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The Steam Deck has finally been surpassed — by a fork of Valve’s own experience

An Asus ROG Ally X running Bazzite has all but replaced the Steam Deck in my life.

For the moment, it may be the best handheld your time and money can buy — because it brings 90 percent of the Deck’s ease of use to the Ally’s more powerful hardware, larger 80 watt-hour battery, and variable refresh rate screen. But using those chip wattage adjustments, I easily managed to improve battery life even further than Windows in some of the least demanding games I test, ones where the Steam Deck has generally run circles around the competition in the past. While Bazzite does include Steam’s wonderful controller remapping and support the ROG Ally X’s gyroscope for precision aiming, it doesn’t magically give it a pair of twin touchpads to make generations of older mouse-and-trackball games work.

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