Steam Deck OLED vs ROG Ally vs Legion Go - BEST Gaming Handheld in 2024!?

H okay hey guys I'm T the tech Chap and I have got my grubby little paws on the three latest and greatest what are we calling them handheld gaming PCs we've got the Lenova Legion go steam Deco Leed Asus R Alli and I absolutely love all three of these and just this whole new era of handheld gaming I can take these on planes and trains uh to bed with me I don't have to sit over there at my desk with my desktop PC honestly whichever one of these you buy you're going to be very happy with it but the question is which one of these is best which one should you actually by and as always if you do find this video useful a cheeky little like And subscribe down there would be lovely okay so these guys do have a fair amount in common we have these big high refresh touch screens we get USBC charging headphone Jacks micro SD card slots for expanding your storage dual joysticks haptic feedback and plenty of options for tweaking performance and of course they all play well PC games but apart from that they all actually are quite different so let's start with this guy the steam deck OLED and uh I reveal that I'm using a sticky light and some DJI microphones to actually hold it up because this doesn't have a kickstand like this guy does and I'm actually using a tech chat mug to hold this guy up and the steam deck has kind of been The Benchmark for these handheld PCS right I mean it was the OG uh it was the one that sort of spawned these New Kids on the Block and now we have the steam deck OLED which is essentially a steam deck 1.5 the new larger 7.4 in 90 HZ OLED screen looks fantastic the battery life is significantly longer up to double inide cases we get more consistent performance so games feel smoother especially with that higher 90 HZ refresh we have a new one tab storage option and it is basically the same price as before uh it is as comfortable to use as ever lots of people swear by these trackpads especially for RPG games and of course with Steam OS and steam verified settings and controls it is by far the easiest just to pick up and play this thing is great then we have the RG Ally and this is like the sleekest the lightest the most pocketable of the three despite showing the same size screen as the steam deck OLED but this gets a sharper 1080p 120 HZ IPS display and like the legion go these guys use the zed1 extreme ryzen processor from AMD which is anywhere between 20 and 50% faster than the steam deck although we'll come to Performance in a second and that's also partly thanks to a higher TDP that can scale even higher when plugged in and after a recent price drop it costs about the same as the steam deck OLED although the storage does top out at 512 rather than the terabyte although of course you can pop in a Micro SD or even open it up and swap out the SSD we get some nice go faster RGB I do quite like the offset position for the joysticks which we also get on the legion go although the Ally does lose the touch pads and also a couple of rear paddle buttons versus the deck although we do get this XG mobile connector Port thing at the top here uh part of it is the USBC but there's also this XG mobile connector so you can actually plug it into rog's own uh GPU dock external GPU if you want to well just spend ton more money and get better graphics performance although of course you will be Bottom lecked by the CPU but you have the option then we have the legion go which is by far the biggest and also the most versatile of the three the 8.8 in Quad HD Plus 144 HZ screen is faster sharper and about a third bigger which makes a big difference to how immersive your games feel although this is a big boy it might be too big we have a kickstand which I absolutely love and I wish these guys also had we have RGB thumb sticks a single touchpad plenty of paddle buttons on the back and also a second USB 4 Port so you can actually charge and connect extra peripherals if you want to use this more like a desktop PC most impressive though or at least most interesting is the fact that we have these detachable controllers very much like the joycons on the Nintendo switch if I can pull it out there we go and obviously then you can put the kickstand out in game like this but I do wish there was something we could connect these two otherwise you kind of just have to well hold them like this but this is certainly a unique feature compared to the rivals but wait there's more because this is a puck drop a controller into it and it becomes a sort of mouse for FPS games where you can shoot by clicking the scroll wheel on the back or just navigating the desktop it's a really unique and smart idea although I'm not entirely sure how much I actually want to use it like this so the go is the biggest and the chunkiest and the heaviest but it also kind of feels like the most wellmade the most sort of Premium out of the three but in terms of pocketability and that these are supposed to be handheld gaming devices I would probably say the most comfortable one is the seam deck then the Ali then this but what about these screens well I'll tell you the first one you'll definitely be drawn to is the steam deck OLED it is the only one of the three to have an OLED panel giving you those deep Inky blacks and Rich colors and actually surprisingly impressive brightness this can hit 600 nits in SDR and 1,000 nits in HDR enabled games versus just 500 on the other two and while it is only 90 HZ it's still a big upgrade over the 60 HZ LCD on the old deck and like the 800p 16 X10 resolution it's a good fit that does suit the power on offer although obviously with a lower resolution you do lose some detail and you get more Alias edges and text can look a little bit grainy also exclusive to this one terab model of the Deco Leed we have this anti-glare etched glass which is still pretty reflective it does a similar job to what we have on the original deck and to be fair bright lights are less intense and a bit more diffuse than on the other two it's kind of like going from a glossy to a slightly mattified screen although you do lose a little bit of that OLED contrast but the 16x9 1080p screen of the Ali and especially the 16 by10 1600p display on the go are just so much sharper and it kind of makes a hard going back to the deck they still get fairly bright and colors and viewing angles look fantastic but as I say the legion Go's much bigger screen is a sight to behold and it gets the highest Quad HD resolution and the smoothest 144 HZ refresh rate and even if you choose to not game at their native High refresh rates no not refresh rates resolutions and you drop the res to like 800p or whatever or 720p then the extra performance on tap allows you to crank up the graphic settings so your games do end up looking better on these also 90 HZ 120 HZ 144 HZ so if you are playing older or less demanded games and you can get those higher frame rates then it will of course look smoother on these as well now in terms of actually using them the experience and how many times they want to make you tear your hair out Steam OS on The Deco is by far the easiest to use it's so simple and easy to navigate and you can access the Linux desktop via the power button and from there you can install other game launchers or console emulators whereas Windows 11 on the lii and the go means we get better compatibility it's easier to access non steam game stores although definitely at the expense of a less slick and less curated experience Windows really needs a dedicated handheld mode now to be fair all three did experience sort of launch issues with the steam deck originally there just wasn't that many games that were optimized for this sort of handheld uh form factor that's got better especially with the steam door and this sort of verified list with the Ally uh annoyingly actually when we reviewed this like a week or two later AMD pushed out a driver update which boosted the performance by like 10 to 20% which was really annoying for everyone who had reviewed it but again getting better with time and the legion go this is the most recent to launch and it does have some problems we've got dead zone issues with the touchpad and the controllers uh we've got the sort of orientation problems full screen issues with it and a fair amount of crashes and games that simply don't work although that also applies the Ally as well it will get better with time but certainly early adopters have had their fair share of issues with all three although I think right now the go does need a few tweaks so it might be worth holding out on this guy a little bit for more updates to come out and also for the price to drop a little bit so the Ally has the Armory crate and we have Legion space on the go both acting as hubs for all your settings and your linked game libraries and from here you can open the relevant launchers including Steam OS outside of steam though you do miss the control compatibility modes which valve implements in its deck verified and playable listed games and their curated great on Deck list really helps to know how well a given game will work on a handheld and in each case there are unsupported games or games that simply won't work at all so it is worth checking to see if your favorite game has decent support and you can use any of them like a more traditional desktop PC if you wanted although obviously you've got Linux here Windows 11 on these two and if you hook them up to a compatible Dock and maybe video out to a monitor you can plug in other USB peripherals maybe an RJ45 ethernet and turn them into a bit of a PC and also these things are a great way to emulate your old console or ancient PC games and muu deck is a great place to start and it's designed for the steam deck but it does work on the others okay let's talk about performance and straight away these two are at an advantage because they have the much uh newer and more powerful AMD ryzen zed1 extreme processor although technically the Alli does come with the regular zed1 as an option it's a bit cheaper but but I would probably avoid that and roughly speaking it's 20 to 50% faster than this guy the steam Deco Le does use the same processor as the original one but it's now on a more efficient smaller 6 nanometer process so it's more efficient a little bit cooler runs more consistently smooth I'll come to that in a second but certainly in terms of raw performance these guys are definitely out in front to give you a rough idea both are good for 30 to 40 FPS in the latest AAA games at full HD with medium settings and in fact they can manage TTP at about the same frame ratees as the deck OLED can running at 800p they also offer different Power modes now I tested the steam deck OLED with its 15 wat performance mode versus a custom 15 wat mode which is similar to the default balance mode on the allly and the legion respectively as I reckon this gives you the best balance of frame rate and battery life but obviously you can change and tweak this whereas the deck oled's performance is fixed so games will run the same no matter what so kicking off with cyber punk in Steam deck mode the Ally and Legions performance were basically the same though The Deco lead wasn't that far behind at 800p in Spider-Man remastered both the legion and the Ally kept frame rates above 60 at 800p using FSR 2 balanced in default custom mode which is a solid 12 FPS ahead of the deck so I reckon 1080p on the alline the legion is best here it's sharper you get a lot more detail but you're still getting a very playable mid-40s frame rate although I did see some frame dips especially on the Legion now Boulders Gate 3 is pretty demanding and it's much more playable on the Ally and the legion although perhaps not at their higher resolutions like, 1600p on the legion but it's still very playable on the deck and that OLED screen looks fantastic but then in rocket League or any other less demanding game it really shows how much higher refresh rates can make a big difference because at 720 or 800p I'm getting 120 FPS on the Ally on the legion which just looks and feels great f123 performance was solid and by the way looks amazing playing on a handheld like this racing games in general work really well on handhelds and lastly in shadow of the Tomb Raider the Ally and Legion frame rates were about the same and around 23% higher than the deck can manage even on low settings at 800p but crucially on the all and the go I can crank the tdps up to 25 watts giving me up to a 50% increase in frame rate versus the deck across the board although at a serious cost of battery life although on any of them you can limit the frame rate to 60 or 30 especially more demanding games to avoid the bigger frame drops and also if you can play plugged in definitely do it because turbo mode boost the power from 15 up to 25 watts on the Ally and 30 Watts on the legion go where performance has improved massively and it feels almost like you're getting a full gaming laptop experience now obviously being handheld portable gaming devices battery life is pretty important as well in terms of the size of the batteries these guys have a 50 W hour cell This is 40 W hours so the Ali has the smallest battery and it does last the least amount of time but without question the best battery life is a steam deol partly because it has the biggest cell like the legion go but it's just simply not as powerful and also it's on that smaller more efficient 6 nanom chip compared to the original steam deck for example in reg Fest the deck OLED managed a massive three and a half hours versus just under two hours on the Ali and 2 hours 10 on the legion go although dropping down to quiet and balance mode added an extra 50 and 30 minutes respectively but then the game play was a lot choppier and in each case limiting the refresh rate to 30 FPS extends the battery life massively do that in a less demanding game on The Deco Leed and I reckon this will get you to 4 hours and breathe okay let me wrap this up which one should you buy well I'm just going to go and say straight away I do really like this I think it's the most versatile I love the kickstand detachable controllers uh the puck things a cool idea and that big screen is a sight to behold it's lovely don't get me wrong but it's just too expensive because this is just launched it's about2 200 thereabouts more than these guys and also there's quite a few bugs and issues so I reckon I would give this a little bit of time to mature come down in price of touch and then it'll be a lot more competitive and could end up being the best one but right now this would probably my third place option so it really is a toss up between these two and then it's a question of how much do you value the slightly sleeker nicer design the much better screen much better performance of The Ally versus the very nice OLED display and also the much longer battery life and arguably the smoother nicer experience of Steam OS with the steam deck I would say for most people this is your best bet it's just a nice smooth easy experience but if you want a higher end gaming experience and easier access to non- steam game libraries then I think the r is probably the best allrounder and right now I would say is the one I would buy it's not perfect they all have pros and cons I think for most people the steam deol is the one to go for but I would probably pick this for now hopefully we see this drop in price soon although if you do get The Deco Leed I reckon the one terab model is worth paying the extra 90 quid as you're getting double the fast SSD storage also that anti-glare coating and the case comes with a liner that doubles as a more compact travel case and again for the Ally I would definitely go with the Z1 extreme model but which one would you go for out of the three and if you already own one share your experience in the comments below and also what would you love to be different about these in 2024 with the Gen 2 versions that could tempt you to upgrade thank you so much for watching guys again if you enjoyed this video a like And subscribe would be fantastic and I'll see you next time right here on the tech chat [Music]

Channel: The Tech Chap

Views: 170,685

Keywords: steam deck, steam deck oled, rog ally vs legion go, lenovo legion go, legion go vs rog ally, legion go, steam deck oled review, rog ally, pc gaming, steam deck oled vs legion go, lenovo legion go vs asus rog ally, rog ally vs steam deck oled, legion go vs steam deck, asus rog ally review, lenovo legion go review, asus rog ally, handheld gaming, rog ally vs steam deck, steam deck oled vs rog ally, steam deck review, steam deck oled vs ally, rog ally vs, legion go vs ally

Id: sNm41mvqKc4

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2023