Asus ROG Ally is BETTER Than Steam Deck OLED!

Hello, welcome back to a new video. So

Christmas is coming soon and many people

might be wondering which kind of handheld

gaming device should they buy for

Christmas. There is the Steam Deck OLED,

very popular and recently released at a

low price point of about £500 or $500.

And then there's also the ROG Ally, which

I've been using personally for a couple

months now, and I have to say I am blown

away by this amazing little device. So

today we have to talk about why the ROG

Ally is decidedly better than the Steam

Deck OLED. Now there's many reasons and

we're going to be getting into that today.

Okay, so first of all, we talk about the

price and the specs. So for $600— I think

it was $700 when I bought it, so it's even

more of a better bargain value right now—

for about $600 you get 16GB of RAM,

you get a Z1 Extreme chip, which is

basically the Ryzen 7 840U chip, which can

also be found in other devices like the

Legion Go and some other laptops. And it

has actually been proven that on the

benchmark performance tests, the Z1

Extreme or the Ryzen 7 840U actually

outperforms Apple's M2 chip on the MacBook

Air and the MacBook something else that

has M2 chip. It's actually better

performing than the M2 Apple chip, so

that's pretty impressive. If you take into

consideration that this is half the price

of a MacBook Air. So you've got 16 gigs of

RAM, 512 gigabytes of storage, and

compared to the Steam Deck OLED, which has

a much older chip with thicker nanometer—

I think it's like 7 nanometer technology,

the chip that's in the Steam Deck OLED,

compared to 4 nanometer technology, which

is the chip in the ROG Ally. And you can

easily say that the Z1 Extreme chip

outperforms the Steam Deck OLED's chip

because it's using the same chip from last

year, which is an older chip. The chip

that's in here is at least a year newer,

so obviously it's going to be better,

faster, and just be all around better as a

chip. So the only thing the Steam Deck

OLED really has going for it is the OLED

screen. Apart from the OLED screen, I

can't really say it's the same as the

previous Steam Deck because it has slight

improvements, like the battery is slightly

bigger and it's got like slightly better

optimization, but I don't think the

average user is really going to notice

this. Now the main thing I would say that

is better about the ROG Ally is the fact

that it's running Windows 11. As you can

see, got Windows 11 booted up here, and it

basically just performs like a computer.

I got a little keyboard here that I use to

type on, I've got a mouse here, and yeah,

I do actually just use the ROG Ally as my

main computer, and I barely even play

games. So one of the reasons I'm thinking

of getting the MacBook is because I

realize I do really barely play games

unless I've got to cover one for a video,

but I feel like for the most of the time

I'm not really gaming, I might as well

just have a MacBook. But that's a

discussion for another day. If you do want

gaming and you want like a desktop

experience, the ROG Ally can do those

things, whereas the Steam Deck OLED can't

really. I mean, technically it can because

it has a desktop mode, but it's only

running Linux or SteamOS, which is very

limiting on what it can do. Now some

people say that's better because it's more

optimized for gaming and it's got better

battery performance and it just works

better because it's designed from the

ground up for a handheld gaming device.

Whereas as this is not really, it's just

kind of like Windows 11 shoved into a

handheld gaming device with Armoury Crate

slapped on top to try and make things

better. So I've got Armoury Crate actually

on my, on my main monitor, which for some

reason I can't Can't seem to drag it down.

I have to pan the camera up, I guess.

Hold on. So I got Armory Crate up on my

big monitor. For some reason I can't

minimize it. But then anyway, you got all

these things like you got access to your

games here, big easy-to-press thumbnails.

You got settings, you can fiddle with the

lighting and operating modes,

which is quite fun. Like you can do

operating mode, create a manual operating

mode with different fan curves, which is

very good. I mean, you could put all the

fans on maximum fan speed like I did, so

you've got maximum performance all the

time, or just go on to one of the pre-made

performance modes. And then you've also

got this little— you press that button and

you've got this menu where you've got

monitoring systems, desktop or gamepad

mode. So ASUS have made a lot of software

things to make the experience on Windows

11 a lot more accommodating on

this handheld device. So it's not really a

problem. I've seen people say and

complain, saying that, oh, the software

has loads of glitches, it's annoying using

Windows 11 on a little screen. Trust me,

it is not. I have not had a single problem

using Windows 11 on this little device. I

don't know what they're moaning about.

Armoury Crate and the monitor button thing

creates all these little shortcuts that

make it very easy to use Windows 11 on

this handheld device. So if you want the

desktop experience, then you've got it.

Look, you got right-click, all the

thingamajigs, got folders.

It's on my second monitor here. Look, I

can drag it down. You got folder storage

management, all that stuff you'd expect

from Windows. And then if you don't want

desktop mode, then just use Armoury Crate,

and then you can have like a handheld

gaming device experience, user experience,

same as SteamOS. So I don't really see why

you would want SteamOS over Windows 11.

Look, I got Steam, got Steam right here.

So you can just scroll down Steam, look at

the games, manage my own games library.

Look, I got 6,000 hours on Rainbow Six.

Oh yeah, that brings me on to my other

point. The last time I tried to play

Rainbow Six on the Steam Deck, it wouldn't

let me because Rainbow Six uses some kind

of Windows-only anti-cheat third-party

software, and it said it wouldn't work on

Linux. So I couldn't even play Rainbow Six

on Steam Deck. I don't know if there's a

way to get around that. But I shouldn't

have to worry about that. So I've got

other games like Red Dead Redemption on my

ROG Ally, and then I've also got

Battle.net so I could play some Diablo

or World of Warcraft. And I've also got EA

Store, the Epic Games Store. You've got

everything you can get on a Windows 11

computer, and you can't really get those

things on Steam Deck unless you do some

kind of fiddling around, sideloading,

sidebooting, that kind of stuff. Finally,

I'll show you some Red Dead Redemption 2

gameplay whilst we're waiting for that to

boot up. I'll talk about some other

things, like I think the portability

of this device is way more portable. It's

just much smaller footprint, easier to

hold. You don't have the trackpads, but I

don't really care because I never use the

trackpads anyway.

Says, uh, won't let me up— it won't let me

load Red Dead Redemption for some reason.

Not enough space. Oh, that's— oh, oh,

that's because I unplugged— I unplugged

my, my SSD, I mean my hard drive, my

external hard drive, so it won't let me

open it. So let's try a different game.

You see, even without mouse and keyboard,

you can easily navigate Windows 11 by just

using the touchscreen. Look, you press the

icon. I don't know what people are

complaining about, honestly. I can go on

to Steam.

Scroll around, or if you don't like the

desktop mode, just open Armory Crate.

Go to your game library here, scroll down

your game library. Don't really know what

Could play some Diablo.

Gamepad mode. So that's

gonna launch Diablo for us.

Diablo is a pretty good game to play on it

because it does work very well with the

gamepad. The only thing that's annoying is

trying to manage your inventory using the

thumbsticks without a mouse is a bit

fiddly. Look, I just reached

level 100 on my sorcerer. And I

was able to do a tier 74 Nightmare

dungeon, which I was quite proud of

actually.

Okay, so we're gonna load into a dungeon.

I'll show you what the gameplay is like.

It plays really well, so smooth. We can

bring up the monitor and

you can see we've got, we've got an FPS of

78 FPS. That is insane. So what

are the buttons? I forgot. This is dodge,

that's basic attack. It plays so well, I

can't believe it.

And you got the triggers for some spells.

Got Frost Nova on right trigger. What does

that do? I got Ball Lightning on left

trigger. It actually feels really nice to

play with the controller instead of

keyboard and mouse, and I could easily

just play this for a while sitting on the

bed relaxing. The problem is the battery

doesn't last more than an hour really.

It's so nice, especially the screen. I

mean, I'm playing on low graphics right

now, so you think it'll look rubbish, but

because the screen is so high-res and

highly detailed, it looks great.

If it was blown up onto a big screen,

then okay, it won't look as good

obviously, but most things don't look

very good when you blow them up. It's like

an oil painting, you know, like an oil

painting is very beautiful when looking at

it from far away, but as soon as you step

up close to it and start analyzing the

brush strokes up close, and yeah, the

individual brush strokes don't look very

good, it's just like a splodgy mess. When

you step back to appreciate the whole

picture, then it looks amazing. I mean,

it's like you get a beautiful woman and

you're standing in front of her and she

looks amazing, but then you start getting

really close with a magnifying glass and

like zooming in on her skin pores, and

yeah, she's not gonna look so great

anymore, is she? So look at this,

Diablo 4, we got 75 FPS.

What was that?

Uh, how do I do my special ability? I

think it's left trigger. Oh yeah,

unstable currents. I'm just destroying

everything.

This game is great to play handheld.

Maybe I'll move Red Dead Redemption onto

my SSD. The problem is the 512GB SSD

does get filled up really quickly. You can

unscrew the back and then buy like a 1TB

SSD, which I'm actually thinking of doing,

but it costs like $80, $90, and then I

gotta unscrew the back, which I'm a bit

scared of. It would have

been nice if they gave you an option to

buy a 1TB storage

version. This plays so well.

I thought I'd just play a couple minutes

to show you, but I actually can't stop

I don't know if it's focused on the screen

Yeah, so if you had to ask me ROG Ally or

the Steam Deck OLED, I'd go for the ROG

Ally every time. You got a better

operating system, Windows, more flexible,

can do more stuff. You've got better

chips, Z1 Extreme versus whatever's in the

Steam Deck, which is old 7nm tech. Why

would you want old 7nm semiconductor tech

when there's 3 and 4nm semiconductor tech

in gaming consoles nowadays?

You've got a better look. I think this is

a way better looking design. The Steam

Deck is boring. It's just like black and

like a long oblong slab. This has got

contours and angles and has like a, a cool

gamer aesthetic without being too childish

or in your face. It's got like a nice

white sleek look. I think the ROG Ally

looks so much better than any of the other

gaming devices out there right now.

Yeah, so I guess I'll just end it here

once I get rid of these stupid mobs.

Really don't know why people are raving on

about the Steam Deck OLED when you can get

this for only $100 more.

It's kind of sad the community And the

popularity for the Steam Deck OLED is just

so much bigger than the ROG, which I think

is so silly. This is such a better device

in every way. The only way it's not better

is the battery life. Okay, Steam Deck OLED

will have a couple more hours on the

battery depending what you do, but you got

to make the sacrifice. You want power,

then yeah, you have less battery. You want

more battery, then you got to sacrifice

power. That's just how it goes in the

world of physics. Yeah, okay, sorry,

I'm done with this. Thanks for watching,