ASUS ROG Ally: 6 Month Long-Term Review - Is It Still The Best?

hey everyone I swear I'm not making this video to jump on the whole six-month review bandwagon I've never really given an official review for the RG Ally and it always intended on getting around to one now I had missed the 3-month mark and a plan to do a six-month review and as such with that amount of time having passed I feel there has been a lot of worthwhile changes since launch and some issues that are still persistent now in this video I'm going to break it down into sections based on key areas and I'll speak on how things have either gotten better or gotten worse over time then I'll wrap up the video with a conclusion and a wish list for future potential devices I think one area that people were quite unsure of going into the rogg Ally was accessories by the time the r Ally had been announced there were already so many products you could buy for the steam deck whether it be cases skins back plates or shell swaps companies like J Sox extreme rate and dbrand really excelled in this space at launch there were not many options uh as it did seem like the bigger players in the space were taking a wait and C approach to the success or failure of the Ally it was about a month after launch that some options were available on places like AliExpress however there was still nothing from Mainline manufacturers a lot of companies were trying to sell their steam deck accessories as Rog Ally accessories uh such as oversized cases and uh docks and things like that 6 months later and we have some very professional options now I haven't personally bought a case since the first couple that I bought off of AliExpress um but J Sox has supplied me with a few of their latest Ally specific accessories with that being the silicone grip set which includes separate grips uh for the left and right side of the device as well as XD mobile Port covers uh thumb stick grips and back button sticky grips are included as well the silicone handle kit grows extremely well with either a custom skin on your ally or the next JX product I have which is the RGB transparent back plate unlike the steam deck back plate this one does not have or claim any thermal benefits uh it's just a clear piece of plastic uh kind of hazed or smoked out with an additional optional uh RGB module insert this RGB insert can be customized with included options or you can create your own design um and there is another option available from a website called handheld DIY they have a back plate on Indiegogo with different colors and thermal Improvement claims but for JX finally I have the mod case which is very similar to steam deck kill switch case however the mod case is much cheaper and includes a kickstand uh cover and backstraps dbrand is currently working on a kill switch case for the Ally which should be out at the end of the year um the nice thing about this case though is it's the first case I've had that I haven't had to cut out an extra space to get the XG mobile port to fit uh also they gave me these matte screen protectors while I do have a regular screen protector on my R Ally currently I decided to scratch it up just for fun and then replace it with these matte ones the matte ones are better for filming I find but uh you know it does look a little bit kind of more uh hazy at times uh but it will hide fingerprints a lot easier as well so pick your poison while there are plenty of uh other suppliers for just about every accessory now that you could want for the RG Ally I would always try to stay with companies that have been in the game for a while and as the time has passed allowed them to create some highquality accessories now so if you've also been wondering about the uh cable that I have plugged into the Ally here with the water D out that's from a company called cable Creations this Cable's rated up to1 watts and is perfect for handhelds in my opinion I think it's safe to say that there are plethora of options now 6 months later links to the product shown here will be provided in the description below right from the start Armory crate SE was criticized for a lot of things some were valid some not so much in my first overview video of the Ally I was able to show off some of the bugs happening at that time mainly that Armory crate would just become completely unresponsive only fixed with a system reboot flash forward to the present day and I can't really remember the last time I've had to do that overall Armory crate SE started out a little rough in some areas and then completely lacked features that should have been there from the start it was widely reported that people were suffering from dead zone issues and there was no proper way to calibrate your controller within the armor crate software another missing feature of was gyro although the Alli has the sensors and had the updates of the time uh it just was not natively accessible third party Applications had to be used uh for users that wanted to do things like enabling gyro or turning CPU boost on and off with the most recent update though to Armory crate and the BIOS updates you can now do all these things and more within Armory crate SE more and more things are being added or tweaked to promote users to stay within the asus's provided launcher as opposed to using something like play night or Steam Big Picture Mode even going as far to adding the AMD driver functions directly into Armory crate that way you don't need to go into the desktop to adjust things like rsr or hyper RX Asus does seem to be getting their act together when it comes to updating their software because Microsoft has no official way or build of a handheld mode Asus and other manufacturers are left to their own devices sometimes For Better or For Worse there are plenty of options out there for frontends but I can confidently say now I have no desire to ever download a third party launcher front end system or System Controller again on the r Ally I do personally feel as though for General users and even hardcore users Armory create SE is the best option to sound like a bit of a broken record right from the very start even just before release there was controversy with the RG allies performance it was reported by The Verge and other media Outlets that updating from bios 317 to 319 which was essentially the launch bios would give a performance drop in their examples they gave cyberpunk performing at 35 FPS on average compared to a running at 48 on bios 317 these tests were perform at 720p low and presume presumably during turbo mode but they didn't say thus the BIOS Wars began people were downgrading to earlier release drivers as admittedly it was quite a big performance difference even when debloating the system running the system completely clean it still would not get near the performance as bios 317 performance would continue to fluctuate up and down with people absolutely refusing to update past bios 317 I'm sure there's probably still some out there that are on it when bios 322 came out that is when performance was level two or better than the previous bios updates in my opinion and it was around that time I generally kind of stopped caring about the difference in performance between the BIOS updates unless there just was an egregious difference in the runup to Major game releases new GPU drivers would typically be released these drivers were and have been supplied by Asus unfortunately as you cannot grab a Z1 extreme driver from amd's website however you can take the 78 40u drivers because they share the same 780m driver GPU driver uh I have videos on how to do this as well as other content creators but for the most part I would recommend that you stay on the stock Asus drivers except around September there was an issue that was remedied by installing the 78m drivers and this issue was for games not launching such as Resident Evil Village and EA FC their soccer game again this affected a lot of people so what led to a lot of people using the 784 U drivers it was eventually updated by Asus but it took longer then in the present day I would say the performance on the RG Al is good um if it's been as good as it's ever been or whatever I don't know but I would say for the most part it's pretty solid there have been some hiccups along the way but generally it's in a very usable State without a lot of performance bugs in my experience I'm sure there will always be that edge case of certain games performing Better or Worse between updates I just hope issues that games not launching do not become common place having said that as I was filming some of this footage I was trying trying to launch Doom Eternal and I keep getting a blue screen error because the GPU driver is out of date or something that's the error that I'm getting essentially and I can't play Doom Eternal now on the RG Ally so take that for what you will with the whole Asus driver updates from an absolute subjective point of view only considering the types of materials used feel of the device and general ergonomics I would have to say that the Asus R Ally is really well built compared to the steam deck the quality is of a similar level and with the Lenovo Legion go feeling slightly more Premium versus those two I do personally enjoy the white color of the device although I would not turn my nose up at more options when holding the device it is quite comfortable with only exception being the handles of the controller and how they could potentially push into your palms causing pressure points this is usually alleviated though by moving positions or just stretching out your hands every so often my experience the buttons are very similar to the series control controllers but the sticks do feel a lot looser than the traditional Xbox controller this was something noticed right from the start and it's only gotten worse over time people have modded it to try and tighten them up but it's a difficult mod from what I've heard overall the device has held up quite nicely over the past 6 months with the exception being that the white shell picks up dirt and grime even if you are Adrien monk himself now from a more objective point of view of the actual build quality of device the RG Ali released on June the 13th uh in the RG Alli Discord the Ping about the SD card failures was sent out on June the 22nd thank you Raptors from uh Rog Ali Discord it was presumed that about a week before that failures started happening in the form of SD cards and or the actual SD card slot in the Ally failing there was a lot of confusion and victim blaming going on here surprisingly however there hadn't been a word from Asus during the launch window my SD card reader had failed I had a 256 GB high endurance SD card from Team group and I have my TDP set to manual 30 watt mode my fans were always maxed out above 70° when it failed I was installing Diablo 4D to my SD card for testing as well I was installing various games through Steam on the SS when I came back to check on the status of them my device seemed broken and was operating at a complete snails pace even after restarting the device multiple times it wasn't until I removed the s d card while in Windows that it fixed everything as soon as I ejected it Windows sprung back to life as if nothing happened there were other product defects users had reported over the time such as cases melting or becoming deformed but nothing was widely reported and easily repeatable as the SD card failure moving forward to recent months it does seem that the RMA process has finally solved the issues as users have reported that the reader after RMA had been going strong for about 2 to three 3 months now although I haven't personally sent mine in yet I will do so before the end of the warranty period Speaking more specifically to the display on the RG Ally I would say it's still one of the best screens to play games on on a handheld device even though the Lenova Legion ghost screen is winning me over for its size and Clarity there's just something special about having vrr and low frame rate compensation especially when playing games in the 40 to 60 FPS range you can set your settings a little more Loosely as opposed to having to tighten them up to get a locked FPS with that being said the steam deck OLED was released not too long ago and is quickly winning people over for its battery life and obviously screen as it is an HDR 1000 nit Peak brightness capable display so vrr is not everything when it comes to these handhelds but for certain things it it can uh overall even including the SD card failures I would say that over the 6 months the build quality has been acceptable in my experience while I would have very much liked for my SD card reader to not have failed at least it is backed by some sort of warranty that's easily accessible in the regions of sale unlike if a part failed on a GPD device you would have to pay to ship it there and back and often times devices would get lost or return still non-functional admitting that that bar to beat wasn't very high versus other windows handhelds in terms of reliability the RG Ally cleared it quite easily in my opinion but basically setting up any other major manufacturer for an easy win touching more specifically onto the state of Armory crate SE and keeping with the mindset that bios 319 is the launch bios we have seen updates bringing us up to the current 334 some iterations had fixes While others not so much namely bios 322 brought in new minimum fan speeds to combat the SD card issue although never officially stated in the change log proper 30 watt modes were fixed when connecting to third party docks and bios 3 23 August 8th we saw more V Ram options added to Armory crate SE uh meanwhile bios 330 brought in the much love Dead Zone fix tool as well as the joystick and Trigger calibrators there was mention of the XG mobile getting some love finally um but you know it's kind of the right-headed stepchild of the uh Rog family it seems like controversy struck again though with the release of BIOS 330 as it was reported users were experiencing noises from their fan or device I never noticed anything but users kind of reported it sound like a buzzing sound at times uh this was apparently corrected in BIOS 333 a popular user mod was 900p uh using that as a resolution that was brought in officially in BIOS 331 more recently in the latest round of Asus Armory crate uh and biess updates the device received CPU boost control more stats monitoring panels and Gyro control all these updates were great in their own way and a little less so in others however none of these these updates were ever really given out ahead of time or shared via like a development road map the odd random Asus employee would say something in some random Discord once in a blue moon on the Friday the 13th other than that it was an utter ghost town of course we would get the change logs when the patches drop but mostly we were left in the dark as when we were expecting any sort of fixes or features being added this in my opinion is a very poor practice and I understand not wanting to say anything binding but even a simple bug tracker or something like that show commonly reported issues and commonly uh requested features and then if Asus could just give like a status on it like yes we're aware we're working on it whatever doesn't even have to give a timeline comparing this practice to Lenovo who just recently launched the go their communication has been nothing short of fantastic they have been giving weekly Friday update posts letting the community know which bugs and features are being worked on as well as providing estimates for features even going so far as to moving up the timeline of certain popular requests although Asus Armory crate launched in a much better State than Legion space they simply can't even begin to hold a candle to Lenovo for communication although the XG mobile egpus are not an included accessory they are an optional one a very very expensive optional one pricing for both the 6850 and 380 models have dropped in the recent months however their availability is scarce at best the 490 model which is the worst buy of 2023 is likewise never typically available but it has not seen the benefit of price reductions performance of the XG Mobiles on the Ally have honestly always been Rocky at best right from the start issues were arising mainly with the 6850 model uh but also with the 380 and 490 just to a lesser extent I got the 6850 around July and I had a poor time with the whole setup it would frequently disconnect reboot not work or perform poorly I made a whole video about it there was bugs Galore and the lack of updates meant poor performance in games that should be performing better or certain games giving warnings before starting I have done various comparisons with the 6850 and 380 with the 380 always coming out on top in terms of usability and performance however I could never suggest a price increase over the 6850 moving September and Beyond though the 6850 had been mostly stable with my setup and worked even better than before the only lingering bug was the 100 watt bug that I was limited to on the 6850 from achieving its full 165 TVP or tgp limit uh overall with the XG mobile I would say they are in a much better space since launch however I still cannot wholeheartedly ever recommend one to anyone when speaking to the value of the RG Ali versus other options you do need to determine what you look for most or want most in a handheld I would say for a mass majority the steam deck is likely the better buy due to the lower price point and more mature software it is likely the more user accessible device out of them all and with steam deck OLED it is made an even better buy now however if you are the tweaker Tinker or just generally prefer and are more comfortable with a Windows environment the RG Ali is the way to go not only has the software gotten to a very mature stable State the device can now often be found for as cheap or cheaper than a steam deck whether you buy one used on Marketplace or open box or Best Buy you will be hard pressed to find a better Windows handheld currently available the Lenova Legion go is its obvious competition however the software just doesn't compare to the Ally yet you can have some very different build styles of the devices running uh 7840 U chips as well as an OLED option from iono each with their own pros and cons but in terms of General Mass PE I guess I would go go for the r Ally I always suggest to people if you have a gaming PC already go for the steam deck you'll likely be happy with what it provides and any game you can't run natively on it you can just run on your gaming PC and stream it to the deck if you like you will also appreciate the assumed savings cost versus other options which is always nice when you can have spend a little bit more money on some steam sales uh if you do not have a main rig or if you own a lot of games across multiple different game launchers a Windows handheld may be the smarter buy yes can run third party launchers on the steam deck however it's not always guaranteed and it just isn't as easy it is safe to say though no matter the option you choose now is a great time to get into PC gaming handhelds in conclusion while the Rog Ally started up rough and fumbled its Community response especially when considering the SD card reader failures I would say that as it stands today they have positioned them themselves and the Ally in a very good spot they have been slowly working away at user requests and even adding fan favorites like 900p or CPU boost although they have not been as communitive it as I would have liked I am sure there's some hesitation drawn from the x3d motherboard Fiasco but still it seemed like we were getting completely Stonewall for a while and that sentiment still holds mostly true at least for me especially after seeing how Lenovo came right out of the gate to show them all how it's done with respect to commun the engagement performance had been all over the place near the beginning partly due to the infrequent bios updates and GPU updates for the zed1 extreme Apu however as time crawled on updates were eventually released to fix most of the commonly reported issues with recent updates to the RMA process have apparently fixed the SD card reader issues 6 months in the RG Ally is in a much better place than it was at launch as many predicted bugs and performance tweaks would be made over time bringing it into the state that it's in now as for the future I do hope and suspect that the RG Ally has done well for Asus as such I would hope that they aren't sleeping at the the opportunity to continue innovation in the space or at least making meaningful updates to the console I would very much like to see an Rog strict version of the Ally the obvious inclusions for this would be hall effect triggers and joysticks a bigger screen with the small potential of it being an OLED but definitely smaller bezels as well the addition of 32 GB of RAM and likely bump from Storage uh to 1 tby or 2 terb I could see this version coming out in a two-tone design like the deck OLED limited edition potentially with a base of black with of Rog red at any rate I would say the Ally is an overall success for the company false and all looking back on the past six month of device what have been some of your favorite moments with it have you kept it since launch or have you sold it to move on to another I know a lot of people were waiting for the legion go and they were going to give their Ally to a loved one once they pick that up let me know in the comments what you've been doing as always thanks to my channel members Roy Wayne Darkstar Ric 1217 R access and PC3 mkr I appreciate you guys and can never thank you enough thanks again to everyone for sharing liking disliking and doing what it is you do with the video I hope you all have a great [Music] day

Channel: WinDeck Tech

Views: 13,796

Keywords: asus rog ally, steam deck, steam deck oled, lenovo legion go, review, 6 months, six months, long term, longterm, overview, comparison, new update, bios, performance, quality, problems, issues, bugs, xg mobile, better, worse, SD card, fix, update

Id: EXWDlDFSRiw

Length: 21min 19sec (1279 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 05 2023