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00:00And so firstly, a big thank you to Asus ROG for sending this out for me to have a play with.
00:04This is a pre-release device and we may see more updates before it fully launches,
00:08but I've been having a blast with the Li.
00:10Revisiting some old favorites like Grim Fandango,
00:12I've been streaming Forza Horizon 5 via the Xbox Cloud,
00:16I've been taking out a few targets in Hitman,
00:17embarrassing myself in Rocket League,
00:19replaying Spider-Man Remastered,
00:21and a whole lot more.
00:22And I love playing this when I'm traveling, during my lunch break,
00:25if I had a commute, I'm sure I'd play this on that as well,
00:27or even on the sofa in the evening while Mrs. Tech Chat watches yet another season of Love is Blind.
00:31And best of all, if you have the room to yourself,
00:34hook it up to your TV or monitor, grab a controller,
00:37and properly kick back with your own mini gaming setup.
00:41But it's not all sunshine and puppies.
00:43I've had a few issues with this.
00:45There's been a bunch of games that simply don't work,
00:47like Apex, it actually boots up and then just crashes,
00:50F1-22 doesn't work, Rainbow Six Siege doesn't seem to launch,
00:53nor does Jedi Survivor, but then that doesn't really work well on anything at the moment.
00:56So I guess the first thing I would say is before you take the plunge and buy something like this,
01:00do your research, see if the game that you really want to play is actually going to work well on this.
01:04I've also had a few random crashes,
01:06there's been a lot of forced quitting in Task Manager,
01:08the thumbsticks feel a little bit unresponsive,
01:11particularly noticeable in faster-paced FPS games,
01:13and also the battery life is, well, variable.
01:17But we'll come back to that.
01:18So despite its flaws, I think ASUS ROG have done the best job they can
01:22making a handheld Windows PC as user-friendly as possible,
01:26to the point where they try to keep you away from the desktop,
01:29with the Ally launching straight into their Armoury Crate app,
01:32which acts as a hub, bringing together your library and the different game stores,
01:35plus you have all your settings and customisation options.
01:37Now for me, the vast majority of games I play are on Steam,
01:41so I am spending most of my time in Steam's big-picture mode,
01:44so in some ways I do miss the simplicity and the lightweight-ness of a Linux device,
01:48but certainly you do have more flexibility and options with a Windows 11 tablet PC handheld thing.
01:54But one thing that I was worried about was the price.
01:58We were all worried this might end up being £800, £900, maybe £999 or something,
02:02but I'm very happy to report that the ROG Ally starts at £599.
02:05That's the same in pounds and dollars for the base model with the Z1 chip,
02:1016GB of RAM and 256GB storage, but I wouldn't buy that.
02:13Actually, you can't even buy that for a few weeks because they're delaying that launch a little bit.
02:16To prioritise this, the higher-spec SKU, which is 100% the one you should buy.
02:21This, for $100 more, so £699 or dollars, comes with the Z1 Extreme, 16GB of RAM and also 512GB storage.
02:29So a much beefier chip, it's got two extra CPU cores and three times the number of compute units in the GPU,
02:35and so actually, it's not something I get to say very often, but I think they've nailed the pricing with this.
02:40I thought it was going to be a lot more expensive.
02:42And at the heart of the Ally is AMD's new Z1 Extreme chip, which is based off their Zen 4 architecture,
02:48and it's a whole lot faster than the Zen 2 chip that we have in the Steam Deck.
02:52How much faster? Well, I'm glad you asked.
02:55I tested a couple of games side-by-side, and starting with Red Dead 2, running at the same 720p resolution and the same low settings,
03:01this is still a very demanding game, the Steam Deck averages 47fps versus 72 on the Ally.
03:08That's a 53% uptick.
03:10But then in Hitman 3, again, 720p, but this time with medium settings, the Ally was almost twice as quick,
03:1659 versus 31fps.
03:18That's huge, and at the same time, it runs noticeably cooler and quieter.
03:23So the Ally has three modes, silent, performance, and turbo, which roughly translates to 12, 20, and 30 watts thereabouts.
03:30And you can see how it affects my frame rate, but I almost always play in turbo mode, unless it's a much older or less demanding game.
03:37But then to answer your next question, how much faster is it plugged into the power compared to on battery?
03:42Well, actually, there isn't that much in it.
03:44Going back to No Man's Sky, there's no change in silent mode, we're looking at a pretty unplayable 13fps,
03:49although in performance mode, it's 20% faster plugged in, although only 8% faster in turbo.
03:55But unlike most gaming laptops, we're not seeing a significant compromise with performance, particularly if you stick with turbo mode.
04:01Overall though, in terms of demanding AAA games, it's reasonably capable.
04:05Although my three main takeaways are you're never going to really hit that 120fps in these kinds of games,
04:10turbo mode offers a noticeable boost over performance, and also dropping to 720p is a great option for boosting your frame rate.
04:17And on a 7-inch screen like this, it's not the end of the world, we're still talking 210ppi,
04:22which is basically the same as the Steam Deck and the Switch OLED anyway.
04:25I think on paper, the Z1 Extreme should perform even better than the 50-100% boost that we're seeing compared to the Steam Deck,
04:32but then remember we do have full-fat Windows 11 running in the background, which is a lot more of a system hog than Linux.
04:38Quick tip actually for quickly closing a game or an app, you could long press this and open the task manager,
04:43or just do a simple three-finger swipe up because you've got gestures with Windows, and then just tap the X button on the game you don't want.
04:51That, I found, is the fastest way of getting out of a game.
04:53Now I've been using this for a couple of weeks now, but I think it was within like a day that I filled up that 512 storage.
04:59Now you can expand it with a microSD card, which I've got up here, same as the Steam Deck,
05:04although what's different here is this does support the faster UHS-II standard of microSDs,
05:10which is great and kind of important actually because this does use much faster PCIe 4 internal storage compared to PCIe 3,
05:17so games will load and run a little bit quicker on this versus that, but then microSDs are a bit slow.
05:23So ideally, you'd want to use a UHS-II microSD, but the problem with that is there just aren't that many available,
05:29and you'll rarely find one with more than 128 storage.
05:32But the good news is the internal SSD is actually upgradable, and it's pretty easy.
05:36Taking the back cover off, peel back this little black flap, and you'll see the M.2 SSD.
05:41Now it is a smaller and less common size versus your laptop and desktop,
05:45but you can easily switch this out for a 1 or 2TB SSD, and crucially, it won't void your warranty.
05:51I did ask Asus this specifically, although they said if an issue arises as a direct result of the upgrade, then it will void it.
05:58So that's the inside, but what about the outside?
06:01Well, front and center, we have this 7-inch screen.
06:04Same size as the Steam Deck, albeit with slightly smaller bezels,
06:07but most importantly, it's 1080p and 120Hz versus 800p and 60Hz on the Steam Deck.
06:13Brightness tops out at a solid 500 nits, and it is an LCD touchscreen, which does look pretty good,
06:18but of course, OLED would have been the dream.
06:20The viewing angles on this aren't particularly great, brightness drops off quite quickly,
06:23and for a gaming display, the 7ms response time isn't the fastest.
06:27Asus tell me it's simply a cost decision, and even a 60Hz OLED would make this a lot more expensive,
06:33and they simply don't have the vast economies of scale that Nintendo get to enjoy with their Switch OLED,
06:38so maybe next year.
06:40Let's talk about these controls, because flanking the screen, we have these two thumbsticks,
06:44complete with GoFaster RGB, which I think does make it look and feel a little bit more premium,
06:49although you can turn all that off if you prefer, and it'll save a little bit of battery as well.
06:52We also have a D-pad, we have four buttons and an Xbox layout.
06:56I think a backlight for these would have been nice.
06:57You've got your standard shoulder triggers, and also two extra buttons on the back.
07:01And then we've got these guys.
07:02Bottom left brings up the command center for all your quick settings, and you're gonna use this a lot,
07:06and also a long press of this is equivalent to a Ctrl-Alt-Del.
07:09Bottom right opens the armory crate, top right is for your in-game or in-app menus,
07:14and top left doesn't really do that much at all right now.
07:17In the armory crate, it switches between the list view and the title view,
07:20but that seems to be about it, perhaps it'll add more functionality later.
07:24Then up top, we have a headphone jack, microSD slot, the volume rocker, power button,
07:28and USB-C for charging and also outputting to a TV or monitor.
07:31And it's also part of their proprietary XG mobile connector,
07:34so if you want to pair this with an external GPU, opt to a Ludicrous 4090.
07:39I daresay you get a fair amount of bottlenecking from the CPU with that setup,
07:42but it's still an exciting idea if you have a couple of grand burning a hole in your pocket.
07:47Now, side-by-side with the Steam Deck, and actually I was really curious in person
07:51how much smaller the Ally would feel compared to this,
07:53it's a similar overall thickness, but the Ally is a good deal lighter, around 61 grams lighter,
07:58and also a fair bit shorter, you can see the difference there,
08:01which makes the Ally feel substantially more compact overall.
08:04Still not exactly pocketable, you're not going to put this in your jeans,
08:07but it is smaller and a bit less offensive to whip it out on the bus or at a coffee shop.
08:12Now, we do have these couple of vents at the back there, as you can see,
08:14but it's a bit more for aesthetics.
08:16It's actually these top fans that push out the vast majority of the air,
08:19and when you are gaming, you can feel the heat coming out there,
08:22and I recorded about 45 degrees Celsius, which isn't the end of the world.
08:25The good news, though, is it is expelling most of that hot air,
08:27and the rest of the device stayed pretty cool even during longer gaming sessions,
08:31and so it never became uncomfortable, and I didn't get the dreaded sweaty palms.
08:35And in performance and turbo mode, the fan is definitely noticeable,
08:38but it's no louder than your typical Windows laptop,
08:40and I never felt it was particularly distracting or annoying.
08:43We also have a pair of front-firing speakers, which easily overpower that fan noise,
08:47and actually offer a really solid and surprisingly bassy sound.
08:50Although, mostly, I've been using this with a pair of ROG Sentra wireless earphones.
08:54One criticism I do have is the thumbsticks actually are surprisingly unresponsive.
08:59There's a little bit of dead zone, and in first-person shooters or fast-paced games,
09:03they just feel a bit slow, like there's a good amount of input lag there.
09:07Hopefully, it's something they can fix. I mean, this is a pre-launch model,
09:10but right now, it does make FPS games a bit unplayable on the device.
09:14What does solve the issue, though, is if you just pair it with a controller.
09:17Doesn't have to be one of their fancy ROG ones. It could just be a regular Xbox controller,
09:20but that makes all the difference to those faster-paced games.
09:23And finally, let's talk about battery life,
09:25because an hour of Red Dead 2 at 1080p with low settings in turbo mode used 80% of the battery.
09:31So in the worst-case scenario, we're looking at about an hour 15,
09:34although I did enjoy three hours of Grim Fandango from a full charge,
09:38and if you're running emulator games, then I think four hours is just about achievable.
09:41So it all depends on the game you're playing, whether you're running at 720p or 1080p,
09:45and also the power mode you're using.
09:48So the ROG Ally is certainly not perfect.
09:50Windows 11 is quite clunky. I've had quite a few crashes, and I've had to sort of force close applications.
09:55Not all games I actually want to play do run on this, although that should improve over time.
09:59This hasn't actually been launched yet, so we will see further updates.
10:02The thumbsticks, the latency is a bit of an issue right now.
10:05Also, the viewing angles on the LCD screen aren't fantastic.
10:08I also missed the Steam Deck's touchpads, and the battery life is still a bit rough.
10:12So there's definitely room for improvement.
10:13But even though this is a first-gen device for Asus ROG,
10:17it actually feels more like a second generation, as it stands on the shoulders of the excellent Steam Deck.
10:22I think the key thing to keep in mind is this isn't going to replace your PS5 or your proper desktop gaming PC.
10:27Sure, it can play Red Dead on low at 720p and get 60fps or so, but that's not really how I want to play that game.
10:33I think the Ally, like the Steam Deck, is best for revisiting older indie emulator games,
10:38or even streaming with Xbox Cloud or GeForce Now.
10:41But for $699 for this top-spec Z1 Extreme version, I think it's a steal.
10:45And if you go in with the right expectations, you're not going to be disappointed.
10:49But what do you reckon? Are you going to pick one of these up?
10:51Do you already have a Steam Deck, and maybe are you thinking about upgrading?
10:54If you did enjoy this video, a like and subscribe would be amazing.
10:56And I'll see you next time, right here on The Tech Chap.