Check out our Lenovo Legion Go review! ruclips.net/video/I37mxlDqLrk/видео.html Grab a GN15 Modmat to support us & get a PC building surface! store.gamersnexus.net/products/large-modmat-gn15-anniversary Which handheld do you want to see reviewed next? We're doing more of them. This is a MASSIVE review , but it was a super fun showcase of technology and testing. We're using all of this groundwork to learn how to develop long-term methodological approaches to handheld devices, and next on our list is likely the GPD Win4! What should come after that? LEARN ABOUT THE ACOUSTIC CHAMBER: Chamber Build Video & Explainer: ruclips.net/video/eUqYTenB2A0/видео.html HW News with use cases explained: ruclips.net/video/ghSVNLX8dWU/видео.html Fractal Terra review: ruclips.net/video/pKiFk7tBTLg/видео.html
great content only thing i think is missing from the test charts is the most typical Deck screen refresh limiter set to 40 fps - a "balanced" fps limit that preserves battery while providing close enough to 60 fps experience over 30 fps limit at least that is "widely considered" and reccomended to be the "optimal" setting for running Deck as handheld
Really wish any word of the Lenovo go was included on this, but I know we're still skanse on details there. Please do the Lenovo go on-time for November/December release!
Those steamdeck frametimes are impressive, and then you realize none of those games are native Linux so they're being translated and still manage to be so consistent.
I was actually really looking into this as a software engineer, and all I can say is: modern Windows is now so disparate of a modern Linux, especially a distro made specifically for the device (and specifically for gaming), that there is just no competition because the amount of services and overall profile of the OS itself in memory and compute simply does not bode well for a "single purpose device". Steam basically made an embedded version of Linux (and there are Linux distributions which take this mantra and are the core of many embedded devices, such as Yocto/Open Embedded), while Microsoft dropped the ball on oldie Windows CE. If Microsoft opened their Xbox OS to these device manufacturers, you would maybe have an OS that made sense for these handhelds. But then you would lose on their versatility as "in a pinch" personal computers since "Xbox OS" doesn't do that. While Valve actually managed to get a (well, not Windows, but passable) desktop UI for "in a pinch" situations. I'd actually love to see comparisons between a Windows'd Deck vs the Ally.
Yeah it’s great. I’ve had mine since Christmas last year and have been really happy with it. My only real gripe is I wish the screen quality was better. The low-res lcd screen is underwhelming, especially if you are used to OLED screens.
@@Pythonzzz Yeah the screen is the only thing holding me back and thinking of getting the legion go instead since I don't have a handheld yet and its only a month away from release. The price for performance makes me kinda want the deck. I have some steam decks sitting in my cart on Amazon and keep having to find other sellers cause this things are going like hotcakes
@@bacphan7582 I'm glad that the issue sort of went away. Valve never really said what the issue was. It's really annoying that I can find dozens of posts easily regarding the issue but not a single outlet covering it.
My biggest issue with the Deck is the screen. I don't care about higher refresh rate as much for a device like this, but I'm pretty picky about image quality and resolution.
I'm a big nerd on audio n such jazz (audiophoolery if you will), and I genuinely appreciate the frequency graphs of the handhelds, I do hope you, and your team continues implementing these statistics for future. It means a lot, and also feeds my "utter need for squigly lines" as someone has told me once. Thanks again, Steve n GN team!
i feel sorry for you audio heads. and honestly i look down on you for giving so much time and energy on something so dumb and insignificant. its like living with a constant nerve issue that triggers every time youre in the wrong ambient temperature by a 2 degree delta.
@@x_voxelle_x lol if you think audiophiles are just enjoying stuff is inccorrect. those people will put down others for listening to mp3 formats or anything even slightly compressed. spend a fuck ton of money on barely upgraded and overpriced gear flaunt them and act superior to the rest of the world in the same vein as smug apple users. clearly youve never met an audiophile which im absolutely stoked that they arent as prevelant as sneaker heads those people are the worst. but anyway yea dont feel sorry for me im not worth your energy.
@Lu-db1uf I mean you can take out the battery and remove the m.2 without taking apart 40 screws. I ended up putting a 2280m.2 in the ally. It actually fits no problem at all kinda crazy 😜
Audio engineer here. Very happy to see updates to the new charts. Thank you for using some of the notes from the Terra build. I’m really looking forward to the Dan case!
Steam Deck is just damn hard to beat when everything is considered. I am looking forward to the upcoming Lenovo Legion Go...That thing looks SOLID. Wow lol, after reading some of these replies.. Competition is a good thing, this segment is just getting going really. Can't wait to see what it's like in 3-4yrs. For now atleast, it's SD for me!
@@rustler08 I do wish that, and other services were a bit more "native" to use. However, it's really fairly easy to get going using "Desktop Mode". In fact, that's the only reason I even put MS Edge on it.. That's Edge's sole purpose on my SD, be a Game Pass thing. Once setup, it runs properly well. As does the PS Plus app.
I have a desktop with a RTX 3080 and I use my Ally more. It's far from perfect but I haven't had any major issues. Awesome breakdown. Handheld gaming PCs in a few years will be amazing.
i have a 4080 pc, but im loving my ally! Im not gonna be playing cyberpunk on it or anything like that so im not worried about battery life/fps.Plus i love that its a windows 11 handheld and not just a steam deck.
For illustrating the effect of change in fan speed on the noise levels it may be useful to use a spectrogram to show loudness over time in specific instances. Additionally, a Fourier transform of the frequency spectrum plot can help point out specific problem frequencies if they are present.
@@GamersNexusFor a good example of this, do a quick RUclips search for the Yaesu FT-DX101 ham radio. Their 3D spectrum scope display would be ideal for plotting your data in the time domain to help illustrate perceived SPL and frequency relative to time.
All those fan settings are buggen, you have to redone same settings atleast 5 Times and then when you restart, some of them will be broken again, so Rog Messlly is it
9:27 huh - I'd argue that the out of the box experience is significantly more _beginner_ friendly on the Deck actually. The Ally is simply more friendly to people accustomed to Windows.
Exactly. Steam Deck's console UI (aka. the new Big Picture Mode) is really just that. A console UI. It's a lot easier to navigate and if you don't need to access a proper Desktop UI for your games, it has all you need for gaming for the most part.
For a single-use device where you aren't doing ANYTHING else other than playing compatible Steam games, sure. But I'd rather have more capability and flexibility, even if Windows is not very user friendly.
@@GENKI_INU actually emulation and non-Steam games are fairly straightforward on the Deck - but at that point none of it is very beginner friendly on either device. You can do more easier on the Ally because you are not a beginner.
I appreciate you all taking the time to review handhelds now. The market for them is beyond saturated now, and a lot of reviewers seem to just praise how great each one is without any kind of critical look. Actual in depth reviews are needed.
That's because they're all getting paid under the table. Same with the 8bitdo products. Absolute garbage quality membranes that rip in a few months. By the way I'm not saying GamersNexus does. I don't Steve and the team would ever do that. I was talking about the other people who rave and praise about products. CONSUMEEE
Despite the issues this generation has, I'm glad more of these are being released now. I don't play AAA games and mostly play pixel art, Visual Novel or games similar to Persona and earlier Final Fantasy games which doesn't require a lot of power and usually feels better being played while on the couch or bed.
@@0Synergy Already had a PS Vita and PSP before that. Since P5R and the Steam Indi catalog ain't available on PS Vita, I believe the a handheld PC is better for me since the other option, the Switch isn't viable as I don't play a lot of Nintendo titles.
16:55 You can tame the chaos by displaying the data with a smoothing filter. 1/3 octave is common, 1/12 or 1/24 octave might be better for keeping the annoying peaks visible.
This makes me more excited for a new version of the Steam Deck, if anything else. Valve knocked it out of the park so well with version one that it basically jumpstarted a whole new type of market. With a few years of maturity under the belt now, just imagine the potential of a version 2!
yeah ,but sadly it will end at version 2 and then way later maybe they will release a steam deck like vr headset (this is a joke about valve not being able to count to 3 and also a joke about how instead of half life 3 they released half life alyx ,so a vr game) (amongus potion)
They could probably fix their logistics chain first and have a proper global release. Can't have only a few countries buy the Steam Deck while the rest of us would have to deal with scalpers with no warranty
Epic deep dive!❤ so I’ve done extensive modding on my ally and I’ve got a few fixes that have saved my sd reader from failing. The culprit that mostly kill’s them is the temps from the power delivery area being next to the chip but on the other side of the board combined with the cherry on top being that heat pipe over the reader. The power delivery area has very poorly sized thermal pads and doesn’t extract enough heat off the power delivery and the fans at lower Rpm’s allow the trapped heat to also soak back into the board. Even at lower tdp and even if the user has lower than 95c app temps it happens. The fix isn’t a one size fits all solution but there’s a few things I’ve done to mitigate the issue and so far it has a high success rate based on numerous other people in my community who’ve also followed along. Another thing I see is the ssd you will see significant higher nvme temps when downloading games and esp if you upgrade the drive it can and will thermally throttle a little bit and as you said it was ok but that’s not great. I’ve also created a mod to drop the nvme temps by as much as 25c and it’s very easy to do. That will prolong the life of the drive when comparing to without it at these temps. I’ve reached out to many drive manufacturers and even have data they sent me I compiled in a video if you’d like to see more 2230 data you wont see any where else. Lastly the ally doesn’t have enough ram for some games and you will hit the page file and have worse 1% lows esp without tuning. If you Debloat windows and tune it you can really improve the 1% lows esp on modern warfare. I’ve been able to turn this thing into a best of a device. I’ve got several modding videos coming where I’ll be discussing more detail on my long term analysis of the heat and what I’ve done to improve it. I also have some thermocouples as well I’ve put over said power delivery and I indeed did see some pretty spicy temps at times prior to it and likely well over 70 directly on the reader chip itself. Apu temps I’ve also got down in the 70s with the current mods and I’ve tested several diff thermal compounds and solutions. Thanks Stev and team for finally getting this out. I hope you guys do a hardware failure analysis and re visit this again. I really think it’s worth it. ❤
I bought the Ally at launch and I'm having a blast with it playing through a lot of my backlog. The device seems to struggle more on current gen games but all the older stuff on my backlog is running great on the 780M and combined with FreeSync it's been a great way to chew through all the games I've bought over the years that I told myself I'd play when I got them and never did. I'm sure the Steam Deck would've been the same for cheaper but being able to run these older games pinned to 60 or all the way to 120fps has been great. I'm basically never not near one for super long so battery life was never a big issue since I just charge it when I need to.
These reviews seem to keep getting better every time. Having peer reviewers for your data is next-level in keeping testing accurate. I personally find these audio tests and graphs useful as i cant deal with high pitched whining noises or weird resonance issues like i have with my Arctic P12's (which also have failing ball bearings, which results in high pitched noises as well) which sound very similar to that C5 note played in the video.
It's standard Asus product development. FInd something popular. Fix or upgrade the perceived "flaws" and rush everything else about development. I would be surprised if the ally could survive something like the drop tests Valve did for the deck.
It's an issue for sure. I almost cut mine up to fit a larger 2280 ssd I have laying around in it. All because I can't use the card reader. Then I thought...I barely used this. Let them fix it. It's aggravating but I knew Asus was not exactly forthcoming with the motherboard/Ryzen issue and I purchased this Ally pre-order anyway. Let's see if they make it right.
@@zacharytaylor8523there is one thing they did far more better than Valve: they reinforced the shoulder buttons. But yeah, the SD Card issue was a massive design oversight that I can't see being fixed with just a software update. I am curious if Asus would be afraid of doing a major revision that may piss off the early adopters. I felt Sony was afraid to upgrade the PSP's WiFi beyond the 802.11b despite having plenty of revisions just to maintain equality from the original unit.
Ally owner here. The VRR Freesync display and increased performance when plugged-in are irreplaceable for me. This device has lots of small oddities and annoyances, but I'm overall very happy.
@@Robbie-mw5uu Actually this is pretty spot on. I bought this for travel. My round trip international flight had an AC plug so I was able to play plugged the entire time. This made playing Jedi Survivor and Spiderman Remastered a solid experience. Pretty much the only times I play this thing, I have access to a plug. Flights, hotel, or if i just feel like chilling on the couch or bed with my wife while I play.
@@Robbie-mw5uu Weird... you described a computer with built-in battery, screen, and input as a "desktop". Have you never heard the word "laptop?" Do you think laptops aren't plugged in? Do you think performance isn't far better on a laptop when it's plugged in? I'm not sure if that's more or less shocking than the fact 5 people agree with you.
@MischiefManaged41 well I don't want to haul around a gaming laptop with me especially on travel where i already have my work laptop. I don't understand how people don't see that there are different strokes for different folks.
The latest firmware update and drivers released last week have exponentially increased performance for me. Hope you were able to account for those in testing. Can't wait to find out!
A screen shot I seen on the video was firmware 319 which is hugely outdated. Like to the point his testing in this video is irrelevant at time of release.
Just like the Intel ARC it gets tested with the latest available firmware at the time they sold it in stores so it getting tested like that is in my opinion fair and just like Arc if it gets retested later they should use the latest available firmware then anything else is just corporate apologism.
I love these reviews. Theres just no bull... No infotainment... Proper testing and plenty of valid approaches and viewpoints. The value of these videos for those of us on tight budgets who are scanning the market for options cannot be unterstated. Keep up the good work steve and team
and who exactly is? If you wanted to talk in the laptop space or something I could understand that point but the only real direct 1:1 competitor right now is the steam deck which isn't even remotely locked down. Things like the gpd win are sort of competitors and might be more locked down (don't really know or care) but they also target a very different subset of the market who want a near-traditional experience as opposed to a console-esque device. (which the Ally is already pushing mind you, but it's also clearly still at least trying to fit into that console-adjacent niche)
One of the things that makes the Steam Deck so good is the support it gets from Valve, I've yet to see any handheld PC company match that. It feels like Asus just wanted to get their peice of the pie with the Ally.
For what it’s worth I noticed your Ally’s manufactured date is 03-2023. From reading Reddit and forums it appears devices with a MFD before 06-2023 seem to be the ones most affected by the SD card issue. My device has a MFD of 06-2023 and I’ve been using and my SD card since I got it with zero issues.
Had mine since launch. I'm loving it so far. Currently playing starfield on it and it runs and looks great on Medium 1080p. The only real issue was the SD card reader. It stopped reading my card even though others work and the card works on other devices. Ended up upgrading the SSD to 2TB.
what settings do you use for starfield? just medium preset? I prefer not to play it on my ally because it doesnt look/perform that well in my experience
The SD card situation is such a mystery 😅 I really think that the late June Hotfix update messed this up, that’s when the users started reporting that issue. I just wish ASUS would look at this closely with AMD. I messaged them continuous times.
Same here. I had both a 1TB Sandisk and Silicon Power (SP has higher speeds that the Ally supposedly could have taken advantage of) that used to work on the Ally but for some reason lately the SP card just outright stopped being recognized on the Ally yet works on my Switch/Steam Deck just fine and the Sandisk while being recognized on the Ally had very slow write speeds and causes applications to hang on launch.
@@Kasper0822 That's terrible performance overall 😅 but i guess for a handheld device it's ok, let's not forget we had consoles locked at 30 fps not long ago...
Really glad to see these devices reviewed and tested by someone with your demonstrated commitment to objectivity. I'm perfectly satisfied with my Steam Deck, but I am looking forward to more of them. Because it won't last forever...
Can't wait to see how these funky solid-state coolers from Frore Systems are going to go with Handheld PCs. I mean it could make them slimmer, quieter and make room for more battery. Steam Deck was a much better purchase than I thought, been having tons of fun with it. Now I'm just waiting for something worthy to upgrade to... which won't be an Ally because my god ASUS software drives me insane.
Yeah, the big one is ~10W but it's also just ~7cm long and ~3cm wide. If you look at the heatshield in the Steam Deck I think you could fit two of them side by side ontop of it for at least 15W. There's also probably some room for improvement with these things, they're pretty new after all. Only time will tell. I just feel like Handheld PC's could really profit from this technology the most, along with thin & light laptops.
You didn't mention the biggest advantage of the Ally. VRR. It is a game changer for portable gaming devices that struggle to keep a consistent frame rate.
I still love my Ally and glad this review was done. I knew about the faults when I purchased it so the pros outweighed the cons for my purchase decision. I’ll definitely will get a next gen steam deck as most of my games are on steam
Noise (frequency/dba) charts were highly appreciated! That includes the extended "how to read". I get that you don't want to have such segments in every video, but im glad they were kept for this one!
I would highly recommend applying a small amount of smoothing to the frequency response curves for the noise tests. It will make it significantly more legible and easier and compare the different tests with the naked eye. Really excited about your new acoustic testing facilities though, once again you guys are spearheading the industry with your attention to detail. Keep up the great work.
Forced updates is the main reason I switched my desktop to Linux. The Ally is a very, very sleek device, but out of the box I am very pleased with my Deck.
"Defeats the purpose" regarding having the device plugged-in... Not sure I understand that statement seeing as there is an option to "plug it in" for more performance / use with an external monitor, etc.. It's not like "plugging the device in" is somehow NEVER a use case.. You're at home or in any area (airport, SBUX, etc.) with a wall socket.. Anyway thanks for the time / effort to put this together. One of your more current reviews that suggested the RTX 4070 appeared to pretty much totally discount "upscaling / DLSS / RT" in an attempt to make it seem like a rip off (due to costing ~$100 more than RX 6800XT/ 7800XT.. Kind of difficult to overstate the importance of "upscaling "- as well as Nvidia's massive investments in AI and hence likely farther improvements here" not to mention frame gen / ray tracing when it comes to gaming 2023+ and so forth, so sort of confused by that commentary as well..
@@gemelwalters2942 The point is that the OPTION to plug it in is there and it IS a practical "use case" in many instances as stated - So to state it "defeats the purpose" isn't accurate as the " purpose" of the device is multifaceted (plugged in or not plugged in depending on the scenario) So it is totally unfair to discount this aspect just as it's unfair to discount upscaling / DLSS / frame gen/ RT / power efficiency / AV-1/ overall versatility when it comes to NVidia GPU's such as the RTX 4070 referenced in a recent review vs. the RX 6800XT / 7800XT. All these feature sets mentioned are in FACT things of "value" perhaps not to everybody but to many they are and hence should not be discounted when deciding rather or not an item is a "rip off" or not.
I am no audio expert here, but Tom Scott recently did a video talking about LUFS (loudness units full scale) that attempt to account for frequencies that “feel” louder even at the same dBm measurements. It could be interesting to see another view of your existing measurements adjusted this way to help convey the perceived difference in loudness. I really appreciate you and your teams hard work and really enjoy the content.
GN once again setting the standard for what the highest quality of reviews looks like. That was seriously impressive. The ally is certainly a very impressive device, but for me it mostly highlights how amazing the price/performance of the steamdeck is. As someone who doesn't really focus on AAA graphics performance in his mobile gaming there isn't much that can compete with the deck for me. The only thing I can think of would be the gpd win max 2 because I can think of a lot of use cases for that form factor, but that one is just monstrously expensive. When it comes to the deck I just wish proton was a little better at handling rpgmaker xp titles, quite a few of those are very inconsistent while also drawing less than one watt (tdp, not measured)
The big bottleneck of the ROG Ally is the memory subsystem, it's single channel (=64bit bus) LPDDR5 shared between the CPU and the GPU cores meanwhile the Steam Deck got dual channel memory.
the steam deck actually has QUAD channel memory. gets insane bandwidth. more than apple's m1, which was pretty impressive. it's quad 32 bit though, so single 64bit seems like 128bit total memory bus is dual, but it's not, it's quad 32.
@@Dracossaint I think the ROG Ally could also support dual channel (since it's a Ryzen 7 7840H) thay just didn't solder a second RAM 'stick' on the board.
There's a simple fact why i'd buy the Steamdeck even if it were the same price for worse HW. Actual long term support. Asus LOVES to have something in their products that's slightly proprietary and stops supporting it the next windows release, or when it's 6 months old. I learned my lessons (laptops, tinkerboard, motherboard sensors) and i'll never buy their stuff if there's an alternative (add their shady business practices...). Steamdeck is mostly driven by open drivers for linux, windows, there are hw guides, accessible hw replacements... Steam (mostly) came through with steam controller warranties etc... Though i'm still salty steam link can't be used aa a net-top with linux on it..
True, it's just a shame that there's so little actually good choices nowadays. Be it handhelds, phones, motherboards, cars,..... To buy something now means you have to spend 3 days searching for a "product that has all the features i want, without forcing on the user updates/subscriptions/add-ons/extensions/spyware"....
Agreed. I might check it out when it can be bought for the steam decks price. $700 for a handheld is ridiculous. You can build a much more powerful pc for that much.
I'll add another comment (for the algorithm and for discussion): If the Steamdeck 2 is a thing in the next year (as patent or trademark timing may hint at) I'm eagerly looking forward to that machine. I love my Ally, I do! But I never got a SteamDeck but I really like what Valve did with it, bringing a niche hobbyist market to the mainstream.
One more thing about playing while charging on the Ally; If you create a custom power profile (or "Manual Mode" as Asus calls it) and max out all TDPs including the burst TDP to get maximum performance (which even Turbo mode does not do), the Ally's charger struggles to keep it charged and the battery level actually starts dropping during play (assuming the game maxes out your APU's load).
As a ROG Ally owners myself, I rarely use the SD card but did upgrade the storage to 2 TB and for the games I play on it, including Fortnite, plays really well.
Normally I find the reviews on this channel helpful, but in this case they're way off base. I have a Steam Deck and an Ally, and there is a very noticeable performance increase with the Ally, which other legit reviewers show as well. They're using a very old firmware here, and I wonder if that's impacting things - or perhaps they got a dud of a unit. But if you play the two, back to back, like I've done dozens of times, they're not very comparable, the Asus almost always cleans the Deck's clock (even when it's not at the full 25w). They are completely correct about the issues with the SD slot, which is unacceptable, but outside of that, I've been quite impressed with the ASUS, ONCE they rolled out the new firmware that came available shortly after launch. When I first got the Ally, the performance was much more in line with what you see here - and if that's how they tested this unit, that's a huge flaw, since it was literally updated only days after it was released. With that said, I still love the Steam Deck, it's bigger but also more comfortable, and the battery life in most situations is notably better. Plus, if I was going to let my nephew borrow one, it would be the Steam Deck since it's much easier to use. But a huge swing and miss on this one, unless you just got a dud of a system, in which case the blame goes to Asus.
I’m just happy the handheld generation is here, and here to stay. You can play last gen’s triple AAA titles on your couch. Buy another handheld every 5-8 years for relatively cheap, and you get to play with everything worth playing. I love it.
Something to note about the Steam Deck is that because it doesn't have anywhere near the amount of resource sucking background apps, of course frame times are gonna be a lot more consistent and smoother than the Windows-based handhelds, simply due to the way Windows Update and cohorts (i.e myAsus, etc) suck back performance for seemingly no reason. I'd love to see something like ChimeraOS on the Ally vs SteamOS on the Deck. WAY more apples-to-apples
As an Ally owner I appreciate this video. The big reason I went with the Ally was Xbox game pass, I wanted to play those games on the go. I love my ally, I have not used an SD card but do plan on upgrading the ssd soonish, and I have done my own windows optimization which has helped with battery life. I understand why people would not want to deal with an ally but as a first Gen product I am super excited to see how Asus can improve upon further generations. As for performance modes you can real tweak between different modes but I know people don't want to mess with that, plus I'm never really away from an outlet now a days so keeping it charged up is not a problem. I truly believe windows is holding a lot of these products back, Microsoft really needs to release a handheld cut down windows, I'm sure it would spark a bunch of interest in the handheld gaming scene.
A segment for just screen brightness in general would be cool. With these types of devices, the screen not being bright enough is often a criticism. Would be neat to see how the Lux values compare.
everyone always complains about the screen not being bright enough because of direct sunlight while traveling but i have yet to see a single mention of how dim a screen can get. when I'm chilling in bed before sleep having a dimmer screen is huge and its VERY noticeably different on my last Pixel vs my new one. its also pretty decent on the deck. anyways that's along winded way to say id love a review on both max and minimum brightness
Great review. Mentioning the forced bios and software updates is huge. Not enough reviews mention this. I would never be okay with a product that forces updates. Especially bios updates.
One big plus for the Ally is availability. I could pick one up on launch day, whereas it seems Valve have no plans of ever launching the Steam Deck here.
as someone that is about to buy a deck, this video is a godsend. tyvm steve and the gang for this video and helping in making a decision between this portable pc's.
Seems kinda hard to justify the cost for the Ally over the Deck when the performance is so inconsistent and it is almost guaranteed to have Micro SD issues. Plus the Deck has a bit of an ecosystem of accessories now too. Can't wait for Solid State Cooling to make its way into consumer products though. Will make these handheld PCs so much better.
As one aside to the high refresh screen on a low performance device - the screen being at 120Hz with the game being capped at 40FPS gives you a higher framerate without irregular frametimes, it's a very useful utility of 120Hz displays where it's supported. Though the actually smart choice would be to just drop the screen refresh to 40Hz through software but that isn't always a choice, it is what it is. (also one random aside, the audio recording clarity in the test chamber is super pristine, very neat)
@@BansheeN0rn I don not own Steamdeck, and right now I am desperately holding back to stop from buying the 2023 GPD Win Max 2, the only thing it's missing is 120hz OLED and it would be the perfect laptop, but when Steamdeck is almost 3 years old and still THE BEST mobile x86 at 10 watts? Clearly the mobile PC industry has a lot of room for improvement.
Excellent review, but it's worth noting that Asus has released a newer BIOS and GPU driver that improves performance noticeably, especially in the 1% lows.
I had the same reservations here. If there are known performance issues with a bios that you are using for a benchmark I would prefer that it's clearly stated that that bios is being used for the benchmarks. I would also love to know how the new bios changed performance on battery. Just a statement in a pinned comment would be enough imo. Or a link to an article on the GN website for who is really interested.
My SD card reader broke within the first month from preorder, but I didn't realize for another month or so because I was playing mostly steam games off of the ssd. (Note: most of the turbo plugged in play was before they adjusted the default fan curve with a BIOS update) Also note: my card seems fine in other readers and with card reader dongle, it was the built-in card reader that broke. Before I realized it was broken, it was making armory crate take upwards of 3 minutes to launch as it was trying to read an unreadable sd card. Once I popped the card out, crate launched super fast. I am currently in the middle of the RMA process - which ASUS recognized and allowed.
My Ally card reader stopped reading my 3 SD cards after the last firmware update with the so called new fan curves to fix the issue. I did try the cloud recovery and reset the Ally to factory settings which seems to have brought the reader back to life. Though it now only reads new SD cards, and not the original ones previously used. Since then I have avoided using the card reader. Hope this video gets ASUS to look further into the issue as I’ve started to see reports of RMAs returning back to consumers only for the issue to resurface.
Mine aren’t corrupted they work on everything else even the ally reads them and formats when using an external reader. For some strange reason the Ally’s internal sd card reader just won’t read those 3 cards anymore only working with brand new sd cards.
I've been waiting for this review. Good to see GN reviewing handhelds. The screen is a massive differentiator, especially with FreeSync enabled. I know it was turned off in this review for comparisons sake, but it's important of emphasize how big of an advantage it is. VRR in general on the Ally makes games feel really smooth even at lower fps ranges, with practically no tearing. And yes, there are a bunch of games that can run at 120 fps/hz on the device. Ori and Blind Forest, Planet of Lana, Cuphead, and other indies and platformers. The experience of playing these games on the Ally is just not comparable to playing them on devices with 60hz non-VRR screens.
Yes, we specifically said Triple-A games would struggle to exceed 120FPS. We did not say there aren't a lot of games that would -- of course plenty of games can hit that framerate.
I don't understand. VRR is a very good solution to solve tearing without add latency and stuttering. In games like Ori and Blind Forest, Planet of Lana, Cuphead, and other indies the fps are usually locked so tearing is not a problem and VRR does nothing. In these cases the advantage is due to the higher refresh rate of the screen and not the VRR. On the other hand in the tests performed activating freesync should not change much the final result as it is not comparing the image quality. It would be in the case of activating freesync on the asus rog ally and on the steam deck some technique to avoid tearync as Vsync or render ahead that can introduce latency or stuttering. Enabling freesync should not change the fps variation of the tests performed for the rog ally but not for the steamdeck which should be worse.
I abaolutely fuckin love my rog ally. I just finished marine corps bootcamp in january this year, and im currently in comms school to be a SMART-T operator. Having a portable device like this is so peak that its unbelievable. Its not a pc, but gives me pc performance. I have a dock to connect it to a monitor, and being able to just dismissed for libo and go back to relax in my room with this thing jas been amazing. Rog ally over steam deck for sure. Rog ally over a laptop imo too.
My sd card reader still failed after updating to the newer bios with the updated fan curve. I ended up just putting a new 1tb ssd in the device. It is very frustrating that such issues were not picked up in early testing from asus.
Can you talk about VRR and LFC? Curious how it masks some of the issues with the Ally. I own both and the Ally is "feels" considerably more performant and smooth, with higher settings.
A minor thing, but at launch, replacing the SSD was a giant pain. I had to tear the thing down 6 or 7 times to get the new SSD to function. Had to put the old SSD back in, bios update, then try multiple times to backup from Asus' cloud service. Was not my favorite drive swapping excursion, usually you can clone, swap, and that's it, was not the case with ROG ally on launch. Seems like the software needed a little bit more time. A bit better now, but on launch was super buggy.
Not caring for +16kHz frequencies is the bane of my existence. I hear up to 19kHz and so many devices bother me with weird noises lol. I really appreciate those freq graphs and how much you focus on sound in these reviews. Noise is very important to me and not enough people even touch up on this when reviewing products. It's nice to see so much sound-focused data here.
Great review. Steam deck on battery power is very impressive. Seems like you have to assess how you will use the device. If you are ok being tethered to an outlet, Rog Ally gives better performance and has the better screen and all the advantages (and disadvantages) of running Windows 11. The steam deck on the other hand seems like a better handheld device when not plugged in. For me, I prefer better performance and being plugged in. With that in mind, I'm switching to another Asus product, the Z13 gaming tablet. It goes up to a 4070 gpu and I9 13900H. I'll need to pair it with a controller but will get even better performance. I figure if you have to stay plugged in to get the performance you want, then why not lean into it.
Happy to be in the moment where handheld pc is starting to gain traction, and I believe SteamDeck and ROG Ally significantly helped pushed the space more into the mainstream, especially the SD! Excited to see what handhelds will be capable of in the near future!
I'm loving the Ally so far. I can play Starfield on Low settings, 720p, with an average FPS of around 40 on planet surfaces, a bit higher when in buildings while on 15w Performance Mode, numbers slightly higher when plugged in on Turbo Mode. I'm able to take most of my gaming on the go. Baldurs Gate runs, Starfield runs, Exoprimal runs (games I'm currently playing). Battery is definitely something to be desired, but a good way to regulate my gaming sessions (since I tend to game longer than I should be). You guys spent so much time testing fan noise imo - I don't mind it so much especially when game audio drowns it out most of the time. I don't plan on using the SD card reader for major file storage. I plan on just updating the SSD to a larger one. Maybe just using the SD card reader as a backup storage, similar to how I use my desktop HDD. People need to learn what's inside the Ally and its limits. It's not meant to be a complete desktop replacement, it's not meant to play AAA games on high graphical settings. You're crazy if you think a handheld this size today can do such a feat. If you want a a PC with the graphical fidelity of a desktop, buy a bulky gaming laptop.
The steam deck's 0.1% fps and frame times are seriously impressive, and I'm so glad valve seem to be focusing their efforts on what really counts for the playing experience. As far as I'm aware, games being translated by dxvk pre-compile shaders that would be compiled during gameplay in dx, so assuming you tested on first run, how much of the non-stuttering on the steam deck compared to the ally was due to the shaders already having been compiled ahead of time? With regards to gamescope, I think the reason valve are building that out so much to not allow tearing by default could also be because gamescope will be what runs on their (hopefully) upcoming standalone/hybrid VR headset, and in that scenario it would be much more jarring than in normal gameplay.
Check out our Lenovo Legion Go review! ruclips.net/video/I37mxlDqLrk/видео.html
Grab a GN15 Modmat to support us & get a PC building surface! store.gamersnexus.net/products/large-modmat-gn15-anniversary
Which handheld do you want to see reviewed next? We're doing more of them. This is a MASSIVE review , but it was a super fun showcase of technology and testing. We're using all of this groundwork to learn how to develop long-term methodological approaches to handheld devices, and next on our list is likely the GPD Win4! What should come after that?
LEARN ABOUT THE ACOUSTIC CHAMBER:
Chamber Build Video & Explainer: ruclips.net/video/eUqYTenB2A0/видео.html
HW News with use cases explained: ruclips.net/video/ghSVNLX8dWU/видео.html
Fractal Terra review: ruclips.net/video/pKiFk7tBTLg/видео.html
Am I first to reply
great content
only thing i think is missing from the test charts is the most typical Deck screen refresh limiter set to 40 fps - a "balanced" fps limit that preserves battery while providing close enough to 60 fps experience over 30 fps limit
at least that is "widely considered" and reccomended to be the "optimal" setting for running Deck as handheld
If you guys can , could you test out one of those XG Mobiles ? If you ever get your hands on one.
I'm waiting for you guys to release your own GamersNexus handheld.
Really wish any word of the Lenovo go was included on this, but I know we're still skanse on details there. Please do the Lenovo go on-time for November/December release!
This man is going to make companies actually have to make quality products. I love it.
That's sexist...
@@zues287and I love it
He tries lol. Sometimes it makes a difference.. I appreciate Steve’s work though, he’s great.
But what if it identifies as sheboithemherzippertits?
It's hard enough to have one male quality product
Those steamdeck frametimes are impressive, and then you realize none of those games are native Linux so they're being translated and still manage to be so consistent.
I was actually really looking into this as a software engineer, and all I can say is: modern Windows is now so disparate of a modern Linux, especially a distro made specifically for the device (and specifically for gaming), that there is just no competition because the amount of services and overall profile of the OS itself in memory and compute simply does not bode well for a "single purpose device". Steam basically made an embedded version of Linux (and there are Linux distributions which take this mantra and are the core of many embedded devices, such as Yocto/Open Embedded), while Microsoft dropped the ball on oldie Windows CE. If Microsoft opened their Xbox OS to these device manufacturers, you would maybe have an OS that made sense for these handhelds. But then you would lose on their versatility as "in a pinch" personal computers since "Xbox OS" doesn't do that. While Valve actually managed to get a (well, not Windows, but passable) desktop UI for "in a pinch" situations. I'd actually love to see comparisons between a Windows'd Deck vs the Ally.
@cldpt yeah man, windows 10 has to have the fat cut out so much for it to be usable. There is just so much advertising and spyware bloat.
Valve's done a lot for Linux gaming indeed!
@@cldptWhy would that even be a question? A Windows Steam Deck would just inherit all the same issues on the Ally, minus the card reader.
Steam decks desktop mode isn't even "in a pinch". Theres literally nothing you couldn't do with it. @@cldpt
For Valves first attempt at a hand held they pretty much nailed it, some great software optimisation as well.
Yeah it’s great. I’ve had mine since Christmas last year and have been really happy with it. My only real gripe is I wish the screen quality was better. The low-res lcd screen is underwhelming, especially if you are used to OLED screens.
Did you forget that 400mhz bug that the only fix is RMA?
@@Pythonzzz Yeah the screen is the only thing holding me back and thinking of getting the legion go instead since I don't have a handheld yet and its only a month away from release. The price for performance makes me kinda want the deck. I have some steam decks sitting in my cart on Amazon and keep having to find other sellers cause this things are going like hotcakes
@@bacphan7582 I'm glad that the issue sort of went away. Valve never really said what the issue was. It's really annoying that I can find dozens of posts easily regarding the issue but not a single outlet covering it.
My biggest issue with the Deck is the screen. I don't care about higher refresh rate as much for a device like this, but I'm pretty picky about image quality and resolution.
Big Thanks for Always delivering high quality reviews!
I'm a big nerd on audio n such jazz (audiophoolery if you will), and I genuinely appreciate the frequency graphs of the handhelds, I do hope you, and your team continues implementing these statistics for future. It means a lot, and also feeds my "utter need for squigly lines" as someone has told me once. Thanks again, Steve n GN team!
We'll keep adding more acoustic analysis to part reviews! Thank you for sharing and letting us know you appreciate it -- that helps!
i feel sorry for you audio heads. and honestly i look down on you for giving so much time and energy on something so dumb and insignificant. its like living with a constant nerve issue that triggers every time youre in the wrong ambient temperature by a 2 degree delta.
🤡🤡
@@TheeCapN I feel sorry for you, feeling you have to put others down for just enjoying stuff.
@@x_voxelle_x lol if you think audiophiles are just enjoying stuff is inccorrect. those people will put down others for listening to mp3 formats or anything even slightly compressed. spend a fuck ton of money on barely upgraded and overpriced gear flaunt them and act superior to the rest of the world in the same vein as smug apple users. clearly youve never met an audiophile which im absolutely stoked that they arent as prevelant as sneaker heads those people are the worst. but anyway yea dont feel sorry for me im not worth your energy.
Man I love this channel. The amount of work you guys do to make viewers aware of the negatives and postives for products is amazing.
ROG Ally being easier to take apart than graphics cards is a joke reality plays on us for no reason whatsoever.
Not even a close comparison.....
Probably because the ROG ally has to compete with the *very* repair friendly steam deck.
agreed great design!
What are you even talking about what does that even mean lol
@Lu-db1uf I mean you can take out the battery and remove the m.2 without taking apart 40 screws. I ended up putting a 2280m.2 in the ally. It actually fits no problem at all kinda crazy 😜
Audio engineer here. Very happy to see updates to the new charts. Thank you for using some of the notes from the Terra build.
I’m really looking forward to the Dan case!
Steam Deck is just damn hard to beat when everything is considered. I am looking forward to the upcoming Lenovo Legion Go...That thing looks SOLID. Wow lol, after reading some of these replies.. Competition is a good thing, this segment is just getting going really. Can't wait to see what it's like in 3-4yrs. For now atleast, it's SD for me!
Can't wait to test out more of these devices!
Biggest weakness: Xbox Game Pass. I'm paying for it, I want to be able to use it.
@@rustler08 I do wish that, and other services were a bit more "native" to use. However, it's really fairly easy to get going using "Desktop Mode". In fact, that's the only reason I even put MS Edge on it.. That's Edge's sole purpose on my SD, be a Game Pass thing. Once setup, it runs properly well. As does the PS Plus app.
@@rustler08Then stop paying for it 😅, going to end up just like the streaming service nightmare of today
@@rustler08then just use a pc for it lol. If you’re paying for something like a Aya or ROG Ally just get a PC
I have a desktop with a RTX 3080 and I use my Ally more. It's far from perfect but I haven't had any major issues. Awesome breakdown. Handheld gaming PCs in a few years will be amazing.
i have a 4080 pc, but im loving my ally! Im not gonna be playing cyberpunk on it or anything like that so im not worried about battery life/fps.Plus i love that its a windows 11 handheld and not just a steam deck.
For illustrating the effect of change in fan speed on the noise levels it may be useful to use a spectrogram to show loudness over time in specific instances. Additionally, a Fourier transform of the frequency spectrum plot can help point out specific problem frequencies if they are present.
We were considering 3D/waterfall type graphs also. Will experiment with these graphs! Thanks for the post.
@@GamersNexusFor a good example of this, do a quick RUclips search for the Yaesu FT-DX101 ham radio. Their 3D spectrum scope display would be ideal for plotting your data in the time domain to help illustrate perceived SPL and frequency relative to time.
All those fan settings are buggen, you have to redone same settings atleast 5 Times and then when you restart, some of them will be broken again, so Rog Messlly is it
I got my ally open box like new for $601 and the sd card reader works
9:27 huh - I'd argue that the out of the box experience is significantly more _beginner_ friendly on the Deck actually. The Ally is simply more friendly to people accustomed to Windows.
Exactly.
Steam Deck's console UI (aka. the new Big Picture Mode) is really just that. A console UI.
It's a lot easier to navigate and if you don't need to access a proper Desktop UI for your games, it has all you need for gaming for the most part.
I thought the exact same thing. For most of the things I would say that the deck is more friendly.
For a single-use device where you aren't doing ANYTHING else other than playing compatible Steam games, sure.
But I'd rather have more capability and flexibility, even if Windows is not very user friendly.
Especially with how many different places you might have to update the software from, whereas the deck just updates from the system tab.
@@GENKI_INU actually emulation and non-Steam games are fairly straightforward on the Deck - but at that point none of it is very beginner friendly on either device. You can do more easier on the Ally because you are not a beginner.
I appreciate you all taking the time to review handhelds now. The market for them is beyond saturated now, and a lot of reviewers seem to just praise how great each one is without any kind of critical look. Actual in depth reviews are needed.
That's because they're all getting paid under the table. Same with the 8bitdo products. Absolute garbage quality membranes that rip in a few months.
By the way I'm not saying GamersNexus does. I don't Steve and the team would ever do that. I was talking about the other people who rave and praise about products.
CONSUMEEE
Spot on comment!
I really appreciate how much this channel respects the viewers time, this format of review works great.
Despite the issues this generation has, I'm glad more of these are being released now. I don't play AAA games and mostly play pixel art, Visual Novel or games similar to Persona and earlier Final Fantasy games which doesn't require a lot of power and usually feels better being played while on the couch or bed.
Bro at that point why not a PS Vita?
might as well get a switch
@@0Synergy Already had a PS Vita and PSP before that. Since P5R and the Steam Indi catalog ain't available on PS Vita, I believe the a handheld PC is better for me since the other option, the Switch isn't viable as I don't play a lot of Nintendo titles.
@@drewmendoza2041you might be surprised how many indy pc games have been ported to switch
Exactly, absolutely adore my Steam Deck as emulation and backlog machine
16:55 You can tame the chaos by displaying the data with a smoothing filter. 1/3 octave is common, 1/12 or 1/24 octave might be better for keeping the annoying peaks visible.
This makes me more excited for a new version of the Steam Deck, if anything else. Valve knocked it out of the park so well with version one that it basically jumpstarted a whole new type of market. With a few years of maturity under the belt now, just imagine the potential of a version 2!
Funny... I was hoping this was a new TV console. Steam is in a great position to tear up the Xbox market and nibble at Sony and Nintendo too.
@@meeponinthbit3466stop! I can’t take this level of excitement!
yeah ,but sadly it will end at version 2 and then way later maybe they will release a steam deck like vr headset (this is a joke about valve not being able to count to 3 and also a joke about how instead of half life 3 they released half life alyx ,so a vr game) (amongus potion)
Still waiting for Steam Deck OLED.
LCD is garbage. 🤮🤮🤮
They could probably fix their logistics chain first and have a proper global release. Can't have only a few countries buy the Steam Deck while the rest of us would have to deal with scalpers with no warranty
Love seeing reviews on handhelds like this, keep'em coming. It's a good change of pace from another GPU/CPU review. Thank you Tech Jesus and staff.
Epic deep dive!❤ so I’ve done extensive modding on my ally and I’ve got a few fixes that have saved my sd reader from failing. The culprit that mostly kill’s them is the temps from the power delivery area being next to the chip but on the other side of the board combined with the cherry on top being that heat pipe over the reader. The power delivery area has very poorly sized thermal pads and doesn’t extract enough heat off the power delivery and the fans at lower Rpm’s allow the trapped heat to also soak back into the board. Even at lower tdp and even if the user has lower than 95c app temps it happens. The fix isn’t a one size fits all solution but there’s a few things I’ve done to mitigate the issue and so far it has a high success rate based on numerous other people in my community who’ve also followed along. Another thing I see is the ssd you will see significant higher nvme temps when downloading games and esp if you upgrade the drive it can and will thermally throttle a little bit and as you said it was ok but that’s not great. I’ve also created a mod to drop the nvme temps by as much as 25c and it’s very easy to do. That will prolong the life of the drive when comparing to without it at these temps. I’ve reached out to many drive manufacturers and even have data they sent me I compiled in a video if you’d like to see more 2230 data you wont see any where else.
Lastly the ally doesn’t have enough ram for some games and you will hit the page file and have worse 1% lows esp without tuning. If you Debloat windows and tune it you can really improve the 1% lows esp on modern warfare. I’ve been able to turn this thing into a best of a device. I’ve got several modding videos coming where I’ll be discussing more detail on my long term analysis of the heat and what I’ve done to improve it. I also have some thermocouples as well I’ve put over said power delivery and I indeed did see some pretty spicy temps at times prior to it and likely well over 70 directly on the reader chip itself. Apu temps I’ve also got down in the 70s with the current mods and I’ve tested several diff thermal compounds and solutions.
Thanks Stev and team for finally getting this out. I hope you guys do a hardware failure analysis and re visit this again. I really think it’s worth it. ❤
I bought the Ally at launch and I'm having a blast with it playing through a lot of my backlog. The device seems to struggle more on current gen games but all the older stuff on my backlog is running great on the 780M and combined with FreeSync it's been a great way to chew through all the games I've bought over the years that I told myself I'd play when I got them and never did. I'm sure the Steam Deck would've been the same for cheaper but being able to run these older games pinned to 60 or all the way to 120fps has been great. I'm basically never not near one for super long so battery life was never a big issue since I just charge it when I need to.
I love the Ally. I use it all the time now - I'm in my office less and in rooms more where family members are hanging out.
Wow I watched you guys evolve from science lab informants to full blown scheduled video programming. Amazing!
Was just looking yesterday to buy this. This vid couldn't be timed any better 👍❤️
These reviews seem to keep getting better every time. Having peer reviewers for your data is next-level in keeping testing accurate. I personally find these audio tests and graphs useful as i cant deal with high pitched whining noises or weird resonance issues like i have with my Arctic P12's (which also have failing ball bearings, which results in high pitched noises as well) which sound very similar to that C5 note played in the video.
i wish i could work for you. computers are so much fun to test, but all the work to put together competent reviews is overwhelming
The MicroSD card reading issue is shocking to me. ASUS must have really rushed this product out without doing proper quality control.
It's standard Asus product development. FInd something popular. Fix or upgrade the perceived "flaws" and rush everything else about development. I would be surprised if the ally could survive something like the drop tests Valve did for the deck.
Makes me wonder how long the Ally will last for, ti's a hot box..
It's an issue for sure. I almost cut mine up to fit a larger 2280 ssd I have laying around in it. All because I can't use the card reader. Then I thought...I barely used this. Let them fix it. It's aggravating but I knew Asus was not exactly forthcoming with the motherboard/Ryzen issue and I purchased this Ally pre-order anyway. Let's see if they make it right.
@@zacharytaylor8523there is one thing they did far more better than Valve: they reinforced the shoulder buttons. But yeah, the SD Card issue was a massive design oversight that I can't see being fixed with just a software update.
I am curious if Asus would be afraid of doing a major revision that may piss off the early adopters. I felt Sony was afraid to upgrade the PSP's WiFi beyond the 802.11b despite having plenty of revisions just to maintain equality from the original unit.
Mine got burnt out after a few weeks, 120$ for a 1tb SanDisk extreme pro that now just sits there
The screen alone sold me on the Ally. Outside of everything else, that is what you are staring at. 120hz in old games as well is quite amazing
I really just want a Steam Deck with a screen that has better contrast.
@@David-ln8qhnext big steamos update let's you increase the saturation of the screen
DeckHD is a 1200p screen replacement for the steam deck with better color accuracy.
Ally owner here. The VRR Freesync display and increased performance when plugged-in are irreplaceable for me. This device has lots of small oddities and annoyances, but I'm overall very happy.
>when plugged-in
lmao this homie spent $700 on a weak desktop computer
@@Robbie-mw5uu Actually this is pretty spot on. I bought this for travel. My round trip international flight had an AC plug so I was able to play plugged the entire time. This made playing Jedi Survivor and Spiderman Remastered a solid experience.
Pretty much the only times I play this thing, I have access to a plug. Flights, hotel, or if i just feel like chilling on the couch or bed with my wife while I play.
@@Robbie-mw5uu Weird... you described a computer with built-in battery, screen, and input as a "desktop".
Have you never heard the word "laptop?" Do you think laptops aren't plugged in? Do you think performance isn't far better on a laptop when it's plugged in?
I'm not sure if that's more or less shocking than the fact 5 people agree with you.
@@boltup2220 lmaoo at that point you paid more for a shittier gaming laptop
@MischiefManaged41 well I don't want to haul around a gaming laptop with me especially on travel where i already have my work laptop. I don't understand how people don't see that there are different strokes for different folks.
The latest firmware update and drivers released last week have exponentially increased performance for me. Hope you were able to account for those in testing. Can't wait to find out!
A screen shot I seen on the video was firmware 319 which is hugely outdated. Like to the point his testing in this video is irrelevant at time of release.
Just like the Intel ARC it gets tested with the latest available firmware at the time they sold it in stores so it getting tested like that is in my opinion fair and just like Arc if it gets retested later they should use the latest available firmware then anything else is just corporate apologism.
@@diamondgrape543 That’s a terrible bios. The video should reflect the latest firmware and bios at the time of release.
@@nogravitas7585 The 319 bios came out weeks ago. No excuse not to update it before making the video. I’m disappointed
@@nogravitas7585 ...no. This was released today. It doesn't show the product as-is now.
15:30 Another thing to note about human sensitivity in the
I got my steamdeck and love it. And love the fact that I didn't buy an Ally. I still want one, but after all the errors are fixed
I love these reviews. Theres just no bull... No infotainment...
Proper testing and plenty of valid approaches and viewpoints.
The value of these videos for those of us on tight budgets who are scanning the market for options cannot be unterstated.
Keep up the good work steve and team
Have to give props for the ease of disassembly. The Ally has some flaws, but at least ASUS isn't trying to keep them hidden.
The bloatware is right in your face. You're right, they are not hiding them, rather showing them off even.
and who exactly is? If you wanted to talk in the laptop space or something I could understand that point but the only real direct 1:1 competitor right now is the steam deck which isn't even remotely locked down. Things like the gpd win are sort of competitors and might be more locked down (don't really know or care) but they also target a very different subset of the market who want a near-traditional experience as opposed to a console-esque device. (which the Ally is already pushing mind you, but it's also clearly still at least trying to fit into that console-adjacent niche)
One of the things that makes the Steam Deck so good is the support it gets from Valve, I've yet to see any handheld PC company match that.
It feels like Asus just wanted to get their peice of the pie with the Ally.
It’s amazing that Valve released a major update providing an SRGB color profile to LCD decks even as they released a new OLED.
For what it’s worth I noticed your Ally’s manufactured date is 03-2023. From reading Reddit and forums it appears devices with a MFD before 06-2023 seem to be the ones most affected by the SD card issue. My device has a MFD of 06-2023 and I’ve been using and my SD card since I got it with zero issues.
This video only taught me that the Steam Deck is such a beast when it comes to game stability.
Had mine since launch. I'm loving it so far. Currently playing starfield on it and it runs and looks great on Medium 1080p. The only real issue was the SD card reader. It stopped reading my card even though others work and the card works on other devices. Ended up upgrading the SSD to 2TB.
what settings do you use for starfield? just medium preset? I prefer not to play it on my ally because it doesnt look/perform that well in my experience
@@BA-oy9uo Just the medium preset with motion blur disabled. It's getting 42fps in neon city right now. Good enough for me.
The SD card situation is such a mystery 😅 I really think that the late June Hotfix update messed this up, that’s when the users started reporting that issue. I just wish ASUS would look at this closely with AMD. I messaged them continuous times.
Same here. I had both a 1TB Sandisk and Silicon Power (SP has higher speeds that the Ally supposedly could have taken advantage of) that used to work on the Ally but for some reason lately the SP card just outright stopped being recognized on the Ally yet works on my Switch/Steam Deck just fine and the Sandisk while being recognized on the Ally had very slow write speeds and causes applications to hang on launch.
@@Kasper0822 That's terrible performance overall 😅 but i guess for a handheld device it's ok, let's not forget we had consoles locked at 30 fps not long ago...
Really glad to see these devices reviewed and tested by someone with your demonstrated commitment to objectivity. I'm perfectly satisfied with my Steam Deck, but I am looking forward to more of them. Because it won't last forever...
Can't wait to see how these funky solid-state coolers from Frore Systems are going to go with Handheld PCs.
I mean it could make them slimmer, quieter and make room for more battery.
Steam Deck was a much better purchase than I thought, been having tons of fun with it. Now I'm just waiting for something worthy to upgrade to...
which won't be an Ally because my god ASUS software drives me insane.
I think they're too weak even for these systems. Their limit is supposed to be around 10W TDP.
Yeah, the big one is ~10W but it's also just ~7cm long and ~3cm wide.
If you look at the heatshield in the Steam Deck I think you could fit two of them side by side ontop of it for at least 15W.
There's also probably some room for improvement with these things, they're pretty new after all. Only time will tell.
I just feel like Handheld PC's could really profit from this technology the most, along with thin & light laptops.
I’ve already created a rog ally ssd heat sink guide and lowered temps up to 25c❤
@@massivepileupmaybe doubling them up or having them as just an additional cooling instead of as the main cooling.
Read their white paper for use in the steam deck. I sent an email asking to preorder to use them on my steam deck. Completely silent cooling.
You didn't mention the biggest advantage of the Ally. VRR. It is a game changer for portable gaming devices that struggle to keep a consistent frame rate.
@@NixperienceSteam Deck only has it for external displays from my understanding. The Ally display itself supports VRR.
I still love my Ally and glad this review was done. I knew about the faults when I purchased it so the pros outweighed the cons for my purchase decision. I’ll definitely will get a next gen steam deck as most of my games are on steam
Me and my Girlfriend are playing both our ally’s at the bar rn shieeet
@@ZARSHIT14 then seek professional help
I hate it. In my mind it's a POS, and I've only used it once because it's so terrible.
Noise (frequency/dba) charts were highly appreciated!
That includes the extended "how to read". I get that you don't want to have such segments in every video, but im glad they were kept for this one!
I would highly recommend applying a small amount of smoothing to the frequency response curves for the noise tests. It will make it significantly more legible and easier and compare the different tests with the naked eye. Really excited about your new acoustic testing facilities though, once again you guys are spearheading the industry with your attention to detail. Keep up the great work.
Your thoroughness in all aspects of this, and all reviews is appreciated!
Forced updates is the main reason I switched my desktop to Linux. The Ally is a very, very sleek device, but out of the box I am very pleased with my Deck.
All these handhelds are super interesting and have me curious so I love these in depth reviews.
"Defeats the purpose" regarding having the device plugged-in... Not sure I understand that statement seeing as there is an option to "plug it in" for more performance / use with an external monitor, etc..
It's not like "plugging the device in" is somehow NEVER a use case.. You're at home or in any area (airport, SBUX, etc.) with a wall socket..
Anyway thanks for the time / effort to put this together.
One of your more current reviews that suggested the RTX 4070 appeared to pretty much totally discount "upscaling / DLSS / RT" in an attempt to make it seem like a rip off (due to costing ~$100 more than RX 6800XT/ 7800XT..
Kind of difficult to overstate the importance of "upscaling "- as well as Nvidia's massive investments in AI and hence likely farther improvements here" not to mention frame gen / ray tracing when it comes to gaming 2023+ and so forth, so sort of confused by that commentary as well..
I'm assuming because you buy a portable device so you don't have to constantly be plugged in.
@@gemelwalters2942
The point is that the OPTION to plug it in is there and it IS a practical "use case" in many instances as stated - So to state it "defeats the purpose" isn't accurate as the "
purpose" of the device is multifaceted (plugged in or not plugged in depending on the scenario)
So it is totally unfair to discount this aspect just as it's unfair to discount upscaling / DLSS / frame gen/ RT / power efficiency / AV-1/ overall versatility when it comes to NVidia GPU's such as the RTX 4070 referenced in a recent review vs. the RX 6800XT / 7800XT.
All these feature sets mentioned are in FACT things of "value" perhaps not to everybody but to many they are and hence should not be discounted when deciding rather or not an item is a "rip off" or not.
I am no audio expert here, but Tom Scott recently did a video talking about LUFS (loudness units full scale) that attempt to account for frequencies that “feel” louder even at the same dBm measurements. It could be interesting to see another view of your existing measurements adjusted this way to help convey the perceived difference in loudness. I really appreciate you and your teams hard work and really enjoy the content.
I love handheld gaming and so this video is of great interest to me. Thanks for making it!
Amazing depth and scope in this review, this type of analysis just isn't available anywhere else, top stuff.
GN once again setting the standard for what the highest quality of reviews looks like. That was seriously impressive.
The ally is certainly a very impressive device, but for me it mostly highlights how amazing the price/performance of the steamdeck is. As someone who doesn't really focus on AAA graphics performance in his mobile gaming there isn't much that can compete with the deck for me. The only thing I can think of would be the gpd win max 2 because I can think of a lot of use cases for that form factor, but that one is just monstrously expensive.
When it comes to the deck I just wish proton was a little better at handling rpgmaker xp titles, quite a few of those are very inconsistent while also drawing less than one watt (tdp, not measured)
Before buying any device..... I wait for GN team to have a review on it. Thank you GN. :)
The big bottleneck of the ROG Ally is the memory subsystem, it's single channel (=64bit bus) LPDDR5 shared between the CPU and the GPU cores meanwhile the Steam Deck got dual channel memory.
the steam deck actually has QUAD channel memory. gets insane bandwidth. more than apple's m1, which was pretty impressive. it's quad 32 bit though, so single 64bit seems like 128bit total memory bus is dual, but it's not, it's quad 32.
Yep the steam deck actually has quad channel. Which is part of the insanity of the handheld itself.
@@Dracossaint I think the ROG Ally could also support dual channel (since it's a Ryzen 7 7840H) thay just didn't solder a second RAM 'stick' on the board.
I thought dual-channel didn't matter on DDR5, no?
@@GSBarlev it doesn't, which is why valve went with quad channel. single channel is 64bit, dual channel is 2*32bit, quad channel is 4*32bit
This thoroughness is why I keep watching your videos and have no problem waiting for them. Keep up the great work GN.
I am a lot more confident with Valve quality control, support and updates than Asus
Thanks for the timestamps Steve but your videos are basicly the only ones I don't skip through
There's a simple fact why i'd buy the Steamdeck even if it were the same price for worse HW. Actual long term support.
Asus LOVES to have something in their products that's slightly proprietary and stops supporting it the next windows release, or when it's 6 months old. I learned my lessons (laptops, tinkerboard, motherboard sensors) and i'll never buy their stuff if there's an alternative (add their shady business practices...). Steamdeck is mostly driven by open drivers for linux, windows, there are hw guides, accessible hw replacements... Steam (mostly) came through with steam controller warranties etc... Though i'm still salty steam link can't be used aa a net-top with linux on it..
good thing we don't live in a world where we can only have one handheld ;)
True, it's just a shame that there's so little actually good choices nowadays. Be it handhelds, phones, motherboards, cars,.....
To buy something now means you have to spend 3 days searching for a "product that has all the features i want, without forcing on the user updates/subscriptions/add-ons/extensions/spyware"....
Agreed. I might check it out when it can be bought for the steam decks price. $700 for a handheld is ridiculous. You can build a much more powerful pc for that much.
Always raising the standards for good product reviews. Nice, GN!
I'll add another comment (for the algorithm and for discussion): If the Steamdeck 2 is a thing in the next year (as patent or trademark timing may hint at) I'm eagerly looking forward to that machine. I love my Ally, I do! But I never got a SteamDeck but I really like what Valve did with it, bringing a niche hobbyist market to the mainstream.
I can't wait for a Switch 2 man ❤🤤. Heavily customised SOC with DLSS technology surely will punch above it's weight 🔥
One more thing about playing while charging on the Ally; If you create a custom power profile (or "Manual Mode" as Asus calls it) and max out all TDPs including the burst TDP to get maximum performance (which even Turbo mode does not do), the Ally's charger struggles to keep it charged and the battery level actually starts dropping during play (assuming the game maxes out your APU's load).
As a ROG Ally owners myself, I rarely use the SD card but did upgrade the storage to 2 TB and for the games I play on it, including Fortnite, plays really well.
I like the frequency response graphs. Very informative and more useful than just the average noise levels.
Normally I find the reviews on this channel helpful, but in this case they're way off base. I have a Steam Deck and an Ally, and there is a very noticeable performance increase with the Ally, which other legit reviewers show as well. They're using a very old firmware here, and I wonder if that's impacting things - or perhaps they got a dud of a unit. But if you play the two, back to back, like I've done dozens of times, they're not very comparable, the Asus almost always cleans the Deck's clock (even when it's not at the full 25w). They are completely correct about the issues with the SD slot, which is unacceptable, but outside of that, I've been quite impressed with the ASUS, ONCE they rolled out the new firmware that came available shortly after launch. When I first got the Ally, the performance was much more in line with what you see here - and if that's how they tested this unit, that's a huge flaw, since it was literally updated only days after it was released. With that said, I still love the Steam Deck, it's bigger but also more comfortable, and the battery life in most situations is notably better. Plus, if I was going to let my nephew borrow one, it would be the Steam Deck since it's much easier to use.
But a huge swing and miss on this one, unless you just got a dud of a system, in which case the blame goes to Asus.
Yeah would like fresh data :/
I’m just happy the handheld generation is here, and here to stay. You can play last gen’s triple AAA titles on your couch. Buy another handheld every 5-8 years for relatively cheap, and you get to play with everything worth playing. I love it.
Something to note about the Steam Deck is that because it doesn't have anywhere near the amount of resource sucking background apps, of course frame times are gonna be a lot more consistent and smoother than the Windows-based handhelds, simply due to the way Windows Update and cohorts (i.e myAsus, etc) suck back performance for seemingly no reason. I'd love to see something like ChimeraOS on the Ally vs SteamOS on the Deck. WAY more apples-to-apples
As an Ally owner I appreciate this video. The big reason I went with the Ally was Xbox game pass, I wanted to play those games on the go. I love my ally, I have not used an SD card but do plan on upgrading the ssd soonish, and I have done my own windows optimization which has helped with battery life. I understand why people would not want to deal with an ally but as a first Gen product I am super excited to see how Asus can improve upon further generations. As for performance modes you can real tweak between different modes but I know people don't want to mess with that, plus I'm never really away from an outlet now a days so keeping it charged up is not a problem. I truly believe windows is holding a lot of these products back, Microsoft really needs to release a handheld cut down windows, I'm sure it would spark a bunch of interest in the handheld gaming scene.
A segment for just screen brightness in general would be cool. With these types of devices, the screen not being bright enough is often a criticism. Would be neat to see how the Lux values compare.
everyone always complains about the screen not being bright enough because of direct sunlight while traveling but i have yet to see a single mention of how dim a screen can get.
when I'm chilling in bed before sleep having a dimmer screen is huge and its VERY noticeably different on my last Pixel vs my new one. its also pretty decent on the deck.
anyways that's along winded way to say id love a review on both max and minimum brightness
This review and comparison is fantastic. Side note, I think I'm in love with Patrick 👀
Great review. Mentioning the forced bios and software updates is huge. Not enough reviews mention this. I would never be okay with a product that forces updates. Especially bios updates.
Or software updates for that matter. You always have a choice
But you can disable the forced bios updates and you can roll back? Weirdo
this is the most sophisticated review of hand-held pc!! (or probably any pc tech)
One big plus for the Ally is availability. I could pick one up on launch day, whereas it seems Valve have no plans of ever launching the Steam Deck here.
as someone that is about to buy a deck, this video is a godsend. tyvm steve and the gang for this video and helping in making a decision between this portable pc's.
Seems kinda hard to justify the cost for the Ally over the Deck when the performance is so inconsistent and it is almost guaranteed to have Micro SD issues. Plus the Deck has a bit of an ecosystem of accessories now too. Can't wait for Solid State Cooling to make its way into consumer products though. Will make these handheld PCs so much better.
I love my ally. traded my steam deck for one and I have no regrets. Have had no issues with bugs or any other type of flaw personally.
As one aside to the high refresh screen on a low performance device - the screen being at 120Hz with the game being capped at 40FPS gives you a higher framerate without irregular frametimes, it's a very useful utility of 120Hz displays where it's supported.
Though the actually smart choice would be to just drop the screen refresh to 40Hz through software but that isn't always a choice, it is what it is.
(also one random aside, the audio recording clarity in the test chamber is super pristine, very neat)
good thing deck supports 40hz
so the steam deck?
@@c6tlvr That's what I was getting at, yeah.
Yes!!! The most anticipated handheld gaming review in history! I'm putting my son to bed, then I'll sit back and enjoy, :)
Thank you Steve and the team for all your hard work, can't be easy doing these technical reviews again and again.
My number 1 channel to look for legit reviews!. thank you again ! You made my decision to get a Steam Deck MUCH simpler :)
The Steamdeck is such an incredible piece of hardware at this point I just have to wait for Steamdeck 2.
Steam deck fanboyism
@@BansheeN0rn I don not own Steamdeck, and right now I am desperately holding back to stop from buying the 2023 GPD Win Max 2, the only thing it's missing is 120hz OLED and it would be the perfect laptop, but when Steamdeck is almost 3 years old and still THE BEST mobile x86 at 10 watts?
Clearly the mobile PC industry has a lot of room for improvement.
@@budthecyborg4575 You never gonna believe me 😳…
Watching this on my release day Ally with a fully functioning SD Card Reader!
Excellent review, but it's worth noting that Asus has released a newer BIOS and GPU driver that improves performance noticeably, especially in the 1% lows.
We already looked at the new BIOSes and, while it helps in some games, it isn't universally resolved.
I had the same reservations here. If there are known performance issues with a bios that you are using for a benchmark I would prefer that it's clearly stated that that bios is being used for the benchmarks.
I would also love to know how the new bios changed performance on battery.
Just a statement in a pinned comment would be enough imo. Or a link to an article on the GN website for who is really interested.
My SD card reader broke within the first month from preorder, but I didn't realize for another month or so because I was playing mostly steam games off of the ssd. (Note: most of the turbo plugged in play was before they adjusted the default fan curve with a BIOS update) Also note: my card seems fine in other readers and with card reader dongle, it was the built-in card reader that broke. Before I realized it was broken, it was making armory crate take upwards of 3 minutes to launch as it was trying to read an unreadable sd card. Once I popped the card out, crate launched
super fast. I am currently in the middle of the RMA process - which ASUS recognized and allowed.
My Ally card reader stopped reading my 3 SD cards after the last firmware update with the so called new fan curves to fix the issue. I did try the cloud recovery and reset the Ally to factory settings which seems to have brought the reader back to life. Though it now only reads new SD cards, and not the original ones previously used. Since then I have avoided using the card reader. Hope this video gets ASUS to look further into the issue as I’ve started to see reports of RMAs returning back to consumers only for the issue to resurface.
I found my sd card to be corrupted
Mine aren’t corrupted they work on everything else even the ally reads them and formats when using an external reader. For some strange reason the Ally’s internal sd card reader just won’t read those 3 cards anymore only working with brand new sd cards.
@@charliesalinas8119 I guess I got the worst outcome for the sd card
Update: card reader no longer reads any sd cards as of yesterday.
@@charliesalinas8119 that's a shame smh
I feel like I got wildly lucky with my unit. Great review and as always, honest and legit coverage.
I've been waiting for this review. Good to see GN reviewing handhelds. The screen is a massive differentiator, especially with FreeSync enabled. I know it was turned off in this review for comparisons sake, but it's important of emphasize how big of an advantage it is. VRR in general on the Ally makes games feel really smooth even at lower fps ranges, with practically no tearing.
And yes, there are a bunch of games that can run at 120 fps/hz on the device. Ori and Blind Forest, Planet of Lana, Cuphead, and other indies and platformers. The experience of playing these games on the Ally is just not comparable to playing them on devices with 60hz non-VRR screens.
Yes, we specifically said Triple-A games would struggle to exceed 120FPS. We did not say there aren't a lot of games that would -- of course plenty of games can hit that framerate.
I don't understand. VRR is a very good solution to solve tearing without add latency and stuttering. In games like Ori and Blind Forest, Planet of Lana, Cuphead, and other indies the fps are usually locked so tearing is not a problem and VRR does nothing. In these cases the advantage is due to the higher refresh rate of the screen and not the VRR.
On the other hand in the tests performed activating freesync should not change much the final result as it is not comparing the image quality. It would be in the case of activating freesync on the asus rog ally and on the steam deck some technique to avoid tearync as Vsync or render ahead that can introduce latency or stuttering. Enabling freesync should not change the fps variation of the tests performed for the rog ally but not for the steamdeck which should be worse.
I abaolutely fuckin love my rog ally. I just finished marine corps bootcamp in january this year, and im currently in comms school to be a SMART-T operator. Having a portable device like this is so peak that its unbelievable. Its not a pc, but gives me pc performance. I have a dock to connect it to a monitor, and being able to just dismissed for libo and go back to relax in my room with this thing jas been amazing. Rog ally over steam deck for sure. Rog ally over a laptop imo too.
My sd card reader still failed after updating to the newer bios with the updated fan curve.
I ended up just putting a new 1tb ssd in the device. It is very frustrating that such issues were not picked up in early testing from asus.
If I was 20 years younger I would really want one. Seems so cool!
Can you talk about VRR and LFC? Curious how it masks some of the issues with the Ally. I own both and the Ally is "feels" considerably more performant and smooth, with higher settings.
The humour section of GN videos are Industry Leading ❤❤
A minor thing, but at launch, replacing the SSD was a giant pain. I had to tear the thing down 6 or 7 times to get the new SSD to function. Had to put the old SSD back in, bios update, then try multiple times to backup from Asus' cloud service. Was not my favorite drive swapping excursion, usually you can clone, swap, and that's it, was not the case with ROG ally on launch. Seems like the software needed a little bit more time. A bit better now, but on launch was super buggy.
Not caring for +16kHz frequencies is the bane of my existence. I hear up to 19kHz and so many devices bother me with weird noises lol.
I really appreciate those freq graphs and how much you focus on sound in these reviews. Noise is very important to me and not enough people even touch up on this when reviewing products. It's nice to see so much sound-focused data here.
Great review. Steam deck on battery power is very impressive. Seems like you have to assess how you will use the device. If you are ok being tethered to an outlet, Rog Ally gives better performance and has the better screen and all the advantages (and disadvantages) of running Windows 11. The steam deck on the other hand seems like a better handheld device when not plugged in.
For me, I prefer better performance and being plugged in. With that in mind, I'm switching to another Asus product, the Z13 gaming tablet. It goes up to a 4070 gpu and I9 13900H. I'll need to pair it with a controller but will get even better performance. I figure if you have to stay plugged in to get the performance you want, then why not lean into it.
Happy to be in the moment where handheld pc is starting to gain traction, and I believe SteamDeck and ROG Ally significantly helped pushed the space more into the mainstream, especially the SD!
Excited to see what handhelds will be capable of in the near future!
I'm loving the Ally so far. I can play Starfield on Low settings, 720p, with an average FPS of around 40 on planet surfaces, a bit higher when in buildings while on 15w Performance Mode, numbers slightly higher when plugged in on Turbo Mode.
I'm able to take most of my gaming on the go. Baldurs Gate runs, Starfield runs, Exoprimal runs (games I'm currently playing).
Battery is definitely something to be desired, but a good way to regulate my gaming sessions (since I tend to game longer than I should be).
You guys spent so much time testing fan noise imo - I don't mind it so much especially when game audio drowns it out most of the time.
I don't plan on using the SD card reader for major file storage. I plan on just updating the SSD to a larger one. Maybe just using the SD card reader as a backup storage, similar to how I use my desktop HDD.
People need to learn what's inside the Ally and its limits. It's not meant to be a complete desktop replacement, it's not meant to play AAA games on high graphical settings. You're crazy if you think a handheld this size today can do such a feat. If you want a a PC with the graphical fidelity of a desktop, buy a bulky gaming laptop.
Idk what i was doing watching LTT this whole time, i gained so much knowledge
The steam deck's 0.1% fps and frame times are seriously impressive, and I'm so glad valve seem to be focusing their efforts on what really counts for the playing experience. As far as I'm aware, games being translated by dxvk pre-compile shaders that would be compiled during gameplay in dx, so assuming you tested on first run, how much of the non-stuttering on the steam deck compared to the ally was due to the shaders already having been compiled ahead of time?
With regards to gamescope, I think the reason valve are building that out so much to not allow tearing by default could also be because gamescope will be what runs on their (hopefully) upcoming standalone/hybrid VR headset, and in that scenario it would be much more jarring than in normal gameplay.
I really can't wait for the Legion GO to be tested. Hope it's the perfect storm! Would love to see a video on it when possible!