I was interested in buying a Steam Deck… Until I discovered all the (apparently) better alternatives. Asus Rog Ally, OneXPlayer, Aya Neo etc… I like the idea of an handheld console and obviously I would like to have a device that can run almost everything, so the Windows based handhelds seem better than the Steam Deck. Is it true? Furthermore the Steam Deck looks really big compared to some new devices out there (eg the OneXFly) and neither I like the screen of the Steam Deck, apparently of lower res and with very big bazels (to me looks like the first Nintendo Switch). On the other hand, I think Valve is a more serious company than (apart from Asus) some other unknown Chinese company and I expect Valve to deliver a better product. Still I’m not convinced of Steam OS compared to Windows 11, since I would like to play also Epic games and maybe some emulators. So I started getting information about the alternatives and… There are a lot. There are so many that I got overwhelmed. If you go to the OneXPlayer website they sell like 3-4 different handheld consoles, Aya Neo even more and they also have IndieGoGo campaigns running for new devices, all with weird names. I can’t understand what’s the device right for me (and I really don’t understand their business model). So my question is: are the rivals of the Steam Deck worth their price? Are they really better than the Steam Deck (in terms of quality, screen, size)? Thank you for your opinion!
UPDATE: I finally bought a refurbished 256GB Steam Deck.
I have a ROG Ally and a Steam Deck. The Steam Deck experience is miles ahead. Windows is such a limitation on these handheld devices (and dare I say PC gaming in general). SteamOS is the real MVP behind the Steam Deck, it makes everything feel seamless.
The Ally feels like a crappy ASUS launcher stapled on top of an unoptimized Windows desktop, since that’s exactly what it is.
Also, the ASUS ROG Ally controls are nowhere near as nice as the Deck’s. The Deck sticks feel better. The touchpads allow for mouse control.
Get the Deck.
Hopefully Microsoft releases a handheld mode instead of just experimenting with it. Besides the interface, they also really need to optimize for performance. Even though, with the steam deck, proton is converting draw calls it still outperforms the same deck running windows with native driver support. This really shows how the mountains of extra crap running on windows hurts gaming performance on these low power devices.
Hopefully Microsoft fades into irrelevance. I’m glad the Steam Deck is doing something about Microsoft’s control over the PC gaming market. I’m also glad Microsoft is losing in the handheld gaming PC experience. Let Windows die already, it’s long overdue (especially given the continued and intensifying enshittification of the OS every release cycle).
Yeah, that’s not going to happen in a world where Gamepass is their new focus and those apps only work on Windows.
Hopefully this “you will own nothing and be happy” BS also fades into irrelevance. I hate how everything has to be a subscription these days. No. Just NO.
I refuse to move to subscription based platforms. It’s anti-consumer lock-in. Unfortunately, right now, gamepass is cheap because they’re still in the growth phase and need a compelling product to get people to switch from buying their games to subscribing. However, believe me, in time the enshittification will come. What subscription-based platform hasn’t once it captured the market?
I mean, they’ll have to make some big changes to Gamepass before it becomes worse value than buying all those games outright. Most subs are still pretty good value now for the level of content, available, they’re just not as cheap as they were when they were driving users.
That’s exactly the point though. Until they corner the market and start “deprecating” actual game sales entirely, they have to keep gamepass appealing. If they get to the point where enough people have adopted gamepass that they can stop selling games outright, then they’re free to raise the prices all they want. What are you going to do about it, buy the games instead? Not an option anymore. Buy the games, keep your rights as a consumer.
Get a PS5? I’ve been back and forth between the two platforms for several generations now depending on who’s offering the best service.
I haven’t used other handhelds, but what you say is what I’ve seen from other discussions and reviews. Yes, there are more powerful systems with better screens, but the SD’s OS is miles ahead (but not without a lot of quirks as well). The touchpads are incredible - I couldn’t imagine trying to use a handheld PC without those touchpads. Also, the custom control configuration abilities built in to steam OS are incredibly versatile and detailed.
Yeah, the Rog Ally got the more powerful hardware, but this is a good example how power isn’t everything.
On paper a lot of these devices beat the Deck. In reality the Deck sits on top and looks down on everyone else.
Can you explain why? 🫤
So it’s definitely subjective.
But I definitely wouldn’t swap it straight up for any of the rest.
The Deck is big and heavy compared to the field, but it uses the size for a couple of purposes:
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It has full controller sized everything (this is without measuring; it feels extremely comparable to the Xbox controller, though), plus the touchpads that are IMO an absolute requirement for interacting with the OS at all. Using any joystick to move a mouse cursor is terrible, and you will have to interact with the OS. You can work around this by only managing stuff at home with a mouse and keyboard plugged in and launching everything through a controller friendly launcher, but it’s a headache.
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The Ally has the same 40WH battery the Steam Deck does (per a 30 second search), but if you go smaller you almost definitely have to go smaller. On a similar note, much of the rest of the space is cooling. If something is advertising comparable specs in a meaningfully smaller package, they’re sacrificing one or the other. It’s just physics. The Ally can kick up the power to higher top end performance, but it’s at a higher power draw and you can get down to ~2 hours battery life on the deck. Again, the basic limitations of physics say that’s going to make a dent in the already tight battery life constraints if you use the power. (Yes, having it while plugged in is still nice.)
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The shape is really comfortable. It does take some awareness to avoid resting the weight on your elbows, but once you recognize that you can comfortably play long sessions (compared to the switch, but a lot of the slightly smaller ones have very comparable designs because they’re the only way to make a real dent without shrinking the screen).
You can also install Windows without major issue if that’s your preference, though if you don’t play games that choose to block you out for anticheat you probably don’t need to.
Ultimately, all of these devices have to make compromises. It’s a handheld and there’s only one real supplier for chips to make it with (unless you go the basically Android only ARM route). Steam chose an extremely balanced approach such that you don’t really feel any of them. Others chose to push harder to one metric or another, but because of the bottom line constraints of the form factor, they had to sacrifice something else to do it. It’s possible you prefer the other approaches better, and that’s fine. Valve will be perfectly happy if enough good options become available that there’s no need for a second deck. Their goal was to make handheld PC gaming a thing (and cut down their reliance on windows), and they were extremely successful at both.
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The Nintendo effect. Not only is Steam a “brand” that people know and recognise and very well have a collection of games already on, they’ve designed their software to be very functional for people who don’t know how to go digging for all the hidden options in windows. I can muck about with things like the thermal power limit, frame rate and refresh rate locks, half rate shading, scaler options, from one button access to eh side menu on my deck.
The OS is built for the hardware and is optimised accordingly. It’s like the other handhelds have performance leaks everywhere while the Steam Deck doesn’t. I blame win11. So even if the others are better on paper, actual performance is way better on the Deck. There are so many tools you can download to make it even better, personalise whatever you want. Linux really shines on this thing. And I’ve never used Linux before in my life. You can emulate everything up to the newest Nintendo games. It handles God of War, it handles Elden Ring and Diablo 4. Controls are awesome. Somehow even my Switch is more tiring to hold even tho the Deck is way bigger. For me it just clicks. I know I sound like I’m on their payroll but I just feel it’s that good. And I would swap the Deck in a heartbeat if anything else would be better. But it isn’t.
Not OP but I can take a crack at it. For starters, the build quality is fantastic. As someone who’s used quite a few mainstream handhelds (Gameboy up through Switch light, PSP/Vita, and most recently the GDP XD) The deck feels sturdy, and although it is quite bulky, it fits with case and charger in a backpack that’s flown cross country several times. I’ve had to replace other devices that just couldn’t stand up to that kind of abuse.
It’s also quite powerful - enough to run Elden Ring at a very consistent 30 FPS. More lightweight titles have zero issues. The same is also true of emulated hardware up to 6th gen, including KH1/2, Metroid Prime, etc. Which is quite a feat for a portable computer like this.
The backend/desktop mode is easy to access and makes setting up those emus quite simple, and with a little command line work you can get applications running that aren’t available via Discover.
Really, the only thing lacking here is battery life, but even then, 2-3 hours is on par with most laptops.
It runs linux <3 But seriously the user experience is so good, i thought they would stop refining it after a year or so but no, it keeps going like a smash mouth song stuck in a loop.
Also i had blast tinkering with it in desktop mode and discovering how the whole gadget runs after docking it and plugging a key board, mouse and monitor.
The emulation options are fantastic if not a bit tricky to set up, but there are some tools that you can familiarize yourself with in just a 10 min youtube vid.
Of course it sucks that it cant run the latest AAA, but it is amazing for casual games without micro transactions, indies and ps3 level games. I mean get a real pc if you want to play thoses for sure, but imo satisfying graphics fidelity was reached by the ps3 era, and only gameplay really matters now.
Honestly my fav games atm are steep, stray, and witcher 3 which i would consider the max amount of graphics it can handle (without maxing, but without setting everything to low).
On the indies side I had a blast with carrion, donut county and vampire survivor, games that I thought I would never play sitting in front of my PC.
The idea of a 720 p screen kinda sucks at first, but you dont really feel a difference in game. Personally when I dock it with a screen i set the res higher and on some small indie games i game at 4k since it can take it.
Steam Deck still holds its own on new releases if you’re happy to downgrade them a bit. I’m getting a decent 30 FPS experience on BG3 right now at mid settings. As someone who’s primarily a console gamer used to not having the ultra settings on games, it works for me.
SteamOS (and Linux gaming in general, thanks to Proton) is absolutely great and has been for at least a year or two now. The reduced overhead and lack of update bullshit honestly makes it better than Windows gaming in every way, IMHO. Getting it running on non-Steam Deck mobile hardware is likely a bit of a chore, though. Frankly I don’t even understand why anyone would waste time with the competitors.
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Thank you. And do most of Epic games run well? I’m not interested into latest triple A games and the best of the best performance and resolution, but I would like to some of them being at least playable. What do you think of the Chinese alternatives of the Steam Deck?
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And do most of Epic games run well?
Check out emudeck as well, emulators on the deck have already been done and they work great. Only one that doesn’t is Xenia, but it’s pretty close.
I’m not a Linux fan, but even disregarding the OS (SteamOS vs Windows), the fact that most of these “killers” don’t come with touch pads of any kind makes them an instant loss. So many PC games use a mouse, I’m not using a fiddly thumbstick in its place.
Steam Deck’s secret sauce is the software. Steam Deck’s software isn’t all OSS yet (it’s NOT the same as the publicly available SteamOS), so the alternatives are all running on Windows which… is not good (especially for a handheld).
Honestly, just get a Steam Deck. The “power” differences are just not meaningful at that form factor right now.
Additionally, power costs battery to actually use it. Sometimes it’s better to opt for lower settings anyway if you’re going to play on the go.
Steam Deck is shaping up to be the “Nintendo” of handheld PCs. Not the most powerful thing on the market, but cleverly put together with its own bespoke software that allows users to customise and tweak games at the system level via quick access to its features. Having windows on the other machines makes your access to games better but means you have to dig harder or install extra software to do what the deck does. To paraphrase Sega’s 90s marketing, It Does what Windon’t.
Steam deck has the community. There’s more powerful single card computers than the raspberry pi but the pi has the community so everything works better and for longer. I wouldn’t be surprised if the decks support outlives the others not to mention the third party market.
Steam Deck punches way above its weight. But it does so much thanks to its lower resolution. Though in the format 720p isn’t bad at all. It’s what the switch uses as well.
Skip all the Chinese alternatives, they require far more tweaking / researching than you’re fit for (judged solely by this post).
Really I’d break it down to games and game types you want to play. If you want say Genshin Impact then it’s a lot easier to go with the ROG Ally. There are other Asian games that also don’t play nice with Linux. Multiplayer titles also tend to be finicky with Linux. The ROG Ally is also strong enough to dock to a 1080p screen for titles like Valorant or CSGO. If that is appealing.
If you’re playing mainly older games then the deck is the obvious choice, it’s a beast when it comes to emulation and has much better battery life in that setting than the ROG Ally. It’s also arguably more plug-and-play especially if you play mostly steam games.
Running Windows on the Deck isn’t very good, it kills the decks battery advantage and the lower performance becomes more obvious. Same running Linux on the ROG is also missing out on what it’s actually good at and Linux won’t improve the battery life much.
800p!
Also the 42fps setting is wonderful
I had a deck for a while and have sold it in favor of the ROG Ally. It requires a lot of work to get its software out of your way but after tearing all of thw asus crap out, including the trash services who’s only purpose is to put their broken ass software back on against the end users’ wishes I’ve got a matching software experience on it.
I just could not give up the vrr screen, it makes the Ally beat out the deck for my uses and none of the $1200+ devices really come close either.
I recently picked up a Steam Deck and I can also vouch for it; the device is far more than the sum of its parts and is clearly something Valve was only able to pull off after a decade plus of various software/hardware integration experiments.
SteamOS is the star of the show, and it is both fluid and easy to use while also putting more customization and flexibility at your fingertips than any other game interface I’ve seen. The integration of custom operating system, custom game wrapper tech, and their standardized hardware has produced a device that offers the power and flexibility of PC gaming with a user experience that is getting closer and closer to the “never think about it” ease of use that consoles provide.
It’s not the most powerful; it’s really a 720/800P gaming machine, but games look great at that resolution and you can run a lot of games at comfortably playable frame rates.
I had some doubts after I bought mine when I saw the ROG Ally come out alongside hundreds of “OMG THE STEAM DECK KILLER HAS ARRIVED” videos; but it didn’t take long until I saw a lot of those same content creators return their Ally and come back to the steam deck because although the hardware is slightly more powerful, the user experience end is so much worse than it just wasn’t worth it. Not to mention some serious QC issues with it.
I’ve been a PC gamer for a long time; I think I’ve been active on Steam for 18 years now. The Steam Deck is the best PC Gaming experience I’ve ever had. The hardware is great, the controls (and mapping ability of those controls) are great, the interface is great…everything is just top notch about it. Do I wish it was more powerful? Well that’d be great, and one day it will be. But everything about the experience is so good, I don’t mind some of the drawbacks. It’s encouraged me to get into my backlog of games and genuinely enjoy exploring them again. The Steam Deck just makes it so seamless and easy to play your games.
In fact, I’m getting close to time to build a new PC, and the Steam Deck has really changed my thoughts on it. Seeing how far Proton and SteamOS have come…I just really want Valve to take another shot at the Steam Box. A lot of its shortcomings aren’t issues now, and add in some good Steam Deck integration and have it target 1440P/4K Upscaling, you could create an affordable box that taps into a successful and growing ecosystem. I’d buy one in an instant and just not bother with a new PC build in the years ahead.
That’s how much I genuinely believe that the Steam Deck/SteamOS experience is that good these days!
better alternatives. Asus Rog Ally, OneXPlayer, Aya Neo etc…
Don’t they all cost double or tripple of the SteamDeck? Call me oldschool, but spending $1000 on a handheld just sounds crazy to me. SteamDeck is already pretty much the max price I’d call acceptable.
The biggest problem for me with the SteamDeck, and why I haven’t bought one, is simply its 1280x800 resolution, that might be acceptable for gaming, but it’s really no good when you want to read a PDF or do other non-gaming things. Kind of limits it’s versatility and is just not a good look when you have the same resolution as a cheap China tablet from five years ago, or a Nintendo Switch for that matter, which itself already felt a little out of date at its launch.
The Steam Deck is sold specifically as a gaming handheld. If you’re buying it to read PDFs, you’re buying the wrong device. Besides, the resolution isn’t the issue for reading documents, it’s the size of the screen. If you want to do non-gaming things, you’ll be much better served if you plug in a monitor, in which case you can even use a 4K display if that’s what you want.
I think the SD does have its issues, but I feel like the display is not one of them. At that size, it’s a good resolution to get better performance in games. A higher resolution would kill the battery, reduce performance, and due to its size it would be hard to tell the difference in-game.
I sold my Steam Deck because the hardware really isn’t good enough. Poor quality screen and no anti friction rings for the analogue sticks, plus the whole thing is just too large.
Still I’m not convinced of Steam OS compared to Windows 11, since I would like to play also Epic games and maybe some emulators
How much time, relatively speaking, do you spend playing multiplayer Epic games? If it’s more than 50%, then yeah, SteamOS may not be for you. But if it’s less than that, then SteamOS would be a better experience, simply because it was built ground-up for gaming. No Windows Defender slowing down your system unexpectedly, no Windows Updates to hijack your system at the most unexpected times, no other bloatware or nonsense services like Bing/copilot crap or ads in Explorer - just pure gaming. These Windows handhelds you speak of are barely optimized for gaming, the most they do is add a launcher and call it a “gaming console” - you still have to put up with various Windows annoyances, which defeats the point of a dedicated gaming console - you want to be able to just pick it up, turn it on and game - no nonsense. One of the cool things about SteamOS is how reliable the sleep/resume is when you’re gaming, which allows you to just pause and game whenever you like. This whole streamlined experience is why people love the Deck.
BTW, SteamOS has no issues running emulators. I can’t think of any popular emulator that runs only on Windows, or runs significantly better on Windows.
the screen of the Steam Deck, apparently of lower res
The lower res is actually better because it’s a small screen. A higher res on a small screen makes things harder to see, plus with a lower res you get more FPS and a better batter life.
very big hazels (to me looks like the first Nintendo Switch).
It may not look good, but it actually makes it more ergonomic and easier to hold. Check any review of the Deck and you’ll see they all praise it’s ergonomics, like this one: https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/pc-gaming/steam-deck-review#section-steam-deck-form-factor-ergonomics-and-gamepad
“Despite its undeniable girth, the Steam Deck’s attention to ergonomics makes it an incredibly comfortable device to hold, even during extended gaming sessions”
In fact, read the rest of the article - or any other in-depth review. You’ll find that the Steam Deck is a much more polished experience overall compared to the others, and this is thanks to both it’s hardware and software.
I have a Steam Deck and was considering “upgrading” to something that has more power.
But then I wanted to play Torchlight 2, an action-rpg designed for mouse and keyboard that does not have controller support. I wasn’t even going to try it, but saw that Runic Games had an input profile for it. The left stick controls your character like it supporter controllers, but it’s all using the mouse. The touchpads work for precise targeting. And I’m able to use all 10 skill buttons using modifier keys and adding the back buttons. Plus I was able to easily adapt this to Diablo 3, a non-steam game without controller support.
If you want to be limited to games designed with controllers in mind, go for one of the alternatives. But if you want to be able to play mouse and keyboard games, there’s nothing that competes with the Steam Deck.
