I HATE being lied to… but I love the ROG Ally

[Plouffe]

Thanks to dbrand for sponsoring today’s video!

Head to http://shortlinus.com for all your ROG Ally screen protector and skin needs.

 

Asus was a bit misleading with their marketing during the preview cycle, but we've now had time to properly test the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme and it's still a very impressive handheld. We were already excited, but when they FINALLY confirmed the final price we almost couldn't believe it. Time to sell your Steam Deck? Maybe...

 

Pre-Order the ASUS ROG Ally here: https://lmg.gg/ASUSROGALLYPREORDER

Buy a Steam Deck: https://geni.us/qrCmI1y

 

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

 

 

[MultiGamerClub]

Oh boy.. I cant wait to see how taxes in norway is gonna eat this up.

[CyberneticTitan]

Unrelated to the Ally but great job guys adding those visual indicators.

[filpo]

wish he dropped it at least once 

[RednGold21]

I'm sure everyone with an Asus am5 motherboards that want to use EXPO without burning up their chips hate asus too. But ya nice handheld that will be forgotten about in a year.

[swimtome]

4 minutes ago, CyberneticTitan said:

Unrelated to the Ally but great job guys adding those visual indicators.

I appreciate them experimenting with it but didn’t like this version. Hard to spot on a phone especially the color chart ones. 
 

Would much rather what they’ve (and GN) used before - just highlight the whole area you’re talking bait with a semi-transparent box. 

[darwin006]

Buying the 64gb Steam Deck and just upgrading the SSD yourself or using a SD card is the clear winner here. The lack of repairability with the Ally, combined with Asus highly questionable product support make this decision a no brainer. The quieter operation, variable refresh rate and the ability to use an external GPU are great but not worth all the down sides.

 

And I would shocked if the 64gb Steam Deck wasn't the best selling SKU. The 64gb version seems to be the most recommend version on reviews that I have seen and I know multiple people that bought it and recommend it.

[Tankers]

It's €799-€850 in EU depending on country (atleast from what I gathered so far). And with current things ASUS is doing, ye no shot. Do not put it over 25w or it will void the warranty.

[Brando212]

Man, just for the fact that the $699 price has ended up being for the Z1 Extreme model and not the base version like most of us thought would be the case has me seriously considering picking one of these up.

 

I have a Steam Deck right now and love it but would love that extra bump in power along with the 120Hz panel. Plus I have a friend that doesn't have and can't really afford a gaming computer right now so I'd happily be able to pass off my Steam Deck to him, meaning I know it would still get good use  

[AndreiArgeanu]

No Linus. I think most people do actually buy the base model steam deck. As far as I know it's the first one that went out of stock when they put them on sale, and still is out of stock. Nevermind the fact that in the UK at least the ROG Ally costs quite literally 2 base model steam decks. And the 256gb model is still like 250£ cheaper. That's a substantial chunk of money extra to spend on the Ally.

 

I don't feel like the Ally and the Steam Deck are in the same class. I can't honeslty say that the kind of person who spent 350£ on a base model steam deck would also be willing to dish out twice that for slightly better performance and a better screen.

[HarryNyquist]

>the steam deck wins on low power, but this wins on higher power modes

 

Isn't lower power consumption kinda the entire point of a portable handheld gaming device? You want it to consume as little power as possible while still being performant enough to play.

 

Sure, this is faster on high power, but more power in means more power out. If the steam deck wins when it's using only 10 W I think that's a bigger win than the ally winning with higher power draw.

[Ralf]

Still stuck at low resolution like 720p in the review. We deserve a game changer in 2023. Elevating handheld into Full HD 1080p gaming visuals. I would like to say hello to the Rog Ally that can play AAA games in 1080p a resolution that reviews should test instead of 720p.

[darwin006]

3 hours ago, Ralf said:

Still stuck at low resolution like 720p in the review. We deserve a game changer in 2023. Elevating handheld into Full HD 1080p gaming visuals. I would like to say hello to the Rog Ally that can play AAA games in 1080p a resolution that reviews should test instead of 720p.

A higher resolution screen makes little sense. At 720p you already can't see individual pixels on these handhelds, so higher resolution only results in a slightly shaper image but mostly would result in more battery draw and requires more powerful hardware to achieve the same fps.

 

When you actually play games on the Steam Deck, you think, I wish the fan was quieter, the battery lasted longer and maybe the FPS was higher. You don't think the image needs to be sharper.

[master0fnull]

8 hours ago, Plouffe said:

Thanks to dbrand for sponsoring today’s video!

Head to http://shortlinus.com for all your ROG Ally screen protector and skin needs.

 

Asus was a bit misleading with their marketing during the preview cycle, but we've now had time to properly test the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme and it's still a very impressive handheld. We were already excited, but when they FINALLY confirmed the final price we almost couldn't believe it. Time to sell your Steam Deck? Maybe...

 

Pre-Order the ASUS ROG Ally here: https://lmg.gg/ASUSROGALLYPREORDER

Buy a Steam Deck: https://geni.us/qrCmI1y

 

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

 

 

 

Why don't y'all use histograms for your tests? You essentially use a sideways one with a low number of unevenly spaced bins. more bins and rotated would help a lot. If y'all tell me what software you use to make your plots I can show you how to turn the same data into a histogram. It really doesn't take a long and it would be easy for you to represent the distribution of the data you collect instead of the left-sided extremes. You could even highlight the 1% and 5% low if the low performance is what is noticed more.

 

I am not super aesthetically skilled, but I dummied this up in R in like 15 mins.

 

 

 

 

 

messing_around.R

[master0fnull]

7 minutes ago, master0fnull said:

 

Why don't y'all use histograms for your tests? You essentially use a sideways one with a low number of unevenly spaced bins. more bins and rotated would help a lot. If y'all tell me what software you use to make your plots I can show you how to turn the same data into a histogram. It really doesn't take a long and it would be easy for you to represent the distribution of the data you collect instead of the left-sided extremes. You could even highlight the 1% and 5% low if the low performance is what is noticed more.

 

I am not super aesthetically skilled, but I dummied this up in R in like 15 mins.

 

 

 

 

 

messing_around.R 1.12 kB · 1 download

Another option would be a percentogram which shows the spread using bins. Might be useful if representing extremes is important https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2023/04/13/the-percentogram-a-histogram-binned-by-percentages-of-the-cumulative-distribution-rather-than-using-fixed-bin-widths/

 

 

 

 

[maplepants]

6 hours ago, master0fnull said:

Why don't y'all use histograms for your tests? You essentially use a sideways one with a low number of unevenly spaced bins. more bins and rotated would help a lot

Their graph looks better and more readable on a phone than yours would. 

 

YouTube tells creators what devices people are watching on and Linus has mentioned (on the WAN Show maybe?) that close to half their viewers are on mobile.

[Kit Chan]

I'm curious about Windows 10 compatibility. The Windows 10 touch experience is decades ahead of Windows 11's.

[tkitch]

10 hours ago, master0fnull said:

 

Why don't y'all use histograms for your tests? You essentially use a sideways one with a low number of unevenly spaced bins. more bins and rotated would help a lot. If y'all tell me what software you use to make your plots I can show you how to turn the same data into a histogram. It really doesn't take a long and it would be easy for you to represent the distribution of the data you collect instead of the left-sided extremes. You could even highlight the 1% and 5% low if the low performance is what is noticed more.

 

I am not super aesthetically skilled, but I dummied this up in R in like 15 mins.

 

 

 

 

 

messing_around.R 1.12 kB · 7 downloads

honestly it's just way less concise and takes longer to process mentally.

[YamiYukiSenpai]

After all the coverage with ASUS's lack of QC and anti-consumer moves, I can't see the reason to trust them with this.

 

Maybe in s few years,  but I can't see myself owning one unless it can properly run SteamOS, or another Linux distribution made for handheld gaming.

[1D1]

1080p with 120hz it's strong sale point for Ally, 720p on 7 inches screen looks too blurry for me.

[Radium_Angel]

There is a YT channel that reviews all kinds of handheld gaming devices, with an eye towards retro gaming compatibility. ETA Prime.

He's a bit of a fanboi, so you have to read between the lines on a number of things, but he gets the main points across.

 

In any case, there appear to be a number of "Steam Deck" competitors coming out, but the challenge as I see it, is anyone can build a Steam Deck killer for 2-3x the price, the trick is building one at the same price point, and I haven't seen that yet.

[ToboRobot]

single board computer with similar specs please.

[CaptainDarkstar42]

I think it is a really cool computer, but, it looks like the software is a little half baked because you have to keep fighting Windows and ASUS' own software to use the damn device.  I would never buy it without it having a Steam Deck like sleep and auto resume function,  which is a killer feature for me.  Maybe they can add that in, whether it be just a program that you could install or by possibly installing Steam OS on the machine.  Still, I hope we get many more affordable handheld gaming PCs!

[maplepants]

48 minutes ago, CaptainDarkstar42 said:

I would never buy it without it having a Steam Deck like sleep and auto resume function,  which is a killer feature for me

Agreed 100%. These kind of devices are consoles in my mind, and that feature is just table stakes for any console I might buy. 

 

But overall, the product looks promising. I hold out hope that by the time I'm looking to upgrade my PC, I'm able to upgrade to a handheld + docking station setup.

[Brando212]

3 hours ago, YamiYukiSenpai said:

After all the coverage with ASUS's lack of QC and anti-consumer moves, I can't see the reason to trust them with this.

 

Maybe in s few years,  but I can't see myself owning one unless it can properly run SteamOS, or another Linux distribution made for handheld gaming.

I'm curious to see how Holo OS runs on the Ally as well. Would be interesting to see if that solves the 10W issues, or if it helps at least.