I just saw the ASUS handheld in the wild. It was running some FPS game pretty well.
Can anyone help me compare the two - Steam Deck OLED vs comparable ASUS version? Which do you prefer? Pros/cons?
I’m almost decided to buy the Deck OLED, but seeing that in the wild made me pause. It looks nice.
Rog ally: lots of headache and poor battery life but complete freedom to play any game and to get cheaper deals (GamePass, EGS).
Steam Deck OLED: Best handheld screen with great battery, but best for majority but not all steam games.
fwiw it is possible to get games from all the other stores. the only restriction is it has to be runnable on linux, which really isn’t that big of a deal anymore with the current state of proton. it is a bit more work than games from steam tho
Does proton extend to other stores?
Proton is just fancy Wine. You’re running the games from those other stores in a Wine prefix, and you can definitely choose Proton as your Wine version.
Frontends like Heroic or Lutris make that super easy.
You can also use Steam as a launcher. In Desktop Mode there is a menu entry “Add a Non-Steam game to my Steam Library”. For Windows games, you can just browse to their .exe file. After adding it to the library, you can open the Library Entry’s Properties page, and choose Proton as compatibility tool.
That way you get your non-Steam games in your Gaming Mode launcher.
To get nicer images, there’s a website named https://www.steamgriddb.com/ that also has a small Flatpak tool that you can use in Desktop Mode to set icons/banners for your Non-Steam games.
Yeah its an open source project with the configs based on the game not steam it’s self. Steam just supports its in their launcher.
Thanks for that clarification. I think it is still not possible to run Xbox GamePass, correct?
You can load windows on the steamdeck, nothing is stopping you. I actually have a Bootable microsd with windows to play gamepass games. That being said, the drivers for windows are a bit messy and setting it up is kinda a pain.
I mean if someone really wants to use XGS or EGS or games with anti cheats, ROG Ally ain’t so bad, but SD OLED is definitely the champion overall as it stands. Maybe if Windows is optimised for handled usage things may change, though I doubt anybody can slam laptop chips and expect SD OLED levels of battery life and efficiency.