I Should Have Bought a Steam Deck
In early 2022, Valve launched the Steam Deck. They carved out a whole new market segment for mobile PC gaming, bringing the best aspects of consoles like the Nintendo Switch to their large software platform. Although small handheld PCs had technically existed before, no one had quite nailed the combination of power, features, convenience, and price that Valve balanced with the Steam Deck.
Like with any successful tech product, other companies got to work on competitors. Last summer, Asus launched perhaps the most high-profile of these so far in the ROG Ally. It had a nationwide retail roll-out in the US with whatever is left of Best Buy. I happened to run into some supply on launch day, and I impulse bought the $700 model.
I was happy to be able to get one right away without the production and shipping delays of the Steam Deck. The more powerful AMD Z1 Extreme processor inside appealed to me, as did the 120hz Freesync display. I liked the potential gaming flexibility of the Windows OS over the slightly more console-like nature of Steam OS. I wouldn’t be limited to just Steam-certified games, and I would theoretically have an easier time installing games from other store platforms.
