Awesome video! The Ally’s sleep mode definitely needs work but hibernation is amazing to have it “asleep” for more than a week while Steam Deck would waste 80% of the battery by that point. It’s still an impressive windows handheld considering how frustrating windows can be.
It really sounds like you are mentioning issues that occur very rarely as somewhat common. I have had mine day 1 and never had Armoury Crate freeze on me, not saying it doesn't happen, but it seems to be pretty stable. And performance at 25w is much better than what you can get on the Steam Deck. Now, if you're just looking for the most convenient way to play games, the Steam Deck is the way to go. Especially the OLED model, which not only upgrades the screen, but improves the battery and other features too. Being Windows based provides flexibility, but brings along well-known inherent issues. If you already game on a PC you know what they are and I think it's unfair to think that ASUS would suddenly be able to resolve them for this device.
I think this is a fair critique of my critique. Ultimately I really want to adore the ROG Ally for the reasons you mentioned and several more, so my videos that are critical of products are usually meant to get ideas out there that some in the community may latch onto so that either through software updates (or a hardware successor) we may get them. We're still in the young days of mass adoption of portable handheld pc gaming so I'm excited for what updates and iterations have in store
@@ProfessorTekyou also stated that the performance is almost identical and that’s not true at all even with the oled steam deck. Ally still outperforms both and by a decent amount. Legit 60+ fps on most games with the ally Steam deck gets 40-50 at most. Unsubbed because you stated those lies
@@ProfessorTekI know both n hit way higher on lower end games but still. IMO the systems are more for preference based. SD is for people that want more of a true handheld experience Rog ally is for people that want performance/there pc on the go
@@sambentley52that's actually inaccurate, it's been proven time after time Ally outperforms the SD at 15 watts, if we are talking about raw performance Ally wins here 15watts and above, at 10 watts SD will win here. If we are talking about power profile then SD will win in any scenario. However most games I play at 15 watts usually will last me over 1 hour sometimes up to 2 hours and very rarely do I need to jump to 30watts just to get that extra power.
Theres an option now for better sleep mode inside AC, now. I have no problems sleeping and waking up games, Cyberpunk has always cooperated perfectly. Untill recent update to AC, i would get the uncommanded wake ups. They seem to have fixed this with the vefore mentioned deep sleep option.
Mine is going back to best buy. The speakers, headphone jack, blue tooth doesn't work and it wont launch games. Downloaded every driver I could find and factory reset still nothing. What a nightmare of an experience, 2 days of pure rage.
Once (if) windows releases a handheld version of the software I think it will be a huge contender as a handheld console for the consumer. With standard windows 11 installed it's better to think of it as an older gaming laptop without a keyboard that's meant for enthusiasts rather than the average consumer. As far as a sleep function goes, I only see it as beneficial to starting where you left off. I personally would never leave a game open on a device and pick it back up, unless it's my PS Vita. I always like to get to what feels like a good stopping point and power my device down. Along with that, the boot times with the NvME have to be sub 10 seconds. I run my Ally daily as a desktop PC with the option of portability or taking it off the dock to play on the couch. I used it to replace my casual gaming desk PC (I mostly do sim racing and VR on another PC setup I use) that performed basically on par with the Ally (GTX 1060 3gb i5 7400 16gb ddr4) The ally's performance along with all of these handhelds are not at all impressive other than the fact it uses an APU, but you can play basically every game at a smooth frame rate and most games at 1080p. Just don't go expecting Minecraft with 300+ mods with 284 of them being shader mods 😂
Very simple reason why I had to get the Rog after Deck... Blizzard launcher updates. Stupid yet a very important for anyone trying to play WoW Classic on Steam Deck. Works flawless, but will have to reinstall launcher every week. If your game settings are server side, its fine. If it's stored on your device, all your settings are gone after Blizzard launcher gets bricked.
It's really a great time to be alive as a gamer. The Steam Deck ushered a new era of handheld PC gaming that has pushed a lot of companies to try and compete with. The Ally and Legion Go are amazing devices, but they fall slightly off the mark in terms of battery life and the ability to just pick up and play. I sold my LCD Steam Deck to upgrade to the OLED version. I did ask myself if I should go to Best Buy and get the Legion Go, but then I remembered I'd have to deal with Windows. Nah, I've done enough tinkering since Windows 3.11. All I want is to just play my games and SteamOS provides that console like experience. Once I received my OLED in the mail, within 10 minutes I was playing Spiderman Remastered. The fact that Hades can run for 10 hours on a charge is mind boggling!
I got the Steam Deck OLED despite the Ally being on sale for almost $200 cheaper (in Canada) because I loved my LCD Steam Deck and the only things I wanted from a successor was a better screen and battery life. Would I turn up my nose at more performance? Of course not, but not at the cost of battery life. I need my handheld to be usable handheld, not just plugged in.
my steamdeck has as many or more crashes as my ally which is not common on either. howerer cannot say how many times games like bg3 go into single digit FPS limp mode with the battery still at 20% on the deck on longer sessions - almost every time. most newer games while playable are not enjoyable on the deck and comfort is relative. i find playing in bed for example the ally to be more comfortable. i ended up returning my OLED as well since once you peek past the hype it still plays exactly like the LCD deck. i would also say comparing where the deck was 6 months post launch and where the ally is today at a similiar timepoint the ally is more refined. i love both for what they are but the ally now with CPU boost off gets similar battery life to the deck when playing at deck level TDP and i rarely use my deck anymore. the deck is a genius device to lure people into the steam store and pc gaming. the ally takes that experience than one level up. not to mention the xg mobile for those without a desktop.
Great review, love your presentation too. Valve years of investment in Linux has paid off in spades. Funny how Linux running Deck, is better machine running Windows games compared to Windows running devices. I setup a ROG Ally recently, everything was so scattered and bizarrely stitched together I never wanna do it gain. Windows looks so out of place on a handheld it's not even funny. I hope Asus does Linux based handheld at some point but their place as Windows vendor might not allowed them to.
I mean, its not hard to save and quite the game then shut the system down. Oh my bad, its just so horrible to waste a few more seconds to turn on and load the game back up... smh. Gonna risk hurting your system bc youre too impatient. Even is sleep mode works, why risk destroying your system from over heating just bc youre being lazy
I feel like most of the critique here are issues you have with Windows, and it's not really fair to criticize the ROG for that. And whilst you've adressed this, you still detract from the Ally when this is clearly a windows issue. That being said, all of these are still valid concerns. Overall, personally the Ally has been much more reliable than the Steam Deck for me. I feel like the problem is that the Ally is pushing it's boundaries too hard and the Steam Deck isn't pushing enough. Ideally we'd have something inbetween, a console with a 1080 60hz screen and a Windows fork that still allows for freedom but is more streamlined for the hardware. Either way, your critique has been insightful overall!
Awesome video! The Ally’s sleep mode definitely needs work but hibernation is amazing to have it “asleep” for more than a week while Steam Deck would waste 80% of the battery by that point.
It’s still an impressive windows handheld considering how frustrating windows can be.
Is there a reason for putting the ally in hibernation rather than just turning it off?
@@xNinjamodx This, I realized if I'm just better of shutting off. It hardly makes a difference booting up from either.
It really sounds like you are mentioning issues that occur very rarely as somewhat common. I have had mine day 1 and never had Armoury Crate freeze on me, not saying it doesn't happen, but it seems to be pretty stable. And performance at 25w is much better than what you can get on the Steam Deck. Now, if you're just looking for the most convenient way to play games, the Steam Deck is the way to go. Especially the OLED model, which not only upgrades the screen, but improves the battery and other features too. Being Windows based provides flexibility, but brings along well-known inherent issues. If you already game on a PC you know what they are and I think it's unfair to think that ASUS would suddenly be able to resolve them for this device.
I think this is a fair critique of my critique. Ultimately I really want to adore the ROG Ally for the reasons you mentioned and several more, so my videos that are critical of products are usually meant to get ideas out there that some in the community may latch onto so that either through software updates (or a hardware successor) we may get them. We're still in the young days of mass adoption of portable handheld pc gaming so I'm excited for what updates and iterations have in store
@@ProfessorTekyou also stated that the performance is almost identical and that’s not true at all even with the oled steam deck.
Ally still outperforms both and by a decent amount.
Legit 60+ fps on most games with the ally
Steam deck gets 40-50 at most.
Unsubbed because you stated those lies
@@ProfessorTekI know both n hit way higher on lower end games but still.
IMO the systems are more for preference based.
SD is for people that want more of a true handheld experience
Rog ally is for people that want performance/there pc on the go
@@AlphaEvan only if you go above 15w which means bye bye battery life SD is better than ROG ally at 15W and thats what matters
@@sambentley52that's actually inaccurate, it's been proven time after time Ally outperforms the SD at 15 watts, if we are talking about raw performance Ally wins here 15watts and above, at 10 watts SD will win here. If we are talking about power profile then SD will win in any scenario. However most games I play at 15 watts usually will last me over 1 hour sometimes up to 2 hours and very rarely do I need to jump to 30watts just to get that extra power.
Theres an option now for better sleep mode inside AC, now.
I have no problems sleeping and waking up games, Cyberpunk has always cooperated perfectly.
Untill recent update to AC, i would get the uncommanded wake ups. They seem to have fixed this with the vefore mentioned deep sleep option.
I just got a ROG Ally and I love it. I can play games and with a dock it will be another desktop.
Mine is going back to best buy. The speakers, headphone jack, blue tooth doesn't work and it wont launch games. Downloaded every driver I could find and factory reset still nothing. What a nightmare of an experience, 2 days of pure rage.
Once (if) windows releases a handheld version of the software I think it will be a huge contender as a handheld console for the consumer. With standard windows 11 installed it's better to think of it as an older gaming laptop without a keyboard that's meant for enthusiasts rather than the average consumer. As far as a sleep function goes, I only see it as beneficial to starting where you left off. I personally would never leave a game open on a device and pick it back up, unless it's my PS Vita. I always like to get to what feels like a good stopping point and power my device down. Along with that, the boot times with the NvME have to be sub 10 seconds. I run my Ally daily as a desktop PC with the option of portability or taking it off the dock to play on the couch. I used it to replace my casual gaming desk PC (I mostly do sim racing and VR on another PC setup I use) that performed basically on par with the Ally (GTX 1060 3gb i5 7400 16gb ddr4) The ally's performance along with all of these handhelds are not at all impressive other than the fact it uses an APU, but you can play basically every game at a smooth frame rate and most games at 1080p. Just don't go expecting Minecraft with 300+ mods with 284 of them being shader mods 😂
Very simple reason why I had to get the Rog after Deck... Blizzard launcher updates. Stupid yet a very important for anyone trying to play WoW Classic on Steam Deck. Works flawless, but will have to reinstall launcher every week. If your game settings are server side, its fine. If it's stored on your device, all your settings are gone after Blizzard launcher gets bricked.
Maybe try installing Linux on the Ally. Something like ChimeraOS that uses gamepad ui would be interesting to see running on the Ally.
It's really a great time to be alive as a gamer. The Steam Deck ushered a new era of handheld PC gaming that has pushed a lot of companies to try and compete with. The Ally and Legion Go are amazing devices, but they fall slightly off the mark in terms of battery life and the ability to just pick up and play.
I sold my LCD Steam Deck to upgrade to the OLED version. I did ask myself if I should go to Best Buy and get the Legion Go, but then I remembered I'd have to deal with Windows. Nah, I've done enough tinkering since Windows 3.11. All I want is to just play my games and SteamOS provides that console like experience. Once I received my OLED in the mail, within 10 minutes I was playing Spiderman Remastered. The fact that Hades can run for 10 hours on a charge is mind boggling!
I got the Steam Deck OLED despite the Ally being on sale for almost $200 cheaper (in Canada) because I loved my LCD Steam Deck and the only things I wanted from a successor was a better screen and battery life. Would I turn up my nose at more performance? Of course not, but not at the cost of battery life. I need my handheld to be usable handheld, not just plugged in.
my steamdeck has as many or more crashes as my ally which is not common on either. howerer cannot say how many times games like bg3 go into single digit FPS limp mode with the battery still at 20% on the deck on longer sessions - almost every time. most newer games while playable are not enjoyable on the deck and comfort is relative. i find playing in bed for example the ally to be more comfortable. i ended up returning my OLED as well since once you peek past the hype it still plays exactly like the LCD deck. i would also say comparing where the deck was 6 months post launch and where the ally is today at a similiar timepoint the ally is more refined. i love both for what they are but the ally now with CPU boost off gets similar battery life to the deck when playing at deck level TDP and i rarely use my deck anymore. the deck is a genius device to lure people into the steam store and pc gaming. the ally takes that experience than one level up. not to mention the xg mobile for those without a desktop.
Great review, love your presentation too.
Valve years of investment in Linux has paid off in spades. Funny how Linux running Deck, is better machine running Windows games compared to Windows running devices.
I setup a ROG Ally recently, everything was so scattered and bizarrely stitched together I never wanna do it gain. Windows looks so out of place on a handheld it's not even funny.
I hope Asus does Linux based handheld at some point but their place as Windows vendor might not allowed them to.
Asus rog rules with xbox gamepass period.
I mean, its not hard to save and quite the game then shut the system down.
Oh my bad, its just so horrible to waste a few more seconds to turn on and load the game back up... smh.
Gonna risk hurting your system bc youre too impatient.
Even is sleep mode works, why risk destroying your system from over heating just bc youre being lazy
Talking in general, not at this dude
I feel like most of the critique here are issues you have with Windows, and it's not really fair to criticize the ROG for that. And whilst you've adressed this, you still detract from the Ally when this is clearly a windows issue. That being said, all of these are still valid concerns.
Overall, personally the Ally has been much more reliable than the Steam Deck for me. I feel like the problem is that the Ally is pushing it's boundaries too hard and the Steam Deck isn't pushing enough. Ideally we'd have something inbetween, a console with a 1080 60hz screen and a Windows fork that still allows for freedom but is more streamlined for the hardware.
Either way, your critique has been insightful overall!