Tinkering with SteamOS on the ROG Ally got me thinking: what would my dream handheld look like? Here’s my wishlist across OS, hardware, and games.
A while ago I took my dusty ROG Ally off my shelf and installed SteamOS on it. I had planned to install Bazzite for quite a while, but never got around to doing it. Since Valve has slowly been adding support for the ROG Ally to SteamOS, I reckoned it would be a good time.
The installation experience is quite decent. Installing SteamOS only took a couple of minutes (it took me longer to find a USB drive to no avail, so I ended up using an SD card), and then it was all about installing Decky Loader and a bunch of plugins to dial in the device (If you want a tutorial, hit reply and I’ll write one).
But while playing around with an ROG Ally running SteamOS, I kept asking myself if I prefer this admittedly still hacky experience, or if I should just use the Steam Deck in the first place. I also wondered if an ROG Ally running SteamOS is actually any better than an ROG Ally running Windows.
The thing is, after having tried so many handhelds throughout the time I've been writing overkill, I still haven’t found the one device that I’d deem perfect for my own experience. There’s always some trade-off made by a manufacturer that ends up bothering me in one way or another.
But what even does a perfect handheld look like to me? Especially one that could genuinely exist, without either breaking any laws of physics or turning into a 2,000 eurodollar expensive beast.
So, I figured it was time to write down what my ideal handheld would actually look like.
There are three categories that I'd like to cover for this 'perfect handheld' wishlist:
- The OS
- The hardware
- ..and a little note about games
So, let's start with the OS.
Operating System
To my own surprise, I want this thing to run Windows.