The primary time I put in Bazzite on a Home windows gaming handheld, I laughed. It seemed like such a blatant clone of Valve’s Steam Deck interface. Its many bugs saved me at bay.

Now, an Asus ROG Ally X working Bazzite has all however changed the Steam Deck in my life. For the second, it could be the most effective handheld your money and time can purchase — as a result of it brings 90 % of the Deck’s ease of use to the Ally’s extra highly effective {hardware}, bigger 80 watt-hour battery, and variable refresh fee display screen. Relying on the sport, it could possibly even provide higher efficiency and battery life than the exact same handheld with Home windows. I’ve been testing it for 5 months, and I’ve hardly ever seemed again.

This mixture received’t be for everybody, as a result of the $800 Ally X prices way over a Steam Deck, and Bazzite nonetheless has annoying quirks. However as a result of Bazzite can so convincingly rework a Home windows handheld into a real Steam Deck rival, I imagine it singlehandedly proves that handheld producers are making the improper alternative in the event that they doggedly keep on with Home windows, and that others ought to be a part of Lenovo in hedging that wager as quickly as doable. Bazzite is a method — one other might come as quickly as subsequent month, after we’re anticipating Valve to open up its SteamOS to extra companions. 

In evaluation after evaluation of handheld gaming PC, I’ve tried to elucidate: Home windows isn’t a great transportable gaming expertise. It’s bloated, stuffed with self-serving prompts to share your information with Microsoft, subscribe to Microsoft’s companies, and use Microsoft’s apps. It’s not designed to allow you to navigate with gamepad controls and even do easy keyboarding on a 7-inch touchscreen show. It’s not good at ensuring video games launch full-screen, and worst of all, I’ve by no means been in a position to belief a Home windows handheld to sleep and resume correctly once I drop it right into a bag.

The Steam Deck, with its Linux-based SteamOS, has no such issues. It’s far nearer to the “it simply works” expertise of a Nintendo Change or PS5. I do know my sport will virtually at all times be able to play as quickly as I hit the facility button, and there’s a gamepad-accessible keyboard able to go every time I like. However SteamOS hasn’t been broadly out there for different firm’s handhelds — which brings us to Bazzite. 

The open-source Bazzite is a method to convey SteamOS’s strengths to {hardware} that doesn’t but have Valve’s blessing. It’s not technically SteamOS, because it’s based mostly on Fedora Linux quite than Arch Linux, accommodates many alternative and/or up to date parts and quite a lot of customized tweaks. Nevertheless it performs the identical video games the identical actual manner, and the components you contact are generally even laughably the identical. Bazzite contains an actual copy of the Steam Deck’s UI proper all the way down to Valve’s personal tutorial on learn how to use the Steam Deck’s buttons — all of which ought to theoretically be OK with Valve, because it expressly permits anybody to distribute an infinite variety of copies of that software program beneath a restricted license.

Regardless of what you will have heard, it’s not true that Home windows handhelds provide extra video games than SteamOS. Not solely does Valve’s Proton compatibility layer run many Home windows video games higher than on an equal Home windows handheld, many titles which are damaged and deserted on Home windows have already been fastened by the Linux neighborhood. Whereas the Linux-based SteamOS does have fewer standard multiplayer capturing video games as a result of publishers aren’t prepared or in a position to provide the identical anti-cheat options, I’ve discovered it’s a small worth to pay.

To me, the shocking half is that Bazzite doesn’t really feel like a hack. For me, it’s been a lot extra dependable than Home windows that it makes Home windows really feel international on handhelds, although I take advantage of Home windows on my desktop each single day. And it’s pretty simple to arrange, with its personal installer that walks you thru setup. You may even competently dual-boot Bazzite alongside Home windows, holding down your handheld’s boot menu shortcut button(s) whenever you restart to swap between the 2.

And once I did that with the Asus ROG Ally X, immediately evaluating Bazzite and Home windows, I usually discovered video games ran sooner, smoother, and used barely much less energy with Bazzite’s Linux-based working system.

It’s not evening and day. Whereas I noticed as much as 13 % sooner efficiency in Cyberpunk 2077 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, generally efficiency was equivalent in different video games. In Returnal, the significantly demanding sport the place you crash-land on an alien planet stuffed with destructible objects and swarming enemies, my framerate was initially worse, although a current replace put it on par; in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, my framerate was initially higher however an replace has now made it worse. 

Even with video games which are 13 % sooner, we’re usually simply speaking a couple of small handful of frames; I by no means noticed sufficient velocity improve {that a} sport grew to become playable on Bazzite that wasn’t playable on Home windows via sooner framerate alone.

However they do usually really feel smoother, with fewer hitches! Just like the Steam Deck, I discover that framerate doesn’t usually dip as low with Bazzite because it does with Home windows. Many really feel sooner and look higher on the Ally X than on the Steam Deck OLED, too, due to the sooner chip and particularly the variable refresh fee display screen, which lets the Ally show each body its processors can generate as a substitute of capping at an arbitrary quantity which may really feel uneven. (It’s a killer function for GPU-limited handhelds, and it’s a giant deal that Bazzite helps it at the moment.)

Equally, I didn’t see battery life financial savings in each sport. I generally watch the Ally X drain its battery one, two, even three watts slower on Bazzite than on Home windows once I set the chips to equivalent energy ranges, however that’s not at all times the case. In Dust Rally, I noticed an equivalent 3 hours, 8 minutes from each working techniques, and each Armored Core 6 and Persona 3 Reload drained the Ally on the identical velocity, every providing three hours of play. However in Dave the Diver, I used to be in a position to make Bazzite final practically an additional hour at 4 hours, 14 minutes, far nearer to my 4 hour, 42-minute end result with the Steam Deck OLED.

That’s as a result of like SteamOS, Bazzite makes it simple to tweak how a lot energy and efficiency you’re utilizing on the fly. Not solely does Bazzite have the identical built-in Gamescope monitoring instrument Valve makes use of on the Steam Deck, you may as well double-tap the Ally X’s fast entry button to tug up an built-in model of Handheld Daemon, an influence consumer instrument that allows you to change your chip’s actual TDP to toggle turbo or battery financial savings (or RGB lighting, or rumble, or many extra) in a snap.

Frankly, the interface is extra responsive and dependable than Asus’ personal Armory Crate UI overlay, although it could possibly’t fairly do all the pieces that Asus does with its personal {hardware}. Two key examples: the Ally X’s rear macro buttons don’t work until you instruct Handheld Daemon to emulate a Sony DualSense Edge controller, which is straightforward however can imply mismatched button prompts in some video games. And you may’t maintain down the facility button to shortly entry the Linux desktop mode or a shutdown menu. 

However utilizing these chip wattage changes, I simply managed to enhance battery life even additional than Home windows in among the least demanding video games I check, ones the place the Steam Deck has usually run circles across the competitors prior to now. In each Balatro and Slay the Spire, I received the hand-held’s complete battery drain down to simply 6.4 watts by setting the chip to five watts and dimming display screen brightness to minimal, which theoretically provides you a most of 12.5 hours from the 80 watt-hour pack. That’s class-leading battery life, people — even higher than the Steam Deck OLED.

And whenever you want extra efficiency, the Ally X has the battery to take it locations the Deck OLED can’t comfortably compete. Once I set the Ally X to its 25W “Turbo” mode, I recover from two hours of Helldivers 2, and practically two hours of Baldur’s Gate 3, at a really playable 900p decision with a “Balanced” stage of render scaling. (In the event you can tolerate a lower-res image, you will get practically three hours of BG3 at 17W TDP.)

In brief, I don’t fear in regards to the Ally X’s battery with Bazzite any greater than I do with the Steam Deck OLED, significantly since Bazzite added help for the ROG Ally X’s excessive standby mode the place I discover I solely lose 4 % battery in a single day.

However there are issues I do miss in regards to the Steam Deck OLED and its native SteamOS. Whereas Bazzite does embrace Steam’s great controller remapping and help the ROG Ally X’s gyroscope for precision aiming, it doesn’t magically give it a pair of dual touchpads to make generations of older mouse-and-trackball video games work. You don’t get the Deck OLED’s barely bigger display screen with extra vibrant colours and sensible HDR mild. I personally nonetheless assume the Deck has higher ergonomics, too, although the Ally X is actually my second favourite amongst at the moment’s main handhelds.

The gamepad controls additionally generally take somewhat bit longer to return again to life after resuming from sleep, even with out excessive standby turned on. Bluetooth microphone help appears totally borked in Bazzite. Typically there’s an extended delay once I’m making an attempt to uninstall a sport earlier than the system responds. Each time there’s a Bazzite replace, I’ll uselessly see Valve’s final replace message as a substitute of Bazzite’s and don’t know what I’m about to get. Often I see efficiency take a flip for the more severe after an replace, like how Shadow of the Tomb Raider is all of the sudden giving me decrease framerate than with Home windows. And it’s tough to inform how lengthy a system replace will take to put in.

Additionally, there’s a bizarre problem the place if I virtually totally drain the battery, all the way down to 1 % or 0 %, the entire system will gradual to such a painful crawl it could possibly take 10 minutes simply to avoid wasting your sport and shut the Ally X down. And I must shut it down, as a result of even charging to one hundred pc doesn’t velocity issues up once more. That is simple sufficient to stop by merely plugging within the system on the 5 % or three % mark, such as you’d must do anyway with most different handhelds.

I’ve advised Bazzite’s maintainers about this stuff, and so they say they’re engaged on them — together with a hibernation mode that ought to alleviate the 0-percent charging quirk particularly, and extra intuitive updates. “Now we have additionally been enhancing help for different producers, particularly OneXPlayer, and for the subsequent replace GPD,” provides Antheas Kapenekakis, a Bazzite contributor who’s additionally the lead developer of Handheld Daemon. 

I don’t assume I might personally purchase an Asus ROG Ally X over a Steam Deck, a minimum of not now. At $800, it prices practically twice the worth of a base Steam Deck, and a whole bunch greater than the OLED model I personally advocate. To be value all that more money, I’d need to know the ROG Ally X isn’t simply the most effective handheld at the moment, but additionally the most effective handheld tomorrow. I might personally wait to see a brand new crop of handhelds at CES in January, and listen to what Valve, Microsoft, AMD and Lenovo should say at their January seventh occasion.

But when I already owned an Asus ROG Ally X, or common Ally, or the Lenovo Legion Go, I might completely set up Bazzite on it instantly, maybe utilizing a dual-boot configuration to ensure I can simply swap again. You is perhaps stunned by how little you’ll miss Home windows. You is perhaps stunned by simply how a lot better the transportable expertise can get. 

Images by Sean Hollister / The Verge