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Ever since the Steam Deck debuted in 2022, it’s been one of my favorite devices. It was relatively affordable for a <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/best-handheld-gaming-pc” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>handheld gaming PC, but still powerful enough to play pretty much anything I would realistically play on the go. And while I still love the thing, it’s almost impossible to recommend to anyone right now, after the price increases a couple months ago.
Right now, if you want to buy a Steam Deck from Valve, it’s going to cost you $789 for a new, 512GB OLED Steam Deck, or $949 if you want to bump the storage up to 1TB. You can, of course, save some cash by buying a refurbished Deck from Valve, which starts at around $279 for the 64GB LCD model, but at least in my region, every refurbished Steam Deck is out of stock.
Even on Ebay, getting a used Steam Deck will probably set you back about $450-$500 right now, and there’s no real guarantee that you’re going to get something that works properly.
This is all, of course, thanks to the RAM crisis that we’re all dealing with, because seemingly every company is trying to build AI datacenters, driving up the costs of computer hardware. There aren’t really many devices that have escaped going up in price this year, with everything from the PS5 to the Steam Machine being affected in one way or the other.
But somehow, Asus has insulated its Xbox Ally handhelds from price increases – so far at least. The basic Xbox Ally is still $599 at Best Buy, and the more powerful Xbox Ally X is $999, the latter of which is quite a bit more powerful than the Steam Deck. I honestly don’t know how long Asus’s prices are going to stay like this, but for now at least, the white Xbox Ally is the best budget handheld, especially if you don’t want to deal with the used market.
Back when Asus launched its latest handhelds, I only got to review the Xbox Ally X. But, recently, Asus sent along the regular Xbox Ally, and while it’s not nearly as powerful, it goes neck-and-neck with the Steam Deck. In Time Spy, for instance, the Xbox Ally gets 1834 points, compared to 1715 from Valve’s handheld. That’s basically the same level of performance, which was once an argument against the Xbox Ally. But now that prices have shifted in the way they have, Asus offers roughly the same level of performance as Valve, but for $200 less. That math isn’t hard to figure out.
Quite simply, if you are on the market for a handheld, and you don’t have a thousand bucks (or more) to spend on a high-end gaming handheld, the Xbox Ally is the way to go right now. But, again, if I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that everything has the potential to go up in price. I just hope the Xbox Ally stays affordable for a little while longer.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
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