Are you stuck between the Asus Rog Ally Vs Steam Deck? Which is better and which to choose? We have broken down everything for you to read, and select the one you like.
Asus Rog Ally Vs Steam Deck
Since its launch, the Steam Deck has dominated the handheld gaming PC industry. But, now the Rog Ally is here to give it a tough competition. It would be interesting to see if it can beat the OG.
Steam’s deck runs on its own Valve’s custom OS and is limited to Steam games only. On the other hand, the Rog Ally uses Windows 11 and doesn’t have any such limitations. Rog Ally will win over Steam Deck for those who are new, but Steam Deck’s popularity cannot be beaten easily, even with its aging hardware. Let’s see how Rog Ally compares to the Steam Deck.
Design And Display
The Rog Ally and Steam Deck are both very similar in terms of looks. Both come with a screen sandwiched between the two ABXY sides from the controller pad. Steam deck looks a little bit old-school with its black and grey color scheme. While, the Rog Ally plays it cool with its white color and light-up RGB thumb sticks.
The Rog Ally is a sleek device and has a slimmer profile compared to Steam Deck. But somewhere, it lacks that sense of stability and weightiness that Steam’s Deck offers. Although, the weigh difference between both of them is only 60 grams. It is big and bulky and makes good use of the space with its quality thumb sticks and buttons and their infamous trackpads.
The Rog Ally does lack in certain places, and the foremost is that it doesn’t have any trackpads, also the buttons and thumbsticks feel a little bad and cheap. But not as bad as the Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Con. Yet, it does have some extra features like fingerprint sensors on the power button, as well as faster Wi-Fi and an external GPU connecter.
The Asus Rog Ally is comfy and comes in handy while traveling because of its smaller size. But when it comes to daily use, one can absolutely not let go of Steam Deck.
When it comes to display, the Rog Ally is better in almost every aspect.
The Rog Ally has a higher resolution at 1080p and comes at a 120Hz refresh rate and a brightness of 500 nits, resulting in a much smoother and brighter screen display. The Steam Deck, on the other hand, has a resolution of 800p and a refresh rate of 90Hz with a higher brightness of 1000 nits.
Specs
The thing that makes the Asus really exciting and popular is the underlying hardware. Rog Ally has AMD’S Z1 Series processors, which are custom APUs having Zen 4 CPU cores and RDNA 3 GPU cores. Two models of the Rog Ally have AMD Z1 processors, which are both very different.
The Ryzen Z1 is the weaker processor of the two and comes with six Zen 4 cores and 4 RDNA 3 cores, giving a total of up to 2.8 TFLOPs of theory performance. In contrast, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme comes with eight Zen 4 cores and a massive 12 RDNA 3 cores. According to AMD, this enables a performance that is higher up to 8.6 TFLOPs. Although Rog Ally was the first to use the Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip, there are competitors now.
In comparison, the Steam Deck has much weaker hardware. The hardware, regardless of any of its models can only go up to having 4 Zen 2 cores and eight RDNA 2 cores and gives a total of 1.6 TFLOPs of theory performance. The limit for Steam Deck’s APU is only 15W, while Rog Ally can go up to 30W in Turbo mode.
Despite the big differences, the Rog Ally and Steam Deck do have some specs in common. Both come with 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory and include a Micro SD card slot for expanding the storage. They both also come with a 3.5mm headphone jack and support USB-C charger.
Performance
The Rog Ally is much faster than the Steam Deck. On competing with the same APU wattage and resolution, we can say that Rog Ally is 50% faster than Steam Deck. But, it is important to note that the Rog Ally can scale up significantly higher, too. While the Steam Deck is limited to 15W, the Rog can go up to 30W when charging and in Turbo Mode.
It was very clear from the start that the Rog Ally would be faster. It has a great performance mood and can run the most demanding games in today’s date at medium settings, all the while maintaining 30fps. We ran some tests on a few different games with different launchers to compare the two.
The tests clearly showed that the Extreme Z1 chip is superior. At 720p and the 15W power setting, the ROG Ally scored 38fps in Total War: Three Kingdoms, in Borderlands 3 it scored 57fps, and scored 64fps in Hitman 3, in comparison to the steam’s 25, 42, and 44.
Operating System
The main difference between the Rog Ally and Steam Deck is the operating system. While Rog Ally uses Windows 11, the Steam Deck OLED uses a Linux-based SteamOS. Both OS have their pros and cons. It provides an easy-to-use, streamed line interface to support handheld gaming. It is also associated with the largest distribution network for PC games. But it does have its problems.
To start with, SteamOS is highly prone to bugs. If the Wi-Fi is turned on and you are away from the charger, the handheld will get confused and think it’s out of battery, even when it’s fully charged. These kinds of unconventionalities are widespread in SteamOS.
The most differentiating factor for Deck is that its OS is built on Linux. This ultimately leads you to be unable to play quite a few games. It also blocks out anti-cheat software and games on other marketplaces like the Xbox app. Rog’s Windows 11 solves these problems and allows you to play games from other storefronts and titles that use anti-cheat software. Along with all this, there are some downsides to Windows 11 as well.
The most concerning thing about Windows 11 is that it is a desktop operating System and not a handheld gaming OS. It is very troublesome to navigate Windows on a 7-inch touch screen without a mouse or keyboard. And the whole process of installing games on your device can be irritating. But this all can be avoided if you are satisfied with the Steam games.
Price
Along with all the other aspects, the price point also needs to be in consideration in this handheld battle. The starting price for Steam Deck is $349 for 64 GB of slow storage. To get 512 GB (which Rog Ally’s Z1 Extreme has), you will have to spend $449. But if you don’t want to spend this much, you can go for refurbished Steam Decks, which Valve is offering currently, as it cuts the price down to as low as $279.
Valve is now phasing out both the 64GB and 512GB models with the arrival of Steam Deck OLED. Now, you will have the 256GB model at $399. In contrast, it will come at two different price points. The 512GB version will be for $549, and the 1TB of storage will be $649.
The Rog Ally’s pricing is simple. The Rog Ally with Z1 Extreme costs $700 and is exclusively available at Best Buy. While, the cheaper version with Ryzen Z1 comes priced at $600. The ROG Ally is faster than the Steam Deck, but now, it’s also significantly more expensive.
Game Pass
Game pass is one of the major differences between Asus Rog Ally and Steam Deck. It wouldn’t be surprising if the Steam Deck lacks in this department. Rog Ally feels like the unofficial handheld Xbox. Although the Xbox game pass on Ally is still somewhat buggy, it gives an overall pleasing experience. It also highlights the Xbox game pass and Xbox Play Anywhere.
Same with the Steam Deck isn’t this simple. The gamer will first have to install Windows on Steam Deck (preferably on a different Memory Card). It is pretty much time-consuming and too much work for most of the users. Also the probability of it working fine is less.
Final Verdict
Both the Asus Rog Ally and the Steam Deck have their own positive and negative points. While the Rog Ally seems to be unbeatable, you can absolutely not ditch your Steam Deck for it, especially after the rough update Rog has gone through. So, if you are new to the gaming world, you should prefer Rog Ally. But for a Steam Deck user, it is not worth upgrading to Rog Ally.
FAQs
Q: What is the battery life of Asus Rog Ally?
It can last up to 2-6 hours, depending on the modes and games you are playing.
Q: What is the battery life of Steam Deck?
The Steam Deck has a battery life to last between 2 to 8 hours and 3 to 12 hours for Deck OLED. It mainly depends on the games and usage.
Q: Can you play Rog Ally and Steam Deck offline?
Yes, both Steam Deck and Rog Ally can be played offline. However, there will be limitations to the multiplayer and non-updated games.
Q: Is Steam Deck more powerful than Rog Ally?
Long story short, the Rog Ally is more powerful as well as expensive in comparison to the Steam Deck. But the steam console is also powerful on its own, although less.
