As things stand, the ROG Ally is one of the best handheld gaming PCs, the Steam Deck aside, particularly if you are after a portable powerhouse that is rocking Windows 11
Literally no one is looking for that. Some people might think they are, but they are misinformed.
The fact that the Deck doesn’t run Windows is a selling point. Sounds like higher management here needs to at least pretend to understand their product.
I actually run W11 on my SteamDeck, and would not recommend it for most users and definitely not for anyone to use for console. The biggest “killer-feature” all of these handhelds are missing is the ability to sleep like SteamOS allows and every other portable console for last two decades. It honestly makes these devices like the Ally with all their greatly improved specs look like cheap knockoffs since they can’t sleep, which could be a huge problem when using on the go.
Im blown away to learn thats not a normal feature for the other handheld gaming pcs.
I am also slightly less surprised, but still surprised, to learn there isnt a snappy name for this type of computer, like tower or laptop.
IDK, “handheld” is snappy imo. I have a desktop PC that sits on my desk, a laptop PC that can sit on my lap, and a handheld PC that I can hold with my hands.
Yep, the functional sleep is the singular feature that makes the Steam Deck stand out, in my opinion. Not that it isn’t a nice piece of hardware otherwise, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not unique in any other respect. The fact that you can use it like you would a Switch or something is the thing that sets it apart, and none of these upstart competitors seem to understand that.
Ah yes spy on me more daddy Windows and send my data to the NSA
All cringy jokes asside I switched away from Windows 11 for a reason, no way in hell I’m going back
Microsoft is looking for it and it wouldn’t surprise me if they are paying a decent penny for it to try to stop the Linux gaming momentum the deck is driving.
It’s entirely irrelevant to me. I don’t care what the specs are if it’s just running Windows.
I “really” love when “articles” seem to “randomly” throw in quotes around “single” words “because” they decided they “wanted” to be click-“baity”.
Will it be Linux based? No? Not based.
based, I’ll just keep buying stuff from valve I don’t want to deal with windows anymore.
They will try, and they will miss the mark and make an iffy experience even if the specs are good. I’ve heard the current one is definitely better than the others only in ease of taking apart and putting back together.
Until someone can come up with a better kb/m alternative for desktop mode nobody is beating the deck. Even the current deck solution has room for improvements. If you could edit the layout I could probably reach 80% of my qwerty speed using ‘isolinear’ colemak on the deck pads. Definitely can’t touch my real keyboard speeds on that layout though.
Upvote for a fellow colemak user!
What does isolinear mean in this context?
This is just a random image from search but basically in a grid like this rather than Remington typewriter key positions. It’s a lot easier to use blind IMO and less hand cramp-y. I could never type with ‘proper’ or consistent hand and finger position until I switched. I also used shift weirdly.
I always thought that term was ‘ortholinear’ - am also a fan and user of them, though mine are all splitsy in halfsies so that might be the difference…
Yeah you are right it’s Ortho. I have made some split boards too but I do too much one hand typing and Cheetos in the other making single board easier
Or god forbid you have a game that has a binding on the right hand side. Ugh. Yeah. Great for working though…
Or when you want to remap to play a text chat heavy game on any non QWERTY layout and almost can but Q and E are hard mapped to menu tabbing and it feels awful and colemak at least splits them.
Gboard version for people unfamiliar with it:
Android side note: swipe/glide type gives me better results than qwerty but alt layouts on screen typing are otherwise cursed.
Ah, that looks really weird to me, but then that is how Colemak looked when I was using QWERTY. Will read about them and see what their deal is.
Thanks for the info!
Uhh. Where are most of the letters and why is there upside down stuff?
When you make a lot of diy keyboards you end up with a bunch of random symbols and duplicate keys and one keyboard will get all the odds and sods because keycaps are weirdly expensive. It’s not my photo but I’m fairly certain that is what is up. If you touch type for real they can have anything. I don’t know where I put it, but my keyboard has those really dished out caps with some selectively upside down to angle them the wrong way, and tab and shift etc is in the middle of the board. People that have tried to use my computer think I’m insane.
A successor might be likely.
Actually competing with the Steam Deck isn’t. Their software blows.
It can try
I find that very unlikely actually. What SoC would it run? AMD hasn’t released anything stronger than the Z1 Extreme (which is just a power constrained laptop part) so the only alternative would be a variation on that, maybe one that works better under a tight power budget just like the AMD chip in the Steam Deck? However I’d argue, as a ROG Ally owner, that battery life improvements aren’t really that high on my wish list. If I could get anything it would be optimizations making the experience more stable and improve 1% lows. But most of that I don’t think is even on Asus, it’s more on AMD to tweak their drivers and on the game makers to tweak for the Z1 Extreme, which thankfully is in more than just the ROG Ally so it does make sense to do so.
valve make their own drivers so they can tweak how much them want, asus really can’t compete on that
I seriously wonder how Asus hopes to compete f they can’t touch the OS or the drivers and depend on Microsoft and AMD for everything.
That’s a really good point
