Steam Deck OLED vs ASUS ROG Ally - Which is Best in 2024?

yo going into 2024 I think that the steam deck OLED And Rog Ally are going to be two of the most popular choices when it comes to PC gaming handhelds but for me personally one does ultimately come out on top the Ally I'll be talking about today is the most expensive Z1 extreme model for a retail price of $6.99 you're getting a 512 GB SSD this is actually still more expensive than the top-of-the line steam deck which at 649 is providing a 1 TB SSD right off the bat in ter terms of value the steam deck is the clear winner the steam deck uses the Linux based Steam OS which Straight Out of the Box provides a much more userfriendly experience it was designed much more heavily with touchbase controls in mind if you want to go into settings and adjust things like your connected Bluetooth devices or view the amount of storage that you have available it's easy to do so with the Rog Ali running Windows 11 it is quite honestly a pain in the ass to use there is the Armory crate app that serves as sort of a fix as well as the Big Picture Mode but it's not quite the same Windows is a desktop OS by far and while I understand why Asus went with it I just hope that Microsoft creates a proper gaming mode so that with all these windows handhelds coming out the experience can be improved upon the benefit though is that Windows 11 can play essentially any game that you have from any launcher with ease you're not going to have to jump through any Hoops to get games working properly for an example getting Xbox game pass to work required you downloading Edge making that a steam game and then adding custom launch options it's not crazy difficult but for the Ally all you have to do is just download the Xbox app that said the steam deck out of the box is perfect for playing your steam Library backlog that is the ones that are properly supported I was really excited to give the finals a try cuz I played it on PS5 but I found out that the anti-che is not supported on Linux the same can be said for Modern Warfare 3 and countless others of course on the Ali this just isn't a problem if you're looking for a gaming handheld to sort of be your all-in-one gaming PC that you can take on the go and play at home home the Ally makes this a real use case now onto the design both of these devices are made of plastic but there's something about the Allies that make it feel far more premium the white casing as well does make the device look Sleek despite the steam deck's cheaper feeling I find that the way the handles wrap around your hands make it far more comfortable to hold for prolonged gaming sessions the Ally is essentially just a slab with barely protruding side handles that with the macro buttons make holding on to them far less comfortable I have slightly larger hands and just find that after an hour or two it becomes very awkward feeling and harder to stay comfortable with as I primarily use a handheld when traveling I wanted to stay as comfortable as possible for as long as possible and that is one reason that I heavily prefer the deck that said even though the weight was reduced to 640 G it's still slightly heavier than the 608 G Al this wouldn't be such a huge difference if it weren't for the fact that the steam deck is actually a chunky boy it's wider but also thicker by a noticeable amount so you will need need a little more room in your bag to carry it around while holding the deck my thumbs can sit nicely on top of the joysticks there is something to be said about the placement of them and the buttons though they are unlike a traditional controller shifted up to the top which makes getting at them less seamless I don't personally find a problem with this especially as it makes room for the two trackpads below I don't get a ton of use out of them in game but when I ultimately have to use the desktop mode to download certain apps it makes navigating through the browser and all of Linux so much simpler this just further makes windows with touch controls that much more undesirable quick side note about these in terms of scrolling a few of you guys mentioned in my review of the deck that the proper way to do this is actually moving your finger around in a circular motion not up and down now for joysticks in my opinion these steam decks are far better than the Allies they have been slightly improved on the olded model so they are a little grippier and supposedly more reliable but the difference that I notice is my fingers just sit in them much better the Allies have very little grip and just feel kind of cheap if I'm being hon honest this might just be my unit but they're a lot looser and less consistent feeling in their range of motion neither of these though are going to be on the same level as a proper controller playing any FPS game feels awkward in comparison the buttons on each are solid but I do like how the de- head presses on the deck a little bit better I also really like the quick access menu the way that it ties in with steo just feels fluid whereas on the Ali it has a more sluggish and less organized feel moving on to the displays which in day-to-day gameplay is where you will see a significant difference between two most notably the steam deck has a 7.4 in screen that runs at 1280 by 800p and the RG Ally has a 7in screen running at 1920 x 1080p natively in addition to a higher resolution the Allies display also has a 120 HZ refresh rate the two are now closer in this regard as the olad bumpy decks up to 90 HZ which I think is perfect for what this device is there's very few games where you'll be hitting 120 and even in the ones that do they're likely Indies which have less movement that benefits from the smoother gameplay though the tangible benefit that does come along with the Allies display is VR this is something that's not found on the deck even though I haven't really had any tearing issues it still would have been nicer in games that are constantly fluctuating from say 30 to 50 FPS just making that look a little less drastic I won't lie going back to a 1080p display after using the deck so much this last month it really makes me miss that improved Clarity any few times at night where I may just want to go upstairs and lay down but still gain for about an hour the allly is really clutch as I'm sacrificing less Fidelity but really at such a small screen size I don't think it's worth the performance trade-off you can run games at 720 on there and they honestly don't look that bad I've gotten used to 800p and honestly think it looks perfectly fine plus with this OLED display most of the time I would actually say it makes up for it the benefits OLED bring are obviously those Inky blacks but also a brighter more contrasty image with better looking colors the display went from 400 nits to 600 nits of brightness in SDR and up to 1,000 nits in HDR in the very few games like cyberpunk that support HDR I cannot recommend turning it on enough after going back to the Ally I just can't help but think it's 500 display is way too dark especially if you're in a darker part of game it can be a little harder to make out enemies but what you probably care to know the most is game performance there's no doubt the Rog Ally is more capable in this regard the Z1 extreme processor is a far more powerful chip than one found in the deck however there is one major drawback of this and that's that the Allies battery life is far worse we'll touch on this in just a minute at maximum the steam deck can operate at 15 watts whereas the Ally can go into a more powerful yet battery draining 25 wat turbo mode it can also go into a 30 wat mode but this is only when connected to power from my testing the turbo mode in 1080P brings a very small performance increase from 15 watts it's just 5% in cyber Punk and then 12% in Red Dead it's a lot more tangible in 720p though in both games I was getting around a 30% increase for Pure Performance the Ally at 720 is going to be the best I tested the deck in its 10 Watt and 15 watt modes and then the Ally across its three something weird is the Ally was running a lot worse in the 10 wat mode than the deck with the exact same settings I don't know if I did something wrong and if it's like stupid just let me know down below but for now I will say just use the 15 watt and 25 watt modes the deck at its native resolution can run AAA games in the 40s with low or medium settings which I found is more than playable and at this screen size still looks great the Ally performs roughly the same at 720p in the 15 wat performance mode but if you're really taking advantage of its chip you can get well into the 50s at 720p or sit closer to the 40 FPS Mark at 1080p when it comes to Indies the two are going to be pretty much comparable and this is where I think the OLED display starts to become the tiebreaker in a game like brothers Tail of Two Sons the game is capped at 6 anyways and the graphics are so simple that I much prefer how it looks on the OLED display for that use case that I mentioned of having the Ali being a more dedicated gaming system it actually works quite well docked up as it's designed to run games at 1080p connecting to a 4K display the resolution scales quite nicely and while medium settings don't look that good blown up it's still a playable experience I would say by far the Ally wins in terms of docking because 720p blown up is going to look awful and the deck really struggles to push 1080 now one thing that I really like about the steam deck is you can quickly suspend this system by pressing the power button and then get right back into it when you come back on the allly it makes you resign into windows and then open the game back up now battery life depending on your use case is right up there with or even more important than the OS and performance of each of these it's no surprise that the Rog Ally is far worse than the decks in my testing you're looking at 1 to 2 hours less now that the deck's battery upgraded from 40 W hours to 50 W hours it varies so much game to game but on average the deck is getting 2 hours in aaa's and then close to 4 hours depending on how light of an indie in addition the steam deex more efficient chip plus the increased memory bandwidth speeds contribute to better battery performance overall from the LCD model if you're primarily looking at a handheld so that you can game while traveling in my opinion the steam deck is the clear winner if I'm going to be on a long flight I'm willing to deal with less Fidelity so that I can play longer I think a power bank is a good idea to grab for the Ally and and the deck if you want to extend its life further I bought a nice one from anchor that on average is giving me around a charge to a charge and a half with both the last aspect worth touching on is the storage options between the two handhelds the steam deck has both 512 GB and 1 Tab models whereas the Ally only comes with 512 GB regardless of whether you go for the upgraded version notably as I mentioned at the beginning the most expensive deck is still $50 cheaper while having Double D Storage of the Z1 extreme I do think the difference is now now less drastic though as it's not like with the LCD models where the lowest option is only 64 GB for a lot of people 52 GB will be completely usable but it's my personal preference that I have 1 tbte so that I can load up the drive with as many games as possible what I did was I bought the 512 GB model because I didn't want the anti-glare display and then swapped it with a 1 TB drive from Corsair the process was a little tricky as prying off the plastic was a pain but once that's done actually swapping the drive takes less than a minute the procedure on the Ally at least from watching a quick video seems that taking off the back plate is far easier now in addition both allow you to expand storage using micro SD I haven't done it myself with the reports of the Ally breaking them but this seems to be less of an issue with the deck so the steam deck OLED and Asus Rog Ally are two handhelds that are hard to go wrong with ultimately for my use case as a device mainly used when traveling I much prefer the steam deck for me it just stays comfortable for longer and helps that the battery is a significant Improvement I'm mostly playing Indie story driven titles when on the go where the performance Improvement of the Ally isn't as big of a deal for me that said I would recommend the Ally if what you'll be playing is mainly aaa's and you're often using this as a main gaming device what's great to see is that both of these devices including the Ally which I was not expecting are still receiving post-launch updates which I don't see stopping anytime soon let me know what you think down below and if you want to go deeper with the steam deck OLED go watch my full review next take care yeah

Channel: Cole Caccamise

Views: 56,583

Keywords: steam deck, handheld game console, handheld gaming pc, rog ally, steam deck oled, steam deck oled vs rog ally, asus rog ally, rog ally vs steam deck, ally vs steam deck, ally vs steam deck oled, best gaming handheld, rog ally steam deck which is is best, valve steam deck, steam deck review

Id: FEVWQuZCr4A

Length: 11min 30sec (690 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 07 2024