EDIT: Misspoke about the Steam Deck: You definitely can play non-Steam games on it with a little bit of Linux knowledge to go outside of Steam and with a little bit of tinkering to do so. Also seems a lot of folks mention Bazzite. Which I’ll have to try eventually when I get over my irrational fear of Linux 🙃
I noticed I started playing more casual games when I got the ALLY. I'm playing way more indie games than I did before because I am not as interested in getting the best framerate just having fun. And I get to play Fall Out 3 and FO4 on the go. That is the best part to me.
The Ally X is one of the best handhelds out there and I know there are a lot. I like how easy it is to install Bazzite and game play is just crazy good!! 20w will last me around 2hrs 25mins playing the Division 2 or borderlands 3. Best investment I’ve made, my gaming pc is collecting dust.
Hi Jimmy! Great vid. I use my ROG Ally a lot as a dedicated gaming PC for my treadmill with a standing desk. If you're using it docked on your TV, try out Steam Big Picture mode! You get a lot of the benefits of Steam OS (or you could also install bazzite if you REALLY wanted to run Linux on it), Big Picture mode has way better controller support than Windows. You could also look into running something like Playnite to have a more console like experience on Windows. I use mine docked and have it so changing one USB C cable will move all of my peripherals over from my work PC to the Ally. I actually love this setup so much that I'm getting an Ally X for it's USB4 port, and I'm excited to experiment with eGPU builds to squeeze more performance out of it, but have the option to disconnect and take it with me if I go over to a friend's house or on a trip. These machines are so cool and I can for sure see a PC market evolve to be more "Switch-like" in the future.
I personally buy it not just to play games, but also to use as a PC and Laptop as well whenever my MacBook has issues. I will also plan to primarily use it for running VMs of older Windows OSs on it as well. It also takes up less space as a traditional laptop would, since I don't wanna have another bulky laptop right beside my M1 MacBook just to run X86 Windows OSs.
I have an ally x. My first handheld PC and for someone who is on the go I appreciated it a lot. I can have access to quick Google sheets and start working on simple tasks that my job demands while in a middle of a play session in a couch or car without the need of powering up a laptop. Don't get me started on emulation. I just found out this week that there is an app called retroachievements that puts a trophy system on almost all old console games like PS1! The ally x or even ally extreme runs it very well (I'm assuming since they have the same processor). I tried PS1 to PS3 and it's smooth!
I've upgraded to the Ally X and kept the OG Ally and loaded Bazzite to it. You should try it! Upgrade the SSD and dual boot if you want to keep Windows.
@@aghatechnobuzz3317 Ally X has: Double battery Usable SD card slot M.2 2280 normal sized ssd slot 2x USB c ports (with 1 of them being a thunderbolt port, supporting any Egpu setup)
From someone who traded a legion go for this.. totally worth it don't look back! The optimization for this thing along with the updates is night and day compared to the legion.
Bought the Ally Z1 Extreme for 335€ a few days ago from Amazon Warehouse. Basically it was like new. Not a single sign that it was out of the package one time. Since then i play way more Indie Games from my Steam library because since i own consoles (PS4 Pro and Xbox Series X) i'm not into sitting on my desk playing with mouse and keyboard. Therefore the Ally came in very handy. Sure battery isnt that great but enough for 1 or 2 hours of games which arent super demanding.
I'm still avoiding to purchase ASUS handhelds because of their very unfriendly costumer support or anti-repairability mentality. For now I'm just waiting for the next generation Steam Deck.
@@JeskidoYT its more of a mid-gen refresh than anything. The screen, battery life and internals all had changes but the in-game performance is just about the same.
Just depend on country, as mine getting fix at ASUS authority, was so much easy (change montherboard) due to issue of micro sd card. They just ask to leave the device n sd there for a week.
I've had an rog Ally z1 extreme for months now and I love it so far I seems the SD card issue has been taken care of on Asus's part...id recommend it and I have a steam deck coming tomorrow
@8:45 Bought an open box Z1 Extreme Ally on 9/22/24 from Best Buy for $388 plus tax. The power brick still wrapped, no nicks, dings, scratches or scrapes on the Ally itself. The trade-in date on the Best Buy sticker was May 11, 2024. The thing looked brand spanking new, original owner heard the Ally X was coming out and traded it in maybe. The SD card slot works, so safe to say this one was not returned for that. The warranty was started on December 05, 2023 (usually automatic when the store scans it for on sale date) until 04 Dec 2025. The repair history shows "none". I believe I got a good deal Edit: duplicated a sentence
sorry I was in a bad mood when I posted that comment. To be honest thanks for the review - I am actually looking to be Asus or Lenovo and this video helped me to make a decision. Sorry man keep up the good work
Please do a video on EmuDeck on the ROG Ally! It makes it a GREAT TV set up for pretty much any emulation! Thats my main use case for my Ally when plugged into a TV
I love the rog ally in every way well apart from the sd card slot is shot the battery doesn’t last and half the time the controls don’t work so I have to reset the computer . Apart from that it’s pretty great. I’m actually not sarcastic
Your thoughts are fair and generally the consensus. If you don't tinker and want a console like experience, steam deck is the way to go. If you need options and a windows environment then the ROG Ally is the way to go (refurb is the better value if you get a good one). ASUS is already moving to the next generation and the X shows they know how to design the next one without the heat issues that impacted the SD card.
Now this is coming from someone who works from home and lives alone, but my handheld of choice has been the AYN Odin and I've been extremely happy. There are times that I wish that I had the ability to local host Steam games instead of always needing to use SteamLink, but I value the battery life the Odin provides and like the size, weight, and form factor.
I'd recommend trying out moonlight with sunlight. There are a few videos on RUclips on how to set this up and I would heavily recommend it. Moonlight is a much better local host application than steam link in my opinion. I'm able to play my games either steam or any other platform like steam, epic, gog, whatever you play. You are even able to control your pc or laptop from a phone or a handheld. Hope that is able to help you!
I love my ROG Ally, even though I don't use it as much as I'd like to. I had a Steam Deck as well, but I literally haven't touched it since owning the Ally. The Ally is just SOOOO much bonlyr!
Been thinking of grabbing one a gaming handheld for a bit, but I'm holding out until one has really good thunderbolt support, to where it can be plugged into a dock that includes a GPU enclosure, essentially making a PC Nintendo switch.
@@KamrynB really? I thought I heard some info about it having USB C Gen whatever to make it similar, but I wasn’t sure if it had actual thunderbolt, that might make things more interesting!
Waited til they had a $100 off sale then I bought one of those open box returns they marked down even more, put the savings on a bigger SSD and other stuff. Think it helped with the buyers remorse.
A Rog Ally is best looked at as a tiny gaming pc and not a handheld. The battery life doesn’t lend itself to being portable, and that’s perfectly fine. There are so many Anbernic devices and others that are fine for that.
I got a steamdeck and it is definitely a more relaxing method to unwind as compared to PC gaming. The handheld form factor coupled with the performance to run modern games is really a blessing.
I have an issue with these huge handhelds. They are just too uncomfortable to play on. I miss the old pocket-sized handhelds. The games for those handhelds were also purposely made to accommodate smaller screens and a pick-up-and-play-for-a-few-minutes-then-put-away style of gameplay. I owned the Steam Deck, and even though Valve tried to make it as light as possible, playing on it, for example, while seated and commuting on a train, was painful after 15 minutes.
A modded PS Vita is the one I carry every day. PSX, PSP and Vita games available, long after Sony prematurely abandoned it. Plenty of videos to show how to do it on YT.
Dude. Your opening minutes described me. My dear is wasting a few hundred dollars just to play yakuza or snowrunner sometimes and the ally ends up in the drawer like the switch and the oculus
The battery life is not okay. It’s terrible especially if you want to play latest AAA games. You will basically need to keep it plugged in anytime you’re not gaming as it will always need a charge the moment you fire up a game.
Play the heavy games at 12watts with freesync and Vrr on And all the old games at 10watts. Playing at 15watts to 25 on battery won't get you past an hour
You’re absolutely right. Misspoke there or didn’t catch it in editing. You definitely can albeit with a little bit of Linux knowledge to go outside of Steam and do so. Can’t go back and edit that part but I’ll pin a comment!
Deck is not limited to steam however you can only play gamepass thru streaming. Also it is difficult launching different launchers there is a lot of walkarounds than doing it on windows also it has a lot of limitations and a lot of games is not supported. Deck can dual boot to windows however it doesn't perform great booting it on windows. Ally works great on windows and bazzite because it has newer more powerful chip see deck is RDNA 2 while ally is RDNA 3. There is nothing wrong with deck being inferior to ally because ally is a newer device and has a newer processor which is understandable. Newer device is always gonna be better just like deck being better than switch.
Yeah but Linux offers more limitations and it requires deep understanding of the shell to make some games work. Also you can't play auto cheat software games.😅
He’s wrong but from a casual user point of view, the ROG Ally, MSI Claw and Legion Go are Windows handhelds while the Steam Deck runs SteamOS/Proton. It takes effort to run/install Windows on the Steam Deck, and that OS doesn’t get the best out of the Steam Deck hardware.
gotta be honest, I mostly abandoned my ROG Ally Z1E for my Switch Lite with a modchip, I think sometimes the game design alone for taking advantage of the hardware provided is a huge difference. I was excited about my Ally at first , then over the months, its been eating dust. Still prefer playing most PC games on my main desktop rig because of the general nature of using a mouse and keyboard. Oh yea, and the battery drain honestly kills most of the fun, you end up just checking your battery percentage and getting random anxiety of it.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
![BEST Gaming Handheld in 2024!? [Steam Deck OLED | Ally X | Legion Go | Claw]](/img/1.gif)
EDIT: Misspoke about the Steam Deck: You definitely can play non-Steam games on it with a little bit of Linux knowledge to go outside of Steam and with a little bit of tinkering to do so.
Also seems a lot of folks mention Bazzite. Which I’ll have to try eventually when I get over my irrational fear of Linux 🙃
I noticed I started playing more casual games when I got the ALLY. I'm playing way more indie games than I did before because I am not as interested in getting the best framerate just having fun. And I get to play Fall Out 3 and FO4 on the go. That is the best part to me.
That’s what’s been happening for me as well. The care for hi-res or crazy frame rates just disappear on this thing, just enjoying the moment.
The Ally X is one of the best handhelds out there and I know there are a lot. I like how easy it is to install Bazzite and game play is just crazy good!! 20w will last me around 2hrs 25mins playing the Division 2 or borderlands 3. Best investment I’ve made, my gaming pc is collecting dust.
Grabbed a Legion Go from eBay for much cheaper than MSRP Open Box, it's been one of my main drivers for clearing out my backlog.
Hi Jimmy! Great vid. I use my ROG Ally a lot as a dedicated gaming PC for my treadmill with a standing desk. If you're using it docked on your TV, try out Steam Big Picture mode! You get a lot of the benefits of Steam OS (or you could also install bazzite if you REALLY wanted to run Linux on it), Big Picture mode has way better controller support than Windows. You could also look into running something like Playnite to have a more console like experience on Windows.
I use mine docked and have it so changing one USB C cable will move all of my peripherals over from my work PC to the Ally. I actually love this setup so much that I'm getting an Ally X for it's USB4 port, and I'm excited to experiment with eGPU builds to squeeze more performance out of it, but have the option to disconnect and take it with me if I go over to a friend's house or on a trip.
These machines are so cool and I can for sure see a PC market evolve to be more "Switch-like" in the future.
I personally buy it not just to play games, but also to use as a PC and Laptop as well whenever my MacBook has issues. I will also plan to primarily use it for running VMs of older Windows OSs on it as well. It also takes up less space as a traditional laptop would, since I don't wanna have another bulky laptop right beside my M1 MacBook just to run X86 Windows OSs.
How are you liking it so far? I was gonna do the same (I’m using MBA M1 for work but I need a Windows to run ArcGIS) and I don’t really play games.
I have an ally x. My first handheld PC and for someone who is on the go I appreciated it a lot. I can have access to quick Google sheets and start working on simple tasks that my job demands while in a middle of a play session in a couch or car without the need of powering up a laptop.
Don't get me started on emulation. I just found out this week that there is an app called retroachievements that puts a trophy system on almost all old console games like PS1! The ally x or even ally extreme runs it very well (I'm assuming since they have the same processor). I tried PS1 to PS3 and it's smooth!
I've upgraded to the Ally X and kept the OG Ally and loaded Bazzite to it. You should try it! Upgrade the SSD and dual boot if you want to keep Windows.
I have low budget what is the main difference in gaming framerates between ROG ally x and ROG ally
@@aghatechnobuzz3317 Ally X has:
Double battery
Usable SD card slot
M.2 2280 normal sized ssd slot
2x USB c ports (with 1 of them being a thunderbolt port, supporting any Egpu setup)
@@aghatechnobuzz3317they run basically the exact same the only real difference is the battery being twice the size so double the time playing
From someone who traded a legion go for this.. totally worth it don't look back! The optimization for this thing along with the updates is night and day compared to the legion.
Bought the Ally Z1 Extreme for 335€ a few days ago from Amazon Warehouse. Basically it was like new. Not a single sign that it was out of the package one time. Since then i play way more Indie Games from my Steam library because since i own consoles (PS4 Pro and Xbox Series X) i'm not into sitting on my desk playing with mouse and keyboard. Therefore the Ally came in very handy. Sure battery isnt that great but enough for 1 or 2 hours of games which arent super demanding.
How you find this??
I'm still avoiding to purchase ASUS handhelds because of their very unfriendly costumer support or anti-repairability mentality. For now I'm just waiting for the next generation Steam Deck.
Isn't the OLED model the next generation?
@@JeskidoYT its more of a mid-gen refresh than anything. The screen, battery life and internals all had changes but the in-game performance is just about the same.
Just depend on country, as mine getting fix at ASUS authority, was so much easy (change montherboard) due to issue of micro sd card. They just ask to leave the device n sd there for a week.
I've had an rog Ally z1 extreme for months now and I love it so far I seems the SD card issue has been taken care of on Asus's part...id recommend it and I have a steam deck coming tomorrow
Blah blah blah...
The Steamdeck isnt limited to just steam. You can add other launchers.
@8:45 Bought an open box Z1 Extreme Ally on 9/22/24 from Best Buy for $388 plus tax. The power brick still wrapped, no nicks, dings, scratches or scrapes on the Ally itself. The trade-in date on the Best Buy sticker was May 11, 2024. The thing looked brand spanking new, original owner heard the Ally X was coming out and traded it in maybe. The SD card slot works, so safe to say this one was not returned for that. The warranty was started on December 05, 2023 (usually automatic when the store scans it for on sale date) until 04 Dec 2025. The repair history shows "none". I believe I got a good deal
Edit: duplicated a sentence
sorry I was in a bad mood when I posted that comment. To be honest thanks for the review - I am actually looking to be Asus or Lenovo and this video helped me to make a decision. Sorry man keep up the good work
Aww i can smell the hate. Need a hug ?
@@Drzestrella19 yes to be honest sorry for that I was in the bad mood :) comment fixed
@@thejonny0208 amazing 🤗
Please do a video on EmuDeck on the ROG Ally! It makes it a GREAT TV set up for pretty much any emulation! Thats my main use case for my Ally when plugged into a TV
I love the rog ally in every way well apart from the sd card slot is shot the battery doesn’t last and half the time the controls don’t work so I have to reset the computer . Apart from that it’s pretty great. I’m actually not sarcastic
The Ally X is definitely worth it due to the battery life. It changes how you play.
Z1 non extreme is getting better too. The price is looking really appealing too
Your thoughts are fair and generally the consensus. If you don't tinker and want a console like experience, steam deck is the way to go. If you need options and a windows environment then the ROG Ally is the way to go (refurb is the better value if you get a good one). ASUS is already moving to the next generation and the X shows they know how to design the next one without the heat issues that impacted the SD card.
Now this is coming from someone who works from home and lives alone, but my handheld of choice has been the AYN Odin and I've been extremely happy. There are times that I wish that I had the ability to local host Steam games instead of always needing to use SteamLink, but I value the battery life the Odin provides and like the size, weight, and form factor.
I'd recommend trying out moonlight with sunlight. There are a few videos on RUclips on how to set this up and I would heavily recommend it. Moonlight is a much better local host application than steam link in my opinion. I'm able to play my games either steam or any other platform like steam, epic, gog, whatever you play. You are even able to control your pc or laptop from a phone or a handheld. Hope that is able to help you!
I pretty much always use mine connected to my Anker battery for the extra power.
I love my ROG Ally, even though I don't use it as much as I'd like to. I had a Steam Deck as well, but I literally haven't touched it since owning the Ally. The Ally is just SOOOO much bonlyr!
Been thinking of grabbing one a gaming handheld for a bit, but I'm holding out until one has really good thunderbolt support, to where it can be plugged into a dock that includes a GPU enclosure, essentially making a PC Nintendo switch.
It already exists, it's called the ROG Ally X.
@@KamrynB really? I thought I heard some info about it having USB C Gen whatever to make it similar, but I wasn’t sure if it had actual thunderbolt, that might make things more interesting!
11:16 darn thought we were getting a foot shot
Trying my hardest to not end up on Wikifeet :)
I never play at 15 watts unless i am plugged.
With Vrr and freesync.
All my heavy game is played at 12watts
Waited til they had a $100 off sale then I bought one of those open box returns they marked down even more, put the savings on a bigger SSD and other stuff. Think it helped with the buyers remorse.
have the steam deck oled and hands down amazing handheld to play games on. i only play a couple of hours a day so its perfect for me. good video too.
A Rog Ally is best looked at as a tiny gaming pc and not a handheld. The battery life doesn’t lend itself to being portable, and that’s perfectly fine. There are so many Anbernic devices and others that are fine for that.
I got the Ally X for my birthday yesterday :) loving it still setting it up haha
I got a steamdeck and it is definitely a more relaxing method to unwind as compared to PC gaming. The handheld form factor coupled with the performance to run modern games is really a blessing.
Yep these original models of the Ally has terrible microsd support. I heard the X version refines everything
Asus fixed the SD on my ROG Ally that I got used. I would buy again.
I have an issue with these huge handhelds. They are just too uncomfortable to play on. I miss the old pocket-sized handhelds. The games for those handhelds were also purposely made to accommodate smaller screens and a pick-up-and-play-for-a-few-minutes-then-put-away style of gameplay. I owned the Steam Deck, and even though Valve tried to make it as light as possible, playing on it, for example, while seated and commuting on a train, was painful after 15 minutes.
Look into the Retroid Pocket Mini!
A modded PS Vita is the one I carry every day. PSX, PSP and Vita games available, long after Sony prematurely abandoned it. Plenty of videos to show how to do it on YT.
Google Anbernic, Retroid, AYN, Miyoo
you should try sideloading android on it (preferably bliss os)
Dude. Your opening minutes described me.
My dear is wasting a few hundred dollars just to play yakuza or snowrunner sometimes and the ally ends up in the drawer like the switch and the oculus
You just saved me $400. Thank you bro
The battery life is not okay. It’s terrible especially if you want to play latest AAA games. You will basically need to keep it plugged in anytime you’re not gaming as it will always need a charge the moment you fire up a game.
Ally X enters the chat
Play the heavy games at 12watts with freesync and Vrr on
And all the old games at 10watts.
Playing at 15watts to 25 on battery won't get you past an hour
good content man keep it up ima sub
check out a ayaneo flip with keyboard and built in controller its ds style and great
Steam Deck is not limited to Steam. The same way that Windows-based devices are not limited to Xbox. You got it so wrong!
You’re absolutely right. Misspoke there or didn’t catch it in editing. You definitely can albeit with a little bit of Linux knowledge to go outside of Steam and do so. Can’t go back and edit that part but I’ll pin a comment!
@@JimmyTriesWorld I'm probably the only one who reacted to that 😅 I feel a little sorry
Deck is not limited to steam however you can only play gamepass thru streaming. Also it is difficult launching different launchers there is a lot of walkarounds than doing it on windows also it has a lot of limitations and a lot of games is not supported. Deck can dual boot to windows however it doesn't perform great booting it on windows. Ally works great on windows and bazzite because it has newer more powerful chip see deck is RDNA 2 while ally is RDNA 3. There is nothing wrong with deck being inferior to ally because ally is a newer device and has a newer processor which is understandable. Newer device is always gonna be better just like deck being better than switch.
Yeah but Linux offers more limitations and it requires deep understanding of the shell to make some games work. Also you can't play auto cheat software games.😅
He’s wrong but from a casual user point of view, the ROG Ally, MSI Claw and Legion Go are Windows handhelds while the Steam Deck runs SteamOS/Proton. It takes effort to run/install Windows on the Steam Deck, and that OS doesn’t get the best out of the Steam Deck hardware.
Does it play FIFA/EA FC? That’s all I want.
Yes! EA FC, NBA 2K, Madden, all the sports balls!
gotta be honest, I mostly abandoned my ROG Ally Z1E for my Switch Lite with a modchip, I think sometimes the game design alone for taking advantage of the hardware provided is a huge difference. I was excited about my Ally at first , then over the months, its been eating dust. Still prefer playing most PC games on my main desktop rig because of the general nature of using a mouse and keyboard.
Oh yea, and the battery drain honestly kills most of the fun, you end up just checking your battery percentage and getting random anxiety of it.
There is prob a solution to the sd card issue and it is a sd card to usb and some tape if needed
Can it play Roblox tho?
Bring this with a dock and HDMI and its great in hotels.
Should have got the x it's way better
might as well change the title to why I need money from anker
also next gen handhelds are ccoming out in 2025 like cyberpunk at medium high fps
Upton Manors
Magnus Tunnel
McLaughlin Fall
Sudo chown rogallyx
"Thanks again to Anker for sponsoring a fucking third of this video" long ass ad
Be sure to check out all Anker products in the description and click the link for a discount on your purchase
Video was meh
🙄🥱🥱😴😴😴