Hello steam deck community! Well to start I know first and foremost that this question a has been beaten to death, but I have scoured the internet but can’t seem to find the specific answer for some of my niche questions.
To start, I have a 256gb LCD steam deck and I absolutely love it. Recently with the OLED model it has been making me contemplate an upgrade and because I love my deck but at times I really wish I could run games at a higher FPS and have better visuals. I have a solid pc gaming rig, but I mainly use my deck when my wife gets home from work for some couch gaming while we watch Netflix, and the occasional gaming away from home. So my questions are as follows:
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I have an iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard that I bought prior to the deck, so I don’t want to buy a different external monitor/keyboard. I really enjoy playing Guild Wars 2, and even with the community layouts it’s frustrating for me to play on the deck, so I use steam link on the deck to my iPad for the use of bigger screen + mouse and keyboard. Will a steam deck OLED or ROG Ally give increased performance streaming onto my IPad Pro? And if so is one better than the other.
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I mainly play AAA titles, so I am aware that gives the ROG Ally the advantage, but I am afraid that losing my trackpads and extra 2 buttons on the back will make me have buyers remorse if/when the time comes that I really need them. For anyone that has made the jump from steam deck to the ally, was this truly an issue for you or have you even been effected by the loss of those features.
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I have seen on occasion people have mentioned that their ally after a BIOS update has crashed and have had to completely reinstall windows, for somebody that has both devices, is this a common issue?
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For those that own the OLED. Was it fairly significant performance upgrade for you from your LCD models, or was it negligible?
Looking forward to hearing your replies! Sorry for the long read.
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The SD is a better equipped Windows machine than the Ally is when you factor in the trackpads.
I cannot imagine dealing with Windows without them.
The reality is no matter what decision you make, you are giving up something else. The end of the day the Rog spec wise might be suited better overall for more AAA game performance and although the deck oled performance has been improved, it won’t be enough to where an unplayable game on your lcd deck will equal great smooth gameplay on the oled. In terms of your streaming question, if your wifi in your house supports the wifi 6 implemented on the oled then you would most definitely see increased performance on the deck from a streaming standpoint
I admit I never really thought about it being my router effecting that even though thinking about it in retrospect that is probably the bigger factor. I will have to take a look at that. Also good to know about the improved wifi chip
Yeah your router/whatever internet service provide you have for sure will impact things!
The other day I sold my Ally after getting my hands on the OLED deck. I think I can only answer your bios question though. I had my Ally from launch and through each bios update up to the most recent 334 I never had an issue or problem that warranted reinstalling Windows or rolling back the bios version. Speaking purely from my experience, I still don’t understand users who claim navigation of Windows 11 is so horrendous without track pads. Using the touch screen or the analog sticks along with the right bumper and right trigger as your mouse buttons it felt fluid and very easy to use, but YMMV. Overall it comes down to battery life for me, but I mostly play indie and smaller games on a handheld so I wasn’t the target audience for the Ally to begin with. Good luck on your purchase and search, regardless of what direction you go, most importantly have fun!
This is super helpful. I’m glad to hear you didn’t struggle with the updates and you found it fairly easy to navigate with the lack of track pads. I think we are just about the opposite on what we use the devices for and it helps make the decision, I am predominantly a windows PC gamer and as hard as I’ve tried I’ve never been an indie game fan. I mainly use my steam deck now to try and progress whatever game I’m playing when I’m away from the pc, but I’m mainly plugged in. Thank you for the reply!
I own both a Deck OLED and an Ally. They’re both good devices, but with different focuses and different advantages/disadvantages.
The Ally runs Windows…which some people want. It’s also got great performance, will eat AAA games for breakfast, and has a very nice 120hz VRR screen. However, you don’t want to go very far from a battery pack or power outlet, because you’ll be lucky to get 2 hours of battery playing those AAA titles.
The OLED Deck, on the other hand, does not run Windows, so certain games that rely on certain DRM or Anti-cheat software won’t even work. Windows drivers aren’t ready for the Deck yet. The GPU is weaker than the Ally, because the Deck focuses on battery life, which is much better. Likewise the screen is lower resolution…but it’s OLED, which makes it very nice, but in different ways than the Ally’s screen. Which is better is a metter of opinion.
The OLED Deck does not have a noticable performance increase over the LCD Deck. The screen is better, and battery life is better. And if you open your Deck up a lot, the screws are much better. :)
Have had an ally since a week after release. Besides the sd card issue (ended up upgrading ssd), it has worked great and performed as needed. Now, I am using my oled as the main driver and ally for when at work. I have a powerful rig, so I can run games via stream. If the deck alone, it isn’t enough.
But if it is going to be all you use, I recommend the ally. I say this because it will play most if not all your AAA games, maybe not at the best frames, but better than the deck (if you’re doing the full 30w).
Asus has been doing a pretty dang good job at keeping the ally updated. There is another big update coming out at the end of the month. How long they will continue to keep the updates going, who knows. I have had no issues with any bios updates, myself.
Happy buying and playing.
The difference in display quality between the LCD Deck and the OLED deck is far larger than between the ROG Ally LCD and OLED deck. The old LCD on the Deck really was not a good panel and it had poor color accuracy and a low gamut making games look dull. The Ally has a high refresh rate 120hz panel with pretty good response times and better contrast than the original LCD deck. Sure it’s no OLED but the gap isn’t as large between them.
Now which you should get is really subjective. Both have their merits and downsides. The Deck OLED has much better battery life while the Ally has access to more games and other windows based software. Deck is set up for gaming first and foremost so you launch automatically into Steam Big Picture, Ally does not and launches into Asus’s Armory crate software. Ally can however be customized to launch into whatever program you want at boot up like Steam big picture.
Playing games via other launchers is much easier on Ally so if you own games from Ubisoft, EA, Epic, or other stores, you’ll have an easier time. Sometimes updates to these launchers will break games in Steam OS and it sucks.
Multiplayer games, or games with Anti cheat all just work on Ally while on Steam deck it can be a hit or miss whether it works. Some games just won’t launch on steamOS either, however thankfully we do have tools to help with this. ProtonDB is an excellent community run site that tells you whether a game works or not. You can pretty much ignore Steam’s playability rating as whether a game is “Great on Deck” or “Unsupported” really means nothing as many “unsupported” games work fine.
I am surprised how well ROG Ally’s screen is holding up against SD OLED screen.
ROG screen is fantastic. VRR is such a huge plus.