Asus Rog Ally

[dirtyvu]

https://www.asus.com/us/site/gaming/rog/gaming-handheld/rog-ally.html

View Details	ROG Ally AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme	ROG Ally AMD Ryzen Z1
Operating System	Windows 11	Windows 11
Processor	AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme	AMD Ryzen Z1
IGPU	AMD RDNA 3 Graphics	AMD RDNA 3 Graphics
Display	7-inch / FHD (1080P) / 120Hz Refresh Rate / AMD FreeSync Premium / Gorilla Glass Touch Screen	7-inch / FHD (1080P) / 120Hz Refresh Rate / AMD FreeSync Premium / Gorilla Glass Touch Screen
RAM	16GB (8GB*2) LPDDR5	16GB (8GB*2) LPDDR5
On-board Storage	512GB PCIe® 4.0 NVMe™ M.2 SSD	512GB PCIe® 4.0 NVMe™ M.2 SSD

Here's a great vid from Linus Tech Tips:

Yes, I have preordered it from Best Buy and can't wait!

It's going to be my portable Steam and PC Game Pass box. I don't plan on buying any games for it per se. I read about the complaints but many of these complaints (the software) will be worked out just like the Steam Deck which was released in a rough state too.

I also plan on using it as a second laptop next to my Surface Pro 9. I've always wanted a Surface Pro with AMD and because of crappy Intel, I've had to live with Intel crappiness. It's funny how Surface Pro ebbed and flowed based on the Intel CPU generation. Surface Pro 2 and 3 were great because Haswell was great. Surface Pro 4 was a dog because of the unreliability of Skylake (Skylake was the final straw for Apple and the reason Apple decided they needed to get away from Intel). Surface Pro 2017 was pretty great on Kaby Lake as that fixed most of the bugs with Skylake. Surface Pro 6 was awesome by moving to quad core from the dual core of previous generations. Surface Pro 7 was fine. Surface Pro 8 was good. Surface Pro 9 has some serious power management issues in Windows 11 and 12th gen mobile Intel processors have been universally reported as pretty bad.

But back to the ROG Ally. It's pretty amazing power for the price. I don't see any major issues. Since I've grown up on Windows PCs with touchscreens, even small touchscreens, I don't see anything I can't handle. I know how to tailor the touchscreen UI to work for me. Yes, Windows 10 and Windows 11 deprecated touch experience but slowly Windows 11 has gotten to the point of being a good touch system.

 

[Jez Corden]

@dirtyvu great thread. yeah ive gone back and forth on it, i have a ssteam deck and i love lowering the wattage on the cpu and getting monster battery life in 2D games. and i was nervous about some of the initial reports of ROG Ally battery life, but it seems the latest firmware updates and software improvements have gone a fair way to improving things.

it shines a light on microsoft to step up and help this form factor find its footing with windows. the biggest downside for me seems to be windows right now, which just is not designed for this form factor. steam OS is much nicer, even though i run windows on my steam deck for xbox game pass / xbox play anywhere, there's a huge opportunity microsoft has missed while it chases other bs.

 

[dirtyvu]

I get mine tomorrow! So excited. I see that Best Buy paid members got first access to the machine. I guess that's fair considering they're paying a BB subscription. But jelly that they had early access.

I've done a lot of tailoring for my Surface Pro 9 machine as well as smaller touchscreen machines so I think I can do the same for the ROG Ally. We'll see.

 

[dirtyvu]

Got it and so far it's been great but there are a lot of updates, both for Windows, Asus, AMD, etc. There's utilities from everyone! There's an AMD one, there's Asus's. This is a device for PC gamers that are used to tinkering.

What I didn't expected (maybe I should've known) was it doesn't come with a case of any kind. So I ended up buying from Waterfield which makes great bags (WindowsCentral got me into Waterfield).

https://www.sfbags.com/products/cityslicker-for-asus-rog-ally

I ended up getting the Waxed Canvas/Chocolate Leather to be consistent with my other bags. It has protection for the screen as well as the joysticks. It has pockets for the power supply and memory cards.

 

[dirtyvu]

While I do like the granularity in controlling how much performance you need per game in order to save battery, it would be nice if there's some sort of automated detection so that the system can detect, okay for this game, you only need 15 W, this game you need 10 W, etc. Just a minor thing. Mid-game, you just tap a couple buttons to switch performance profiles. But it would be awesome to just have the system detect.

This is the perfect PC Game Pass box (thus far).

 

[ochhanz]

While I do like the granularity in controlling how much performance you need per game in order to save battery, it would be nice if there's some sort of automated detection so that the system can detect, okay for this game, you only need 15 W, this game you need 10 W, etc. Just a minor thing. Mid-game, you just tap a couple buttons to switch performance profiles. But it would be awesome to just have the system detect.

This is the perfect PC Game Pass box (thus far).

Nice thread. Some kind of automatic mode is a good idea and should be possible for Asus to implement since minimum requirements of games are a given (or they could have some kind of smart adaptive mode that tracks your fps).

 

[Jez Corden]

i did ultimately buy an ASUS ROG Ally, and i absolutely love it. the main problems with it are Windows' fault, rather than ASUS, but it's going to kick Microsoft up the arse to better support different form factors.

 

[dirtyvu]

out of all my portables, the Asus is my favorite. The new Lenovo looks great but too big for me.



good times for everyone!