Performance on the Ally is incredible. I benchmarked the CPU against my 5900X desktop and the Ally won (single threaded)!
It’s all down to the awful software experience. Every time I pick it up, there’s something annoying about it. Armoury crate has crashed, the battery died while it was sleeping, it doesn’t recognize controller input, it hasn’t detected a game is running and is still in power saving mode, it’s being finicky about the USB-C adapter and throttling (only the included adapter seems to work, anything else, including 100W and PPS etc. adapters say they aren’t powerful enough), the RGB lights are freaking out, it needs a restart. It’s just perpetual troubleshooting and annoyance.
When it works, it’s amazing. The whole experience is gorgeous. It’s super fast, the display is smooth, etc.
Combined with the microsd card overhearing issues, I just don’t think it’s a good purchase. I’ll definitely be sending mine back.
How is the sleep/resume functionality? I’ve heard mixed reports about Windows-based handhelds ranging anywhere from “it doesn’t have anything like that” to “it works perfectly fine just like Deck/Switch”.
That is pretty much the killer feature of the Deck for me, and as far as I’m currently aware, that’s enabled by it using Linux/SteamOS. If I can’t sleep/resume a game on a handheld, I’d be much more inclined to just play on my desktop and reap the benefits of improved performance and graphics.
Me too, I always ask about this, and this is always suspiciously missing from every single review. I assume it just doesn’t work, otherwise we would have seen someone mention it, the steam deck’s reviews all mentioned that since it’s one of (if not the) most important feature for a handheld. For example (just rewatched it to be sure) LTT’s review doesn’t mention that on the ROG, but on the Deck the quote is
[About the sleep and come back to game feature] An Xbox, sure, but I would like to see a Windows PC do that.
So even back then they acknowledged that windows was not capable at that time of doing that (remember they had other handhelds at the time), but they never brought it up on the ROG review, which is very suspicious, almost as if Asus is trying to find a fix and preventing reviewers from talking about it. But that might be too much time hat on my side.
I don’t typically trust LTT reviews anymore. Omissions like that - and no follow-ups for it - lead me to believe they’re just advertisers in tech people’s clothing.
ETA Prime can likewise be a bit light on criticism at times.
Ya, I’ve had it work once or twice where it just comes back and the game is able to resume. Generally though, the system is either dead or shut down or hibernating and not usable. I generally don’t even try and use the suspend option. I save and exit out of the game to avoid messing up my save games.
It absolutely does not work as well as the Switch. It’s one of the various constant annoyances of using the Ally.
I mean, I’m with you with the software being the sole reason for it leaving to be desired, but even if YMMV, this is a little harsh…
Yes the Ally is more powerful, there is no question about that. It also is much more expensive. And from a performance-per-money point of view, the steam deck wins hands down.
The battery “burn out” can be mitigated by using the “storage mode” instead of letting the device sleep, which, while inconvenient to use regularly, definitely lets you pick your device up at a battery level reasonably close to what it was when you put it down…
I have had zero problems with controller input so I cannot say anything about that.
USB PD is really complicated to implement (check the spec, if only just the number of pages…), so there’s no surprise about your annoying charging experiences; but that’s something to do with the USB consortium and the USB PD spec, not VALVe.
Performance on the Ally is incredible. I benchmarked the CPU against my 5900X desktop and the Ally won (single threaded)!
It’s all down to the awful software experience. Every time I pick it up, there’s something annoying about it. Armoury crate has crashed, the battery died while it was sleeping, it doesn’t recognize controller input, it hasn’t detected a game is running and is still in power saving mode, it’s being finicky about the USB-C adapter and throttling (only the included adapter seems to work, anything else, including 100W and PPS etc. adapters say they aren’t powerful enough), the RGB lights are freaking out, it needs a restart. It’s just perpetual troubleshooting and annoyance.
When it works, it’s amazing. The whole experience is gorgeous. It’s super fast, the display is smooth, etc.
Combined with the microsd card overhearing issues, I just don’t think it’s a good purchase. I’ll definitely be sending mine back.
How is the sleep/resume functionality? I’ve heard mixed reports about Windows-based handhelds ranging anywhere from “it doesn’t have anything like that” to “it works perfectly fine just like Deck/Switch”.
That is pretty much the killer feature of the Deck for me, and as far as I’m currently aware, that’s enabled by it using Linux/SteamOS. If I can’t sleep/resume a game on a handheld, I’d be much more inclined to just play on my desktop and reap the benefits of improved performance and graphics.
Me too, I always ask about this, and this is always suspiciously missing from every single review. I assume it just doesn’t work, otherwise we would have seen someone mention it, the steam deck’s reviews all mentioned that since it’s one of (if not the) most important feature for a handheld. For example (just rewatched it to be sure) LTT’s review doesn’t mention that on the ROG, but on the Deck the quote is
So even back then they acknowledged that windows was not capable at that time of doing that (remember they had other handhelds at the time), but they never brought it up on the ROG review, which is very suspicious, almost as if Asus is trying to find a fix and preventing reviewers from talking about it. But that might be too much time hat on my side.
I don’t typically trust LTT reviews anymore. Omissions like that - and no follow-ups for it - lead me to believe they’re just advertisers in tech people’s clothing.
ETA Prime can likewise be a bit light on criticism at times.
Ya, I’ve had it work once or twice where it just comes back and the game is able to resume. Generally though, the system is either dead or shut down or hibernating and not usable. I generally don’t even try and use the suspend option. I save and exit out of the game to avoid messing up my save games.
It absolutely does not work as well as the Switch. It’s one of the various constant annoyances of using the Ally.
I mean, I’m with you with the software being the sole reason for it leaving to be desired, but even if YMMV, this is a little harsh…
Yes the Ally is more powerful, there is no question about that. It also is much more expensive. And from a performance-per-money point of view, the steam deck wins hands down.
The battery “burn out” can be mitigated by using the “storage mode” instead of letting the device sleep, which, while inconvenient to use regularly, definitely lets you pick your device up at a battery level reasonably close to what it was when you put it down…
I have had zero problems with controller input so I cannot say anything about that.
USB PD is really complicated to implement (check the spec, if only just the number of pages…), so there’s no surprise about your annoying charging experiences; but that’s something to do with the USB consortium and the USB PD spec, not VALVe.
What RGB lights!? 🤨 Mine doesn’t not have that…
I was talking about the Ally, not the steam deck.