Hello fellow devs.

I’m in need of a new machine as I had a little mishap with my notebook. For a long time, I thought on buying a gaming notebook as normally they should have the best hardware for my personal (gaming, light video edit) and professional (full stack web dev) needs.

Next week, Asus will launch the ROG Ally X officially on my country. So, I’m wondering if it could be a viable alternative.
The other possible devices would be ROG Ally (Z1 Extreme) and Lenovo Legion Go, as Steam Deck is not available here.

I work from home for a foreign company. I have a monitor, a wireless keyboard, and a usb trackball already. I bought them to use with a mac mini my previous company lend to me. I do not have a desktop and do not intend to buy one right now.

So… My questions: Does any of you have experience using a handheld device as a main dev machine? Are there any cons I’m not considering?

Thank you!

  • Ethan@programming.dev
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    1 month ago

    The con is that it’s not very powerful. I haven’t attempted to code on a gaming handheld, but I’ve had issues with a midrange laptop being under powered. RAM is probably the biggest issue. My life improved noticeably when I upgraded my main machine to 64 GB. Granted I was doing particularly heavy work. It really depends on what you’re doing. You could get away with it for some work, but it’s going to be painfully slow for other stuff.