I'm almost 49 and lol when you said the sponsor's name. I've had the Ally a month and long story short I love it. I haven't played my steam deck or switch in over a month.
@zigga967 19 seconds ago (edited) Just got mine yesterday; I absolutely love it for what it does; I'm a console guy (x xbox) who almost bought a ps5 to play ff 7 remake. This takes care of that (already 3 hours in), plus it takes care of gaming on the go. I also plan on using it docked to play lesser powerful games (command and conquer, for example) and others like a gaming PC. I'm very curious bout the external GPU that can kick it up to a legit rig. Does anyoneWould anyone happen to know of a way to run Zelda and other Switch games via emulator?
@@zigga967Also since coming from console, if you install Epic game store and launcher and sign up to their free account, they offer games every Thursday that you can just add to your account library. Most aren't that great but there are some good one's and even triple A's and bundled collections here and there. Especially the last half of December is a different game every day including some triple A's. Just thought I'd mention it as another option for getting some games
@svenmify agreed I own an ally and a steam deck, I prefer the ally overall but having the sticks be symmetrical is so comfortable, everyone complained about it on the switch but now it seems to be the standard for handhelds, holding a controller like that is fine but holding a 600gram handheld asymmetrically just gets uncomfortable after time.
I’ve got the deck and ROG and I love them both! The deck is my dedicated emulation machine and is great for indie titles and I use the ROG for more demanding games and love it docked
I liked your comment on how since it's really just a Windows PC, you can be expected to tinker with it more. That's one thing I think appeals to me about it. I like windows. I like tinkering. I like gaming. I'm fine with and would even enjoy more so something I can play around with to optimize and customize. I do see how that could be a downside to some and some would consider that to mean it's not working as expected when it's exactly what you should expect from a gaming PC.
I wanna get the Rog so bad but I'm lowkey scared because so many people reported a bunch of problems with it straight out the box and so many have returned it and because of that I'm kinda leaning towards the steam deck because it seems like the safer option but it's less powerful 😭😭 idk what to do😭
i got my ROG Ally last month. heard the same thing you have. never had a steam deck, just was on my Xbox One. but wow do i not care about the steam deck or my XBOX. ROG ally docked and no big upgrades yet. soon 1 TB sd and power bank for Traveling. but man, i even gave my lil nephew my Xbox. Just waiting to get more bred up for the accessories that are soon to come!
I’ve had both. I bought the most expensive steam deck first and I’ll say straight out the box it was easy to setup and play. I had it for about 5-6 months and while it is a good experience all around it did lack a good bit of game compatibility leading it to feel a bit restricted. So I sold it a couple months ago and purchased the ally. I personally haven’t experienced any big issues and gaming on it has been amazing. If you’re really that sketched I would definitely recommend to try out the steam deck to see if it’s even something you’d actually enjoy long term. Then upgrade to the ally once you’ve gotten comfortable with the state of the ally.
I think you said it best. I just got mine and it took about 12 hrs of trouble shooting to actually get games up and running the way you want to. I think right now this device is for people that don’t have a problem troubleshooting and researching to get things working
I have a gaming pc and it’s very hard for me to want to play on one of these. I had one and returned it because the battery life made me tied to a power cable or battery pack and for that I would just rather sit at my computer and have no need to run lower settings and what not. Maybe just not for me but for others I hope they enjoy it.
@@cellington77 well mine became overheated and charger stopped charging . I returned after a week or so . For me using windows was a pain . Glad it suits you .
Mine is so frustrating, I sold my steam deck for the ally. The ally is amazing, but the amount of problems I have is just downright dreadful. Sometimes games won't even work on the ally. I am done tbh, gonna return it and wait for another good handheld. Also the steam deck is underpowered and its display sucks, so it doesn't make sense buying it again. For the ally, it only has problems. Might get the aya neo
Soylent makes me wanna play through Xenogears again! Also, while disappointing, it's reassuring to know that others are also struggling with the ROG. I have a friend who has been struggling with it.
@@erwintan4746 why? I'm really bad with setting up etc. I have a asus rog g14 top of the range laptop. But I need something with an external GPu. U recon if I set up the gpu the handheld ally will stay cooler? I can't afford to pay 2300 dollars for all this including the memory card and have everything melt.
@@misterpacha1 it's the software from what I can tell. Armory Crate is exceptionally lousy from what I can tell. And the high price point with it just makes it feel unreasonable. Couple that with their poor customer service and bad RMA practice they've had in recent years just makes it a non-purchase for me. Happy with my steam deck, it does just fine
Returned mine a few days ago, I would wait for more refinement on from Microsoft to support windows on handheld and battery life. Anyways these days I’m playing TOTK mostly on the go
I got my the day it released and returned it within a week. I own a Steam Deck and upgraded it to a 1TB ssd and couldn’t justify the purchase of the ROG Ally.
Honestly when I first got mine 2 months ago setting everything up was insanely annoying . But now I love it and everything is so perfect for me , from switch to 360 to triple A
Hot take: Windows 8 was made for devices like this. All the windows complaints he had, were complaints about many "features" of windows 8, specialized ui, mobile centric focus, etc etc. I'd be curious to see how 8.1 would handle the device (if it were possible).
if you are not a tech enthusiast or do not have basic to intermediate technical know-how... this is NOT for you. Every day I have some issue with this device. If it's not one thing, it's another. And if it frustrates ME, it's gonna absolutely turn off curious buyers. For anyone who is used to console/casual gaming, buy a steam deck. It has way less bugs and issues and windows 11 is just an awful experience in a handheld form factor. I can't recommend the ROG ally to anyone right now because of how many problems it has.
I'm hoping that the ROG keeps getting updates so that it's less buggy. People forget that Steam Deck was buggy when it was released. Of course, this is ASUS, so um...not holding my breath on that one.
Try this>>>I had the same problems with controllers and keyboard mixes during gaming until I: (1) Disabled all steam inputs in the controller section in Steam ( focus, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, generic) etc [this is also the only way I could get a controller or ROG pad to properly work with my emulator package]. (2) In command Center > I set "control mode" to Gamepad(always). (3) I set "embedded controller" to Disabled only when using a controller (switch back to enabled when you want to go back to ROG pad). (4) If or when asked to use a customize game profile and switch to auto "always" select NO.-Full stop Now when a game boots up I or you can push A to start and on loading screens I or you will now see---> A,B,X,Y etc. instead of [TAB] , ENTER etc. Hope this works for others using controllers . I use the Rakiri Pro controller. Keep up the good work Kevin Kenson!!!
If anyone has a problem with the ally after updates or bios updates and even get locked out, it might be cause of windows device encryption. Its probably not a problem but it was specifically for me with what I needed to do. I had to turn it off. It’s a program that locks out access after bios updates or new data transfer devices being connected. Might even be the cause for the sad cards not working. If you don’t keep private data that your livelihood depends on on the device. Turning it off should be ok. It’s not an anti malware, only data encryption.
When it comes to using the gamepad you have to launch the game from armory crate so it can set it up for you. At least thats how it works for steam games
I think the steam deck is just missing 120 hz for being a killer instant buy for me. Ive been so accustomsed to it from phones to monitors to tvs to tablets. I understand the steam deck wont run GAMES at 120hz 24/7 when it cant run them at 60. But it makes SO MUCH of a difference in day to day stuff like just selecting games in the UI, NAVIGATION. things like that.
I thought the 60hz display was going to be pretty jarring after deciding to go for the deck, but it's surprisingly nice. It may not be the best, but it's certainly not terrible.
I honestly didn’t have any issues with mine other then the cloud recovery because I upgraded my ssd day one. Other then that all the games I play I get like 90min to 2 hours which basically my switch gets so I’m very satisfied I typically play games at 15watts at medium setting because I don’t notice the difference in quality.
Can you please say where you bought it from? Was it Best Buy, Amazon or the Asus site I want one so bad but so many people reported a bunch of problems and returned it
I got mine at launch and I had the sd card reader issues 3 weeks in. Sent if off for repair. Should be back mid week. No idea what they did to fix it. Haven’t heard. Other than that issue I love it
if Lenovo releases a Lenovo Legion handheld PC i'd buy it in an instant because they support Linux and Asus doesn't. I wish the Steamdeck had the button layout like the ROG Ally instead of having analogue sticks next to the buttons/dpad which is horrendous.
I got a steam deck, like it a lot. Playing xcloud games, diablo 4, bannerlord 2, days gone, fifa 2, mad max and use it for remote play from my Xbox. It runs everything pretty well but I have to say I’m thinking of selling it and buying an rog ally. But than again, it runs everything I play and it runs it well. It’s just the fact that I want the best device “regular “ people can afford. And I guess it’s more future proof? That said, I really enjoy my deck it has become my daily gaming device.
@@X862go fair enough, think it’s not a device for everyone. I played Skyrim with mods but I streamed it from xcloud. It doesn’t have as many mods as pc but it’s better than nothing :)
Upgraded to 2tb ssd and stop auto updates and I read everyone’s experience before I updated if it’s bad for me I roll back and stop trying use a sd card with the Ally it just does not want to work with my devices
mine basically started having SD card reader issues after roughly 1 month of use, which aren't noticable while it's just idling Windows, but 10~20 min into playing a game the SD card reader would just stop functioning.. :| currently waiting for the RMA to return it
I installed ff14 on my steam deck and played no prob and same with d4 and wow not what what u mean by hoops maybe its better now then launch day I got mine during summer sale and luv playes everything
When it comes to this MicroSD overheating issue, I'm as concerned about the potential "fix" as I am with the problem itself! There's only one way to fix a thermal issue with a software update - reduce thermal output by reducing performance - and Asus has a history of responding this way. When reviewers keep saying that "Asus is aware of the issue and hope to fix it in software," I hear "an update is coming that will cripple performance." Think about it, if people are returning these because of card slot issues then Asus loses money - but if they forcibly drop all the TDP limits by 10 watts then they can just claim the issue is "fixed." They could even reduce all the limits silently, so 30w setting really equals 20w, and they just hope we don't catch-on.
OK, so coming from a gaming laptop (3060) steam deck, switch OLED, S23 Ultra, Series S, and the Ally all running through the Anker Nebula Capsule 3 and Nreal glasses I can confirm the Ally kinda sucks 😂 its hard to explain but somethings off with it. The hardware is great for sure but the software makes it redundant
I have the steam deck and also the Ally and the only issue I have with the steam deck is the colors and screen looks washed if the screen looked as good as the Ally it would be fun to play I played my steam deck every day for a year and served me right I will not get rid of it but the Ally is my new go to and it just works and I can’t get enough I Ben playing fallout 4 and it runs amazing have not had any issue’s and being able to play on the go it’s great just make sure u have 3 power banks haha
8:55 are you trying to act cool and say I told you so a year from now? Microsoft has already announced that they're exploring ways for a future software geared towards handheld gaming. You should know this by now.
I love the ROG Ally, and I consider it to be the best of all the PC handhelds I've used thus far, but It's got glaring flaws. Particularly, Armory Crate is a mess, and the battery is less than it should be. I've owned a Steam Deck and a Win Max, and the Ally beats them both, but if you're looking for something that's close to perfect, like a console, we aren't there yet with any of these PC handhelds. People will try to convince others that the Steam Deck comes the closest in that regard, but where it fails is at running games from other launchers, so to me, it's dead last in the handheld race. Heck, it even has trouble running games that comes straight off of Steam if they have anti cheat, which is something Windows handhelds don't need to worry about.
I will never get the "SteamDeck OS is a console so it's easier, with Windows you're dealing with PC problems" SteamDeck is literally the same, it just opens Steam on Big Picture mode WTH!, just open it in the Ally??? Windows won't have you dealing with proton versions, anti cheat issues and instantly has better performance.
Microsoft has said that they are looking into creating a version of windows for handhelds like this. I tried one out at a best buy and wasn't super impressed. I blame it mostly on the demo which was Forza horizon 4. Even turning it down to low it could barely render the map and suffered a ton of hitches and visual problems like the map but loading chunks in
Weird because I just left Best Buy a couple hours ago and played forza on the ally and had 0 issues. In fact, I bumped up the fps to 120 and it ran like a dream. Granted, the employee just finished updating it so that may have also been why it ran so well
Yeah that unit at bestbuy had to faulty because fprza was stunning at the best buy that I went to. I purchased one and love it. No issues and set up was easy.
