The first time I installed Bayesight on a Windows gaming handheld, I laughed. it looked like As such An obvious clone of Valve's Steam Deck interface. Its many bugs kept me away.
now one asus rog ally x run bazite It has replaced Steam Deck in my life. Right now, it might be the best handheld your time and money can buy – as it brings 90 percent of the ease of use to the deck with the companion's more powerful hardware, larger 80 watt-hour battery, and variable refresh rate screen. . Depending on the game it may also offer better Performance and battery life comparable to Windows handhelds. I've been testing it for five months, and I've hardly looked back.
This combination won't be for everyone, as the $800 Ally But since Buzzit can turn a Windows handheld into a true Steam Deck rival, I believe this alone proves that handheld makers are making the wrong choice if they stubbornly stick with Windows, and others should do this Join Lenovo in saving that bet As soon as possible. Buzzit is one way – another may also come as soon as next monthWhile we are expecting Valve to open up its SteamOS to more partners.
In Review after Review Regarding handheld gaming PCs, I've tried to explain: Windows is not a good portable gaming experience. It's bloated, full of self-service prompts about sharing your data with Microsoft, subscribing to Microsoft's services, and Use Microsoft appsIt's not designed to let you navigate with gamepad controls or even do simple keyboarding on the 7-inch touchscreen display. It's no good ensuring that games launch full-screen, and worst of all, I've never been able to trust the Windows handheld to turn on properly when I put it in a bag.
Steam Deck with Linux-based SteamOS has no such problem. Its away It's closer to the “it just works” experience of the Nintendo Switch or PS5. I know that my game will almost always be ready to play as soon as I press the power button, and the GamePad-accessible keyboard will be ready whenever I want it. But SteamOS is not widely available Other The company's handhelds – which brings us to Bazight.
open-source baizeite There's a way to bring the features of SteamOS to hardware that doesn't yet have Valve's blessing. it technically SteamOS, because it is based on Fedora Linux rather than Arch Linux, includes many different and/or updated components and lots of custom tweaks. But it plays the same games in exactly the same way, and the parts you touch are sometimes even ridiculously similar. The bugsite includes an exact copy of the Steam Deck's UI, right down to Valve's own tutorial on how to use the Steam Deck's buttons – all of which should theoretically be fine with Valve, as it apparently does. Allows anyone to distribute an unlimited number of copies of that software. under a limited license,
Despite what you may have heard, it's not true that Windows handhelds offer more games than SteamOS. Valve's Proton compatibility layer not only runs many Windows games better Compared to equivalent Windows handhelds, many titles that were broken and abandoned on Windows have already been fixed by the Linux network. While Linux-based SteamOS has less popular multiplayer shooting games due to publishers Are not willing or able to offer similar anti-fraud solutionsI've found this to be a small price worth paying.
To me, the surprising thing is that Bazite doesn't feel like a hack. To me, it's so much more reliable than Windows that it makes Windows feel foreign on a handheld, even though I use Windows on my desktop every day. And it's quite easy to install, with its own installer that walks you through the setup. You can also enable dual-boot the BaseSight with Windows by holding down your handheld's boot menu shortcut button while you switch between the two.
And when I tried Asus ROG Ally and fasterSmooth, And Slightly less power was used with Buzzit's Linux-based operating system.
It's not night and day. While I saw up to 13 percent faster performance in this cyberpunk 2077 And Deus Ex: Mankind DividedSometimes the performance was similar to that in other games. In ReturnA particularly demanding game where you crash land on an alien planet filled with destructible objects and swarming enemies, my framerate was initially poor, though a recent update evened it out; In shadow of the tomb raiderMy framerate was better initially but an update has now made it worse.
Even with a 13 percent faster game, we're typically only talking about a handful of frames; I've never seen such a speed increase that a game became playable on BaseSight that wasn't playable on Windows simply through faster framerates.
All games were tested at low 720p.
But they often feel more comfortable with fewer interruptions! Like Steam Deck, I've noticed that the framerate usually doesn't drop as low with Buzzit as it does with Windows. Many people feel faster and look better on the Ellie Can generate instead capping on arbitrary numbers. He may feel choppy. (This is a great feature for GPU-limited handhelds, and it's great that Bazzite supports it today.)
Similarly, I didn't notice any battery life savings either. Everyone game. I sometimes notice that the Ele Does not happen. In dirt rallyI saw the same 3 hours, 8 minutes from both operating systems and armored corps 6 And persona 3 reload Allies drained at an equal pace, each offering three hours of play. but in dave diverI was able to run the Bayesight for almost an extra hour at 4 hours, 14 minutes, which was pretty close to my 4 hours, 42 minutes result with the Steam Deck OLED.
That's because, like SteamOS, Baseite makes it easy to determine how much power and performance you're using. Not only does Bayesight have the same built-in GameScope monitoring tool Valve uses on the Steam Deck, but you can also double-tap Ally X's quick access button to pull up an integrated version of the handheld daemon, a power User tools that let you change. The exact TDP of your chip to instantly turn on turbo or battery saving (or RGB lighting, or rumble, or many others).
To be honest, the interface is more responsive and reliable than Asus's own Armory Crate UI overlay, although it can't do everything Asus does with its hardware. Two prime examples: Ally and you can't hold down the power button for quick access to Linux desktop mode or the shutdown menu.
But using those chip wattage adjustments, I easily managed to improve battery life compared to Windows in some of the less demanding games I test, where Steam decks typically circle around the competition in the past. Runs. in both Balatro And kill the pinnacleI reduced the handheld's total battery to just 6.4 watts by setting the chip to 5 watts and setting screen brightness to minimum, which theoretically gives you a maximum of 12.5 hours from the 80 watt-hour pack. That's class-leading battery life, folks—even better than the Steam Deck OLED.
And when you need more performance, the Ele When I set the Ellie hell diver 2and about two hours baldur's gate 3At a very playable 900p resolution with a “balanced” level of render scaling. (If you can tolerate a low-resolution photo, you can get about three hours bg3 At 17W TDP.)
In short, I'm not more concerned about the battery of the Ellie Only lose four percent battery throughout.
But there are a few things about the Steam Deck OLED and its native SteamOS that I miss. While BaseSight includes Steam's amazing controller remapping and supports the ROG Ellie Gives. You don't get the Deck OLED's slightly larger screen with more vibrant colors and great HDR light. I personally still think the Deck has better ergonomics as well, although the Ellie X is definitely my second favorite among today's leading handhelds.
Gamepad controls sometimes take a little longer to reactivate from sleep, even without turning on extreme standby. Bluetooth microphone support seems to have been completely discontinued in Buzzit. Sometimes when I'm trying to uninstall a game there is a long delay before the system responds. Whenever there's a Bayesight update, I'll just see Valve's last update message instead of Bayesite and have no idea what I'm going to get. Sometimes I see that performance degrades after an update, like how shadow of the tomb raider It's suddenly giving me lower framerates than Windows. And it's hard to tell how long a system update will take to install.
Also, there is a weird issue where if I drain the battery almost completely, down to 1 percent or 0 percent, the whole system will crawl to such a painful crawl that it takes 10 minutes to save your game and shut down Ally X. May take place. And I need to turn it off, because even charging to 100 percent doesn't get things any faster again. It's easy enough to stop this by simply plugging it into the system at the five percent or three percent mark, as you'll need to do with most other handhelds.
I've told Buzzit's maintainers about these things, and they say they're working on them — including a hibernation mode, which should specifically alleviate the 0-percent charging weirdness, and more. Smooth updates. “We're also improving support for other manufacturers, especially OnePlus and the next updated GPD,” says Baseite contributor Anthes Kapenakakis, who is also the lead developer of the handheld daemon.
I don't think I would personally buy the Asus ROG Ele X in place of the Steam Deck, at least not right now. At $800, it costs almost double and hundreds more than the base Steam Deck I personally recommend the OLED versionTo be worth that extra money, I'd like to know if the ROG Ellie X is not only the best handheld today, but also the best handheld tomorrow. I'll personally look forward to seeing and hearing a new crop of handhelds at CES in January What Valve, Microsoft, AMD and Lenovo had to say at their January 7 event,
But if I already have Asus ROG Ally Using a dual-boot configuration To make sure I can swap back easily. You might be surprised how much you'll miss Windows. You may be surprised to find how much better the portable experience can be.
Photos by Shawn Hollister/The Verge