Is The ASUS ROG Ally The XBOX Handheld Of Our DREAMS?! 

Loved hearing about your experience, Matty. I absolutely love my ROG Ally, the fact that it runs a game like Ghostwire Tokyo and Exoprimal like a charm is absolutely insane, and has changed the way I play games after a day of work. Good stuff as always, man!

I really like my ROG Ally but unfortunately I did have an issue with overheating as the Ally did cook one of my SD cards to the point that its not usable on ANY PC. I use an external SSD to add games instead and will not use the card reader until ASUS enables a permanent fix. I have adjusted the fan curves to compensate for the heating issues but the fans are indeed much louder than the default settings.

The ROG Ally is the closest thing to an Xbox handheld in 2023. Being able to play native Xbox games (PC version) on the go has always been a dream of mine. Also, the Ally has made me appreciate Xbox Play Anywhere titles more than ever before. It’s not a perfect device but I would highly recommend it.

I'm Australian and valve are determined to avoid taking money from us for the steam deck (not available here going on more than two years after launch). This might be a good alternative as its actually available in Australia (with local warranty etc) Price is A$1299 which is close to what gray market importers are charging for the 64gb Deck

Absolutely loving Rog Ally. It's my main gaming system now. I also bought a 4090 asus e-gpu and the games run like butter at 4k 60-120 fps.

We got a display for the ROG Ally at work recently and it's actually scary how hot it gets. The metal bracket they used to secure it (vented btw) gets almost too hot to touch. About half of the units we sell end up getting returned. I've been told the micro-SD card slot is in a problematic location and accidentally ejects frequently. I think it's a cool device but I'll be waiting for the next revision.

Super excited to try mine out once it's set up. Literally just got one today! Thanks for the honest takes man.

Absolutely love mine! Your review on it is spot on!

Big fan of ROG. Great quality, huge satisfaction for years.

Awesome review! I don't just get games from Steam, so this handheld is more for me. I'm just worried about how much it would cost if something like a button stops working and it needs repairs.

I have been trying to figure out if I want the Ally or a Steam Deck. I think I am edging toward the ally, it would pair nicely with my ROG laptop. Thank you for this video Matty, it helped me a ton.

I'm happy for you 🥳. I fully understand why you gave a good review 🎉. Besides this video, keep up the good work 👍

Just watching your video on my ally. Great vid. Hope it will play starfield well.

Getting one after watching this! Thanks man!

I absolutely love it!! Been using it for a month and I pretty much run all my games in performance mode or a manual mode at 18 watts and I run every AAA game at 60+fps and Better battery than 25watts! And it's also my retro machine as well!

I just bought a steam deck after yours and Cog's video! Got me hyped!

Great get with that AMD Sponsorship Matty, I've been thinking about maybe picking this up. 👾👾👾

I cant wait to get my hands on an ROG Ally, does it come with a built in screen recorder like mobile or is it going to need a 3rd party app for recording, thanks 👍🏻

Those Exo Primal frame pauses were legit.

I dont think we'll ever get a handheld xbox device (well the one in this video is probably the closest) but with cloud gaming, you can do that on literally any mobile device. It is extremely easy to just buy a wireless bluetooth controller and game pass and boom you can play on your phone almost anywhere. I am still blown away that its possible to boot up an xbox game on my phone and just play it. I don't use this feature myself, but i can imagine if i had had this when i was young, i dont think i would've ever played on anything else xD

i went with the GPD WIN 4 for my handheld. But i was told that this ASUS ROG was the better option due to the power and optimization. Good review. Thanks.

I absolutely love my Rog Ally - best handheld I've owned and I've been playing handhelds since the original gameboy ...

Thanks for the review I definitely want to buy one of these now

I’ve had mine since launch. I love it.

Are there some accesorios like controllers or k board/mouse for this?

Awesome device, got it a couple of weeks ago 🔥🔥

Love mine, doing a House NV runthrough on the go has been awesome. Vegas runs well even on 10W and 720 high settings, pretty good if you ask me.

Love my rog ally! I just beat ds1 and am about 1/2 way through ds3 and having a blast. So cool to play console quality games in bed before I go to sleep. It really is impressive

Super distracted by that poster in the background yelling "my toe my toe" in my head lol

Imagine if they released an xbox special edition of this, with official xbox controller sticks and buttons and an xbox skin

How does the ally stack up against the series s graphically? (Plugged in/docked of course.)

Can you dock this and put it on your tv? And can you use an xbox controller with it?

Currently playing a fully modded fallout 4 on the Ally and it’s amazing.

If battery life is an issue...portable battery charger have gotten better by leaps and bounds as well compared to the older ones. They have fast charging and all now

The ROG Ally sounds pretty awesome, but I had already ended up getting the Steam Deck. Matty you should do a comparison on the two and lay out your opinions on both :)

I'm tempted by the Ally but as a Steam Deck owner running Win11 I feel I would miss the track pads. I also think I want a handheld that supports all eGPU and nothing proprietary. For me that's the next evolutionary step here... Hope that is something that is possible in the Steam Deck V2 over thunderbolt 4...

I’m extremely intrigued by the Persona series. I love fighting games and jrpgs. And Persona has both. Do I have to play them in order? Are they stand alone like Final Fantasy? If so, can I get recommendations on a particular one? 🤔 I’m only loosely familiar with I think P4. I think that’s who crossed over with BlazBlue ?

How does star field on game pass feel does it run good ?

i was wondering if i signed in with my xbox account can i download my purchased games from my xbox . or just only the game pass ?

I will buy an ROG Aly soon. I don’t know when but SOON 😊

You don't need 1080p on a handheld! They need to make these things with reasonable screens. There's no point on having a really high resolution screen on a handheld. It's bad for the user. Takes more power to run and tweeting for triple AAA games. 1080p is enough or even 720p like the switch.

As someone who mods any game they can I'm curious how it or the steam deck will handle starfield and Skyrim modded.

Thanks for the video bud. Cloud gaming has just been an awful experience so far for me and have been waiting for a proper handheld with downloads n such. This being essentially a gamepass machine sounds amazing. Many of us love handheld gaming on the couch who grew up with it.

the overheating problems occur when playing games whilst charging, and is very consistent. it is obviously entirely avoidable, but I don't want to have to stop playing the moment the battery gets low.

Would the Asus out perform the XSS when it comes to playing Starfield?

More of a steam deck guy myself. The ROG looks cool, but I really love steam os and the tailored experience it provides, even if I have to sacrifice compatibility

They killed their own product by rushing it. Fried sd cards, screen gets too hot to touch, even the power plug gets blazing hot. Also if you're playing on the most recent bios the fans are loud on any power setting.

I love my AokZoe A1 pro. The 19:10 ratio is great for retro gaming!

So can i play any on my series and and anygame on my pc playpass catalogue?

my wife wants to play FO76 with me on it. would like to know how well that runs / overheats.

Dude whered u get the tmnt posters in the background

Yes, it is for me. I haven't turn on my SeriesS for a week now (i feel sorry for my S😅).

Can someone please clarify whether this is the Z1 or Z1 Extreme? Thanks and Happy Holidays gamers!!!!

I love mine so much its pretty much a middle ground between series s and x, with a monitor i can get forza horizon 5 at 1440p 60 med settings or even 4k 60 at low settings

One thing I'm wondering is how is Starfield going to run on the Rog Ally🤔

I was just looking at the Asus Ally today at Best Buy and sales person warned me from buying it. 😮 They said Best Buy got a lot of these returned because of over heating problems. Wait for the next version.

I have had a steam deck for the last year and so far I am very happy with it. I would love to play windows game pass, but I’m hoping that around some point the deck gets dual boot. Would also love a cross comparison Matty.

‘Modern game that looks and runs great’, Matty shows Exoprimal that is hardly playable from the start.

FO3, FO:NV, FO4, Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind run perfectly on the Steam Deck... Why'd you need to wait, Matty?

I was playing Honkai Star Rail on my Ally and it ran beautifully, pretty happy with it.

I love my ally, I have deck as well and I do prefer it sort of but I pretty much always use the ally now because it's just easier and more powerful.

I love the rog ally! I'm surprised how xcloud runs great on it. Xcloud ran fine the latency has not been an issue and getting 120 fps which I was surprised about

Can u play the xbox series x games you have digital on it without having xbox with you?

Does it have remote play or is it only game pass games?

The idea of handheld gaming has always been appealing but I've never spent much time on those systems despite owning many of them over the years. It is good to see handhelds take such a massive step forward these days though.

I love that there's choices for those of us who are on the go. I love the steamdeck tho

Wish I had one or that one streaming handheld but I personally am fine. With my Steam Deck playing Halo on it and my Series X. But I would like a gaming pc eventually.

Am 70 years old and am still gaming lol

Personally I will wait until the battery technology gets better for these things. At the moment I dont really care for handheld gaming, I just play at home. But if one day theres a handheld with similar specs and 5+ hours on maximum performance im in.

The biggest issue I’ve seen with the Ally is just Windows. There’s only so much Asus can do even working with MS and without a dedicated gaming mode from MS like the Steam Deck has it just seems bloated. I still just want MS to make a dedicated handheld Xbox built on Xbox architecture especially seeing what the engineers managed with the Series S in such a small package. I am ironically more interested in the Ally as a desktop gaming and work PC with its specs and price point, but with Windows 12 rumored to be like a year out I’d rather just wait for the next model. I do unironically love the handheld revolution and that Valve and Asus aren’t just copying the Switch. I know this isn’t the first time we’ve seen handled gaming PCs, but it is the first time they’ve been so affordable and accessible with great dedicated gaming UIs (or an effort) and that console like plug and play mentality. I’m hugely hoping they boost PC gaming on the whole and really make console gaming go the extra mile (because when the initial cost and user accessibility barriers get dismantled PC gaming just becomes a clear beast compared to console).

I watched this on my phone and couldmt resist switching to my ally to watch it before playing Street fighter 6 Im not old enough for the original gameboy but the advance was my first handheld. I stopped after upgrading to the sp, havent had a handheld since because none of em had games i wanted till now. I have em ALL MUAHAHA!!!!

If it gets at hot as my rog zephyrus then you'll be losing fingerprints playing this thing.

4:22 I was literally rubbing my screen to clear that dust particle 😅

Its powerful enough to run the highest demanding games at 60fps, given its as low as 720p low settings but still

Still rockin' my Odin Pro here for, not only, my streaming needs. A slot for a sim card, so I can use my 5G subscription, would have been better, but it is what it is. Sad that some of these handhelds are annoying to get in Europe.

I recently got a series X and Starfield (constellation edition) just to be able to play Starfield. Now im considering selling my xbox and buying an Ally to play Starfield on that instead. Im wondering: 1. Can I transfer my saved character to play on the Ally? 2. If so, will this only be possible with game pass (the save isnt "on gamepass" since i bought the game for Xbox)?

Most titles require 720 to 900p for decent battery use. At 1080p, expect to hit Turbo mode and be tethered to a wire or get a power bank.

Division 2 on this is it decent?

I'm getting mine this week! I can't wait to play Mass Effect on my break at work away from the kids lmao 😂

I have a Xbox series X but Im thinking sell it and get this rog, you think is a good idea?

Is this worth picking up for PC Game Pass as the primary use? Because this would be my main reason to buy.

Can I play my entire Xbox purchase library on this device? Or only game pass??

Can i download previous purchased games from my Xbox marketplace?

I'm imagining the clicks of it are similar to the xbox controller or am I wrong

This thing made me never touch my deck ever again.. it’s amazing

The speakers are incredible

Xbox is sponsoring this thing, and it have freaking windows, those two things are literally saying this is a Microsoft handheld, so yeah it is the Xbox handheld people were looking for In a side note Microsoft sponsored another product the Logitech g cloud, is basically a handheld console but focus on cloud gaming, so basically Microsoft is appealing for both users, the local and the cloud, those guys are genius :v

Would I be able to play games that I already own for Xbox without getting game pass?

Must suck when Microsoft pays you for damage control

So everything on there was 60 fps plus?

What is the name of the first game he placed?

U got an hour and a half with 84%battery life left over while playing mass effect 2!? How? Evening on the rog when i play it lasts like 45 mins. You'd be lucky if u get an hour or a little bit over an hour.

So for me Xcloud run flawless, so I use my phone and Xbox connect to it great fun. Still would be cool with a Roge ally

Iam comming from playstation and bought the ally with the xbox game pass iam loving it

Anybody pick up the ally and the xbox app just refuse to load for them? Tried to uninstall the app but now I get an error message and it won't download on the MS. You can however still download your games through there.

What's your update on n this Matty

Is it just gamepass games or entire Xbox library?

Can I play Xbox games without Internet connection? For example when flying?

I’ve been absolutely in love with my ROG ally since launch day. The amazing performance and beautiful display have been worth every penny. This also happened to be my gateway to PC gaming, so I’ve been getting to enjoy that as well.

Can you only play your game pass games? Or can you play the games you bought on your Xbox from the store? ( wondering if I have to buy the same game twice in order to play on Xbox and this)