The ROG Xbox Ally is here, and while it’s not exactly a true Xbox — it’s made by Asus, not Microsoft — its marks a big moment: the entry of one of the game industry’s biggest players into the handheld market. This is a space which, not long ago, had been totally ceded to Nintendo. But now there is competition in the form of the upstart, if still relatively niche, PC handheld market. This market is led, and was created, by another massive player: Valve, with its Steam Deck. Meanwhile, Nintendo looks to consolidate its position and ensure its hegemony with the recently released Switch 2.
Of these three major players, which should you buy? The decision is complicated; both Steam Deck and Xbox Ally come in a range of specs and price points, and the three platforms do fundamentally different things, especially the Switch 2. But still, by breaking it down, perhaps we can come to a definitive conclusion. Let’s get stuck in.
Design, build quality, and materials
All three devices are sturdy, well made, and reassuring to use. The Xbox Ally is the chunkiest of the three, and the Switch 2 by far the slimmest. With its detachable controllers, Nintendo’s console is the most delicate, but thanks to the strong magnetic attachment system for the Joy-Con 2s, that never feels like a weak point, as it did with the previous Switch.
The Switch 2 easily outclasses its PC rivals in terms of materials, packaging, and design, however. The silky matte finish, the steel buttons, the clean, sharp edges, and the playful coral and aqua highlights all look great and feel good to the touch. Nintendo has crammed the Switch 2 into an amazingly slender package that is much quieter and much classier than the competition, and it feels like a premium device, despite being the cheapest to buy.
Winner: Switch 2
Controls and ergonomics
These three consoles all boast quite different approaches to control. The Steam Deck is wide and squared-off, with awkwardly placed sticks and buttons to make room for two touchpads. The D-pad is poor quality, but the customizable buttons on the back face are excellent.
The Xbox Ally is more like a traditional game controller with a screen in the middle. The full grips make it the most comfortable to hold, and the stick and button placement is excellent (apart from the back-face buttons). It also has the best analog triggers.
The Switch 2 offers motion and even mouse controls via its detachable Joy-Con 2 controllers. The lack of analog triggers and a proper D-pad can cause issues, but the button switchgear is the best quality, with a responsive, clicky feel. Unlike the others, it has no controller grips, which can make it tiring to hold.
They all have touchscreens but none of these consoles feature Hall Effect sticks, sadly.
Winner: Xbox Ally for comfort, Switch 2 for versatility
Portability
Switch 2 weighs 534 g and is just 13.9 mm thick. Steam Deck weighs between 640 and 670 g depending on model and is 49 mm at its thickest (It’s also very wide). The Xbox Ally weighs 670 g and the Xbox Ally X a hefty 715 g, and is even thicker than a Steam Deck. The Switch 2’s slim and grip-free design allows for much smaller cases. These are all quite big consoles, but there’s no doubt which slips easiest into a bag.
Winner: Switch 2
Screen
The Switch 2 has the biggest screen: a 7.9-inch, 1080p, 120 Hz display with variable refresh rate and (rather weak) HDR. It’s not the highest-quality panel, but side by side with the others, the extra real estate is really noticeable.
The Xbox Ally has a 7-inch 1080p screen, also with 120 Hz and variable refresh rate. It’s fine.
The base Steam Deck’s 7-inch, 800p, 60 Hz screen is really showing its age now, but the Steam Deck OLED’s 7.4 inch screen (which also has HDR and is capable of 90 Hz) easily beats this competition for brightness and color reproduction. Despite its lower resolution, it just looks a lot nicer.
Winner: Steam Deck OLED for image quality, Switch 2 for size and everything else
Interface and usability
The Switch 2’s interface is a very lightly modified version of the Switch’s. It’s minimalist to the point of being basic, but it’s extremely responsive, lightning-fast to boot, and realistically offers everything you need. The eShop is much improved over the Switch, the integrated GameChat service is a big plus, and the interface’s sound effects are delightful.
The Steam Deck’s SteamOS operating system and Big Picture Mode interface do a good job of making a handheld PC feel as much like a console as possible. It can be slow to boot, but once in, it’s pretty stable and responsive, as well as being nicely laid out and crammed with useful info from the Steam platform.
The Xbox Ally boasts Microsoft’s first attempt to make Windows gaming console-like with the “Xbox full screen experience,” but it has a long way to go. It’s prone to quirks and crashes, it can be sluggish, and core device management features like storage and connectivity are relegated to a separate app. You can always boot to full Windows to do whatever you need, but… it’s Windows.
Winner: Switch 2
Game compatibility
The good news is that all three devices offer access to vast libraries of excellent games.
The Switch 2 is the most restricted, if you can say that about a console that is backward-compatible with almost the entirety of the Switch’s huge library. It balances that out with access to dozens of brilliant Nintendo exclusives that can’t be played anywhere else.
Out of the box, the Steam Deck offers access to the biggest and most vital game store in the world, Steam. Compatibility is variable, but Valve has done a good job with testing and labelling to indicate how well games will play. The Proton compatibility layer means most Windows PC games will run, despite this not being a Windows device; and if you’re up for tinkering, you can get other game stores running on it, too.
As a Windows PC, the Xbox Ally runs the biggest range of games of all three out of the box. Quick and easy setup of Steam, Battle.net, GOG, and other stores massively expands its library without the need for any fiddling, while out-of-the box support for Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere titles is a huge plus.
Winner: Xbox Ally
Tech specs and storage
For the Switch 2, this is simple: Nintendo’s console comes in one version, which offers a rather meagre 256 GB of fast storage (expandable via microSD Express card) and 12 GB of RAM. It’s powered by a custom Nvidia Tegra T239 processor, which means it has exclusive (for a handheld) access to Nvidia’s class-leading DLSS upscaling tech.
Depending how much you spend, the Steam Deck comes with 256, 512 GB, or 1 TB of rather slow storage (expandable via Micro SD card). All models have 16 GB of RAM and are powered by a custom AMD processor based on the Zen 2 that is showing its age, but still surprisingly capable.
The base Xbox Ally is powered by a similar AMD Ryzen Z2 processor, has 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage (expandable via Micro SD). The Xbox Ally X has a far more powerful Z2 Extreme processor as well as 24 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage.
Winner: Xbox Ally X, obviously. It’s pretty much a tie between the base models; the Switch 2 looks worse on paper, but its faster storage and DLSS compatibility count for a lot.
Performance
Performance is obviously closely linked to outright power, but it’s also about how efficiently and smoothly that power is used. The Xbox Ally X is by far the most powerful of these machines and will run much more graphically impressive games, and be capable of faster frame rates. (The Steam Deck’s lower screen resolution does help mitigate its power deficit, though.)
But Switch 2 has a different and very significant advantage over the PC handhelds, which is that any Switch 2 game has been engineered and optimized to run on its specific architecture, and subjected to Nintendo’s quality control. So games will, in theory, be me more stable, run more smoothly, and sometimes be more graphically impressive than on the similarly powered Steam Deck and base Xbox Ally. (Cyberpunk 2077 is a good example.)
Winner: Xbox Ally X for power, Switch 2 for consistency and reliability
Battery life
Battery lifeThis varies hugely depending on the game and settings, and the device itself; the Xbox Ally X has a beefy battery but it draws more power, nullifying its advantage there (although it does offer a range of power modes). The truth is that all three consoles are underwhelming in terms of battery life, managing just 2 hours when playing demanding games, and somewhere between 6 and 8 hours of lighter use. The best all-rounder is probably the Steam Deck OLED, which has an upgraded battery but the same processor as the base model, and can go a little longer.
Winner: Steam Deck OLED
Versatility and connectivity
The Switch 2 is supplied with an HDMI-equipped dock for playing on TV, and detachable controllers that can be combined into a standalone game pad or used separately for local multiplayer. A kickstand enables playing in tabletop mode, too. It’s got two USB-C ports, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.3; the dock has a further 2 USB ports and and ethernet port for wired connection.
The Steam Deck has a single USB-C port and a headphone jack socket. The base model has Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 5; the OLED models have Bluetooth 5.3 and WiFi 6E. A dock is available with more features than the Switch 2’s, but it’s $79 extra, and you’ll need a game pad, too.
Both models of Xbox Ally have two USB-C ports, a headphone jack socket, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.4. There’s no dock specific to the Xbox Ally included or available yet, but plenty of options available from Asus and third parties that will allow TV play.
Winner: Switch 2
Value for money
At $450, the Switch 2 packs in a lot of versatility and features as well as a premium build. It’s not cheap, exactly, and 256 GB of onboard storage is disappointing, but overall it represents solid value.
The base Steam Deck costs only $400, but at $550 the 512 GB OLED model is perhaps at the sweet spot of spec and price, with its superb screen, strong battery life, great out-of-the box experience, and huge potential.
The base Xbox Ally offers a bit more flexibility for an extra $50; the Xbox Ally X is powerful, but at $1,000, is it really powerful enough?
Winner: Switch 2, but Steam Deck is compelling too
Overall
In one sense, this is an apple-to-apple-to-orange comparison. People buy Nintendo consoles and PC handhelds for very different reasons, and a decision is more likely to be swung by exclusive Nintendo games on one side, or access to huge PC libraries on the other, than any other reason.
At the same time, in pure hardware terms, these devices have very similar form factors and capabilities. And looked at in isolation, it’s easy to see why Nintendo’s market dwarfs that of the PC handhelds. (At nearly 6 million, Switch 2 sales are already high enough to match the size of the entire PC handheld market.) Switch 2 has the most category wins in our test. No PC handheld manufacturer can hope to match Nintendo’s design and manufacturing resources; the Switch 2 likely won’t have true competition until Sony decides to get back into portable gaming.
All of that said, the PC handhelds offer almost boundless gaming possibilities for those willing to tinker and put up with a few quirks. The Xbox Ally’s breathtaking out-of-the-box game compatibility is a big selling point, especially for Game Pass subscribers and PC gamers who aren’t only invested in Steam. But the user experience isn’t quite there yet. Steam Deck is more attractively priced and much nicer to use day-to-day, and remains the PC handheld market leader for good reason.
Different gamers will make their choice between these machines for their own, entirely valid reasons. But looked at as objectively as possible, there can be only one winner. Switch 2 is an easier to use, better made, better designed, more portable, more versatile, more reliable device at a competitive price. Nintendo is playing in a different league.
