I was interested in buying a Steam Deck… Until I discovered all the (apparently) better alternatives. Asus Rog Ally, OneXPlayer, Aya Neo etc… I like the idea of an handheld console and obviously I would like to have a device that can run almost everything, so the Windows based handhelds seem better than the Steam Deck. Is it true? Furthermore the Steam Deck looks really big compared to some new devices out there (eg the OneXFly) and neither I like the screen of the Steam Deck, apparently of lower res and with very big bazels (to me looks like the first Nintendo Switch). On the other hand, I think Valve is a more serious company than (apart from Asus) some other unknown Chinese company and I expect Valve to deliver a better product. Still I’m not convinced of Steam OS compared to Windows 11, since I would like to play also Epic games and maybe some emulators. So I started getting information about the alternatives and… There are a lot. There are so many that I got overwhelmed. If you go to the OneXPlayer website they sell like 3-4 different handheld consoles, Aya Neo even more and they also have IndieGoGo campaigns running for new devices, all with weird names. I can’t understand what’s the device right for me (and I really don’t understand their business model). So my question is: are the rivals of the Steam Deck worth their price? Are they really better than the Steam Deck (in terms of quality, screen, size)? Thank you for your opinion!
UPDATE: I finally bought a refurbished 256GB Steam Deck.
Steam Deck’s secret sauce is the software. Steam Deck’s software isn’t all OSS yet (it’s NOT the same as the publicly available SteamOS), so the alternatives are all running on Windows which… is not good (especially for a handheld).
Honestly, just get a Steam Deck. The “power” differences are just not meaningful at that form factor right now.
Additionally, power costs battery to actually use it. Sometimes it’s better to opt for lower settings anyway if you’re going to play on the go.
Yes, battery and heat meaning you’ll hear the fans and feel your device get hot.
I’m not a Linux fan, but even disregarding the OS (SteamOS vs Windows), the fact that most of these “killers” don’t come with touch pads of any kind makes them an instant loss. So many PC games use a mouse, I’m not using a fiddly thumbstick in its place.
Without the trackpads, the Steam Deck would be considerably less useful. They open up a huge variety of games that would be practically unplayable with sticks alone. Disregarding them simply for more power is foolish.
Yes, and funnily enough, also makes running Windows worse, since it’s so mouse-driven. Why’d they do stupid decisions like that?
On paper a lot of these devices beat the Deck. In reality the Deck sits on top and looks down on everyone else.
Can you explain why? 🫤
The OS is built for the hardware and is optimised accordingly. It’s like the other handhelds have performance leaks everywhere while the Steam Deck doesn’t. I blame win11. So even if the others are better on paper, actual performance is way better on the Deck. There are so many tools you can download to make it even better, personalise whatever you want. Linux really shines on this thing. And I’ve never used Linux before in my life. You can emulate everything up to the newest Nintendo games. It handles God of War, it handles Elden Ring and Diablo 4. Controls are awesome. Somehow even my Switch is more tiring to hold even tho the Deck is way bigger. For me it just clicks. I know I sound like I’m on their payroll but I just feel it’s that good. And I would swap the Deck in a heartbeat if anything else would be better. But it isn’t.
It runs linux <3 But seriously the user experience is so good, i thought they would stop refining it after a year or so but no, it keeps going like a smash mouth song stuck in a loop.
Also i had blast tinkering with it in desktop mode and discovering how the whole gadget runs after docking it and plugging a key board, mouse and monitor.
The emulation options are fantastic if not a bit tricky to set up, but there are some tools that you can familiarize yourself with in just a 10 min youtube vid.
Of course it sucks that it cant run the latest AAA, but it is amazing for casual games without micro transactions, indies and ps3 level games. I mean get a real pc if you want to play thoses for sure, but imo satisfying graphics fidelity was reached by the ps3 era, and only gameplay really matters now.
Honestly my fav games atm are steep, stray, and witcher 3 which i would consider the max amount of graphics it can handle (without maxing, but without setting everything to low).
On the indies side I had a blast with carrion, donut county and vampire survivor, games that I thought I would never play sitting in front of my PC.
The idea of a 720 p screen kinda sucks at first, but you dont really feel a difference in game. Personally when I dock it with a screen i set the res higher and on some small indie games i game at 4k since it can take it.
SteamOS (and Linux gaming in general, thanks to Proton) is absolutely great and has been for at least a year or two now. The reduced overhead and lack of update bullshit honestly makes it better than Windows gaming in every way, IMHO. Getting it running on non-Steam Deck mobile hardware is likely a bit of a chore, though. Frankly I don’t even understand why anyone would waste time with the competitors.
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Thank you. And do most of Epic games run well? I’m not interested into latest triple A games and the best of the best performance and resolution, but I would like to some of them being at least playable. What do you think of the Chinese alternatives of the Steam Deck?
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I don’t have a steam deck, but I use Linux and often play games from the epic store through the heroic launcher. I haven’t had an issue with a game not working. Worst case scenario, I just had to switch proton versions, which heroic makes really easy.
And do most of Epic games run well?
Check out emudeck as well, emulators on the deck have already been done and they work great. Only one that doesn’t is Xenia, but it’s pretty close.
Screen is not the best, but everything else is superior. SteamOS is much better than Windows, IMO. Though I don’t play multiplayer games and I’ve read some anticheats don’t run on Linux. The only multiplayer game I play from time to time is Fall Guys and it works. Emulators are actually where Linux shines and especially Steam Deck - there’s an app called EmuDeck that sets up all the emulators you could think of and makes it work really easily. For Epic and GOG games I use Heroic Games Launcher and it works well, I played Spider-Man and Fall Guys from Epic and most of my library is on GOG.
You can run Heroic on the steam deck to play Epic
Ally is worse than the steam deck in everything unless it’s plugged in and you’re using a keyboard and mouse, at that point you should get a laptop
Emulators also have no issue
The res is lower so it can play higher demanding games, necessary res scales with screen size, a 1 cm screen doesn’t matter if it’s 10 pixels or 10 million but a 200 cm screen you’d want the 10 million
Rivals might compete but they aren’t big enough to handle volume (you might be waiting a long time)
Also Linux is better than Windows
better alternatives. Asus Rog Ally, OneXPlayer, Aya Neo etc…
Don’t they all cost double or tripple of the SteamDeck? Call me oldschool, but spending $1000 on a handheld just sounds crazy to me. SteamDeck is already pretty much the max price I’d call acceptable.
The biggest problem for me with the SteamDeck, and why I haven’t bought one, is simply its 1280x800 resolution, that might be acceptable for gaming, but it’s really no good when you want to read a PDF or do other non-gaming things. Kind of limits it’s versatility and is just not a good look when you have the same resolution as a cheap China tablet from five years ago, or a Nintendo Switch for that matter, which itself already felt a little out of date at its launch.
The Steam Deck is sold specifically as a gaming handheld. If you’re buying it to read PDFs, you’re buying the wrong device. Besides, the resolution isn’t the issue for reading documents, it’s the size of the screen. If you want to do non-gaming things, you’ll be much better served if you plug in a monitor, in which case you can even use a 4K display if that’s what you want.
I think the SD does have its issues, but I feel like the display is not one of them. At that size, it’s a good resolution to get better performance in games. A higher resolution would kill the battery, reduce performance, and due to its size it would be hard to tell the difference in-game.
I mean… Buy a 50usd tablet to read pdf’s and do some casual browsing. Steam decks are made for gaming.
I don’t understand some people :)
I have a Steam Deck and was considering “upgrading” to something that has more power.
But then I wanted to play Torchlight 2, an action-rpg designed for mouse and keyboard that does not have controller support. I wasn’t even going to try it, but saw that Runic Games had an input profile for it. The left stick controls your character like it supporter controllers, but it’s all using the mouse. The touchpads work for precise targeting. And I’m able to use all 10 skill buttons using modifier keys and adding the back buttons. Plus I was able to easily adapt this to Diablo 3, a non-steam game without controller support.
If you want to be limited to games designed with controllers in mind, go for one of the alternatives. But if you want to be able to play mouse and keyboard games, there’s nothing that competes with the Steam Deck.
I feel like windows would seriously hamper the experience, it’s terrible on small screens and when you don’t have a normal mouse and keyboard to use. It also has a ton of overhead that’s going to eat into the more limited CPU and GPU.
I’m also pretty sure you can just dual boot windows on the steam deck if you want to have windows available.
I recently picked up a Steam Deck and I can also vouch for it; the device is far more than the sum of its parts and is clearly something Valve was only able to pull off after a decade plus of various software/hardware integration experiments.
SteamOS is the star of the show, and it is both fluid and easy to use while also putting more customization and flexibility at your fingertips than any other game interface I’ve seen. The integration of custom operating system, custom game wrapper tech, and their standardized hardware has produced a device that offers the power and flexibility of PC gaming with a user experience that is getting closer and closer to the “never think about it” ease of use that consoles provide.
It’s not the most powerful; it’s really a 720/800P gaming machine, but games look great at that resolution and you can run a lot of games at comfortably playable frame rates.
I had some doubts after I bought mine when I saw the ROG Ally come out alongside hundreds of “OMG THE STEAM DECK KILLER HAS ARRIVED” videos; but it didn’t take long until I saw a lot of those same content creators return their Ally and come back to the steam deck because although the hardware is slightly more powerful, the user experience end is so much worse than it just wasn’t worth it. Not to mention some serious QC issues with it.
I’ve been a PC gamer for a long time; I think I’ve been active on Steam for 18 years now. The Steam Deck is the best PC Gaming experience I’ve ever had. The hardware is great, the controls (and mapping ability of those controls) are great, the interface is great…everything is just top notch about it. Do I wish it was more powerful? Well that’d be great, and one day it will be. But everything about the experience is so good, I don’t mind some of the drawbacks. It’s encouraged me to get into my backlog of games and genuinely enjoy exploring them again. The Steam Deck just makes it so seamless and easy to play your games.
In fact, I’m getting close to time to build a new PC, and the Steam Deck has really changed my thoughts on it. Seeing how far Proton and SteamOS have come…I just really want Valve to take another shot at the Steam Box. A lot of its shortcomings aren’t issues now, and add in some good Steam Deck integration and have it target 1440P/4K Upscaling, you could create an affordable box that taps into a successful and growing ecosystem. I’d buy one in an instant and just not bother with a new PC build in the years ahead.
That’s how much I genuinely believe that the Steam Deck/SteamOS experience is that good these days!
I own Steam Deck and the ROG Ally. Steam Deck is a simpler experience, ROG Ally is more powerful and offers a true desktop experience in a handheld.
and offers a true desktop experience in a handheld.
Awkwardly telling us it’s an unsuited Windows 11 installation on a handheld. Would not want it on my desktop, let alone on my unwieldy handheld.
No I’m telling you that you can have more of a direct desktop experience on a handheld like ROG Ally. There’s no compatibility issues - apps and games all work as expected. What Steamdeck provides is streamlined experience but it is also limited somewhat as a result - can’t easily switch between, say, a browser and a game, can’t easily run desktop apps such as Wallpaper Engine or productivity apps. There’s a use case for Ally.
Steam Deck punches way above its weight. But it does so much thanks to its lower resolution. Though in the format 720p isn’t bad at all. It’s what the switch uses as well.
Skip all the Chinese alternatives, they require far more tweaking / researching than you’re fit for (judged solely by this post).
Really I’d break it down to games and game types you want to play. If you want say Genshin Impact then it’s a lot easier to go with the ROG Ally. There are other Asian games that also don’t play nice with Linux. Multiplayer titles also tend to be finicky with Linux. The ROG Ally is also strong enough to dock to a 1080p screen for titles like Valorant or CSGO. If that is appealing.
If you’re playing mainly older games then the deck is the obvious choice, it’s a beast when it comes to emulation and has much better battery life in that setting than the ROG Ally. It’s also arguably more plug-and-play especially if you play mostly steam games.
Running Windows on the Deck isn’t very good, it kills the decks battery advantage and the lower performance becomes more obvious. Same running Linux on the ROG is also missing out on what it’s actually good at and Linux won’t improve the battery life much.
800p!
Also the 42fps setting is wonderful
Steam Deck has better software support than ROG Ally. Also, the latter only sports standard analogs, and SD offers two trackpads (which are great, btw).
On the other hand, ROG has more raw power and a better display. I don’t know anything meaningful about the rest you mentioned.
As for the OS, Linux seems better suited for these kinds of devices. Proton runs almost anything and offers a great experience, and on top off that, you can still use it as a daily PC with the use of peripherals. But I’m probably somewhat biased, as I know and love my SD.
Thank you all. This discussion is really helping me making a decision. I even thought that YouTubers are being paid for well advertising all these Chinese alternatives and put the Steam Deck in bad light.
I’d like to second what Veraxus said. I have a steam deck and the ease of use factors are off the chart. At this point my gaming PC sits nearly entirely unused, I do everything on my steam deck, even playing Caves of Qud lol
I bought a Onexplayer mini. I massively regret having done this instead of spending less money on a steam deck. the batery life stinks. I wish I had touchpads.
You should not just assumed a large community is telling the truth about their products. Steam Deck is still just a machine that requires Proton to work. You are at the mercy of Valve corp and the community. If a game doesn’t work than the game will not work. Steam Deck is not amazing in what people here have told you, it’s a machine that runs limited Steam games, nothing else mattered.
