I don't think the portal is a competitor to the ally at all.... you need the internet to even use it then you need to also buy a whole console they aren't even in the same category. You can play games on the ally on a plane or on the subway if you get a battery bank
Yeah you are right! I dont get why people even compare vastly different devices to each other. Same when the deck came out.. they kept comparing it to a switch😅 which is a completely different device for a completely different category.
The Portal isn't a competitor to anything, its only useful if you have a PS5 and good internet. The portal is just a screen with a controller and doesn't even have Bluetooth.
Yeah, I dont get these guys comparing portals here at all, the first requirement is wtever but the 2nd one is the most important one, even if you have a ps5 chances that an individual has good internet is low, strong internet wont mean anything if its unstable.
facts portal actually sucks. get a ayn odin it can emulate up to switch. and stream everything else from pc to ps to xbox. and its not as big or pricey as a rog ally.
You need a good internet connection, ps plus premium, and the pulse earbuds; that might trip your brain into a new understanding. Btw i have all three consoles and guess which one gets the most play… Portal
Just one sentence: I’m a fan! I work nights, I work often, I have little time to play when I'm at home and as a result, I rarely finish my console games. Since I got it, my oled switch with Zelda TOTK has been in the back of the cupboard, I sold my home consoles (because I rarely use them and I don't have a next gen optimized TV. The joystick LEDs , the noise of the fans I forget about them once immersed in the games. As a big fan of "portable" games, moving from a Game Boy Advance Sp (it was my first personal portable console) to a console on Switch next gen (😊) I can play ps4, ps5, xbox series games... (Lies of P, Elden ring, Forza horizon 4, Last of us, Resident evil village, etc.) Certainly it is not as beautiful as on TV, but the quality and performance are there, what more could you ask for such a small computer/console?!
I feel you sir. And same sir I also live in a RV full time so the power usage is the best thing about it. A full pc at the power of a handheld game system. its amazing. And connect it to my tv and using Starlink I can play anything anywhere.
Playstation portal is NOT competitor, that thing is a pointless & soulless abomination. I guess its too much work for Sony to create a new handheld as they are the ones who did it the best...
@zombos22222 no, however it's a useful utility. Why pay for something that's limited? Ally, L-go, both stream, and offer you so much more to boot. You can buy a toaster, or a toaster oven.
@@robbieburns3564 if that makes no sense, then you have a problem. I don't see how anyone cannot understand that a device that can Stream games, play PC games, and Emulate every console system up to The Nintendo Switch, is better than a device that can only Stream one platform's games for nearly the same price. More is better.
@@kewlztertc5386 Better is relative. I have the steam deck and would NEVER buy the portal. I would buy the Ally if it was a significant enough upgrade. But for SOME people, the portal is the best thing for them. They have a PS5 already, they like the controller and haptic fees back and they want to play their PS5 games on the go. They are a PS5 gamer, NOT a PC gamer. They have NO intention of playing PC games. For these people, which is the vast majority, the Portal is better in every way to the Ally. From ease of use, battery, game library. It's just better FOR THEM.
Bought the base model a few days ago from BestBuy, $399 and free overnight shipping, worth it! While it's under powered, it's good enough for all my 2D games and JRPGs. Yakuza 0 played amazing even at 10W setting with this Ryzen Z1 NON-Extreme chip.
This is not a touch only display. Yeah touch pads would be a nice touch but you have the option to switch back and forth between desktop mode and gamepad mode. I do it often and it really doesn't feel like an inconvenience as much as it feels like I have another option to navigate the desktop.
The ROG Ally gave me a true portability since I can just carry a power bank if I want to play longer. A gaming laptop is much more limiting on when and where I can play, since I need to carry around a power supply and mouse/controller along with having to find an AC port and a Desk + chair to setup.
I was playing some Hogwart's Legacy on it yesterday. I was going to get this game for my Nintendo Switch and after seeing the reviews no way will I want to play that game like that. This Asus ROG ally is able to give me 50-60FPS in Low Settings which still looks way better and plays way better than it would on the Nintendo Switch. So I am happy I have it. It is the smallest PC I have ever owned and it is powerful. I just had to swap out the 512GB to 2TB and I am good. 😁👍🏆 Note: I have the Steam Deck as well. It is also good. 😉👌
@@benedictpayot9527 I actually wasn’t even thinking of getting one of these. But, I was killing some time browsing on OfferUp app and seen someone selling this Asus ROG ally here locally for $500. I know at the time when I bought mine it was selling for $699 at Best Buy which is where I first saw it. I contacted the seller and offered him $400 Cash and to my surprise he accepted my offer. I like it much better than my Steam deck due to the fact this is an actual windows 11 gaming pc in a hand held form factor. I mainly use the steam deck for emulators and use this one for all my other gaming. It is slightly more powerful than the steam deck. The SD Card works flawlessly I have a 1TB micro SD card in the slot and I have installed some games on it and they play great but, it takes a lot longer to install games compared to my SSD . Which, I took out the stock 512GB SSD and replaced it with a 2TB M.2 SSD which is super easy to do. I used a cloning software that came included with the new 2TB SSD for Free. I did the swap this way so I didn’t lose any of my data I already had installed. It saved me a lot of time. I am happy I got it. I believe, they’re currently on sale right now as well. Yup, it is Best Buy showing they’re $399.99 So if you’re interested and thinking of getting one. Now is the time to do so. It is Awesome! I recommend getting some 3D printed grips to make it much more comfortable to hold. eBay has em for $15 a pair free shipping.
@@benedictpayot9527 the speaker is a lot better on rog ally, the option to boost up to 30 W is also considerable. But steam deck can have windows OS, while rog ally cant have steamOS (except the chimeraOS that isnt final yet)
@@benedictpayot9527 I don't have one but from what I've seen the SD card issue is from poor placement of the SD card reader being next to the exhaust fans causing it to overheat. They have released a patch to increase the fan speed of the side that it's on, this has increased the noise levels because it's compensating for poor placement.
@eksquirrel1879 I bought a cooling fan from Amazon for about $20 bucks. This thing stays cool. 😁👍Any powerful device that is in a small form factor will get hot. My Meta Quest 3 gets way too hot. I need to get a fan for it. But, yeah. This kind of power is always going to produce a lot of heat. Asus should have already known this. They really should have moved the card reader to the bottom, and there wouldn't be a problem.
My use case, travel. I don't use it in the plane or car. I do use it in the hotel, or AirBnB. Battery is not an issue. It's smaller than a laptop, and a console and easier to throw in a bag.
I have about 2000 games installed on my Ally. Mostly retro stuff, but also 6 modern titles as well. An SSD adapter is like 10 bucks and converts the small form factor M.2 to a standard PC size. I got a 2tb and the adapter for about 100 usd. I agree on the SD card... I don't understand why people even care to use those at all. Poor performance and reliability in all devices not just this one. I got the Ally to play modern and retro games from my couch while watching sports with the family and in bed from time to time. Waifu plays her Switch, and I play the Ally. Honestly, it's a fantastic machine so long as you are okay with a short battery life. I have an AC adapter in both locations and use a 90 degree angle cable on the Ally end to keep it low profile when playing. I also have a dock and xbox one controller for the living room for it. I can stream games from my 13900k/4090 gaming PC to the Ally and play in the livingroom with very good performance. I def recommend this if your use case permits. Better than a steamdeck IMO as its more versatile even if not as good battery life.
No one talks about using these as streaming devices. All I want is a nice screen and low power machine that can handle 4k 60 or 2k 120 decoding. preferably oled hdr. Just bought a legion go. I plan on installing bazzite linux and moonlight and seeing how long I can stretch the battery as a low power streaming device over wifi 6. I already do this on my tv on a cheap device. Works great. The price for these devices is too high or they have low res screens though. Finally bit the high price bullet
I really enjoy the ROG Ally. I'm a casual gamer who sits at a computer desk all day, so coming home and being able to play AAA games from my bed instead of sitting at my desk to play my PC is very worth it for me.
My dude, the Gameboy is almost 40 years old LOL. My brother and I got one for Christmas the year they came out and we were playing one another in Tetris with the cable connecting them. Good times.
Dude…. Can we please not forget the real problem with the ally…. THE DAMN SD CARD READER BURNS OUT!!!! “Oh just upgrade your main SSD card and u good”… I didn’t pay $700 plus dollars just to pay another $100-200 to upgrade storage and not use the brand new SSD card that already came with the damn system
I had a portal before I got my ROG allly and I can confirm the ally is a game changer compared to the ps portal. With the ps portal it’s only remote play you have to have your ps5 on and on the same network and to travel you will need to bring your ps5 with you. With the ROG ally it’s a stand alone you don’t need your pc with you it is it’s own thing you can travel with it
i don't really like that you talk about Portal up to 10 hours (that isn't even true) It's 4 hours on battery test channels. ROG Ally and Steamdeck with Chiaki Last longer, and stream on higher bitrate than the Portal. Come on mate, how you compare native to streaming, and don't even mention that the device can do streaming.
I used the PS Portal for around 3 hours before selling it. Even with high internet speeds, cloud streaming just isn’t there yet and theres a noticeable delay. Just ordered a ROG Ally, can’t wait to play games natively on there.
Just a head up from one user to another when you get it your gonna want to upgrade that SSD. Do yourself a favor and do a clean Asus backup of your device as soon as you get it setup then when you change SSDs in it you will be able to grab that update and have your windows key and everything with out a big fuss as some of the over videos on youtube will show when you do it.
@@joshuatipton1994 I had it for a few weeks now. I upgraded it to a 1 TB and everything’s been running really well. Overall a much better, lag-free experience compared to the PS Portal. Nothing beats native play.
Portal and Rog Ally comparison makes no sense at all to me. Ally, SD, Go are standalone gaming platforms with pros and cons. Battery life and easy of use --> SD Performances and flexibility --> Ally & Go Portal is just a controller with a build it screen for streaming... how can you even compare their battery life?
@@fantasytky28😂ender ring mid-low-60fps, the last of us 60fps low,days gone max-mid 60fps.....I won’t say that Steam Dec is shit (it has its advantages), but it can’t do that...😅
I like to go on drives and find a nice place to park and play games in my car and this is the most ultimate device for me to do so. Can't wait to emulate nfs underground on this
Man, you lost me the moment you said the Portal is "quite a competitor", how is a streaming only device a competitor to the Ally? Wouldnt the Legion Go be it's TRUE competitor?
I'm more of a PowerBank guy I always bring a 40000mAh at my backpack with 65W of charging and I just ordered my ROG Ally would it hurt the battery if I used it always plugged?
well.. idk what problems you people have with the touchscreen, you can set the dpi just a little higher if you can't click on something, i have sausage fingers and i can navigate or do anything i want on the screen at 100%. the right thumbstick is perfectly usable for the cursor movement btw. this is a perfect handheld for emulation, barely uses cpu or gpu, or battery. i played frickin 6 and half hours donkey kong on the first day i got it, from 100% to 3% battery, with the lowest TDP, but still i'm not limited to only one platform, one UI, i can do anything i would do on a normal desktop PC
Ally user here and I'm enjoy playing all my games on it. Battery life is not an issue for me as long as I can play all my games with no performance drop issue.
I like this review I love my ally and with a nice size power bank battery isn't really an issue. Also a lot of people are forgetting one quick and easy L bracket ssd mod and a 2280 4tb ssd can fit into the ally. The ability to do this gives it a huge advantage for me no need for the sd card haven't used it at all.
I'm not gonna tell you NOT to mod you're Ally for a full length drive. But after taking off the back...I wouldn't. Asus didn't use a shorty drive to screw the consumer. Its more expensive for them too. They used is because a full length places the drive right in the path of a bunch of dumped heat. Now, if you're not playing for long sessions and mostly at lower wattage that might not matter. But it made me question the long term health of any drive I'm putting in there. Just dropping this here for others that read the comments so they can do their own research of the pros and cons.
@@jonofpdx I still havent touched the og ssd so tyvm for this heads up. I might keep searching for a nice powerbank to link an ssd+keyboard,mouse or even another hdd if i feel like downloading more light performance games. Its been like 12 days since I bough it and I wonder the same about long term health status/performance in the long run with the parts...
You are 100% correct. It's why I haven't sold my steam deck. So now I have both. If you want to play an RTS or, say, Stellaris you basically have no real option but the steam deck. Why Asus did not include it is beyond me.
Not having at least a single trackpad means letting go of literally dozens of keybinds. The steam deck trackpad can do so much, it's crazy. Not having one its a big letdown imo. That being said, i'd still choose the ally over a steam deck simply because it can run stuff the deck can't, with better performance even though the battery sucks. And it has VRR. Both got their pros and cons
honestly the ability to hook up the xg mobile egpu (if you can get your hands on one for less than a grand) immediately makes the ally blow competition out of the water. you have the best handheld performance now mixed with the best desktop performance of all handhelds on the market. It just highly depends on how cheap you can get an xg mobile. found one local for $700 rx6850xt variant
Got my ROG Ally Z1(non-ex) for $399, had a Steam Deck too, definitely a nice difference. For battery life I tune it to the Steam Decks res and wattage. More tinkering to do than the Deck, but once you do it's worth it, at the price I got it at least.
I moded mine and put a 4 terabyte ssd in it, I always bring my power cord with me, and I can always plug In Somewhere. As far as the SD memory card, I use them for the emulators they seem to handle it just fine, it works really well on my ultra wide monitor, it kinda like having a ps3 that can handle modern-day games. It's practically a prototype, im interested in the next gen of rog ally.
The fact he went into a (basically) gaming laptop review thinking it was going to be like a Switch or Xbox says how not trustworthy this review is right off the bat.
+1 for RGB leds which I consider as light pollution source and useless gadget. I also turned it off and never switched it on since ;) Given the short battery life, I ended up using it as a full desktop gaming PC which I like. The two thing I wasn't used to anymore is hearing a fan and reduced battery which makes me think these PC handheld can't compete with mobile chip we usually find in phone, tablets or newest macbook. The only reason they exist, I think is because most games have been developed on PC architecture. I can't imagine what an handheld with chip similar to Apple Silicon inside would do: so much battery life, performance and silence...
@@acwbit2368 Speaking of tablets, smartphones and newest macbooks with apple silicon's chips, they do not use any fan anymore while still delivering high level of performance which shows a huge difference of efficiency between ARM and regular X86 architecture. I was just telling my experience after using passive device for more than a year and then coming back to regular X86 like the Ally, you're very surprised about spinning fan and the difference is very noticeable.
Really confused why he thinks the PS Portal a good standard to hold the ROG Ally to? And also why seems to prefer the portal? They aren’t even the same product. Like comparing an Xbox One to a VCR. They look the same, but…. Also the amount of RU-vidrs that completely lack understanding of the purpose of the 120hz screen blows my mind. “It’s a complete waste because the number in the corner will never go that high”
You can do in game settings adjustment using the gamepad like, you know an Xbox controller!!! What is this guy talking about this video is all over the place
no, in my opinion, the rog ally graphics could be compared to xbox one x / ps4 pro and games are more optimised for consoles than computers but if you play xboxlive by cloud gaming, yes you can replace the series X
ps portal is a competor?! what are you smoking... ? ally can play games, and have an actual operating system inside of it. you can't use the damn portal without an ps5!
I am waiting for Legion Go to come to my country….i loved Legion laptops in the past….ROG Ally is good but the hall effect sticks and detachable stick module just sold me
This guy has no idea what he's talking about. He's like "imma make a tech RU-vid channel and act like I know it all" you just don't fit the RU-vid personality man go back to your desk job
Really depends on what games you playing. Like Spider-Man remastered I struggled to get 50-60 fps in low settings but when I play dead space 2 I can max out the setting and still get 120+ sometimes it even hits 300 fps which is ridiculous
