Interesting review IMO, with colour accuracy comparison and benchmarks of DeckHD vs. original screen (and other “known good” screens).
I would be more tempted by an OLED screen upgrade, but colour accuracy looks pretty good tbh. Pricing is in line with an official (matte) screen replacement from ifixit - $99 USD.
I’m gonna get some hate for this, I love Valve bringing Linux gaming forwards with the Deck, but at what point is an ROG Ally a better choice?
Unless you’re buying a refurbished steam deck or the 64GB model, you’ll end up in the same price bracket but have a slower APU.
Battery life and SteamOS.
Yea the Ally can beat the steam deck in performance, but the battery life will be awful. If you want to get the same battery life as the steam deck you’ll get about the same performance.
Also steamOS is a much better OS for handhelds than windows. SteamOS is just more optimized for a handheld, it’s snappy, doesn’t eat all your battery in sleep and can play most windows games, sometimes even with slightly better performance.
Add ergonomics, controller quality and the trackpads on top of that.
If you don’t care about inputs and have to have windows anyways, maybe.
Seriously joysticks and touchscreens to control a cursor both blow though.
I have both and I prefer the steam deck. The Ally runs games better when they run, but the trip there always sucks, to the point that you never want to pick it up.
The Ally is actually much more of a “linux-like” experience because you can get more out of it, but you have to put a lot more work into it to get there. The steam deck is like a console.
If you’re willing to upgrade the SSD, the case and the screen, I don’t think it makes sense to choose the SD, but that’s one of the advantages of it - talk about hardware of software, it’s pretty much as open. The main advantage that remains is arguably Steam OS, but even then is it impossible to run it on an Ally?
If you’re willing to pay that price, you may as well buy a ROG Ally, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m very happy with the SD as it is.