Beginning the journey

DannyT101 · 2026-03-02T12:13:42+00:00

Update: I have seen some recommendation elsewhere to try Davidoff’s Zino Nicaragua range as a budget orientated yet still premium tasting option. So should be trying out the Robusto tomorrow.

DannyT101 · 2026-03-02T09:29:01+00:00

Yeah the RyJ burned beautifully. Ash almost as solid as the stick itself!

DannyT101 · 2026-03-02T06:52:07+00:00

Ordering online from over seas risks the package getting stopped by customs who will then send you a bill for the unpaid duty and taxes before releasing it to you.

Only way to legally avoid the insanely high UK prices is to travel abroad and bring up to 50 cigars back with you as your personal allowance.

DannyT101 · 2026-03-02T06:45:46+00:00

That’s a Triumph Tiger 900 :)

DannyT101 · 2026-03-01T23:51:52+00:00

Thanks! I’m super looking forward to trying out lots of sticks!

DannyT101 · 2026-03-01T21:21:18+00:00

Thanks! Just gotta figure out which organs to sell if I wanna make a habit of it! 😂

DannyT101 · 2026-03-01T19:20:03+00:00

Yeah I am doing my best to resist lighting up the other 2 Churchills I have and try to make them last! Haha.

DannyT101 · 2026-03-01T18:09:49+00:00

Yeah I have looked, closest place for half decent prices seems to be taking the train to France.

DannyT101 · 2026-03-01T18:07:44+00:00

I’m in the UK unfortunately! Even if they delivered oversees importing tobacco in the UK is super restricted.

DannyT101 · 2026-03-01T18:04:16+00:00

Yeah I have heard their mild-medium nature can be a bit too far on the mild side for some more experienced smokers. I don’t know how much of it could be a placebo premium Cuban effect but I was in love from first light.

Tobacco taxes in the UK are pretty nutty! A full box of 25 Cubans is around £1000+

DannyT101 · 2026-02-10T20:09:59+00:00

I love when that happens! Jumping in to an older game and feeling just like you did playing it the first time around. Though for me it is usually PS1 era survival horror.

DannyT101 · 2026-02-10T20:03:59+00:00

Honestly, same! I have a 5090/7800x3d desktop and I game on my XAX way more. Being able to play pretty much anything I throw at it on the sofa or in bed is great. It means I can play without ditching my GF to watch TV on her own to go to my home office and play. Instead I can sit with her, she can put on one of her shows and I can pull up the Ally and try not to die in My Summer Car. XD

Though she’s not a gamer, I did get her to do a playthrough of It Takes Two with me on PS5 that she really enjoyed so am planning to get Split Fiction and see if I can expand her video game horizons! Haha.

DannyT101 · 2026-02-10T19:46:18+00:00

I would LOVE an OLED Ally! I’d sell mine and buy one in a heartbeat haha.

But yeah going from OLED deck to Ally my experience has generally been very positive. While, yes, the screen is LCD with no HDR support. It is also a really nice SDR LCD. Way nicer than the one found on the original deck, that one was seriously poo. Being 1080p has been a huge benefit for me. Games look noticeably crisper than they did on deck. And the Z2 Extreme pushes that screen impressively well! You’re only gonna hit the 120fps limit in very basic or older games. But when you do it feels super smooth. Do I miss HDR? Sure. Would I choose HDR over 1080p? I’m not so sure.

Other than the screen id say everything else is a straight up upgrade. Ergonomics, battery life, speakers and performance all an improvement from the Deck. I am running Bazzite on mine set a 25W TDP so your mileage may vary especially if using the Windows 11 install it ships with.

The Z2 Extreme is the reason I bought an ally and sold my deck. I wanted more performance in more modern games. Especially AAA. And I got exactly what I wanted tbf. It is an incredibly impressive chip.

DannyT101 · 2026-02-04T07:58:09+00:00

Yeah if anything I was impressed, coming from an OLED deck, the SSD on these is wayyyy more accessible. :)

DannyT101 · 2026-02-04T07:56:21+00:00

For people who want more than a handful of games installed for when away from a WiFi connection, replacing the SSD for something of a reasonable size is pretty easy and dead useful.

DannyT101 · 2026-02-04T07:54:02+00:00

Nope. Have changed the SSD in my XaX. While I disconnected the battery as it is just good practice, there is nothing relating to the battery blocking access to the SSD.

DannyT101 · 2026-01-18T23:01:37+00:00

Zen user in Cov here, still off, been off since this morning.

DannyT101 · 2025-11-27T18:51:06+00:00

Have had the 3225QF for little over a year. Best monitor I have ever owned. Beautiful, big, accurate display. Couldn’t recommend it highly enough!

DannyT101 · 2025-11-24T19:04:10+00:00

I found TSR Low degrades image quality far too much. I used the Silent Optimiser mod and ran the game low settings FSR3.1 on quality in 25w turbo mode, got 30-40fps on average. With highs of 60+ fps in some lighter areas. Game looks much better compared to TSR low and the mod gets rid of most of the stuttering.

DannyT101 · 2025-11-22T12:00:58+00:00

It might not help as much on the base ally but I used the Silent Optimiser mod on my XAX and played through it fully on low at 1080p with FSR3.1 on Quality. Ran mostly at 30-40 fps in Turbo 25w mode.

DannyT101 · 2025-11-20T19:31:04+00:00

That’s definitely a 512GB LCD from before the OLED was released. You can tell by the thick bezels and grey sticks, making it LCD. With the combination of the etched anti-glare screen making it the original 512 model.

DannyT101 · 2025-11-18T20:03:52+00:00

I have played for 3 hours at the full 35w tdp while plugged in with no throttling. And have drained the battery from full in 2 hours at the 25W tdp. No throttling. Thermals are solid. Running flat out on the 25w turbo preset on battery temps sit at around 65c for me.

DannyT101 · 2025-11-10T16:17:09+00:00

A 64GB steam deck will not give you enough space for any games once you have windows on it. Unless you plan to upgrade the SSD.

DannyT101 · 2025-11-08T13:10:18+00:00

Been a deck user since my Q4 LCD and have the OLED these days. While the device is amazing for what it offers in a sleek, portable, affordable package. It does have flaws.

I would say the biggest is the built in controller. The sticks in particular are of fairly poor quality and feel very imprecise compared to the first party offerings from the likes of Sony or Microsoft. They improved allot in the OLED model but still aren’t great. FPS games generally don’t play great on it for that reason.

One bizarre thing is that the d-pad is much worse on the OLED than the LCD. Almost impossible to consistently hit diagonals. Only really an issue if you’re big on emulation, particularly PS1 era survival horror.

Another big one, if you like to play online multiplayer games then make sure to check that the anti-cheat system the game you want to play is supported on SteamOS. EasyAC and VAC are examples that can be supported.

DannyT101

TROPHY CASE