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Description #
Affiliate Links: I earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links, at no extra cost to you. The Joystick Protector USA: https://amzn.to/3VoAZBA The Joystick Protector AU: https://amzn.to/3X9oKdA
Link to reddit post for new vegas issue https://www.reddit.com/r/ROGAlly/comments/1ccmd19/fallout_3_goty_fallout_new_vegas_crash_on/
Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction 0:11 - General Impressions & Game Performance 0:30 - Untitled Goose Game Performance 1:04 - Fallout New Vegas Issue & Troubleshooting 2:36 - Switching to Yakuza Zero 4:01 - Battery Life and Performance Modes 5:30 - Nitpicks: Button Mapping, Joystick, SD Card Issue, and More 8:58 - Size Comparison & Accessories 9:42 - Final Thoughts
Hey everyone, welcome back! Today, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the ROG Ally after six months of use. I unboxed it on this channel, and now it’s time for a detailed review. Long story short, I like it, but it comes with some caveats.
The Good:
Played some great games: Untitled Goose Game, Fallout New Vegas, and Yakuza Zero. Lighter titles like Untitled Goose Game run well at lower clock speeds, saving battery life. Manual clock speed adjustments can extend battery life significantly. The Bad:
Fallout New Vegas crashes post-update, highlighting Windows-related issues. Frequent updates and driver issues can disrupt gaming experience. Windows isn’t optimized for handheld gaming, making navigation clunky. Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas seem to broken on the Asus ROG ally now Nitpicks:
Non-reprogrammable buttons, awkward button mapping for Steam. Joystick grinding issue, fixed with rubber ring. SD card placement next to heat source can fry cards. Non-illuminated buttons hard to see at night, unnecessary RGB lights. No included stand or case, had to purchase separately. Crunchy audio issues at lower clock rates, requiring settings adjustments. Final Thoughts: While the ROG Ally has its strengths, the drawbacks make it hard to recommend. Windows-related problems, hardware issues, and lack of optimization affect the overall experience. Despite these issues, I don’t regret buying it, but I can’t recommend it to others. If you’re in Australia and considering this over a Steam Deck due to availability, make sure to get the extreme version for better performance.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one! Bye!
#ROGAlly #GamingReview #HandheldGaming #ROGAllyReview #GamingTech #asus
2024 - William Termini
Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45CDrzBZvPc
Transcript #
Hey everyone, welcome back. Today we’ll be looking at my ROG Ally. I’ve had this for about six months and I unboxed it on this channel. Now that I’ve had it for a while I thought I’d talk about it. Long story short: I do like it, but there are some caveats.
Let’s start with the good. I’ve played a lot of great games on here. Notable titles are Untitled Goose Game, Fallout: New Vegas, and Yakuza 0 — those are basically the three games I’ve played the most on this device, and they’ve run really well. This is Untitled Goose Game and it’s running at 7 watts. Lighter-weight titles like this can run at lower clock speeds, which means your battery will last longer than normal. Interestingly though, you have to manually enable lower clocks — you go into your settings (not those settings, these settings), then into Operating Mode, and enable a manual profile. I recommend setting one for 7 watts, because that profile will last the longest. I don’t know why they didn’t include it by default; it should have been there.
Oh joy — I found an issue with this device that I didn’t know about. Now when I go to play Fallout: New Vegas, it just crashes. Great. I’m going to have to diagnose this, which gets into one of the problems a bit early: this thing runs Windows, and when they push updates, sometimes things break. I’m going to see if there’s an update or something I can do to fix this. Looks like there are some updates in Armoury Crate. The BIOS update didn’t fix anything, so now I’m trying to update my AMD drivers. Let’s see if that works. The thing with this thing is it runs Windows and stuff breaks. I had a Windows update happen and everything was all wonky, and I had to manually reinstall things. It’s a clunky experience, and I was going to save this stuff to the end, but my demo got derailed, so now you’re hearing about it.
Okay, I’m installing the AMD drivers. It’s been installed successfully. Let’s restart and see if that fixes Fallout. Let’s see if it’s [Music] broken. I’m not going to fix it in this video. We’re not going to bother, because obviously it’s broken in the default experience. There are workarounds on Reddit; I tried some basic troubleshooting but I’m not going to bother. That’s not what this video is about — it’s about the device, and a game that did work before doesn’t work anymore because of AMD’s drivers. Great job, great experience. My review wasn’t going to be this negative originally, but now I’m in a bit of a mood because it destroyed what I was going to show you. This worked before — I played a whole bunch of this, I did a whole run of the game on here, and it was great. I loved it. It ran really good around 15 watts, although you could get it down to 7 watts and it was fine. But now it doesn’t run at all. Great job guys, good work. Well, on to the next game I guess.
Hey all — as I said, there was a Reddit post that explained most of the problems I was having. This was reported a month ago and still doesn’t seem to be fixed. I tried updating; it’s not fixed. So there you go — Fallout is just broken now. Yakuza still runs fine, so let’s go through the modes. This is what it looks like at 7 watts. It’s playable if you really wanted to stretch the battery. 10 watts is a bit better, definitely playable, and you’ll get slightly worse battery, but it will still stutter and lag. You can get it up to 15 watts — don’t fight me — 15 watts, which is Performance, is pretty much the sweet spot, in my opinion, of performance to battery life. You can push it even further with Turbo, which is perfect, but you’ll be lucky to get an hour or even two of battery life — it’ll just drain. You can run it at 30 watts if it’s plugged in, and that’s really amazing, but you need an outlet. This thing is really good if it has an external source of power. I guess that’s pretty much it — I like it for gaming.
Now I’m going to go into more of the nitty-gritty. Let’s start nitpicking. Further things I don’t like: this isn’t like a Steam button or an Xbox button. It’s not reprogrammable; it only opens up their software, and I think their software is not complete trash, but I don’t want to use it — usually I close it immediately. You can’t remap this button. This button is like a select, and start and select over here. So what I have to do if I want to get to Steam is use a paddle plus this button. That acts as the Steam button: paddle plus that. That was something I had to do manually, because by default there’s no Xbox button on here, and if you want to load up the Steam front end, you can’t unless you create a hotkey for that. So that’s annoying.
The joystick started grinding against itself, which is a known issue, so I had to get these little rubber doodads on the sticks to stop it from eating itself away when I play games. It would just grind and there would be powder everywhere — good job. There’s also the SD card issue. I’m lucky my unit isn’t plagued by it — my SD card reader still works after six months and my SD card is fine — but they haven’t fixed the actual underlying problem, because the SD card is right next to the heat and it can fry them.
More into nitpicking territory: I don’t like these buttons and you can’t really see them at night. It’d be nice if these glowed, and I don’t really care for the RGB here, so I always keep it off. It’s way too bright. Why do I need to see this? I’d much rather see these. Why isn’t there RGB under here, or just white lights? That would be good. That’s what the RGB looks like. I don’t really care for it — it looks kind of cool at first, but it gets old really, really fast, and I don’t know why I can’t change that. I just keep it off because I never use it. Sometimes when it’s charging and it’s off, they’ll just turn on and it’ll be bright at night, so that’s cool.
Another thing: Windows was just never meant to be used like this. It’s so clunky and everything is so small. This is 720p at 1080 and there’s no scaling — it’s just not good. Where’s all that Windows 8 stuff that was there before, which would be really useful now? Totally a nitpick, but it’s definitely not easy to navigate. I actually prefer, if I need to do anything, to dock this thing and use a proper desktop. Another weird thing I had to do: game audio was super crunchy, particularly at lower clock rates, so I had to go into settings and turn off these Dolby Atmos effects for speakers and headphones. Otherwise the audio would be crunchy. Great sign of quality, absolutely fantastic.
For a size comparison, here it is with a Nintendo Switch. The Switch is much thinner and much smaller. It makes a Switch feel like a 3DS — here’s a 3DS for scale. This thing’s quite the chunky boy. It doesn’t come with any kind of stand — it comes with this cardboard, which I’ve never used — and it doesn’t come with a case, so I had to buy my own. It’s actually really good when paired with portable displays like these TCL Nxtwear glasses. These are actually surprisingly good — I quite like them, and it’s great for using it on an airplane.
Final thoughts: this review got derailed because of the Fallout issue. I was going to be way more positive, but I cannot in good faith recommend this device to people. Do I hate this device? No, I do not. Do I regret buying it? No, not really — I’m still quite happy with it. But I cannot recommend this to literally anyone because of the issues. Furthermore, if you’ve seen Gamers Nexus’s video on this device, there’s more reason not to buy this or support ASUS for the time being. So, great device, don’t buy it.
I live in Australia — I can’t buy a Steam Deck at any store. I was able to walk into JB Hi-Fi and pick this up with an Australian warranty. I can’t do that with the Steam Deck. I’d love to, but I just can’t. Also, this is the Extreme version of the chipset. I don’t think the slower model is sold in Australia, but if you do per chance want to buy one of these, do not buy the lower-end one — get the Extreme version from what I understand. Good device, lots of flaws, definitely can’t recommend. I’ve also never used a Steam Deck, so I can’t say “oh, Steam Deck’s so much better” because I simply don’t know. Make your own decision, but you’ve seen what I’ve seen — things break, Windows is clunky, and it has hardware issues which can’t be fixed with patches, unfortunately.
Anyway, thank you very much for watching and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye.