I’ll stick with the deck. I’d rather a Linux first approach and to support the people putting in the work.
Agreed. It’s hard to believe anyone still recommends Asus after the whole GN debacle.
Steam Deck has the OLED display, better efficiency/battery life, is hundreds of dollars cheaper, is supported by a company that actually cares about it’s customers, and doesn’t need to mess around with installing a different OS.
Agreed. It’s hard to believe anyone still recommends Asus after the whole GN debacle.
If you’re in Asia, that debacle is a non-issue. Their support in Asia has been great for me. I’m on the Steam Deck camp but they’re still my go to for gaming laptops.
Just because you haven’t personally experienced issues doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
As always, I’m not going to be able to play half my usual games without touchpads.
Analog sticks do not make a good mouse replacement.
I really love the deck’s layout, the original steam controller only having one analogue stick killed it in my opinion. I could never get used to trackpads joystick emulation in games that were designed for an Xbox controller.
Valve leaked a Steam Controller 2 thumbnail in their SteamVR drivers recently:
I had the same experience, by why is that??? On paper, it should have really felt the same.
What are your top faves that you use the touchpads for? I usually only played verified have that use the joysticks.
In desktop mode I also find the touchpads a little difficult to use primarily because the lack of a physical wheel and left and right click.
Grim Dawn, Factorio, Project Zomboid, FTL, Rimworld, Crusader Kings, Papers Please, Red Alert, Stacklands… the list goes on.
The Steam Deck’s trackpads (and Steam Input in general) are the most underrated and game changing aspects of the Deck and the old Steam Controller.
Playing keyboard and mouse, or mouse only games is totally doable and a joy on the Deck.
I’ve actually chosen to change some games from using gamepad to Keyboard and Mouse since the Deck is so good (for instance Factorio does do gamepad but it’s much better to just use KB&M via Steam Input).
I’d argue Grim Dawn is better on the Deck as I’ve got so many fancy radial menus etc set up, it’s actually easier to play than pressing the number row etc. And with the touch screen, you can rapidly tap different enemies without needing to touch the “mouse”.
I’m pleasantly surprised with how well Grim Dawn and Rimworld play on the deck, tweaked both a bit for personal preferences but actually solid experience. I did cities skylines and ksp on the og steam controller, I can’t get into trackpad as trackball though on the steamdeck for whatever reason, did that with the steam controller for warframe, was great to be able to turn quickly on a controller.
No trackpad really would be a non starter to me, just adds so much flexibility, and the haptics do totally work for me.
Desktop mode I find just fine, steam controller was how we operated a htpc for a few years. Gamepad control worked for kodi, but anything else I had to drop into desktop and mouse around with the touchpads and triggers. Little bit more finnicky with the deck because of the size of the pads though.
I’ve been in Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island (1-3 are my jam) lately. Technobabylon. I’ve been working my way through games I haven’t had time for because of work, like Gemini Rue, the Rusty Lake games. I never played Day of the Tentacle back in the day either so I’m keen for that one. Va-11 Hall-a.
I could not get handy with fps games on the deck at all. I really wanted to run Borderlands 1 again but I was just getting murdred trying to aim with gamepad controls. Touch on right pad activating gyro set me on the right path, and that technique translates to my steam controller when I dock too. It feels more natural to be able to flick around like with a mouse as week. I briefly had a ps3 in 2010. I could not play fps well with a pad. I went from Sega to Dos, to Win 95/98, back to Sega. So I never played around with thumb joysticks. They were never part of my life until I bought a ps3 and just fumbled around with it.
Also Blood. I’m through the first two episodes but put it away for a while.
Been on a Kknd kick in the last few months. But it’s worked so well I’ll move into some other favourites when I’m done - Dark Reign, Total Annihilation, Blood and Magic.
Last year I did my 3000th Fallout 2 run on my desktop pc, but now I’ve got a deck I’m planning to do my first ever fallout 1 play.
In Torchlight 2 (this has been my deck go-to for hack and slash), I play using both pads to move mouse. Getting into the rhythm of it, I easily cover the entire screen by flicking over one pad and setting off in the other. It’s a technique I started using on steam controller some years ago.
I haven’t played Grim Dawn on deck yet, but I understand people are playing it with native gamepad control, I’ll see how that goes.
I play a lot of point and click games (just replayed Grim Fandango), and text entry is way better with touchpads than joysticks. I’ve also played a couple city builders, and I prefer touchpads for that
That said, I prefer joysticks most of the time, especially for games with a lot of action like Metroidvanias and whatnot with a lot of fighting.
One of the appealing things about the Steam Deck is its repairability. Valve even made the analog sticks modular, published a teardown video, and partnered with iFixit to make replacement parts available, IIRC.
It would be hard to convince me that a device that doesn’t beat the Deck in this area is “today’s best”. It’s important.
As someone who owns neither but is impressed by this new boom in handhelds, I’m just happy that there are multiple options that are repairable and modular.
Not the case for me (at least for the original model). I used it a lot for a few month before it just… stopped charging, not with the supplied power cable, not with any other cable capable of charging it.
Weirdest of all it still detects usb-c for files & stuff, and charges with a phone cable, but the power delivery is so crap that it doesn’t even show up as charging on the taskbar.
Sent it to general repair many times, they could not find out why it does that. It could be a windows problem, and i wish i was in the minority here, but it basically dead weight now.
GamersNexus proved that ASUS is a scummy company and the ROG Ally isn’t a great product
Different how? No difference in that the same scummy company sells them both.
Original Ally has a lot of design flaws, like the SD card being cooked to death, that were fixed in the X.
However, it’s still Asus.
No touchpads. OOTB experience questionable and Bazzite is a community project, compared to first party support from Valve for the Deck.
And the display isn’t definitely better. Yes it’s 120 Hz, higher resolution and VRR, but the Deck’s OLED has proper HDR support and 90 Hz is probably enough for this type of device (as is the resolution, although I’d take a higher res screen as well for 2D games). The main thing that the Deck’s screen is missing is VRR imo.
I’m running bazzite on my steam deck and I love it, it gives me more compatibility with uh… alternatively sourced games. It may be a community project, but it’s brilliantly done
Oh Bazzite is great, no doubt about it.
But it’s not endorsed/supported in any way by ASUS so ROG Ally (X) compatibility isn’t a given. ASUS could release a firmware update tomorrow that breaks compatibility (very unlikely of course).
