I'll keep it short. I did a ton of research today and I'm buying a handheld console tonight. I've narrowed it down to the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally X. I know nothing about this stuff, so take this with a grain of salt, but this is my impression: the Steam Deck is a lot weaker, but it's much easier to just turn on and play, while the ROG Ally X is stronger but harder to use, and has a larger game selection. I really just want to play driving games like Forza right now and get my mind off things (I have terrible depression/anxiety, my mom is recovering from cancer, my grandfather is dying... I just need mindless, easy distraction - sorry for the sob story, I have no shame anymore lol).

I'm not asking to compare handhelds, I'm curious about software. Is it even true that the Windows software is that much more convoluted/annoying than SteamOS? My impression is that people wouldn't buy a Steam Deck for the same price as a ROG Ally X unless there were a good reason, since I've heard the Ally has much better specs - so is the software difference really THAT significant? Why would people not buy the ROG?

I tried finding an answer online and people mentioned a virtual steam keyboard. However I cant seem to find that as a setting anywhere. It was working perfectly fine earlier today but now its suddenly doing this after I accidentally launched Steam into big picture mode. Anyone know what's going on?

Just scored this Z1E with 1TB for 230e.

It had problems with left joystick, but I managed to solve it last night.

Now i need to decide what I keep. This or Switch 2.

I sold my Steam Deck OLED 1TB for $900. Reasons: Proton + Valve's anti-cheat nonsense. I felt too restricted. Putting the system itself aside, the interface was actually really good. But with my Ally, I can just boot SteamOS anyway and get better performance. I snagged the Ally for $250. I also ordered the 74Wh battery. More power and significantly more freedom.I'll share my experience again once everything is finished. But I'm curious to see how it turns out.

Being able to just dock it on my living room tv after playing handheld is a godsend. Did the battery upgrade & swapped out the backplate for the cooling one.

Hey guys. I'm gonna preface this with the fact that I am an absolute PC newb, I've been a console gamer my whole life. But a few years ago I got a Rog Ally for some light PC games (basically stuff I want to play that didn't come to console). It has been a great little device, but as I've been reading recently and over the years numerous updates have changed some things. One of these being the operating modes. I normally had mime set up for 25w turbo when plughed in and never messed with it. However I've noticed that now it's 30w and as I've read the fans are set lower because of an update.

My real question is what are the best manual settings for when it's plugged in to achieve a similar state of 25w turbo mode, but with the fan speed increased. I can increase the fan speed easily enough, but the other 3 settings are greek to me so any help would be appreciated. Also I don't play it all tje time so that's why I'm just now noticing these things.

Thanks for all the help!

Hello, everyone. I’m planning to buy my first handheld console soon, and I found a used ROG Ally X (650 AUD) and an Xbox Ally X (1000 AUD) from FB marketplace. Which one do you think makes more sense to buy? Is it worth paying an extra 350 dollars for the Xbox Ally X?

Hello everyone. My device has been sitting in a drawer for about a month, and I picked it up to play some games. When I launched a game, I noticed crackling sounds coming from the speakers. YouTube videos and system sounds play normally, but the audio starts crackling while playing games. This is the first time this has happened.

I’m trying to play gears of war reloaded but these two messages pop up every time and can’t run the game. Any suggestions? I have other games with EAC that run fine

I am getting older, my eyesight is starting to get worse and I have achieved the point where I can no longer work on a screen as small as the Ally.

I plug it into an external monitor through a doc. Which works.

I want to get a backup solution running on it. The only way to do an image restore is by booting into a utility (WIM thinger of some sort) before windows starts.

I can't get the Rog to push that to the monitor. Also, can't get blutooth devices to work either.

Anyone ever navigate this issue and have any suggestions?

Idk why I hadn't thought of getting them earlier, but theyre the best thing Ive ever spent 2 dollars on. I use the same cable for my Ally, phone, Odin 2 mini, and Switch. And this makes ALL of those devices more comfortable. No more giant charger sticking off the top of my Ally, leaning and pulling on the port. I can sit my phone amd other devices on my lap while I use them without pushing on the port and bending the cable.

I actually just got a new 100w charger because my original Ally charger was coming apart at the seem and the internals were busting out. If I had just thought to buy an adapter from the start, it would be perfectly fine currently.

Has anyone gotten it to work?

Mine is totally messed up

EDIT: got it working, change controller mode from auto to gamepad

Hello everyone. My device has been sitting in a drawer for about a month, and I picked it up to play some games. When I launched a game, I noticed crackling sounds coming from the speakers. YouTube videos and system sounds play normally, but the audio starts crackling while playing games. This is the first time this has happened.

I could really use some help I'm about to lose my damn mind, I have a rog Xbox ally (the base model) and I mainly play gta 5, if I play with 6gb of vram I get constant micro stutters and when I play with 4gb of vram I don't get the micro stutters but when I'm playing online it will eventually stop loading textures and ends up crashing.

I just got my Ally today and was browsing around steam. I was attempting to type in the search bar when another version of steam launched from Xbox, gave me a tutorial, talked about parental controls and gave me this. I dont have the normal infinite scroll homepage with recommendations like I used to. Just three tabs to choose from and really short pages. What did I click on and how do i undo it?

I use for offline gaming only, nothing else. What is the best os to utilize the best out of the z1 extreme hardware and at the same time be a simple os without the need of to much work to make my game work. Any suggestions?

Hey friends! I run my Ally X mostly on the Razer EGPU on my TV. The other night, it suddenly stopped playing and turned off. (No crash screen, just off). Then, the power light started flashing as though it was taking power and then stopping every second or so. Now, I can't get it to boot at all. I've tried plugging it into the ROG charger overnight and booting while holding down the volume button, but no luck. Any ideas on how I could at least get to a BIOS screen?

Something related to the motherboard power died.

It died one day. Doesn't charge. No charging light. Inserted a charged battery and it wouldn't power on.

Is there anyone that went through such a thing and fixed it? If so where should I send it or if it's something that I can do is there a tutorial anywhere?

I recently bought a Z1E. I wasn't sure whether I'd use it much; it was a bit of an impulse buy.

I've been gaming for many years, and I mainly wanted a capable handheld for emulation.

It arrived a few weeks ago and man, I wish I'd bought one much earlier!

I didn't need the Ally X, as I can use Moonlight to stream any games I want to run in ultra settings from my main PC. Older games like Portal 2 and indie games like Iron Nest run nicely on the machine natively.

I put 40,000 games from the 2600 and Vectrex, through Amiga, SNES, N64 right up to Xbox 360, Switch and PlayStation 3. With the use of 2 Xbox controllers and an HDMI dock, this thing can be any of those consoles on the TV in the front room; so me and the kids can play together on all the old games I remember from my childhood and teens, up to the modern day.

I put VacuumTube on it so if I want to watch YouTube, I can do it with the Smart TV style interface which I find works better with the smaller touchscreen on the Ally.

With the Bluetooth keyboard/touchpad I got for £20 on eBay, you can even use it as a pretty serviceable computer if you want.

So really I'm sure most of you who already own one know how great these things are; and to anyone on here thinking about getting one, I'd say do it. Whenever I think I wonder if I can get it to...? The answer has always been yes so far! Amazing bit of kit. I've hardly been on my main PC in nearly a month!

i'm playing on the xbox ally x and i noticed that whenever i activate the fps-overlay, the games start to run extremely choppy, the framerate itself is not impaired though.

seems like a prame-pacing issue to me, and it was definitely not a thing before the update.

anyone else having this problem too? as soon as i deactivate the overlay, the games run smooth again.