Asus ROG Ally

I actually reviewed Steam Deck a little over a year ago, and had almost nothing but praise for the hardware itself. That's pretty much always the case when Valve designs hardware, we get a solid execution of a number of exciting ideas. But at the same time, the review of the machine itself came along with a follow-up article, which in a slightly more lukewarm way explained the compatibility issues we had experienced during the test period.

The conclusion was quite simple; due to the Linux operating system, there are some critical limitations with Steam Deck, and it requires the consumer to be patient at times while the platform is optimised for each individual game from the consumer, and not all games offer guaranteed functionality.

It seems Asus took a close look at this critical consensus, and then set about designing their own handheld gaming PC. It has now, after a slightly confusing unveiling on the 1st of April, landed on the market - the ROG Ally, and it's a sort of answer to all the limitations of a Steam Deck.

Firstly, it's a little more bling all round. It's white, that's one thing, but there are also dual stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support, there's WI-FI 6E, Bluetooth 5.1 and support for Asus' own XG Mobile GPU platform (more on that later). There's a 1080p LCD display at 120Hz, and there's even RGB lighting around the analog sticks.

The Ally feels more luxurious than the Deck, and it doesn't feel fake, hollow, or cheap. It's deliberately designed, and while you can't exactly call it subtle in appearance, the 608-gram weight is perfectly balanced, and there's no part of this experience that feels off.

Under the hood is a special SoC, a combined chip with CPU and GPU developed in separate collaboration with AMD based on their new 4nm process, and which is part of the Zen 4 architecture. It's called "Z1" and offers six cores and 12 threads, or eight cores and 16 threads depending on which model you get. We've tested the Z1 Extreme variant, a more expensive version with eight cores, 16 threads, 12 RDNA 3 GPU cores, 24MB cache and an estimated performance of just over 8.6 teraflops, which in itself is a slightly inadequate summary of actual performance. Per AMD's own estimate, a Switch sits at 0.4 teraflops, so perhaps there's a valid comparison of what to expect, but it's all about optimisation in the end.

There seems to be a massive discrepancy between the Z1 Extreme, which we've tested, and the regular Z1 model. Asus itself says that there's a good 6.2 teraflops difference, so as a consumer you have to make a pretty decisive choice from the start. Whether this is evidence of a flawed design process, or whether it's nice that the two variants offer two seemingly very different user experiences, well, it's hard to say.

Whichever Ally you choose, it runs Windows 11. Yes, just plain old Windows 11 with no frills. This of course means that your Ally, which has a touch panel, can be used as a sort of mini tablet, and it also means that by using semi-traditional PC components and the most common OS on the planet, you won't run into any compatibility issues whatsoever. If the games are launched on Windows 11, which all of them are, then they theoretically work on Ally. Of course, it requires controller support, something I was surprised to find lacking in the likes of V Rising and Darkest Dungeon II, two obvious games to get stuck into since they're exclusive to the PC platform.

The wide compatibility is an obvious plus for the Ally, and Asus has actually also thought about it from a user perspective in the sense that there are four extra buttons on both sides of the display. Two are standard start/select in the Xbox layout, but the other two are an overlay menu that provides quick access to a number of classic Armory Crate settings such as a frame-rate cap, performance modes and similar bells and whistles. The other sends you back to the special Armory Crate SE main menu, where Ally collates your games across a number of launchers, making it easier to launch games without having to mess around too much.

It's a nice idea, and it works most of the time, but it would be naïve not to realise here that what you gain in compatibility via Windows 11 also means you lose some cohesion in the interface. It's impossible to avoid having to go back into Windows 11, or Steam via Big Picture Mode, or suddenly having to use touch to log in to the Epic Games Store. You'll find that a software keyboard won't pop up, or games won't go full-screen. I started with Vampire Survivors, Outer Wilds, and Darkest Dungeon II. The first wouldn't go full-screen, the second was waiting for a software keyboard that wouldn't pop up, and the third wouldn't launch properly at all. Windows 11 offers access to the widest range of titles, yes, but at the same time, that collection of games isn't curated, optimised or tailored to your platform. Just as PC people are generally used to, Ally requires you to be willing to tinker, to fiddle, to gradually customise your experience.

That said, the Armory Crate SE is actually a solid piece of software, and I had a good experience with the central main menu from which I launched games from Xbox, Epic Games Store, GOG, and Steam, and while I did get bounced around a bit at times through different interface paradigms, Asus has tried to make it all work together, and it works most of the time.

So, how does it feel to play? Well, quite excellent most of the time. Firstly, the display is brilliant, and simply makes Steam Deck's 800p/60Hz display look antiquated. This panel is bright, far more fluid and more colour accurate too. It's 1080p, and most of the tests we've done are at that resolution, but at the same time it also gives the user a few more options to reach a higher frame-rate. Furthermore, the shape itself is incredibly ergonomic and the weight is perfectly distributed. The buttons and analog sticks are responsive, and it's hard to find a single hardware-related error, if only in the 10 days or so I've had to test.

In Geekbench 5, among other things, I saw an OpenCL score of over 35000, however, we will update the review with real benchmarks when Ally is launched and all the right drivers are installed. What I can say is that 60fps in most games, from Cyberpunk 2077 to Death Stranding, from Outer Wilds to Darkest Dungeon II, is generally possible if you tweak the settings, and that's without adjusting the 1080p resolution. I didn't see any signs that running Windows 11 in the background had any direct negative effect on the gaming experience, although this isn't a machine that can handle 60fps on High or Ultra, or deliver visual flourishes like Ray-Tracing. But if you keep your expectations at a realistic level, this Z1 Extreme is something special, and should be about 15% better than handheld gaming PCs from the Ryzen 6800U generation, such as competitors from OnePlayerX and Ayaneo.

There is, however, in the Z1 Extreme's case, one rather central sacrifice, and that's battery life. I've had a Steam Deck since launch, and a Switch OLED for that matter, so I'm actually used to mediocre battery life, but the Ally has averaged about an hour of use under pressure, and I'm being generous with my estimates here. That brings forward some pretty severe limitations in general. It helps to set it to "Quiet", to turn off the RGB lighting around the analog sticks and possibly activate a frame-rate cap, which can easily be done via Quick Settings, but overall, battery life is Asus' weak point, no doubt about it.

But the ROG Ally is now, overall, a bit of a triumph. By combining it with an XG Mobile (which comes in a multitude of variants and at many different prices) you suddenly get the Z1 Extreme along with an RTX 3080 Ti, or a 4090 for that matter, which also allows you to connect key accessories like a controller, mouse/keyboard or a display. The Ally has a real chance to become a gaming PC for the TV, and a gaming handheld on the go, and it has the horsepower to do it too. The battery life is lacking, and that's a shame, but Asus is very close to being in first place here, no doubt about it.