(upbeat music) - I really just did not see
the appeal of this thing. There's just so many Windows handhelds that are on the market right now, and all of them are
trying to go head to head with the Steam Deck, and none of them even come
close for a few reasons. One of them is the UI. It's currently impossible
to navigate Windows with a controller. For example, you can't, it just did it. It just did it. You can't sign in with a controller. Sometimes. Navigating around here, the desktop, just isn't gonna be easy, and it's not much better
with a touchscreen. And the second reason is the price. The Steam Deck is just so cheap. It's only $400. I've reviewed Windows handhelds that are upwards of almost $2,000, and in some cases, the Steam
Deck can play games better than some of those $2,000 machines. When ASUS first announced the ROG Ally with its Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor and its seven-inch full
1080p 120-hertz display, I thought for sure this
thing was gonna be expensive. It also didn't help that
they were really quiet about the price of this thing, even in all of the previews. I went to their preview event
in Brooklyn a few weeks ago, and yeah, the thing was cool, but they still didn't announce the price. You mean I spent four hours in traffic just to play Forza and drink coffee? It was really good coffee. We went right around the
block from the venue, this place called Devotion. Also, ASUS had these
really tiny lox sandwiches at the event that were really good. ASUS said that they
wouldn't have price details until the day the review
embargo gets lifted, which is usually a bad sign, because it means they don't want you to take the price into account
when you're reviewing it, which is absurd. But the price got leaked, and that was $699 for
the Z1 Extreme Edition. I didn't buy that at all. But the price has since
been confirmed by ASUS, and that's not even the base model. That's the expensive one. And if you're a console guy, that might sound a little
more on the high end, but remember, this is full-on
Windows at 120-hertz 1080p. That's pretty damn good
for that price point. And since recording that, they
announced the cheaper one, which is only $600. It might be worth it to
get those extra flops. Now, we have a serious
Steam Deck competitor from a reputable company
that makes actual computers. It's about the same size as a Steam Deck, but a little smaller in width, and sits shorter because the
grips are slightly smaller. Ergonomically, it feels pretty great. The plastic does feel a little cheap, and the buttons feel pretty bad. The A button has stuck on me a few times. The buttons are these
weird, jewel, glossy things. I don't like it. But the layout feels fine. There are only two additional
buttons on the back instead of four, like the Steam Deck. I don't mind this. I think two is more than enough. I actually don't hate the
Xbox-style disc D-pad. I prefer the Steam Deck
D-pad, but this is also fine. The screen is about the
same size as the Steam Deck, but the Steam Deck's screen
is only 800p 60-hertz, whereas the ROG Ally is 1080p 120-hertz. And it's a beautiful screen. It's really the star of the show. So yeah, that's what I'm saying. The amount of tech that's in this thing is a little bit insane
for the price point. Keep in mind, though, that
this is still a handheld. You're really not gonna
be getting 120-hertz out of most of the games that you're gonna be playing
on here, especially at 1080p. But you always have the
option to lower the resolution in favor of the frame rate. So at least that option's there. Some of you might already
be saying to yourself, this thing is $300 more than a Steam Deck, so why the hell would I
get this over a Steam Deck? Well, first of all, this has 512 gigabytes of internal storage,
making it more comparable to the $650 Steam Deck. That makes this only $50 more than the comparable Steam Deck. Also, let's not forget,
this is full-blown Windows. So this is capable of playing more games than what the Steam Deck is capable of, because you also get the
whole Steam library, too. But it's a little bit
of a double-edged sword, because some games are
a little more optimized for the Steam Deck than they would be on a lower-end Windows machine
like a handheld would be, but only slightly more
optimized in some cases. The Steam Deck has its own ecosystem. It also has a great UI
that's easy to navigate with the built-in controller. This makes it more of a game
console than a handheld PC, and it's better off for it. But ASUS really tried here to give you that console experience, too. I said they tried. When I first went to
take mine out of the box, I noticed that it was already open. Weird. When I booted it up for the first time, it opened up to the Windows 11 desktop for a split second, then went right to the
ASUS Armoury Crate UI. This blew me away. Every other Windows handheld
that I've ever tried had this long Windows setup that's really annoying to
do with just a touchscreen. But this just booted right
up, and I was ready to go. That was awesome. Then I realized the box was already open. Wasn't that weird? Yeah, it's because they
set it up for me already. You're not gonna have that experience if you go out and buy this. And that was confirmed by ASUS via email. They did set this up for reviewers. That's a little weird. It also came with moving out. Yours will come with a demo of that. Armoury Crate will most likely
be pre-installed, though, so after that initial setup, your ASUS ROG Ally will look like this. And it boots pretty quickly into that UI, which feels pretty console-like. It's a lot more responsive now than it was during the preview event. I broke the UI quite a few
times at that preview event. It also helps that Steam
loads in big picture mode, and that feels identical
to the Steam Deck, making this basically a Windows Steam Deck that can also play Fortnite, Call of Duty, Destiny, and other games
that the Steam Deck can't. Don't make me play
Fortnite for the B-roll. I'm not doing it. But in order to do that, you're gonna need to
navigate the Windows desktop. In fact, doing something as
simple as just connecting to Wi-Fi is gonna require
you to leave the beautiful, easy-to-use Armoury Crate app and open up disgusting old Windows 11, which you can navigate
with the thumbstick, which is kinda nice to be able to do, to click the mouse around and
stuff, but it's still janky. It would be helpful if
one of these buttons acted as a multitasking button, so I set one of the back
buttons to the Windows key and the other to Tab. So if I wanna multitask, I can just do that and
click the app I want. You can set the back buttons
using the Armoury Crate app. However, you cannot use the back buttons in the Armoury Crate app. So it took me a while to
realize my idea even worked, and that also means you can't multitask out of the Armoury Crate app. Again, just another example of the jankiness of a Windows handle. I had some issues logging
into Steam on here, and I didn't really think much of it until I witnessed Wood having
the exact same problems. It could be verification
issues on the Ally itself. - I know my password, and it
was sending a code to my email, and every time I tried putting it in, it was like, that's not the right code.
- Wait, no, that did happen to me. - Does that code just not work on this thing for some reason? - [Bob] That's a possibility. - Where do you find the, I'm here, where do you find the QR?
- It's so annoying. It is very annoying. Hold on, let me find it on my Steam app. I also had Steam once just
stop recognizing my controller as an input device, so I had
to close it and reopen it, which is a small problem, but just another example of the jankiness of a Windows handle. But I wanna give credit
where credit is due. This thing is way easier to navigate and way less janky than
every other Windows handheld that I've ever had the
pleasure of playing with. ASUS really tried to make this thing as easy to navigate as possible, and I think they did
a pretty damn good job given what they had here. They made the day-to-day use of this thing feel a little bit console-like, but that initial setup is gonna require some Windows 11 jankiness. It does have USB-C, so when I
was setting up all my games, I plugged it into my Thunderbolt dock, which gave me mouse, keyboard, monitor, and ethernet support. This made setup a breeze
because I had input devices. I recommend getting a USB-C
to USB-A hub or something, just so you can plug
in a mouse and keyboard for the setup at least because it's not gonna be fun otherwise. You might notice at the top
this big black slit up here that encompasses the USB-C connection. Right next to it, there's
another weird connection. All of it, including the USB-C, is part of this weird
proprietary ASUS connector. It allows you to hook this thing up to a proprietary ASUS external GPU. I got to play around with
that at the preview event, and yeah, it feels like I'm
using a desktop computer because I am using a desktop computer. This is pretty cool, but I'm not sure how practical it is. This external GPU with
a 3080 in it is $1,500. I would never advise anybody
to get this thing for $700 and then get that thing for $1,500 just to play it at your desk. For that much, just
get another desktop PC. Anyway, at that event, I tried Forza for a brief little bit. That ran at around 80
frames per second and 1080p, which is a lot for a handheld. And this game is on Game Pass. You can't locally install
games from Game Pass on a Steam Deck, so being able to use your
Game Pass library on here is a huge plus. At home, the first game that I played was Resident Evil 4 Remake. This runs at around 60 frames
per second on Steam Deck, but the Steam Deck struggles a little bit and it gets super loud. So I actually run this game at 30 frames per second on the Steam Deck. On the ROG Ally, it
honestly ran like at 1080p. I dropped it to 720p, which gave me frame rates just
under 60 frames per second. It still stutters when transitioning between different areas of the village, but I'd say it performs very well, slightly better than the Steam Deck, but what's more impressive is it's quiet. It doesn't feel like it's gonna explode at 60 frames per second
like the Steam Deck does. It does blow a lot of hot air
out of that fan vent though. It also has horrible battery life. I got just under an hour
of Resident Evil 4 gameplay on this thing, which isn't much better
on the Steam Deck either. I mean, right now though, I've just been tooling
around with this thing in different games and stuff, and it's at 17%. That's not looking too good. There is an Armoury Crate overlay that you can access by
pressing this button, but it doesn't show battery usage. So there's no way to see
how much battery is left while in a game. I had to multitask out of Resident Evil 4 in order to see that I
only had 9% battery left. The unit didn't give me
a warning or anything. That's something that I hope
they can fix in an update. On the Switch, for example, you could just hold the home button and a little thing will slide out and show you all of the
information like the battery usage. And on the Steam Deck, you just press the three
dots button on the right side and the same thing kind of happens. I think the AYANEO even
had this figured out with their software. So if they can do it, certainly ASUS can release an update so that theirs can do it. I've played Jedi Fallen Order
on the Steam Deck before and it runs great on there. The stupid EA launcher just
ruins everything though. In fact, it won't even
load on my Steam Deck now. The same thing is true for the ROG Ally. It just won't load from
Steam Big Picture Mode because of that launcher. And it won't even let me
log in with my password that I know is correct. So, we're not playing it. We're gonna play something else. Destiny also requires
some Windows nonsense, but really it wasn't that bad at all. This ran very smoothly, getting around 60 frames
per second at 1080p right out of the gate. Bumping the resolution down to 720p only gave me about 10 extra frames though. So you're probably best
off leaving this at 1080p, which does look and feel really nice. I was a bit surprised by Call of Duty. Even just navigating around the menu felt better than it does on my actual PC. It loaded super fast. It did look pretty abysmal until I purposely lowered the brightness like way more than it
said to in the settings. But it ran great at 1080p, hitting right around a
steady 60 frames per second with no signs of slowdown at all. This is another game
that cannot currently run on Steam Deck. Of course, we gotta test out
emulation on this thing, right? It is a Windows handheld, so it's just a Windows computer. Pretty much everything's
gonna run great on here. Because of that, I just
went straight to Dolphin because I wanted to put this
thing to the maximum test. And Dolphin cannot be added
to the Armoury Crate app. So if you wanted like a nice, neat UI, you might wanna get something
like Emulation Station DE. That'll put all of your
emulators in one UI, and that will probably be able to launch from the Armoury Crate app. You're gonna want some sort
of emulation front end. But I just went straight to Dolphin, and that ran, of course, fantastic. I'm not sure why Dolphin
always needs the controller to be configured, even
if this one does show up as an Xbox 360 controller. It also has analog L2 and R2
triggers, which is very nice. And GameCube ran great. First game I tried was Melee, which ran as good as I've ever seen. Better than even on my Steam Deck, although it runs pretty
damn good there too. Still not good enough to
run Rogue Leader though, which is a shame. You can never get that
game to emulate right for some reason. I did mess around with
Ryujinx a little bit on the ROG Ally. I decided to go with Ryujinx over yuzu because Ryujinx is just a
little easier to set up, and I've used it before. I don't love talking
about Switch emulation for a lot of reasons, but we gotta put the
Ally through its paces. We gotta put it through the ultimate test, the most powerful stuff we can. Smash Brothers Ultimate ran just fine. Some slowdown, but it settled into itself after a little bit of playing. I'm sure it could also be better optimized if I tweaked some settings. I'm playing this in docked
mode, which is 1080p. I switched it over to handheld mode and the stuttering was improved. I still wouldn't wanna play
like this competitively or anything. Mario Odyssey ran about the same, knocking it down to portable mode made it run a lot better,
less random stuttering. Still a bit of stuttering though. I'd say this is more than playable though. I don't think there's any
beating the ease of use and the console-like
experience of the Switch. You thought I was gonna say
the Steam Deck, didn't you? Yeah, the Steam Deck does have
a console-like experience. It's still a little more jank than something like a
Nintendo Switch though. And a Windows handheld is
gonna have the most jank out of all of them. The Steam Deck has significantly less jank than any Windows handheld I've ever tried, including this one. However, the ASUS ROG Ally
proves that there is room for a console-like experience on Windows. It's all in the UI. There are a lot of rough edges in this console-like
experience, but to be fair, there were a lot of rough
edges on the Steam Deck when that thing first launched. Do you remember my first
video on that thing? So much has changed since then and ASUS could just do the
same thing with updates. I have a lot of faith in even Microsoft. They seem to be working on
some sort of handheld UI for Windows. Microsoft had an internal pitch about it. It would greatly help
Xbox and even Game Pass. So I have a lot of faith
that it's in the pipeline for Microsoft at least. The ROG Ally is awesome for what it is. It's a solid price for a powerful beast that maybe doesn't need 120 Hertz display, but it's cool that it's there. I still think that there's
merit to the Steam Deck if you want something
cheaper that just works, but there are a lot of games that don't just work on the Steam Deck. If you have anything that's
not Steam Deck compatible in your current gameplay rotation, seriously consider the Ally. The Steam Deck opened me up
to a whole bunch of games I wouldn't have played otherwise, and the Ally opened me up to even more. I'm excited to see where
this handheld industry goes in the near future. I love that big players
are getting involved. It can only get better from here. So what do you guys think
about this guy, the ROG Ally? What would you use it for? What need does this fill for you that some other consoles don't? Or why would you stick
to one of the other guys instead of this? Leave it in the comments
below, at me on Twitter, any and all of this other
social media garbage. I shouldn't have to say this, but ASUS provided this to me, obviously. I did say it before, but it's
not sponsored or anything. And you can tell, because
I played emulators on it. Hey, we got Twitch streams
over on twitch.tv/Wulffden, usually at night. I'm gonna be playing
the new Zelda, I think, for quite a while, I'd imagine. I also do stuff for videos
while I'm over there. So you could come over there, hang out, talk to me in chat if you
wanna ask any questions or if you wanna participate
in any of these videos. I like to use Twitch footage
in videos all the time. The most important thing
that you can do right here is just subscribe. That'd be nice if I
could get to a million. You know, this is the 10 year anniversary of the channel this
year, did you know that? Turn on notifications so that you know when every single video
goes live if you want to. And of course, share
this video with a friend. A friend who maybe didn't get a Steam Deck but is thinking about getting one. Maybe they'd like something like this. Thank you guys very much. Have yourself a very good week.
