Valve addressed this in an interview as to why they aren’t also using the Z1 extreme. The performance gain is minimal and the battery life reduction is major. They set out to make a handheld with the best balance of performance, battery life, and thermals and that is exactly what you get - and cheaper to boot.

Steam Deck’s battery still isn’t great, but OLED should bring some improvements. I would say even with the improvements, you will still get low battery life if you are playing any AAA titles.

If I were you and wanted to save money, I’d just get a quality portable battery bank and just wait for Steam Deck 2.

That said, the trackpads on the Steam Deck are pretty great, I use them all the time and couldn’t imagine using the ROG Ally.

You’ll be leaving performance on the table but if you’re not taking advantage of the higher watt modes on the Ally then not much and in some instances the SD will actually beat the Ally in the same power mode. SD also wipes the floor with the Ally at lower wattages because the Z1 in the Ally isn’t really meant to run that low. You’ll also be giving up your compatibility by leaving Windows, yes you can install Windows on the SD but it’s not a particularly great experience and Valve can take awhile to update drivers for Windows. That being said as someone who has owned a SD for awhile purchased an Ally because the potential performance gains seemed like a big win and then ended up returning the Ally I’d say it can’t hurt to try. Battery life was a big deciding factor in why I returned it before the device went totally defective on me. You have a 14 day return policy so take it for a spin and if you don’t like it you can always return it. Personally I’m 100% ordering a SD OLED the screen has been the biggest drawback to the SD in my opinion and now that it’s fixed I’m perfectly fine to use the SD until a SD2 is released.