We bring you the comparison of Steam Deck vs ASUS ROG Ally , two consoles that allow you to play your Steam video games wherever you want. However, ASUS ROG Ally brings the concept to more platforms, such as XBOX Game Pass.
Nintendo Switch is to blame for this, huh? The Japanese revolutionized the concept of portability with a “powerful” console for what was available then. They did this in 2017, but with the rise of the cloud in a few years, Valve saw that it had to give its game library concept a twist: it launched Steam Deck. Several brands have wanted to expand this concept, and among them is ASUS.
Index of contents
- What is Steam Deck?
- Hardware
- Games
- What is ASUS ROG Ally?
- Hardware: the fight between Steam Deck vs ASUS ROG Ally
- Games
- Steam Deck vs ASUS ROG Ally, which is better?
What is Steam Deck?
You’re in luck because we just did a review of Steam Deck in Professional Review, and we can tell you up close what it is. Steam Deck is a portable console with an operating system called SteamOS 3.0 that is based on Linux, which allows you to play all the games you have in the Steam library.
Hardware
At what quality? It is subject to the hardware that the console has. In the case of the Steam Deck, it is equipped with an AMD Zen 2 APU with 4 cores and 8 threads at 3.5 GHz , together with an RDNA 2 GPU with 8 CUs at 1.6 GHz that give a total of 1.6 TFLOPs.
A priori, it may seem that it is scarce, but remember that in a portable console we do not need the best hardware either, but the screen and the battery are more important. And it is that we have a 7-inch IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 1280 x 800p , 16:10, 400 nits and 60 Hz . Maybe this is a little loose.
It comes with 16 GB LPDDR5 of RAM, as well as 3 possible storages:
- 64GB eMMC.
- 256GB NVMe SSD .
- 512GBNVMe SSD.
The SSDs come in a 2230 form factor, also having a microSD card slot. Its operating system makes it like a mini PC: we have a desktop, a Web browser, a file explorer; of everything. Don’t get “hot” with the storage options and keep reading ?.
Games
Can we only download Steam games? Well, just this Linux-based OS allows us to download Epic Game or Xbox Game Pass , making it much more than a portable console. In fact, we have an application store like Windows or Android/iOS, but we anticipate that installing things manually… is more complicated.
Some people have used the Steam Deck to install PSP or Nintendo Switch emulators , but you already know that they are not very well optimized.
It’s time to install the games, or not? Steam Deck allows us to play from the cloud , which saves us from filling up storage space. You will see that not all games are compatible, so the console itself has a classification system of “verified”, “playable” and “incompatible”.
As with the Nintendo Switch, we can connect it to a deck and it will be connected to the monitor or television. Here we can enjoy in higher resolutions, but we warn you that the hardware will be the same, so the FPS is in danger.
Tell you that you can adjust the graphics to your liking because these games are designed for PC, and taking into account that we have RDNA 2 you can activate FSR to gain FPS . The problem we saw in our test had to do with resolution: there may be texts that look too small, but you can adjust the size of the subtitles.
This Steam Deck vs ASUS ROG Ally is going to be very interesting because streaming is totally recommended with Steam Deck, if we have a good WiFi connection. Cloud gaming faces the main problem: the lag from when we activated a key until it is executed in the game.
What is ASUS ROG Ally?
ASUS ROG Ally is a portable console that is mainly powered by Windows 11 and AMD Ryzen Z1, which means RDNA 3. More than a portable console, we could say that it is a laptop because we do not see a specific OS, but rather Windows 11. Home like any PC.
The concept is very similar to Steam Deck, but much more flexible because Windows 11 allows us to do a lot more than just play. Also, if we want to play, we already have a console optimized to play on Xbox Game Pass, which is a spectacular library, 3 months free!
Hardware: the fight between Steam Deck vs ASUS ROG Ally
In the ASUS ROG Ally we see a fairly important upgrade in specifications, since this console has been released in 2023. Everything translates to AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme , which is a SoC with a 4 nm Zen 4 CPU armed with 8 cores and 16 threads which can go up to 5.10 GHz , as well as an 8.6 TeraFlops RDNA 3 GPU , almost 8 times more than Steam Deck!
The SoC will be accompanied by 16 GB LPDDR5 and 512 GB PCIe 4.0 SSD with a 2230 form factor. It has a microSD UHS-II card reader, with support for SD, SDXC and SDHC to further expand capacity.
The screen mounts a 7-inch IPS-level touch panel with Full HD resolution , 120 Hz and 100% sRGB coverage . And it is that the experience is much better than with Steam Deck: we have WiFi 6E Triple band 2*2 and Bluetooth 5.2 , which is ideal to play at maximum speed if we do it through the cloud.
Furthermore, it brings noise cancellation technology, Dolby Atmos, Hi-Res certification; everything to elevate the gaming experience.
Games
From the outset, we will be able to use the games from Steam, Xbox Game Pass, Epic Games, GOG and other platforms because we have Windows 11 installed. However, we have to say that it brings very, very interesting things:
- It also comes with a dock for using the Ally on a high-resolution monitor or TV.
- It comes prepared to connect a monitor, mouse, keyboard, and even an eGPU or external GPU that allows us to increase performance. ASUS has released the ROG XG Mobile for this purpose, being able to see RTX 4000 and RX 6000 .
- Armory Crate SE, which allows you to play these games in streaming.
Do you want to play with controller? It is compatible with the official XBOX, as well as others that are compatible with PC.
For those concerned about knowing what autonomy it offers, tell you that we will have 2 hours of local play , but for games in the cloud we have up to 6.8 hours of autonomy. The good news is that it comes with fast charging: from 0 to 50% in 30 minutes.
Steam Deck vs ASUS ROG Ally, which is better?
Taking everything into account, it is necessary to conclude with which console is better to know the winner of this Steam Deck vs ASUS ROG Ally. In our experience, we will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each console.
Starting with ASUS ROG Ally, we have a newer SoC (Ryzen Z1), better display, Windows 11 instead of a Linux-based OS, plus next-gen local capability (PCIe 4.0) as input. However, the ASUS ROG Ally console has not come out, and it can only be compared in terms of its technical sheet: we do not know what autonomy it offers, or how Windows 11 moves on this device.
Steam Deck offers 8 hours of gaming with a battery of the same capacity; his thing would be for the ASUS console to offer the same with better specifications. And it is that a SoC Zen 2 vs SoC Zen 4 is not the same , not only in terms of performance, but also in terms of efficiency: they are 7 nm vs 4 nm .
On the other hand, Steam Deck provides a better implementation of Steam at cloud level; of that we are sure. It has good specifications, but we believe that its first barrier may be its operating system and its screen: not having even 90 Hz is a chore as we approach 2024.
It must be understood that a large part of the target audience are PC gamers who want to enjoy their games outside the home, so it is essential to try to give an experience close to it.
On paper, for us the winner of this Steam Deck vs ASUS ROG Ally is the one from the ASUS brand because it has better specifications, in addition to coming with Windows 11. This last fact means that it is not only a console, it is a laptop! ! In fact, it would be better than many Chromebooks that cost around €300-400, and much more interesting than some laptops that hover around €500.
Another thing is at the level of gaming experience which joystick configuration do you like the most, and for this we use this image.
In the Steam Deck we have a configuration similar to that of the PlayStation, with a D-pad in the left corner, and a left stick below it. The opposite happens in the ASUS ROG Ally, in which we have a full XBOX configuration, including the same colors on the right button panel for each assignment.
Personally, I always prefer a PlayStation-style configuration, but it is known that the one that works best is the XBOX one at the sales level. Following the argument of the portability of PC gamers to these consoles, the ASUS configuration will have a better meaning in this regard.
But, should this be vital to buy one or the other? Not at all, since we can take advantage of bluetooth technology to use the same controller that we have on the PC or buy a wireless one. Likewise, it must be said that both come with a USB-C port , so it can also be used for this (although it is recommended for charging).
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We hope this information has been of interest to you. If you have any questions, comment below and we’ll get back to you shortly. Which one do you stay with?