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ROG Ally X vs Steam Deck OLED: What’s the difference?


Asus has finally revealed its new premium gaming handheld, the ROG Ally X, but how does it compare to Valve’s popular Steam Deck OLED?

While the two portable gaming machines look similar on the surface, there are key differences between the two, from screen tech to processing power and pricing, that could sway your buying decision one way or the other.

While we’ve not yet gone hands-on with the ROG Ally X, we’ve spent plenty of time with the Steam Deck OLED. With that said, here’s how the two compare on paper. 

The Steam Deck OLED has better screen tech

The Steam Deck OLED has a trick up its sleeve in the form of, yes, you guessed it, an OLED display. 

Steam Deck OLED with a game on screenSteam Deck OLED with a game on screen
Steam Deck OLED

More specifically, the Stream Deck OLED sports a 7.4-inch touchscreen OLED screen with a 1200 x 800 resolution. While the latter is dwarfed by the ROG Ally X’s Full HD resolution, the OLED tech should deliver a superior visual experience with deep blacks and vibrant colours that’ll look incredible. 

That said, the ROG Ally X’s 7-inch LCD screen shouldn’t be written off entirely, even if it can’t achieve such deep blacks as the competing OLED panel. As noted, it has a higher Full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution, and it also has a faster refresh rate at 120Hz compared to the Steam Deck OLED’s 90Hz refresh rate which allows for more frames per second in games.

The ROG Ally X has a larger battery

When it comes to battery life, the ROG Ally X should have the upper hand with a much larger battery than the Steam Deck OLED, measuring at 80Wh compared to the 50Wh of its competitor. 

The ROG Ally X’s AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme chipset – that we’ll get to in a sec – is also much more energy efficient, produced using a 4nm process, compared to the 7nm process of the Steam Deck OLED’s custom AMD processor. 

The two combined should result in much better day-to-day battery life than the Steam Deck OLED, but we can’t say for sure until we’ve benchmarked the new handheld games console.

ROG Ally XROG Ally X
ROG Ally X

The ROG Ally X has a more capable processor

As we just mentioned, the ROG Ally X sports the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme chipset as the regular ROG Ally – hence why this is a variant of the original ROG Ally and not the ROG Ally 2. 

That said, even without a new chipset for the ROG Ally X, Asus’ handheld remains the more capable of the two when compared to the Steam Deck OLED. 

The custom AMD chipset used within Valve’s handheld is built on a rather dated 7nm process, with four cores and eight threads that clock in at a maximum of 3.5GHz. The ROG Ally X’s Z1 Extreme, on the other hand, is built on a more efficient 4nm process, and with a boosted eight cores with 16 threads, it clocks in at an impressive 5.1GHz.

While we’ve not specifically benchmarked the ROG Ally X just yet, we can look at just how well the ROG Ally and its identical Z1 Extreme chipset compares to the Steam Deck OLED to get some idea of the performance on offer.

The ROG Ally X has more RAM

One of the key upgrades of the ROG Ally X compared to the regular ROG Ally is an abundance of RAM, with the Ally X sporting an upgraded 24GB of LPDDRX5 7400 memory that should further improve the performance of the top-end gaming handheld. 

That’s also a big jump compared to the Steam Deck OLED’s RAM offering, coming with just 16GB of slightly slower LPDDR5 RAM. It’ll be interesting to see how the difference in RAM will translate to the gaming experience once we go hands-on in the near future. 

Steam Deck OLED in handSteam Deck OLED in hand
Steam Deck OLED

The Steam Deck OLED is cheaper

With a faster processor, more RAM and other upgrades compared to the Steam Deck OLED, it shouldn’t be too surprising to learn that the ROG Ally X is the more expensive of the two gaming handhelds – and by a fair bit too.

That’s because the Steam Deck OLED starts at a rather tempting £479 if you want 512GB of storage, jumping to £569 if you want 1TB of storage to play with. The ROG Ally X, on the other hand, comes in at a cool £799 with 1TB of storage as standard.

The Steam Deck OLED is available to buy now, while the ROG Ally X is expected to be released in the coming weeks.

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