u/termus

MS and Sony can push their handhelds, but I'm not looking for a locked down device to play games on. The reason the Steam Deck was such a sell for me was that it is a full PC. That I can do what I want with. I don't want "mobile" or console gaming, because they have turned them into predatory micro-transaction mess.

Ah thanks. That's what I thought. MicroSD cards are cheap enough and I boot to Windows once in a blue moon. Rather do that than adjust my partitions to give Windows a home on my device. It remains banished to the MicroSD. But yeah I could see how someone that uses Windows more frequently would want to go that route.

Got a reason why?

I'm all for competition and they are getting better but they just miss the mark. While some of them are faster than the Steam deck, their frame rate lows and averages don't get close to how stable it can be. Plus the touch pads, joy stick functions, 4 rear buttons. It's everything you need and the price is better than theirs. I had the original LED since launch and have since upgraded to the OLED model and it was absolutely worth it. The improvements they made to the touchpads, reduced weight and a gorgeous screen are fantastic.

It baffles me how people get the ROG Ally over it. Maybe because they hear that some games may not run on Linux? Those are usually competitive FPS' that I wouldn't want to play on a handheld anyway and if you really wanted to you could just install Windows 10/11 onto a MicroSD and boot to Windows.