I think most people will spend the extra $100 for the Z1 Extreme. Maybe that will see them bring the price down on the Z1 in the future. I just hope that disappointing sales of the Z1 won't lead to Asus giving up on making budget or mid-tier handhelds, we need more
This handheld will confuse parents or people unfamiliar with the differences and they will end up with a bad experience because of it. Unless you are going to go really cheap like sub $300 for an emulation machine like the odin 2 they should not come out with these gimped x86 handhelds. They are too weak to play games well and at that $300 price you are better off with an android operating system with a snapdragon. You'll be able to emulate everything up to ps2 and gamecube and get great battery life with a better OS experience. Still could stream everything as well. Just make sure you add a desktop like feature when plugged in to a monitor like Samsung or Motorola has.
@@creaturecore13 If we applied that logic to gaming PCs and laptops they would all come with RTX4090s and be prohibitively expensive for most people. Handheld PCs with varying degrees of performance and price is a good thing for the consumer.
At the ROG price point, I don't think its worth saving $100 to get a Z1. What I'm interested in is the possibility of mini PCs using the Z1 in the future at decent prices. It would make for a great little Steam Box/alternative console.
Which is dumb since steam deck beats them in almost every category. At least the z1 extreme version have performance advantage in some cases, this new model is just a worse steam deck.@@infomanfaatshare6667
just grabbed a Z1 for $399. at that price, not bad for someone who just wants to dabble in handhelds. Would have never considered spending over $500 on a handheld
I have now owned the Z1 extreme, currently the Legion go, and early the steam deck. Locally I can get a non-extreme for 250. Seriously seriously debating it because for that price it will emulate pretty much anything and I am within shooting distance of an Odden, but with the ability to play some AAA light I have my desktop and laptop for the heavy stuff.
@douglarsen4801 realistically once you want to play the bigger AAA stuff you'll probably want a bigger screen, etc so I think lightweight gaming and indies is perfect for the Z1
Considering you can get an open-box Z1E for the same price at the same store, it's a really tough proposition at $599. I wonder if Asus is going to put these on sale regularly.
@@kyledoesntgetit5602 those open box have a higher chance of having a lot of backlight bleed or any other known asus quality control issues cause they were returned for a reason lol
After watching both of your reviews I think I made the correct choice getting the z1 extreme version rather than waiting for the cheaper one to come out over here (UK). Thankyou for your clear and concise review on both devices
My how time can change things up dramatically----Best Buy almost always had the Z1 version at $399. It's not all the time, but most of it. For that much of a drop over the Z1 extreme, I'll deal with the lower performance and buy a ton more games 😄
Yeah, I had heard when this device was released, I don't know if it was from Asus or AMD or someone else, that the difference wouldn't be that great. It's a good step up on the Extreme, so I think the Z1 is for less expensive devices in the $400-500 range. 720p LCD screens, cheaper plastic body and buttons, smaller and slower drives. Built for emulation and older titles. If there is a market for that in that price bracket
@@deansmits006 Something to consider, if they're dropping to 720p, the GPU horsepower needed will also drop pretty dramatically, so it could still do some AAA games at a reasonable framerate (or probably using less power to do 30fps), which would be a perfectly fine compromise. After all, that's basically where the Deck was targeting and while Valve has the pain point of selling either at a loss or pretty much at cost (can't believe they'd be making any money on these things with how much some stuff costs these days...), if Asus could have at least designed down to the $500 range with a cheaper screen that competes more with the Deck, it'd be a good alternative to suggest for people. Otherwise, if you're in the US, getting a Deck on sale for $360 is basically *the* deal to get, just add your own screen protector and a microSD card and you're off to the races.
I just got it and it runs everything just fine. Like a dragon in 1080p and high settings with 25w, no issues. GC emulation all good. FC24 with high in 720p, no issues besides the stupid cut scenes. Jedi Surviror in low and 720p also works like a charm. If you are in a country where the Z1 is 200 or even more EUR cheaper, its definitely worth it over the extreme version.
The Ally drew me into the handheld community. I got mine day 1. I still love it. It does everything that I wanted it to do. I do have some interest in the Legion Go though.
Something to note: Best Buy is selling the ROG ally Z1E used at like new condition for around 600-630. If you go for a worse condition you might be able to get it for even less. At that price there is no good reason to buy this, so you’ll probably see this handheld either discontinuing or dropping down to 500 (or even 450 though unlikely). Edit: my best buy has the rog ally open box with excellent condition at $587.99. An absolute BARGAIN, I recommend checking your local best buy for the price if you're looking for one.
Lol what? They won't be discontinuing it or dropping the price. Those are best buy exclusive open box and cosmetically flawed units. Doesn't mean it's going to drop in price or that they will stop selling it 🤣
If you are already spending that much money, might as well spend extra 100 dollars to get xtreme model. Doesn't make sense to leave so much performance on the table to save only 100 bucks...on the other hand, i think this model should have been priced at $499.
At the initial MSRP, I think the Z1 does not justify a $100 difference. However, Best Buy is having a $200 discount for the holidays for the Z1 which, in my opinion, is way more in line with price vs performance difference. In my use case, the Z1 will be more than sufficient for the games I intend on playing, especially while I’m traveling. Plus, down the road, as things change, the ability to upgrade the GPU for home use is perfect! Just my $.02
Hey Russ! Kind of a new subscriber, who bought their first handheld device (Miyoo mini plus) based on your videos! I was hoping if you could give us another video on some “budget” handhelds maybe under the $200 mark? The miyoo mini is perfect for GBA and some PS1 emulation which is what I got it for. BUT, I am kind of missing the console I grew up with, the PS2 and Wii. I know that those two might be hard to find, besides the retroid pocket 3+, but I’m hoping you can help me narrow down a few more choices. But thank you, I watch your videos every time you upload. You’re really doing very exceptional work along with other RU-vidrs focusing on retro and handheld gaming. Again, thank you and a very warm thank you for getting me in touch with my inner child!
That latest vertical handheld and and the retroid pocket flip can do GameCube and PS2. If you want Wii though, ya maybe outta luck for a bit longer at that price point. So you'll need to wait for another gen before that, otherwise you'll have to raise your budget a bit.
I got mine for about 400 at best buy, and honestly I think it's worth the price. Sure you could just get the z1 extreme but price wise, think about it like a switch lite to a normal switch. Sure it's missing a few things but it's still a good handheld.
@@cassijoanna it was a bit of a hassle to get working right. The guy who returned the ROG ALLY had vanilla Windows 11 installed so during the initial setup Windows didn't recognize the ROG Wi-Fi card so I couldn't connect to the internet. I ended up having to boot into the ROG BIOS and doing an Asus cloud recovery.
Until a hardware revision comes around for the SD card issue, I can't see *either* SKU being a good idea... I only see the lower spec model here being a winner if somewhere down the line they get heavy discounts.
@@GundamDroidMany Ally have been frying people SD cards. Russ even mention in this video that he couldn't retest Two of the games because they were on this fried SD card. People think it's because the slot is too close to the Air exhaust, but either way, it's too risky to use SD cards with Ally devices.
@@GundamDroid not just cooked cards, some folks have had the actual SD card hardware in the device die, notably Gamers Nexus had that happen to the (retail) unit they were reviewing.
The ONLY reason to pick up the original Ally over a Steam Deck was because of the significant performance boost. Here, that advantage is lessened. Just go with a Deck and enjoy the amazing software support and ecosystem.
I have the deck and other handheld pcs. I have the most issues with the deck. I still love it when it works but yeah i don't have as much access to my library as i wanted.
@BGRecon wtf are u even talking about? what library? unless urbtoo rtrded almost everything works on the deck, everything I've thrown at the deck worked, even games and apps nobody knows about
@@c6tlvr most games work just fine, but there's some popular titles that don't due to anti-cheat incompatibility. Like CoD, Battlefield, etc. That's my biggest issue with the Deck.
I'm pretty stupid excited about this whole thing. I'm still waiting on the Legion Go to come out, because detachable controllers have potential in my head, but the Ally is still my dream handheld.
Hopefully the Legion Go is popular and manufacturers start making alternate controller attachments. The best thing about the Switch joycons was the opportunity to swap them for full size controller grips.
I got the z1 about 4 months ago and I got it really cheap because I knew a store manager of a certain electronics retailer. At first it was ok but not great. About a month ago I got some great updates from ASUS and now I’m playing games that I couldn’t play before. I’m keeping now and enjoying it. ASUS is on top of it with there updates. Consider this model if you can catch it at a good price.
If the Z1 performs so much worse than the Z1 Extreme in most cases, then just get back Steam Deck at that point. The cheapest model is $359 right now, which is a steal!
Steam must be losing a little money, or just covering costs on the Deck. Which is often the case with Consoles, but not typically full computers. But I agree, that's a steal.
@@c6tlvrthey mean losing money on hardware sales, which is a common thing on console, you regain your money on software sales, which asus can't do (as they don't own steam)
New subscriber, thanks for all your awesome videos! I love your particular brand of reviews and hands-on descriptions that is sometimes better than straight benchmarks. Got the Z1 Extreme Ally and love it! Game on!
This Ally non-x for $399 or steam deck with same price? Which one is better? Because right now ally non-x is $399 in best buy so i was wondering w/c is better to get.
Wait a bit... Z1Extreme is basically the 7840U, but the TFLOPS performance is around 3x the Z1. But I believe the 7640U has 8 CUs on the GPU, and Z1X/7840U has 12... so the Z1 probably/really has 4 CUs as it was said... that's a big cut. Even the Steam Deck has 8, despite from one gen before. If it was at least 6, like the (middle) AYN Loki, it would be okay, but 4 is a quite a stretch for some cases. If I had the money and a single option for a non-6800U/non-7840U, I think I'd prefer a GPD Win 4 with the 7640U... I believe Asus dropped the ball on this one. That said, there's always a case for everything. Someone might get this one and put in lots of hours of fun. If so, good for you! Nice video as always, Russ. edit: better reading; 4 CUs, not 3, guess I can't math properly 🥲
Thank you for the review. For $100 less it is not worth it. Z1 Extreme version for $100 more is the best price performance. Not to forget the two-time smaller SSD(512 vs. 256 Gb).
I was hoping this would be close to matching the battery life with the steam deck on lighter indie games and emulators, but with it seemingly capping under 4 hours even there and costing around the same as the top model of steam deck this might be a hard sell. But the higher frame rate, VRR and screen is nice so hopefully there is a market for this and more incentive for Valve to improve on the screen.
@@krzysztof6591 I'm referring mostly to very light indie games that could go for the 120 fps, or anything between 60 and 120 really. The SOC is not so bad that no games can benefit from the higher refresh rate. And if the frame generation picks up in the future that might help in more cases. Better screen is still better screen and something Steam Deck and others could hopefully improve on down the line.
That price point is actually intriguing. I keep thinking to myself. Man, I'd love to have a windows dedicated handheld. Although Linux handhelds like the steamdeck are great. So many games just straight up run better on windows. Thank you for your coverage as always! I have to say though. I wonder what you do with your handhelds? I saw you auction off some. From that one video you posted. But Like on a regular bases. I'd have a hard time choosing which ones to use. 😂 I like my Steamdeck though. It can do everything I need it to
Buy a 1 - 2tb SSD, and put an install of windows on to it, then write an image of whatever flavor of Linux you want on a 1tb micro SD. When you wanna run windows leave the card out, when you want Linux pop that booger in.
Price dropped again and it's now 399. I think now is the time to pull the trigger specially for someone like me who would only use it mainly for emulators. Would you agree?
Got it at 399.00 and honestly I am chill with it, for the casual games I play they run perfectly fine and hardware wise its just cool looking, so I'm a happy camper with the regular Z1, ASUS should keep it at 399.00 IMO
@@alfredtorres1252 man so far I've just been enjoying the same games from my deck at like double the performance it feels 😭. I was impressed in sections of cyberpunk that ran locked 40 but now I can get a nice image and turbo mode 25w off battery and I can hit 60!! And even the dips in heavy scenes on medium don't go below 30. Vrr helps out. Besides that I'd say 120fps halo,sifu, I'm waiting to see how the situation develops with cod but I'll probably skip it, I want to set up some psp emulators etc. plus I don't miss my decks track pad at all armory crate ftw
@@kimalibennett9468 heck yeah. I sold my steam deck and got the rog ally for what I sold my steam deck for. All the reviews were talking bad about the z1 model and it couldn’t run mw3. I’ve been playing it flawlessly on battery and obviously ever better when plugged in. I was running windows on steam deck but this blows it out of the water. I was playing Skyrim on steam deck and so excited to play it on rog ally especially since I have an upcoming flight this week
It's more accurate to say the Ryzen Z1 is analogous to the Ryzen 5 7540U. The Z1 Extreme/Ryzen 7 7840U has 8 CPU cores and 12CUs (Radeon 780M), the Ryzen 5 7640U has 6 CPU cores and 8*CUs (Radeon 760M), and the Z1/Ryzen 5 7540U has 6 CPU cores and 4 CUs (Radeon 740M). Big fan of you being upfront in not being hugely benchmark focused - there's other reviewers who will handle that. Keep doing what you do best - talking about the overall experience.
Yup I am seriously considering getting the z1 at that price but since this will be my only gaming setup (last one was ps2) I'm hesitant to get the lower model. Just getting back in to gaming and Currently using a tablet with Xbox game pass and I think I need something that can do all the new higher end games
@@donkeydrangis216 I ended up getting the extreme, was looking at them that weekend on best buy and almost got the z1 but decided to wait a couple weeks but on Monday I couldn't resist and checked bestbuy again and they dropped the extreme to $599 and they had open box in excellent condition for $500 so I went for it
Just picked up the Z1 regular for $299. I figure it’s worth the performance decrease to save $3-$400. Wondering what the prices will be when the Ally 2 comes out.
Got a Extreme for 550. It was surprisingly easy to set up other than me having to reset all my windows and steam passwords cuz I forgot them all. The setup took a little bit to load up but other than that I was playing a game not long after finishing the install process. I'm most impressed with the sound and the screen. I've used the steam deck in the Ally speakers blow it away it might not be a big deal for some people but it's important to me. The only reason I went for this was it was on sale at Best buy and I could pick it up I can't just get a steam deck in person. The downside to that was having to have Best buy pitch me 10 different warranties and upsells and upgrading my accounts. They wanted me to spend like an extra $300 on stuff I didn't need. If it breaks I'll either send it to Asus or fix it myself I don't need Best buy to disappoint me.
I just don't see the upside to this version, its good for older game and emulation but a very expensive way of playing those games. As a AAA portable games machine, its just not good enough. So its expensive for old games & can't really play new games. The moral of the story, get the proper ally or get a cheaper dedicated emulation handheld. Unless I'm missing something?
They clearly introduced it now to counter the 699$ Legion go and those new refurbisned Steam decks. But whoever put down the numbers missed the whole exercise.
I'll just keep using my Oled Switch for handheld gaming and my PS5 for those AAA games, my life will not change being able to play them on the go, i rather enjoy them at home in my already expensive monitor without having to go through all the trouble of settings and all that bs
I was considering an odin 2 for a handheld device, BUT this one is actually at 400 euros where I'm from so I don't really see a point in getting the odin anymore. This being a PC is such a high value alone.
Snagged one of these for $300 from MacBids. For that price, I'm enjoying playing some things like Ori, Trails in the Sky, etc. that wouldn't look as good on something like the Switch. I have yet to do emulation on it, but with this I feel like I could do without my Odin 2.
Plz don't use 16bit FLOPs figures. No one does that and makes for confusion to tech newbies. Use 32 bit figures which would give Z1x ~4TFLOPs and Z1 ~2.6TFLOPs.
Three questions. 1. Doesn't the system allow you to have scale to screen so that the black bars are only on the sides instead of all sides for 4:3 games? 2. Can this CPU really not bottleneck the external mobile 3080 Ti? That's impressive. 3. Since you use it as a PC, (which I would too if I had one), have you tried doing video editing on the device, with external monitor with and without the external GPU?
Difference between 4 CUs and 12 CUs alot lesser than the number implies, probably due to memory bandwidth and power limitation, but for 100 dollar more the z1e is definitely the better buy. For people who really don't need the power and still want a high quality VRR screen with good and non over exaggerated colors for their handheld I guess it's still an option. Make more sense at 500-550. I don't suppose you know if they really mix zen 4 and zen 4c cores here?
I've heard that it's that version, with 2 standard cores and 4 dense cores. For a gaming focused handheld, it may not be the best chip. I mean, gaming can be highly single threaded, but the other 4 cores wouldn't turbo very high, just meant to offer 4 more cores in about 2 cores space for multi threading. If you plan to use your Ally as a computer, then sure, probably a good chip. But as primarily to game....just the Z1E.
Why the steam deck is never compared to the Rog Ally with the Z1? That's strange. Maybe cause the performance is very similar to the steam deck and asus wouldn't like a comparison?
@@kimalibennett9468 No it's almost the same. It's just strange that there is no direct comparison. I guess no one would buy the Rog Ally with Z1 if they see that the performance is the same like the one from the steam deck. While having said that I'm sure very few people anyway buy the version with Z1.
Wtf do u really think someone is gonna spend $1,500 extra for that external you just to play 60fps 1080? This is ridiculous! Then wats even the point of the handheld? Not even worth buying if ur gonna spend a total of $3000 for old specs
@@creaturecore13lmao just say you can't afford it. I've been enjoying my z1e since launch and haven't had sd card issues because I knkw how to adjust the fan curves.
@@robertsmith20022 that's definitely it, not that I don't own a steam deck, odin, aok Zoe a1, and have a 1k onexfly coming in a few weeks. Definitely can't afford this overpriced z1 that's weaker then a deck.
Z1 corelates more with 7540U than 7640U but to me I'd base it on 7640U and use 7540U for "lite" chip for h-helds up to 6" used mostly for indie and emu
had the Ally for 4 days returned it and got the winmax 2 from amazon instead I cant tell any difference between the z1 and the 6800u. Having a full keyboard, with all the I/O and extra storage is a game changer.
Watching Link's Awakening hit 60fps (LIKE IT DID ON GAMEBOY) is such a heartbreaker for Switch. Switch 2, man, we need that shit. Bad PS3 emulation's pretty much on lock. I'm getting slick performance even with a 5600G and no GPU, so no surprise to see the Z1's keeping up with the Xtreme
Yeah but try playing Devil May Cry 5 at 800p on the Steam Deck at 60fps with some frame drop, then try Devil May Cry 5 at 1080P 75+fps on the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme. Even at 15 watts 1080p, the Z1 Extreme gets over 60fps.
Never limit yourself when you're already working with a handicap. Order the full meal, even if you don't plan to eat everything. You may be hungrier than you think.
I checked the AMD website and found that the Z1 has actually 4 CUs, while the 7640U has 8 CUs. So they are not the same chip. And this Ally model is less powerful than a 7640U device.
I don't even care about this version of the Ally but thank you so much for this video. D2 is my main game and that thumbstick issue has been a huge pain point since the thumbstick settings had done nothing to help certain games on my steamdeck I had all but given up and hadn't thought to adjust them on steam on my Ally. Also I had no idea about the controls using the D Pad and the back bumpers. I'm 8 minutes in and this is already the most informative ROG Ally Video I have seen and I have owned my Z1 Extreme since launch. Thank you so much now if they could fix it so that halo MCC's input worked properly from the handheld controls I'd be all set.
the ally also has quite a bit of motion blur / ghosting due to it being 7ms response rate. i noticed this straight away when moving the mouse cursor for example. it blurs. probably gonna be more noticeable for people on the spectrum like me. i would say the steamdeck is worse tho
Spoiler alert Z1 vs Z1E reminds me of during an episode of Top Gear, they put a Toyota Prius on a track and ran it flat out, and a BMW M3 just had to keep up with it. After X number of laps or time, the Prius had used more fuel.
