I have both, mainly got the Ally as an experiment. The Deck is absolutely the way to go. Windows is a dreadful experience in general, but especially so on a handheld. No touchpads means awful mouse control, but Windows means an OS designed around mouse control. Asus' software feels like a big hack (because it is) haphazardly glued on top of a stock Windows desktop. Steam Big Picture works OK but the Steam menus are limited in functionality compared to using them on SteamOS and the Deck. Meanwhile, the Deck is an incredibly polished product and the SteamOS interface is controller-first. You can still go to the desktop and use it as a PC, but you won't wind up there accidentally like you will on the Ally. The SteamOS gaming mode is built around operating with a controller and everything works well.

As for running Linux on the Ally? It is doable, but the experience is nowhere as good as the Deck. No seamless sleep and resume< issues with button mapping, limited tweaking of power limits, and more. Just get a Deck OLED and be happy.

Valve actually gives a shit about its consumers, and is working hard on making its OS competitive. ASUS just dumps specs on the market and then abandons it.

This is a Steam Deck community, so I expect the answers will all be pro-steam deck, so keep that in mind.

I generally believe the Deck is better, but the Ally does have its strengths.

• The ally is more powerful, at the cost of battery life. Battery life is also comparatively terrible on low power games, games that last 8 hours on the deck will kill the Ally in ~2.5 hours for some reason.

• The ally, being windows based, supports some multiplayer games that won't run on the Deck due to anti cheat. So if your main focus is a call of duty or fortnite handheld, you'll either want the Ally or to install windows on the Deck. Here's a list of anticheat games and whether they work on the deck or no. For any non-anticheat games, you can usually assume they'll work.

The deck is going to be better on most everything else, from being able to suspend/resume mid game (I can't overstate how important this is for how I use the deck), controls, user experience, battery life, compatibility with older games, warranty coverage, and more.

So if you only want to play the newest most demanding AAA games or one of the non- supported multiplayer games, you may want an Ally. But for everything else I would recommend a Deck.

Steamdeck is a company innovating and putting money into full time devs improving and building a community and ecosystem. This has long term value. Everyone else is trying to privateer (legal piracy) on the backs of Valve using marketing nonsense and contract manufacturing. The only full time employees involved are the warehouse staff. It is not even a choice.

Linux based with long term support + touchpads + repairability vs a generic Windows handheld.

No touch pads? No deal. They're just that good.

There are many handhelds now, but none use Linux to my knowledge except the Steam Deck, which puts the SD ahead due to working straight with Steam.

Steam Deck. The touchpads make way more games playable than possible on the Ally. Besides the Steam Deck is a well thought out machine that you'll get great support for, rather than an attempt to jump on a trend for a quick cash grab.

The deck is probably going to get more support for longer even though it's slightly weaker. Even after valve stops supporting it down the road there are already a bunch of Linux distros for the deck

Steam Deck runs GNU/Linux while Asus ROG Ally does not. An instant disqualification for the latter.

I have the OG deck, 64GB self-upgraded to 512, and don’t have the Asus one. Ally wasn’t launched back then but there were quite a few Ayaneo ones.

My thought was this, I’m not sure you’re old enough to live through iPod days, but non Deck ones seems like the non iPod mp3 players. There were plenty of choices, cheaper (at least per GB). But 3-4 years down, when you simply need a battery replacement, which one do you think you can the replacement of? Or just look at accessories, cases, skins, etc.

You can get hundreds of performance comparisons all over youtube, I personally don’t think it matters as much. You’re not going to maxed out all the settings on either. They both can play recent games pretty well.

GN has a fairly thorough review and comparison of the Oled deck vs the asus ally. There’s pros and cons to each. https://youtu.be/egdV0NLoL-c?si=7ZdbYdMzG2PbJy0T

Rog ally: lots of headache and poor battery life but complete freedom to play any game and to get cheaper deals (GamePass, EGS).

Steam Deck OLED: Best handheld screen with great battery, but best for majority but not all steam games.

Ally has better specs, support for games which are easier to mod (because windows). It has no touch pads, worse battery life, and windows isn’t great for handheld. Might be good for an alternative windows “laptop” you can also game well with.

Deck has a really good community, is repairable, has touch pads, Steam OS desktop is built for mobile and insanely customizable thanks to Linux (I made mine behave Mac-like). Better battery. Not all games are guaranteed supported (many publishers ignore Linux, so the community or Steam itself usually puts the work in), some require tinkering, and publishers can bust games unexpectedly with anti-cheat efforts. That said, none of the games I’ve ever cared about have been affected. Desktop mode can be used for productivity, but you won’t be able to get away with as much as you would with a more mainstream Linux distribution because Steam OS is read-only and an update might remove some advanced functionality you might have installed. I’m not a Linux user, so I can’t really elaborate on that. Also Arch Linux (which Steam OS is built from) is like the Dark Souls of Linux distros, and not very good for newcomers.

Between the two: if you like windows, modding games, and don’t mind being tethered to a wall in exchange for a little more oomph, go Ally. If you like community support, good controls and battery efficiency is more important than raw performance, go Deck.

In my opinion there are 2 reasons to buy the Ally:

1. You absolutely have to play competitive games that require kernel-level anti-cheat (these won't work on Linux/Deck).
2. You absolutely have to have the highest graphics possible (resolution/frame rate), battery life be damned.

If you care more about the overall experience, ease of use, battery life, input options, color, sharpness, repairability, customer service, software options, etc. etc., SD is the answer.

Why anyone would want to play a competitive game with a controller is lost on me.

SD has a 800p/90Hz display. This is a higher pixel density than the MacBook Retina display. And a higher frame rate than you'll want to run most games at. But not enough for some, I guess.

Asus is a bit faster. Steam deck is cheaper.

I believe there's going to be a new rog Ally soon too.

All I can tell you is, I have an OG Steam Deck and it's served me well. I would definitely recommend it.

Not so sure about the OLED version, but I'd be worried about burn-in.

The Ally has nice specs but they kinda seem like overkill for a portable device.

I got the Ally to play Destiny 2, and it works perfectly. I play almost daily at lunch time in my car. I love it so much. Can't do that on a Steamdeck. Granted, the Steamdeck is a marvel, but I really needed a Windows machine.

I had the same question, went work the deck and never looked back, it's all you need

Only FPS I have played on Steam Deck are Call of Duty World at War and Black Ops 3. Both run extremely well