Steam Deck

[Harrison]

I'm not so sure about the Ally. It's been getting way too much hype. Even M$ jumping in to try and push Xbox gaming. But in preview testing but Linus and other regular handheld testers it isn't delivering on the promise. The battery life being the worst part. In performance mode outs estimates to be 1-2 hours. That isn't good. And real world tests show it only managed about 5-8 fps better in some games than the Steam Deck.

I also don't like the design. Offset sticks always bugs me, and the D Pad doesn't look good. And I've got so used to the touchpad on the Deck trying to use a Windows based system without them will be fiddly.

Finally for me the cost is too high.

But we will see. It isn't it yet so it might surprise. But I'm not holding out.

[Kin Hell]

These kind of toy's are really not up my street & I've never really wanted to game on the go.

I like to sit down in a comfortable surrounding when gaming, but this ROG Ally is quite a box of tricks looking at the official web link

Me too I never play on the go, never. Basically I just take them with me to Finland for when it gets boring. I also only use retro gaming on them, used the Odin Pro a lot (in Finland) playing PS2 games, but it struggles a bit here and there. I wanted one handheld that can emulate those systems flawlessly, like PS2, XBox, Wii or GC, even Saturn, as that's still tougher to emulate. The never ones also run PS3 and Switch without problems, although I have a Switch Lite and a Switch OLED, but emulating is more my thing.

They are a bit of collection items for me, I love setting them up with everything, but once I'm done, they get put away in some drawer and only taken out for demonstration or updating. Or like I said, they find their use from time to time when I go to Finland.

The ROG Ally only gets released on June 13th, so if by any chance I get the Loki Max by then or if I change my mind I still can cancel my order. But seeing that they are selling out so fast I just wanted to put an order just in case. Perhaps the prices will increase after that and I can sell it for more.

Very entrepreneurial indeed. - Hedging all bets too!

I'm not so sure about the Ally. It's been getting way too much hype. Even M$ jumping in to try and push Xbox gaming. But in preview testing but Linus and other regular handheld testers it isn't delivering on the promise. The battery life being the worst part. In performance mode outs estimates to be 1-2 hours. That isn't good. And real world tests show it only managed about 5-8 fps better in some games than the Steam Deck.

I also don't like the design. Offset sticks always bugs me, and the D Pad doesn't look good. And I've got so used to the touchpad on the Deck trying to use a Windows based system without them will be fiddly.

Finally for me the cost is too high.

But we will see. It isn't it yet so it might surprise. But I'm not holding out.

Guess you're not buying one then eh!

[Harrison]

Valve announced this week Steam Deck support has now officially reached 9000 games, and this is only officially tested games with verified or playable status. There are many more games that do work, but haven't been officially tested yet. The Steam library now had over 70,000 games so there is no way they will all very tested, but 9,000 is impressive and that is already far more than any standalone system.

There is a site called protondb that tests more itself with contributors and can even show their results for your own library.

I continue to be impressed by Valve's level of support, constantly updating Steam OS and Proton to fix games not working or performing well. They even rolled out next day Proton updates for new game releases. No other hardware and OS developer has ever done that.

The Steam Deck hardware is now already at least 2 years old. But it's price point is still very good compared to anything Windows based and it's performance is still good enough for most current releases. Plus more and more support keeps appearing from 3rd parties. The Heroic installer lets you access and install GOT and Epic libraries. And Lutris enables you to access an ever expanding number of gaming libraries, including Humble Bundle, GOG, Epic, Amazon gaming etc, but also now directly has emulation support for systems like mame, dolphin, retroarch etc.I

I'm now also looking Linux again over Windows thanks to the Steam Deck. It's for more lightweight and just works.

[Demon Cleaner]

I eventually canceled my order of the Loki Max and got it already refunded. I was checking a lot of videos lately, and like I said, the Ally will even be available before the Loki as they still didn't ship yet, plus they're now trailing behind, the Ally being a lot more powerful for the same price. I wonder have many people have withdrawn their Loki orders, but what I read in YouTube comments there are quite some.

I also ordered another 1TB SD card for it and a 2TB NVMe, M.2 2230 (Team Group MP44S) to replace straight away, that should leave me with some space.

[Demon Cleaner]

I got it today, that was quite fast. I will only test a bit as I'm still waiting for my NVMe to arrive. I had to cancel the Team Group MP44S because it was still not available for shipping for still at least 10 days. So I ordered a SABRENT Rocket Q4 2230 NVMe 2TB High Performance PCIe 4.0 SSD which should arrive this weekend hopefully.

I also ordered an M.2 enclosure from UGREEN to make backups and as I already was in the shop I ordered a fanxiang S770 4TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD M.2 2280, 7300 MB/s with heatsink for my PS5 because I'm constantly deleting stuff which is annoying, I wanted to download NBA 2K23 which is one of this month free games but it's over 200GB.

- - - Updated - - -

Btw, ETA Prime tested the battery life of both devices:

Battery Life 15W TDP:

Steam Deck: 103 minutes
ROG Ally: 96 minutes

Charge Time (Full Charge):

Steam Deck: 45W Stock Charger = 3.3 hours
ROG Ally: 65W Stock Charger = 1.4 hours

[J T]

download NBA 2K23 which is one of this month free games but it's over 200GB.

There isn't an emoticon for falling off a chair in shock.... so just imagine it.....

I can't fathom how the game would require that much space. Loads of uncompressed textures?

[Harrison]

That's mad. I've yet to encounter a game that big. What would a sports game contain to need that much storage? Just stupid. And I was thinking GT7 with all the updates being over 110GB was big enough, but at least I could see with all the content why it was so big.

What's funny is if that game is also on Xbox anyone with a Series S would only be able to install that one game before needing a storage expansion as it only has a 512GB SSD with about 240GB free.

[Demon Cleaner]

I installed my 4TB in the PS5 and downloading all the stuff back, might take some time.

I will probably receive the 2TB SSD for the ROG Ally tomorrow.

- - - Updated - - -

And it's in

[Harrison]

How easy have they made it to upgrade the M2 in the AOG?

[Demon Cleaner]

You put it in just by opening the cover and you just swap it, it's reachable straight away. No cable removing or such.

Then you switch it back on and it boots into the BIOS, you just chose ASUS recovery and it installs everything from scratch by itself, very easy.