Steam Deck OLED is BETTER Than ROG Ally!

Hello, welcome back to a new video. So

today we have to talk about the ROG Ally

versus the Steam Deck OLED. Now, as

someone who does use the ROG Ally as his

main computer, sometimes I do find myself

finding that the Steam Deck OLED does seem

quite appealing, and I have been thinking

about switching over to the Steam Deck

OLED sometimes. And in today's video, I

want to talk about why the Steam Deck OLED

is probably better than the ROG Ally in

many ways. So one of the main reasons I

would believe that the Steam Deck OLED is

better than the ROG Ally have to be the

fact that it has an OLED screen instead of

this LCD panel. Now, this is not a bad LCD

panel. In fact, it's actually one of the

best, and it's pretty good, and it looks

good. And you can see it looks quite

colorful too. But I'm just thinking the

Steam Deck OLED screen would just have a

much brighter and much more vivid looking

screen, and that would just look a lot

much better if you were just hoping to

play it as a portable gaming device as it

was intended. But if you have a plug-in

monitor, maybe you don't care. So we're

going to pretend or imagine that we are

looking for a gaming portable handheld

device, not really like a desktop

substitute that's going to be on a desk

plugged into a load of stuff. We're just

using it as it is, as it was designed.

And I would say that in— if it was that

case, in that scenario, then the Steam

Deck OLED does seem like it'll be better

for a few reasons. Number one, the screen,

like I just said. Number 2, the

portability just seems like it'll be much

better. And number 3, the fact that the

battery life is just much better on the

Steam Deck OLED. Now, because the Steam

Deck OLED is using internals and GPUs and

CPUs and chips that are slightly older,

about a year older than the one used here.

Here we have the Z1 Extreme, which I think

was made around sometime this year using

new 3 or 4 nanometer technology, whereas

the Steam Deck's chip is using older last

year's, previous year's 7 nanometer

technology, which admittedly is weaker and

less powerful. But what that means is you

get a longer battery life. So if battery

life is important to you, and it should be

if you're looking for a portable gaming

device, then I can't really recommend the

ROG Ally because from my testing, most

games drain the battery in about an hour,

even less sometimes. I played Red Dead

Redemption on low graphics on turbo mode,

and I swear the battery was down 20% after

about 5 minutes. So you could probably get

like 30-40 minutes of gameplay. The

battery life and performance on this is

kind of the equivalent of a gaming laptop.

You can't really expect to play over an

hour unless you're playing like 2D indie

games or really old games or emulated

games, then maybe you can get 2 hours or

maybe more, but you really need to get a

battery bank to play more than an hour.

On the other hand, Steam Deck OLED,

because it's using much less powerful

internals, you can expect to get 2 hours,

3 hours, maybe even 4 hours on certain

games. And that's mainly because the

optimization is better with the battery in

it, and also the battery is going to be

bigger in the Steam Deck. And because it's

just lower performance it's going to have

longer battery life, kind of like the

Switch. Nintendo's tactic has always been

to optimize for battery performance over

power, so they've never really had the

most powerful internals, but you can get

like 10-hour playback if you play certain

games, and that was kind of like its main

appeal point. And you could say the same

for the Steam Deck versus the ROG Ally.

This is— has— this one has the power, the

Steam Deck has the battery. So if you want

a portable gaming device where you want to

play it unplugged then it's kind of

difficult to recommend this over the Steam

Deck. Now when it comes to internal

storage, ROG really messed up. So it has

512GB base storage, which is really not

enough. I've got maybe 3, 4 games loaded

onto this and I'm already out of storage,

and I had to resort to using a 1TB

external hard drive, which is great and

everything, but the write speeds and the

load times using that are really slow.

And it also means I need it to be plugged

into my USB hub all the time. If I unplug

it, then obviously I can't play those

games anymore. And they've put a microSD

card slot here, which you think is great.

Oh, I can just plug in my 256GB SD

card that I use in my camera and then I

can just play games. But people have been

saying that because the SD card slot is

right there above the thermal cooling area

where it gets really hot, it gets really

hot around there, which is where the SD

card goes. And people have been saying

that because of the extreme heat, the SD

card has been fried and become unusable

and it's just broken, not working anymore

because it got so hot inside of there.

And it's so dumb because they could have

put the SD card slot anywhere. Like they

could have put it here or they could have

put it there. You know the Switch OLED?

The Switch OLED's microSD card slot is

actually here under the kickstand, not

here where it gets really hot. I really

don't know why ASUS designed this and

probably stress tested it and did a lot of

testing on it. And after all the testing,

well, I hope they did testing, didn't just

like release this without testing. It.

After all the testing, they didn't realize

that the extreme heat was going to have an

effect on the SD card, which seems like a

really massive flaw in the design. So

although I love the design and the way it

looks and it feels really great in the

hand, I am scared to use my SD card to

expand my storage because I don't want to

use— I don't want to lose my SD card and

accidentally fry it and then lose my game

save data as well. So that seems like a

really big flaw, and I don't know why they

somehow managed to oversee that flaw. So

really the only option if you want to

increase the internal storage without

using an external hard drive is to get one

of those tiny SSDs like a 1TB NVE.

I don't know what it's called. It looks

like a tiny little SSD like that, and then

you unscrew the back of the ROG Ally and

then you take out the one that's in there

and then you replace it with a 1TB SSD or

a 2TB. But they're kind of expensive,

they're like $100 for for the 1TB one, so

that would be an extra $100 on top of the

base price. And then you've also got to

unscrew the back and fiddle around inside

of there, which if you're like me and you

don't really feel confident with

unscrewing devices and taking them apart

and putting them back because you feel

like I'm going to ruin it, I'll dismantle

it and won't be able to put it back, or

break something accidentally or void the

warranty, then you might not really want

to unscrew it and fiddle around like that.

But it seems like that is the only option

to expand the storage. I don't know why

ASUS didn't include like a 1TB,

2TB option model for the ASUS ROG Ally

when you go to the store. The 512GB

version is basically the only version that

you can buy. So I don't know what the

Steam Deck OLED does. I don't know if they

have a microSD card slot for the Steam

Deck OLED, but I do believe they offer a

1TB hard drive— I mean, a 1TB storage

SSD option for the Steam Deck OLED that

you can buy for a couple hundred dollars.

It would have been nice if ASUS offered

the same for that, But I don't think that

they do. So for those reasons alone, I

would have to say that the Steam Deck OLED

is kind of better than the ROG Ally. And

if you also agree and you want

portability-ness and battery-ness, then

maybe you should also get the Steam Deck

OLED over the ROG Ally and avoid these

problems that I have personally

encountered with the device.

There's no fire. There's supposed to be

fire to make it smoky.

There's no smoke flavor.

It's not sticky.