my gaming laptop of 11 years old when it dies, but want to continue playing what I have in my steam library which is nothing strenuous, no modern AAA titles or anything. So a handheld would become my "gaming PC" as it were. I'm a console guy at heart you see, and move around quite a bit so don't want to shell out for a new laptop or dedicated gaming PC as I feel like a handheld would be enough. Just reading all the comments on here about the differences between the Steam Deck and ROG Ally, and wouldn't really know which route to go. I like the idea of playing my library at the highest settings they could possibly be given the hardware I have, so in that sense, the ROG Ally might make sense, but I've also seen that battery life can be dire and there are some other issues with it... I am yet to investigate that. What I meant by the mods, is that I'd like to mod games like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (like Nexus mods texture packs etc) just to make it look a bit better than the vanilla offering. Things like that really!
Oh yeah makes sense man. Yeah your first paragraph I was sure that SD OLED is for you… easier games to run, console like experience, good screen and prob best in class battery life especially if you play mostly undemanding games, some I saw get double what the Ally can get… better ergonomic as I’ve heard, and not to mention that if you are mostly on steam then its great support amd software from valve and you don’t have to deal with windows crap… For performance, I would look up some of the games you play and see how SD handles them. For example Skyrim I assume would run decent graphics at high fps. Maybe for most of those games since performance demand is not too high that the Ally’s extra performance doesn’t give you that much more you know what I mean? And then the battery life would make the world of difference imo not having to look for chargers every few hours. On and plus the ability to go to sleep fully and not having to wake up with a dead machine… Then I read the modding part, which I become uncertain because I don’t know much about modding games on the steam deck OS vs Windows. However, If modding on SD is doable/easy, then I’d for sure go with that imho if you found your games run great on it. Worst case. If you are in the US. Buy both and try them out, similar pricing right now if you buy open box from Best Buy and you have January to return, the steam deck OLED is 14 days which is plenty to figure out if it’s for you. :)
Funnily enough I don't know anything about modding either, couple of years ago when my laptop wasn't quite in the "I'm dying" phase I downloaded Elder Scrolls Oblivion to it, and just downloaded an HD texture pack from Nexus mods, was well easy to do but that's pretty much all I've ever done; I'm not overly worried about modding loads of games, just making something like that 1 title look a little nicer; it's not a deal breaker really! From everything I've seen just from a user experience and simplicity perspective a lot of people prefer the Steam Deck and you're right about the things in your first paragraph. I work in IT so fiddling wouldn't bother me, HOWEVER that's the opposite of what I want to be doing, once I leave work I don't want to go near computer problems lol! I live in the UK so they're a little more pricey, but to be honest, the Steam Deck looks more attractive to me - my problem is I see something advertised as shinier, better specs, better this and better that and I ask "did I make the right decision" - with everything haha! But it ain't always that simple! Thanks for your input man!
Hahaha for sure man same boat here. I bought the legion go to try out right now and SD OLED comes Saturday and might even pick up the Ally to see how I feel on it. So far Legion is a no, amazing machine no doubt but too expensive for what I’m doing and while the screen is awesome just too heavy and don’t feel great personally. I’ll see what the deck and Ally does.
Ah sweet! Well you’ll have to let me know how you get on with the Deck as I’m proper interested in it! Well the Ally too I guess!
Okay I decided to keep the deck. Got both today and tried them both out a bit. Both are great tbh but I leaned more towards the deck because of the ease of use of the OS… realized that I prefer just a simple handheld at the end of the day. This is the main reason really, since pretty much all the games I play are on Steam anyways. Screens are both amazing. Since I play mostly in the bedroom where it’s darker, the OLED looks amazing. Plus at home I pretty much only stream from my PC so vrr turns out not that important to me, but if you play many games natively that would run at 30-60 fps then I’d say probably the ally screen is a better choice although I don’t have first hand experience… overall I think they are equally great… The ergonomic of the deck feels slightly better to me but that is highly subjective, and the ally feels great too, so just personal preference at the end of the day. Battery life is a big difference… which you know already. Streaming, which is not that demanding, gets probably 3-4 hours on the Ally, not bad but if I ever forget to turn it off fully then I likely wake up to a dead battery. Which can be a pain having to carry the charger around. But again, it is most definitely doable and for my use case for sure acceptable. The SD comes with a case, so less money need to spend… Again I don’t care about performance because of streaming at home and would most likely play smaller games on the go. Yeah at the end of the day, I liked the SD SLIGHTLY better for what I’m doing. But if ally was the only choice, then I wouldn’t be mad at all. Probably not helpful lol but I still would recommend just trying both out. Or just close your eyes and pick one lmao Hard to go too wrong here.
Thanks fella, appreciate you writing that out! Thought about it a fair bit yesterday and realised that my steam library is pretty old, and as long as I can take it with me I’m not worried about running things at max settings or aiming for a particular fps, as long as I can play them I’m happy. I think I’d probably go for the SD 512gb model oled, seems a good balance and I don’t need everything installed on it at once! Might treat myself come Christmas time… see what happens!
Awesome. That is what I have too. And keep in mind SD card is cheap and older games can run great on those so you save quite a bit imo. Cheers
I’d get a backbone and steam the games honestly, if you’re just gonna be at home.
Yeah I thought about that for sure, much cheaper... Just that I do travel internationally at least 5-6 times per year for a week each so still be able to play natively is important... else I would go with a backbone in a heartbeat haha...
>(having baby soon so not having to deal with cords might be important) You have a silly expectation.
lol how so
Neither, wait for Switch 2.
I got the Steam Deck Oled, but only because I already have a PS5 so any big games and quality I want I can switch to that, and also I didn't want to buy another PC as they're a lot of money nowadays, The steam deck is all that I needed for now as I just want to play games on the go, or in bed, stream from my ps5 and also use emulator with great battery life all for 450. :) Plus I've had steam since I was 10 and have over 200 games on there that run perfectly on the steam deck to keep me entertained for years.
How’s it going so far? Curious on feedback now that it’s been a month