Pre-ordered the Z1 Extreme ROG ALLY. Being a busy father and husband, blasting through a campaign or playing some 2K etc in quick bursts of around an hour at a time is my gaming life nowadays. Console time commitment isn't like it was when I was a kid where I could sit there for 4hrs at a clip. This device is exactly what I'm looking for
@Bionic Beaver yea agreed I will miss that but StramOS had issues when it came out si we will see what happens a year from now. If I lose that to me I'm OK if I can play all my games on one device
Couldn’t agree more. As a parent an hour is more than enough and as a result this works well for me. Steam had issues on launch and I preordered prior to its launch, it’s keyboard didn’t work for sh*t and software was buggy as hell. Don’t understand why some are comparing the rog to present steam capabilities. With access to more platforms and improved visuals, I’ll work through the buggy start :)
Yeah what the fuck is Matt talking about? I've played all the fallout games including 76 they play great even though Steam says it won't. I've completely replayed Cyberpunk twice and it plays great and that's before it became a verified deck game. Gotham Knights plays fine Hogwarts Legacy all fine. I feel like he turned the Deck on once went "nope" and then moved on.
Yeah same actually, can even play in desktop mode at 900p with FSR 2 on my 2k monitor. Def drops sometimes but never for very long. Get a relatively consistent 35-40fps most the time.
@@dontaviousnegasi1648I didn’t know it got verified lol. I got my steam deck real early in the release and never had an issue with it on the deck. I’ve even played with some mods like the stock market. A lot of mods don’t work just got to play around and try them out.
We already have a switch competitor and that's the steam deck. Let the ROG ally be a pc alternative/replacement, It's not going to be a better console than the steam deck, but it'll be a better pc than a steam deck and that's it's own value v.v
People keep comparing it with the $650 model of the steam deck with all models have the same specs except for memory. You could just buy the $399 model and replace the ssd or buy an sd card. And honestly you are probably gonna need an sd card anyway. So it's not a $50 dollar difference but more like a $300 dollar difference
The 512gb is more for people who want to support valve or get the special carrying case and screen. Otherwise there's no reason to buy the 64 or 256gb. and just buy sd cards for extra storage. The difference in speed is almost non-existent and you are saving yourself almost half the price.
3:32 If you don't want to fiddle with settings this devices aren't for you. Literally if you play everything at 20w or more then you only have 1 hour or less of gameplay. You need to cap fps, lower the best tdp for each game, lower video settings and resolution. At least Steam deck saves those settings per game. The Ally needs those updates.
Cyberpunk even has a specific Steam Deck setting in the game? Tons of people play it on the deck completely fine. Please look things up before making a video saying it straight up doesn't work on the deck. It's even verified now.
This was almost the perfect Pros vs Cons video. I wish you guys had more of a check list to discuses all the topics, like how long the Steam Deck lasts playing at 8-10 Watts with low to medium settings. I played dirt 4 and other AAA titles and it lasted longer than a 5 hour flight. The Steam Deck was designed to last. As Linus Tech Tips mentioned in that 10 Watts the Steam has higher fps for games by a large amount being the "Secret Sauce" of Valve and AMD custome chip. And, Just like was mentioned being the main idea for a portable, is that it lasts longer than 1-2 hours. Ill list some more Pros of the Steam Deck in another post. Another note slightly mentioned in this video but left out of all the reviews is the for those on a budget or who dont come from wealth who can not afford a $700 mobile device, at $399 (cheaper when on sale) Is not the Steam Deck a great choice and competitor being that the hardware is the same and all you need to do is purchase a $20 or-$40 SD card to have more storage. Its such an easy system to use and allows people to experience Linux and explore all the optomized apps ....etc. Just to note Windows will probably kill the ROG Ally simply because....Its Windows! with all the legal malware, telemetry collecting data collectors running in the back ground garbage. Are we not trying to get away from windows and welcome a new competitor? The question is not when Windows will update a mobile version for mobile devices, but rather, When will Valve release Steam OS as a competitor to Windows becasue it is a more optomized no nonsence OS for the mainstream. Think of the days when Intel controlled the market by pushing out AMD while releasing super expensive chips and adding a (+) at the end even though it wasnt really that much better than the last? until AMD came back swinging while the giant was sleeping. Valve has a chance to make a nice dent in the PC industry with Steam OS.
I think you'll read this and maybe saying that's right but I don't know what you will say : it's clear that R O G Ally is faster and the screen is bigger and better, that's because the steam deck is about a year older, I'm so tired of hearing your fuss about a device that can run cyberpunk, my steam deck does at this time of writing when there are any specifications it is always easier to make a new device better and it is the same between Samsung and Apple it is one device is always better than the other won you are a friend turn it and the same is this the case with handheld gaming machines, one is better than the other, that's how it is now and that's how it will always be, it's nothing new under the sun because that's how it's always been and that's how it will always continue to be so I don't understand why in the house so I say hello I'm so up it's really nothing to be so excited about so in a year there will be a device that is better than R O G Ally or in two years it might be the second generation of steam deck then we have the talk again about one device being better than the other it's a long screw with no end And it will go on forever but will you please write back to me under my name : because I am curious to hear your opinion I have written a comment it is the same one that is written here under your answer and your name is waiting for your opinion on this and if you think almost the same as I do I look forward to finding out of you must have a really good day/evening I look forward to hearing from you
This ROG Ally is not the final product you need to wait for the final product before judging it also updates can fix all windows handheld problems specially that windows handhelds is booming now not being able to play anything you want is a deal breaker. Your buying a game to play all your PC games and not limiting you. All steam games is 100% windows and probably 70% Linux at the same time you can play other platform games as well because it is windows. If all your games work on Steam Deck then good for you but others don't. ROG Ally is not only more powerful and can play all games in PC it is also has 1080p 120hz can set it for older games or not that graphical games. And yes because all my device is 1080p TV, Laptop, Smartphone I can see the difference between 1080p and 720p.
2:29 wtf are you talking about I literally played through the CP2077 campaign on my Deck it was literally a smoother experience than my first playthrough on my PC back during patch 1.1
@@DaleonM4 I'm willing to believe that, I only got my Deck 5 months ago but even that's before it was "Verified" and it was already running pretty great. It definitely has gotten better since.
Here in Germany the cheapest SD (420€) is almost half the price of the Ally (800€). And it already comes with a carrying case. I'll probably buy one if they drop the price under 400 during the summer sale. The ally is nice, but on 10-15W performance is really similar and I won't use it docked. The 1080p and 120hz won't really be used a lot on the go.
Honestly as someone who owns a Deck already…. The hardware on the Ally of course is great. You would hope that a system that came out 1-2 years after the Deck is more powerful and it is. That being said, I don’t think it’s enough of a jump to justify running out and buying one of these if you already have a deck. Yeah it’s a boost in performance but it’s not an enormous generational jump. The deck still plays the majority of games you would want to play on these devices just fine. If you need AC on deck that badly you can always dual boot, it might not be glamorous but it does work. My personal plan is to wait for the next generation of the deck. I think the real great value will be picking up cheap steam decks off of eBay that people are dumping to get this thing. Imagine picking up a steam deck for like $200 slightly used. That’s where the value is gonna be.
I partially agree with you. I own also the SD and it is fabulous. But for some games especially AAA I really would need a bit more power to get at least 40fps - for me the sweet spot - to have a more smooth gaming experience. Let's see after some driver updates if the Ally will improve gaming experience. But in Germany you will not find any used Steam deck under 400€. Most of them will be sold around 500€ so really price stable 👍 let's see the upcoming days if the SD will get an equal opponent 😊
@@rogert250 I think when (or if) we get some windows updates to work better on these types of systems and after the OEM programs like Armory Crate work out all the kinks then these devices will be pretty appealing. By then, we might be looking at another HW revision. As for AAA, I don’t really ever use my deck for that. It’s more for budget/indie games or emulators honestly, although if you play AAA on it, more power to ya. Different strokes for different folks.
Same! Was planning on picking up Asus attempt but I've been convinced to pickup the Steamdeck. I got more power machines for demanding games and the community around the deck is what convinced me.
@@BushTurkeyProduction I’ll be choosing closer to the holidays. I’m still in a high limbo. It should give them both more time to improve. The deck would be a much easier decision. But I wouldn’t know what’s really better for me. I hate being patient!
I agree with Matt on this one. We live in a world where conveniency is king and with all the little things a lot of people will not want it. I’ve lived this and that’s why I love my steam deck cause it’s easy to use and at work on breaks I can play for a bit but if I have to spend half my break fiddling I’m not gonna use it.
I completely agree with Matt, the hardware looks great, the problem with it is Windows. I have my doubts that any amount of tweaking will solve the Windows problem. It needs a new version of Windows specifically designed from the ground up and optimized for handheld. Without that, the ROG Ally is just wasted potential.
Haha I doubt that Microsoft would make a new version of Windows from scratch just for handheld gaming, you're talking about the same guys that didn't bothered to change legacy elements from the UI until now
And that's where SteamOS comes in, i really hope windows does not improve at all, its been a monopoly since forever anyways, time to make a change once in a while. Now not saying windows will suddently go obselete(duhh), not soon or ever really, just a small increase in steamOS/linux market share, but boy i really hopefull for the future of linux than i ever would for windows due to its long unsunstaneable model from now on.
You don't need a new version of Windows. Just flip a switch in settings that goes into a different gamepad GUI. There is no reason to change anything under the hood
The Ally is is perfect for me. I have a series x. Ps5 and switch. But I don't have a decent computer. Just a very old laptop. But I have 2 monitors, a hub, a gaming mouse and keyboard that I use for my work from home set up. So I can use this in handheld then dock it after work and weekends. I'm mainly going to use it for emulation and old games.
@@biglevian here's the thing about the XG Mobile - it's $2700 total for a 4090 mobile vs $4000 for a 4090 laptop - you could actually get the 45in LG OLED curved monitor and have a pretty bad ass set up. Excited to see Linus's vid on the 4090 XG. ETA Prime used the cheaper card and it was really good performance.
@@j_dun4830 The 6850 XT's price drop is appealing for a device in this class. $1500 total would not be a terrible price for a full sized laptop with a 6850 XT.
If I didn’t already have a Steam Deck and Switch both with huge backlogs I’d definitely be onboard with the ROG ALLY, there’s simply no room in my gaming rotation for a new handheld but I hope it’s a contender because I’ll probably jump in later down the line.
@@mechanicalmonk2020 in fairness, he said he already has a Steam Deck. So no really huge need to ditch the deck for the additional cost of an Ally at this point I think is what he is saying.
Re Rockstar launcher crashing: does that almost daily on my Steam deck. As far as standby on Steam Deck, I literally leave mine sleeping in my bag for a week to 10 days at a time sometimes and it’ll still have 35% battery. Standby on Steam Deck is epic at sleeping, it’s like the housecat of handhelds. Sleeps great, awake at a moments notice ready to roll.
I completely agree with Austin on this. This isn't a console. It's a PC. Its just like any PC. You will mess with the settings when you are setting up the game to either get the best graphics or the best performance. The best part is that you have those options and you have the power to give you what you want. This is very similar to a laptop. Except laptops die a lot faster than any of these handhelds. There are many advantages to using windows. The only thing that windows is really missing is a handheld mode. Like I mentioned before, a lot of people using these windows handhelds have not used them as their every day device. A lot of the issues they speak of already has fixes
I hope we get more of the per-game settings options like we have on the Deck. That part was huge for me. Custom controllers, custom performance settings loaded when you start the game. And community-based controller schemes, you can download and test alternative controller layouts.
Something you didn't mention at all - the steam deck isn't available in many countries. The ROG ally is available pretty much everywhere, and can be bought at bricks and mortar retail stores. Add the fact that this can actually use your non steam launcher (gamepass/xbox, origin/ea, uplay/ubisoft connect, battlenet, unreal launcher, gog, etc), and can also be used as a regular windows computer.
As a heavy Steam Deck user I really appreciate the Rog Ally it looks cool and it's great to see handhelds constantly getting better and more importantly cheaper which is great for us
yeah but windows sucks! they should be using steamos instead... way better to control and you have the option to use its desktop version...but with windows it does not work at all! adm popups showing all the time! things just doesnt work on a tv... and the handheld experience is horrible with no touchpad
@@bilihileydsonit doesn't suck 😂 It gives you a total OS aka full deskop and it's capability over a crappy limited OS Plus you have access to modding xbox games pass and the fair bit of extra power over the steamdecks fast aging hardware. The price maybe a bit to much fir some but it's totally worth it imo especially for the long run.
@@crashdude7589 well it's still technically an issue even if you're a console player because of stuff like destiny 2 or cod not being supported on it for no real reason
@Sinus Lebastian sure but then you just do what console players have already been doing since the start, you just find a different game to play, alot of popular PC titles weren't on console, they just had to play something else.
i literally played 98 hours of the 111 hours of it on my steam deck with a solid 40 fps and textures on high and it looked great. I WAS SO MAD WHEN HE SAID THAT BRO HAHAHA IM GLAD I FOUND YOUR COMMENT
I’m gonna wait. I preordered it twice and cancelled. I have a Steam Deck and it’s nice. If they figure out the software, it would make sense to upgrade, but not before.
Canceled it also once 😂 But now I will keep the second order and will build myself an opinion about the Ally. Too many tests and different opinions like for the Steam deck at release. After I had the hands on my SD I couldn't give it away anymore 😂 Maybe it will be love at second sight with the Ally 😅
@@rogert250 I’m sure it’s nice, I just don’t think we need to go crazy with preorders. I don’t think it’ll be sold out for months and months. And the Steam Deck will tide me over until I see some software updates that makes it more competitive.
Yeah, people will have so much hate when they pull out their rogue ally to play on the plane, and it turns out to be incredibly hot with a dead battery.
Didn't think of this until I saw your comment, I agree. Been almost a week since their launch event and start of pre-orders and can still go on Best buy and order one for day one arrival for like $760 and change (cause of tax). I would've thought by now there would be a bit of a wait for arrival.
@@vic8230 it's an early adopter device that's targeting Windows PC gaming max power bros. The problem is those people are already rocking Aya Neos, OneXPlayers etc. On the other side the base Deck is half the cost and is upgradeable to double the storage for an extra 100 notes or so. The price is better than I expected in the US but in the UK it's £130 more expensive than the 512GB deck and doesn't include a carry case. So more like £160/£170 more expensive by the time you're done. Which compared to the base deck just makes it worse.
I think the Steam Deck is like the Game Boy from the old days. It's not the most powerful, it doesn't have the best display, but it's got the most value and that's what matters. I think the Ally will not be successful, or at least it will not outsell the Steam Deck.
Steam deck still is more efficient at 10 watts and below. Also keep in mind, gaming on the Ally at 1080P and 120 hertz, you can expect about 45 minutes of Run time! The best case perfect scenario for batter life on Ally is about 4 hours, and steam deck is about 7. If you are wanting a decently long game sesh, you will need to drop settings down nearly identical to steam deck settings, and even then get considerably less battery time than SD since it's chip is less efficient. If you can only game 45 minutes, is it even considered a portable device? I can also game everything at ultra on my laptop with 144 hertz panel, but only for 45 minutes, and I DO NOT consider my laptop portable. Battery life is part of the equation that defines a devices portability!
so. I recently got the Deck. I would still get it. I use the trackpads in every game I have except Forza horizon 5. so therefore that's the only game I consider would be better for me on Ally. I just hate using joystick instead of mouse/trackpad for fps games. although I do mostly just use it plugged in. I bought a 10 foot cable and it beats wearing the battery down for when you may actually need it. I prefer to just have it charged and charging if I can. so that is a benefit of Ally. the extra performance with that. maybe steam will let you overclock or something with the deck plugged in.
a person of discerning taste, I also partake of the 10 ft cable couch club, I hope for your sake the cable has a 90 degree bend, or you're using an angle adapter, it makes a world of difference in terms of wearing out the charging port with mechanical stress
Battery for gaming is over now, more than a decade. We must forgot that we played for around 6 or 7 hours with Nintendo DS. I will certainly use my Ally as a remote stream for my PS5.
I have windows on my steam deck, it was super easy to install. And I love windows, having all the games and gamepass, that's where the steam deck really shines, so the rog ally will be awesome to anyone getting it.
You're missing a few things for sure. Since Valve has their own operating system they can push game-specific performance improvements, like Elden Ring had stutter issues on every PC at launch but it was fixed in SteamOS right away thanks to Valve. Due to the hardware being the same they can distribute shader caches to Deck games to reduce load times or stutter depending on the game. They can curate games and inform customers that they run great out of the box with the Verified Badge similar to a seal of quality. The whole point of it is that they have made a console that is also open. If you want to be curated you can and have a good experience without doing anything extra, but you can also tinker if you want and do anything else that Valve hasn't tested like on a PC, it's the best of both worlds. The Ally is good, I would never knock it and I can even excuse Windows not having a handheld gamepad mode. But I find it odd that some people ignore the benefits of curation. P.S. I'd like to have the Ally but can't justify it since I couldn't play many of the games as well as on the Steam Deck due to the lack of touchpads. Huge omission IMO, this way you are basically limited to console games, or I should say games that don't greatly benefit from having a mouse and hotkeys
It would've definitely been a contender if it didn't have that silly proprietary port. If they had just thrown thunderbolt onto this thing and let people connect it to any GPU enclosure with USB-C outpu, it would've been a game changer. Edit: I played through Cyberpunk when they verified earlier in the year on my Steam Deck. I had no problems with it. Solid 40fps the entire time. Maybe you guys were using the wrong version of proton or something? I've also tested RDR2, Elden Ring, Dark Souls 1/2/3, Sekiro, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Biomutant, and Death Stranding, which are all playable to varying degrees.
The problem with ally is the lack of track pads. Not just to use as a mouse but they have a range of options. As in mapping buttons to them. I use them as hotkeys for some shooters.
@@SEVENTEENPOINT1you were missing out. I use them in almost every game I play. Kind of like the back buttons. But if the game your playing has a hot key bar you can map those numbers to the track pad. Or games that don’t have controller support.
@@CaptAxolotl I have a Steam Controller, the trackpads on the deck are a total downgrade. Way too small to be useful. Used gyro instead for aiming. I also just use joystick mouse for games that need a mouse. Works fine.
We're at the turning point where new games are so shit it's not even worth buying a new PC or new console for them. So these handhelds are able to perfectly run the best games already. I honestly hope these things get more popular and easier to use because it feels like it just makes more sense to have these things as your all-in-one device.
That's pretty much the reason I want one. The new games are god awful however, with what's already currently available + the fact that it's an emulation beast, I can have pretty much every game I want on a single, tiny, portable device. Since the Ally uses Windows 11, compatibility should be fine so it's easier to use unlike the Steamdeck and for older games, it's better to emulate them, whether a PC port exists or not to avoid headaches and troubleshooting. My only complain is that the batteries aren't quite there yet which is unfortunate. I hope ASUS can mitigate this problem and hopefully I will get one later this year, perhaps a revision model of the Ally.
its only good for some console type games... its useless to me without trackpads. I use the trackpads on my Deck for everything, they are awesome... can't live without them.
Love your chat here. Just wanna say, Matt, it's not defeating the purpose of handheld device. Let's say if suddenly Switch gives you an option to tune the TDP, but you can still game as usual if you don't touch that, do you say it defeats the purpose of handheld? Both the Steam Deck and this Rog Ally can run games without tuning anything. But it's just that the vendors now give you open options to tune it the way you like, does not defect the purpose of handheld.
I think his point was that to make it playable for long periods due to poor battery life and bad UX, you have to plug it in and even use an external keyboard (and at times, an external display), then it's no longer a handheld, it's an underpowered gaming PC.
@@mda187 this. a 30 watt gpu mode with a 40wh battery gives you less than an hour of gameplay. if you are plugged ito the wall why not have a discrete GPU with even more power?
@@mda187 these pc handhelds are all underpowered gaming pcs. Honestly I am not really sold on the whole pc handhelds after getting the deck. If games were optimised for this hardware (like the switch or something) it would be a bit better.
ShareDeck is very useful for a bunch of popular games, hope it gets more contributions. His point was that the Ally's advantage is better performance, but that performance isn't worth much is you can't get any battery endurance. The extremely bad performance at low power is the problem. Ironically if the Deck performed the same as now at lower wattage but got a big boost when docked, people would be praising it. It's about freedom of choice, and when your choices are "bad performance vs bad battery life" some people are going to complain. I mostly expect 3-4 hour battery life on my Deck.
Got the Ally (z1 extreme version) and the performance I get out of this is astonishing. Everything looks and plays so good at 900p (even Crapfield). I always play docked cause I want the max performance and I haven’t felt anything less that this being an equivalent to a good gaming laptop (cause everything looks great and crisp on this screen even on low-medium settings). VRR also plays a major role in the feeling of variable framerate!!!
What's funny is most TH-camrs say "ohh it's only $50 more than the deck" but no, it's not If you buy a $400 steam deck and upgrade it, the total cost to get it to be "maxed out" (basically same spec as the $650 one) it'll be like $550-600 at most for good quality products(aftermarket SSD and screen protector and microSD and other stuff)
The overwhelming number of people are not going to "upgrade" a $400 Steam Deck beyond adding an SD card. So yes, the Ally is only $50 more for most potential buyers.
@@mechanicalmonk2020 But it's still not a 1 to 1 comparison. Of course there should be a difference in price...that model of the Steam Deck has half the storage and less power and IO than the Ally. The real comparison is between the 512gb SD and the Ally....and in that comparison, it's only $50 more for the overwhelming number of potential buyers.
People will go and get it but then realise it’s to early and then sell it because is windows. I’m never getting rid of my steam deck. I love it. Plane, car, Motorhome the steam deck is awesome
People will keep it for the same reason, i didn’t like how restricted steam deck was out of the box. And no, I don’t have the time to tweak it, I am 35 years old and have way more things to worry about than get games to work
@@TerrannotOP Generally you know in five minutes if a game will run well. And with per-game settings, you only need to fiddle with stuff once. You can also get premade controller maps from the community if you don't like the default. It's painfully easy for me and I consider myself to be very busy.
The Ally actually performs *worse* than the Deck at the lowest power profile. Being better than the Deck in docked mode is nice, I guess, but it would still very much perform like an entry-level PC, which is unsatisfying on a big screen or a 4K TV. I just think the Ally doesn't know what it wants to be. Consider that even Nintendo made the Switch Lite specifically without docking ability.
"The Ally actually performs worse than the Deck at the lowest power profile." - For now... and its not even launched live yet with more optimizations coming Im sure.
@@derekdrozdzakIt will get better but won't beat the SD. Dave2d mentioned that the SD is better at lower power because it has a custom built chip designed for low power. Ally is using a customized laptop chip that's designed for higher power usage so it becomes very inefficient at low power. No amount of firmware update can make up for hardware inefficiencies like that. That's the price of higher on paper specs, you have laptop specs but dont have the same power as a laptop.
1. For me ROG Ally cost almost 2x price of Steam Deck (i paid like ~400$) 2. I got Win 11 Pro on my Steam Deck with few plugins/addons and all work "almost" perfect(I mean it's great but whole devices have some issues). 3. Spare parts - I can find almost all parts for my Deck on iFixit, ASUS didn't said single word about it and im like 99% sure they will be not available in my country. 4. COLOUR - White? No jokes.
pretty quickly and easily... it won't be hard at all, its just a PC and HoloISO is hacked version of SteamOS people are using on other devices already.
Just got mine yesterday, and i feel most,if not all, the "problems" they are bringing up have been fixed. Prices have come down too since this vid came out. I got a practically new open box z1 extreme version from best buy for $499. Brand new sealed was $599. I think alot of em had an issue with a sticky bumper button, so ppl just returned em. Which mine did have that problem but it was such an easy 10 min fix. Im absolutely loving this thing!
Yep, Windows has always been the problem for these type of devices. At first, I didn't agree with Valve's decision to go the Linux route and bake in their own software but after that released and after all the tweaks and optimization, I totally understand why they had to do it. You can't get what they've achieved simply by tweaking Windows. Asus wasn't the first to try this, and they won't be the last.
If Microsoft actually optimizes the system, as well as the UI, for handheld gaming it might give Valve a run for it's money. However that's very unlikely. At least it's unlikely that Microsoft will put as much effort into it as Valve has been doing.
@@nathanlamaire which is a good thing, holy shit we would no longer need to worry about a single massive corporation abusing or doing anything we disagree with our software
It's a bit more than tweaking because Linux is open source Valve can look at the code, identify improvements/new ways of doing things and then code and test them. Submit those changes to kernel maintainers/driver teams/ get the changes peer reviewed and eventually accepted. You just can't do that with a proprietary O/S and drivers.
What do you mean you can't play Cyberpunk 2077 on the Steam Deck? There are so many videos showing it in action on the Steam Deck and it has its own "Steam Deck" mode for the settings.
i literally played 98 hours of the 111 hours of it on my steam deck with a solid 40 fps and textures on high and it looked great. I WAS SO MAD WHEN HE SAID THAT BRO HAHAHA IM GLAD I FOUND YOUR COMMENT
Every time I see people ok with 40fps, I cringe. Why are people ok with so little. I can never understand people that demand so little. 60 hz is the minimum for gaming. Under 60 hz is unplayable in 2023.
you have a good question right there. Arent the large watt battery banks fairly expensive? I would just plan to plug in the ally to a wall outlet most of the time anyways if the extra power is needed that badly. If I get 1-2 solid uninterrupted gaming sessions any more its a blessing anyways.
Watch for a sale, you can get an Anker jumbo bank for a decent price. Or some other reputable brand. The key is it needs to offer minimum 25W output, preferably more like 40W just for Performance mode. You want something like a "laptop power bank". With my Deck I can tuck a 76Wh pack into the notch in the case, that gives me 10-15 hours of total playtime in most of my games. Even running uncapped I still get around five hours plus, which should be similar to the Ally in Performance mode. Ally in Turbo might only get 2-2.5 hours with the same pack.
I think it will be more interesting when Valve releases a more general installer or imager for Steam OS (at least for OEMs), and we start seeing seeing manufacturers coming out with their own versions of a Steam Deck-like device. I think I heard OneXplayer wants to make one, and are just waiting for the day Valve releases that version of Steam OS.
If it's coming pre-installed there shouldn't be a wait. It doesn't matter if you need to be a "power user" to install steamOS/holoISO of the manufacturer is doing it for you ahead of time. The process isn't intensive so while it requires some competence you'd think that the hardware makers can figure out how to pre-install an OS
The first GPD Win released before the Switch did in 2016 at a price of $350, and I ended up not getting a Switch because Skyrim with mods for $0 sounded more appealing to me than Skyrim without mods for $60. I was really hoping for PC handhelds to take off, I didn't really expect it but here we are. So cool.
The first one was fine for Starcraft and such, worked okay. Problems with defective batteries, a lot of people had to replace theirs. And just like the SD it was a rotated portrait-format screen so some games didn't work properly. The SD's secret sauce is the OS and the presentation layer silently compensating for whatever the game needs.
At. 3:00 he says he couldn't get cyberpunk 2077 to run on the steam deck. I put in at least 100 hours of cyberpunk 2077 on the steam deck. With a mixture of high medium and low settings at mostly 30 frames per second
@J_DUN rog is for people who know how to use computers pretty much for pc gamer who wanna handheld but if you not familiar with computers I wouldn't do it, imma stay with a steam deck I have a gaming PC and laptop if I wanna play a game I'll just download it
From what most other reviewers have mentioned, while the Ally can overpower the Deck at max TDP, the Deck outperforms the Ally at low (sub-10W) TDP. So if you actually intend to use these as a mobile device, you’d be better off with a Deck. EDIT: According to Dave2D (5/29), even with the newest drivers that substantially improve 15+W performance this still holds true for sub-10W. Obviously Elden Ring or Cyberpunk at 3-5 W is a pretty bad idea, but plenty of games-for example, turn-based, indies, and puzzle-are going to do just fine and won’t benefit all that much from the higher end.
@@grantmckenzie787 I mean it'll overpower the deck at just 15w, theoretically you'll get 2 hours or more out of that. That's totally fine for a powerful pc gaming handheld
@@conner_productions If I want high fidelity, I have a desktop rig for that. The entire point of a mobile device is that it’s mobile. 2 hours is hardly acceptable, and it’ll be even worse a couple years from now as the Li-ion battery degrades, as all Li-ion batteries do.
I hate fiddling with settings. I also dont see anything that runs windows to be good with how much resources it takes. If ally was like steamdeck with mousepads/mappable buttons running steams OS i think I'd consider the ally. All the roundabout things id have to do to play games I'm just not feeling ally.
probably gonna get one since Valve won't sell me a deck, and probably going to end up throwing ChimeraOS on it once the drivers are sorted. Watched ETA Prime's video on it and it seemed to be running fairly well already, and I imagine it'll get better once devs get their hands on the devices. I absolutely do not want to mess around with windows on a handheld, I'd just get horrible windows CE flashbacks or something
I have an "old" Aya Neo Pro with ChimeraOS, and it works pretty well, though ChimeraOS hasn't really made an easy way to control TDP for that device. The only other thing is that I like the Steam Deck controls much better overall. The Ally does have full sized sticks though, so that should be an improvement. I find that the offset joysticks on the Aya Neo Pro can be aggravating when you end up hitting the right stick while you're pressing buttons in some games (many games this doesn't matter in because the stick doesn't do anything during the parts of the game where you would be hitting buttons). The other thing is the missing controls. There are no trackpads on the Aya Neo, and the gyro doesn't work as a control method in tandem with the X-Box controls. Perhaps the offset joysticks on the Ally are far enough from the buttons to not be accidentally activated, but I don't believe there are any gyro controls so far, and there certainly aren't trackpads.
I agree with "The hype is here, it will sell out for now but then it will die down". I like that steam deck is not getting a yearly refresh. More games will be optimized for steam deck compared to other handhelds.
Umm cyberpunk definitely runs on the deck, played it on PC and on deck and I'm surprised at how well it actually runs considering it can struggle on a full PC. Not saying it's perfect but to say it full out does not work is blatantly false.
The software improvement of the Ally will depends on the ROG and the community, which is both a question mark right now. How good and committed are ASUS on software side of thing and does the community exists, and does ASUS support the community. Also, with Steam Deck, you can have the power profile settings per game now. Is it already like that at the moment? If not, then you will have to fiddle with it everytime you change game.
I’ve also played a lot of games through the epic game store. You have to do a work around using heroic game launcher as a non steam but I have also had no issues with that either
Dude on the left sold me on Steam Deck, but damn, this ROG Ally does look REALLY nice. With the bangin' processor, I could also use it for SDR type stuff listening for aliens. There is no question that software will always improve, and major companies will start to optimize for stuff like it.
With a Linux-based OS, you can compile the kernel and tweak and system configuration to EXACTLY what your hardware needs, meaning improvements to battery life and performance. You can't do that with Windows I think developers need to start focusing on Linux as at very least a second-class citizen for gaming. The ROG Ally is a impressive piece of handheld, but I really think they should have went with a custom Linux system just like Valve.
And if they went with that route, I believe the price would be higher. The reason why they managed to cut the price down because Microsoft subsidized it, so it can be "official" Game Pass handheld machine.
@@OneWingedVic yeah, this is the real reason why they didn't do it. Custom Linux development, even with the help from Valve, may have significant cost because of the need to manually develop a compatible solution. Not to mention, the need to publish the source code to Linux mainline (except you wanna be a dick like Nvidia, of course)
Nah men, you bump it up to turbo mode and yes you can play 10+ fps than the steam deck but battery just die. I rather play on my steam deck at stable 10 less fps but battery is better
I'm extremely happy with my Deck. If something comes along that absolutely unquestionably eclipses it and makes it obsolete then I will be first in line, but I don't think this is an enormous step forwards. If I didn't have either device then I would definitely have been tempted towards it, but as it is I'm not giving up my Deck.
i would say ROG is sidestep .... kinda a product for bit difference audience ... with its focus on high on paper specs insteand of portablity . But both aswell as the chinese deviced (GPD, Aya, OneX) are signs of quite amazing and interesting future for handheld PCs
Steam Deck will always be unbeatable, especially if they make a Steam Deck 2 Electric Boogaloo in a few years. SteamOS is so seamless, and the huge amount of buttons and trackpads means it can even effectively absorb keyboard control schemes. Community configs are a godsend too for a device like the deck especially, though even on the Ally and stuff they can be nice
Matt is right. I am not buying something to fiddle with the settings. I am not a PC gamer. I turn on my switch or PS5 and play. That's why I like them. I don't want to waste my time doing setting adjustments.
Steam Deck usually works immediately, in the worst case you play around with settings for a few minutes and choose a community-made controller setup. It can store performance and controller settings for each game so you DON'T have to keep changing them around for different games.
@@passintogracegoldenyearnin6310 Is it worth the price? It seems a bit pricey for a first handheld. I wanted to wait for the next one to see if they work out the issues with it.
@@Kikibrat2 Depends, really. Sounds like it will be at least a year before the next Switch, but you could also say the next Switch is finally only a year away. I would say, in terms of value....the Switch Lite is cheap at 200 but the real Switch for 300 is better. Docked mode, bigger screen, replaceable controllers. Switch OLED for 350 is also an upgrade in picture quality and better kickstand. So then the Steam Deck is 400, plus like $30-40 for a 256GB MicroSD to get decent storage. $50-100 more than Switch OLED. It can technically emulate a Switch, but mostly it can play lots of games made for PC. You will get better picture quality and better frame rate on Steam deck. You also may need to change some settings the first time you run a game, mostly to change the controls or improve battery life. Downloadable controls are built into Steam and you can have the Deck save different power settings for each game based on your preference. There is a small, but real chance that an update will temporarily break a game (this happened with RDR2). It does not have as good of battery life as the Switch but it's better than most handhelds. You can install other games stores and various emulators on the Steam Deck. You may be able to play spme games you already own. Steam has sales up to 75% off regularly. Overall playing on the Deck is cheaper than Switch because the games can be much cheaper. Ally is 600 for the base model and 700 for the extreme model, with no independent testing on the base model yet. It sounds like there are updates fixing some of the early reported issues, software is improving. At medium power it's faster than the Deck and at high power it's much faster, but at LOW power it seems to run very poorly. It's between the Switch and the Deck in terms of size and weight. I think the battery life is a big problem if it can't run well at low power, and if it needs to be plugged in I could get a 3050 Ti laptop or an HX80G mini desktop for the same money. I think the Steam Deck still rules the game for now. Switch is cheapest up front but the games are expensive. Ally is more expensive and doesn't seem like a real leap in _handheld_ gaming unless you're willing to stay plugged into a 3m USB cable at all times. The big thing with the Deck is making sure any new game runs well while you're still in the refund window.
The biggest power play Valve could do, is to release SteamOS to the public before this release and support for the new chip. I'm going to buy this and intend on running steamOS(HoloISO) instead of windows besides a handful of games that can't run on SteamOS.
I'd love for them to do this just to see if Asus tries to lock it down and keep you from booting into Linux. It's pretty obvious that Microsoft is subsidizing the price on this thing (if you don't think this is the case, why is the Head of Xbox Hardware, Roanne Sones, sitting in their launch event interview?). It looks bad to Microsoft if people start installing Linux on it after probably propping this release up.
@@mda187 you know, it's entirely possible that both the Deck and the Ally just cost less than their price to make. We've been conditioned so much with decades of the "loss leader" myth that we're unwilling to believe that a good deal could just be a result of good design and economies of scale.
@@mechanicalmonk2020 Very possible, no "NVidia tax" on the Ally. I've gotten full size Ryzen 7 laptops for about $600. Also for the SD, Gabe said the goal was to "not lose money on each device". Their original sales model estimated the $400 model would be the most popular, so the base model should cost less than that to produce and ship. The $530 and $650 models would therefore have about $100 and $180 better margins at least. Based on high sales of middle and best models, they probably paid off the development cost already. They said a lot of testing was volunteer hours. But as the Ally is being sold in retail and not directly, when you also include the "retail tax" yes it's likely that their open partnership with Microsoft includes a subsidy. Even $20 per unit is an extra $20, right? The bigger question is whether the Microsoft partnership includes some real help with improving the interface and battery life.
@@Generic_TH-cam_Username_ sir, it's not the "why"; it's the "why not"! Also, I have a Steamdeck thats been modified heavily already, I love the thing, but... The Steamdeck isn't an Ally running SteamOS because... Windows is just awful at handling handhelds like this. Also, when is my Steamdeck going to to support Thunderbolt, Gabe!?
@@Generic_TH-cam_Username_ Thunderbolt is a fabric logic. It does more than "eGPU's". However an eGPU would be nice but isn't necessary for the Steamdeck. My biggest issue is connectivity that the Steamdeck is sorely missing. However, it's still in the top five handhelds world wide (in my book).
@@Generic_TH-cam_Username_ Well, one of the issues that you have with using a USB3.2 gen 2 port is the lack of fabric logic. Thunderbolt can chain up to four linked objects at once. For instance, my main machine (Intel i7 laptop 13th gen) is chained to a Drive bay, a 10gig network adaptor, an eGPU, and docking station. When I would get home at the end of the day, I would like having the laptop geared for work at work but, while at home I connect it to a docking station that has all of that connected to it, and keeps my games separate from my work machine. Now, sense I work from home all the time, no one can see the machine I like to main line. I would like the deck to take the laptops place in my home computer usage BUT... Till Thunderbolt is supported, that's not going to happen. Technically, I could just live with the Drive bay (for games) and the eGPU for graphics power, however I would like to see the Deck take over as my main compute unit, (also yes, I do know that this is a niche part of the market, but I love it). If this really is Gabe I'm talking to, I hope you hear my words, and understand my main complaint about Valves Steamdeck which, this is where the Ally has that machine beat... I would love to have the hardware of the Ally and the friendliness of the Deck... Like a Deck-ally... Decally... Or De-Calico, like the cat species. Anywho, thank you for reading and entertaining me with the brain storming moment.
5:15 I didn't have any problems setting it up unless someone doesn't have a XBOX/Microsoft account but other wise, no issues on my part and the online keyboard didn't have any problems at all
I have the Steam Deck and I absolutely love it. I upgraded my internal ssd to 2tbs and it was shockingly easy. Migrating everything over was way easier than anything Windows has ever come up with. I'm now looking into the DeckHD screen. I am curious as to which device will be a better purchase in the long term. Being able to upgrade is a huge bonus in my eyes.
Thank you Matt for your skepticism and input on this device! Too many ppl are promoting it as the greatest instead of from a Ease-of-use standpoint. I appreciate both opinions, tbh.
I’ve been playing cyberpunk 2077 for about 2 weeks now on my steamdeck, on default power settings, using the “steamdeck” graphics preset in game and I get a pretty solid 30 fps, in fact I’m playing it right now in a hotel with it docked to my hotel TV. So I’m a bit confused on how he claims his steamdeck won’t run cyberpunk at all…
Also the epic games store works fine on my steamdeck, I recently just finished “A plague Tale: innocence” from the epic game store on my steamdeck. He really needs to get his facts straight, or maybe go into more detail on whatever problems he had, otherwise he’s just spreading misinformation…
Being able to play way more games because of windows is a big factor. I love gamepass on my pc, ive been able to play so many new good games because of it. So to me the game compatibility potential is enormous
You can boot into windows on a steam deck. From an SD even and it runs great. I have an SD with windows and anti-cheat games like Destiny 2 and Game Pass games installed on it. Valve actually released all the drivers for the Steam Deck for windows so people could to this. Then, when not playing games that need windows, I just reboot back into Linux and SteamOS.
You see people on reddit talking about how all they do on their steam deck is fiddle with the settings. So that is a dumb point to keep complaining about on the rog ally.
I'd argue with Matt, while yes being portable is nice, like 95% of my usage of the Steam Deck, and even the Switch, has been plugged in. I rarely if ever don't have access to a charger. Plus you can get some rather hefty battery packs. Plus, how long do you think it'll take for the community to get SteamOS/HoloISO working on this? I know I'll be swapping over to SteamOS as soon as it is viable on my Ally.
I mean even on battery if you don't mind tweaking your settings a little I managed to survive a 5 hour flight from Miami to Phoenix a few months ago just plugged into the seatback, yeah it doesn't charge at full speed but it was enough to slow the battery drain I still had like 14% when I landed and my new Baseus 65W 20kmah power bank just came in the mail. But yeah the majority of my gaming hours are logged on the couch, with a 10 ft 90 degree bend cable with aftermarket 65w PD charger.
@@matthamende6359 would this Baseus 65W 20kmah power bank work just fine for the Ally you think?? The Ally comes with its own 65w charger so this should work fine for a power bank?
@@derekdrozdzak I mean I don't know for a fact but assuming that the Ally charger is 65W Power Delivery USB-C I would have to assume it works. The Steam Deck OEM charger that it includes is only a 45W, and the other charger I have is also 45W and it will stay 100% charged while I'm playing with full power draw. And at least from what I've read about the Ally it seems like the upper limit is about 35 to 40 TDP so it seems like it would still be fine. Seems like it goes on sale. I got it for $47 last week. So keep your eyes open or set up some tracking
Actually, GPD WIN (and subsequent GPD devices) are the true pioneer on this...Ayoneo kind of out competed GPD and is the current leader on this form factor on the higher end hardware (Steam Deck have less powerful hardwares)
They made mention of GPD at the end of the video, and said that they don't really recommend them because all the product they've had of theirs have died.
No youtube even said about most SD sold is the 64 GB and the Ally that they are reviewed is the highest model. SD 64GB is 399 and ROG Ally highest mode is 699. It is 57% more expensive. Lower model on ally will come out later, I think SD still holds up really well againts this new comer. Not to mention asus is well known for their shitty support, and so far with SD, Valve actively supporting theirs and not to mention the community is awesome.
Matt tried to make a mountain out of spending a few seconds changing settings, yes I will absolutely take the performance over a few seconds of convenience
I’m with Matt on this one - I have 20-30 mins to game each night max. Fiddling with settings or updates would eat into that. I just want to pick up the device and game. Steam Deck & Switch allow that.
I have a Steam Deck and I love it BUT being unable to play Windows dependent games is brutal. I find myself using my laptop more for that reason. The Ally hardware is superior and the main issues are the software which can be fixed. TLDR: I will be buying one eventually after they fix the software issues
Nice discussion. Just one thing bothered me. You can't play cyberpunk on the steam deck?? I've spent countless hours playing the game at solid 40-45fps and it's a great experience... Anyway... Rog ally it's a no go for me. It will cost around 920$ in Germany (cause need to buy a 40$ case)
Pre-ordered the Z1 Extreme ROG ALLY. Being a busy father and husband, blasting through a campaign or playing some 2K etc in quick bursts of around an hour at a time is my gaming life nowadays.
Console time commitment isn't like it was when I was a kid where I could sit there for 4hrs at a clip.
This device is exactly what I'm looking for
Similar story here.
@@hackman460 yep, me too - I have a Steam Deck and I just wanted the games I like to play.
Well you gonna miss the suspend function then.
@Bionic Beaver yea agreed I will miss that but StramOS had issues when it came out si we will see what happens a year from now. If I lose that to me I'm OK if I can play all my games on one device
Couldn’t agree more. As a parent an hour is more than enough and as a result this works well for me.
Steam had issues on launch and I preordered prior to its launch, it’s keyboard didn’t work for sh*t and software was buggy as hell. Don’t understand why some are comparing the rog to present steam capabilities.
With access to more platforms and improved visuals, I’ll work through the buggy start :)
Cyberpunk runs great on Steamdeck, you should look a bit more on that.
Its one of those opinions that reminds me that Matt is way more of a casual than an enthusiast. Just a lack of knowledge
I agree.
Yeah I was gonna say
Yeah what the fuck is Matt talking about? I've played all the fallout games including 76 they play great even though Steam says it won't. I've completely replayed Cyberpunk twice and it plays great and that's before it became a verified deck game. Gotham Knights plays fine Hogwarts Legacy all fine. I feel like he turned the Deck on once went "nope" and then moved on.
this dude must be high af, Cyberpunk even has a steam deck preset in the settings
I’ve put over 100 hours into cyberpunk on steam deck. I have never heard anyone having issues with it.
I had to look at the comments because I was thinking the same thing 😮
Right what’s wrong with him it’s even verified
Yeah same actually, can even play in desktop mode at 900p with FSR 2 on my 2k monitor. Def drops sometimes but never for very long. Get a relatively consistent 35-40fps most the time.
@@dontaviousnegasi1648I didn’t know it got verified lol. I got my steam deck real early in the release and never had an issue with it on the deck. I’ve even played with some mods like the stock market. A lot of mods don’t work just got to play around and try them out.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one thinking this….
Matt: optimize and play. Don’t wanna touch anything
Austin: power user, let’s get the max performance, touch all the settings.
I think Matt legitimately wants it to be like the switch or a console. Which neither of these are that.
We already have a switch competitor and that's the steam deck. Let the ROG ally be a pc alternative/replacement, It's not going to be a better console than the steam deck, but it'll be a better pc than a steam deck and that's it's own value v.v
I've never been so annoyed by this guy he was whining the entire time
@@MrJustek switch is no way s steamdeck competitor switch is limited to 30 fps and doesn't play pc games
@@MrMagicAmmo I feel bad for his couch
People keep comparing it with the $650 model of the steam deck with all models have the same specs except for memory. You could just buy the $399 model and replace the ssd or buy an sd card. And honestly you are probably gonna need an sd card anyway. So it's not a $50 dollar difference but more like a $300 dollar difference
The 512gb is more for people who want to support valve or get the special carrying case and screen. Otherwise there's no reason to buy the 64 or 256gb. and just buy sd cards for extra storage. The difference in speed is almost non-existent and you are saving yourself almost half the price.
@@VictorRodriguez-zp2do yeah I've got the 256GB and picked up a 1TB MicroSD on sale and have like 100 games installed some of them AAA
3:32 If you don't want to fiddle with settings this devices aren't for you. Literally if you play everything at 20w or more then you only have 1 hour or less of gameplay. You need to cap fps, lower the best tdp for each game, lower video settings and resolution. At least Steam deck saves those settings per game. The Ally needs those updates.
Cyberpunk even has a specific Steam Deck setting in the game? Tons of people play it on the deck completely fine.
Please look things up before making a video saying it straight up doesn't work on the deck. It's even verified now.
This was almost the perfect Pros vs Cons video.
I wish you guys had more of a check list to discuses all the topics, like how long the Steam Deck lasts playing at 8-10 Watts with low to medium settings. I played dirt 4 and other AAA titles and it lasted longer than a 5 hour flight. The Steam Deck was designed to last. As Linus Tech Tips mentioned in that 10 Watts the Steam has higher fps for games by a large amount being the "Secret Sauce" of Valve and AMD custome chip. And, Just like was mentioned being the main idea for a portable, is that it lasts longer than 1-2 hours. Ill list some more Pros of the Steam Deck in another post.
Another note slightly mentioned in this video but left out of all the reviews is the for those on a budget or who dont come from wealth who can not afford a $700 mobile device, at $399 (cheaper when on sale) Is not the Steam Deck a great choice and competitor being that the hardware is the same and all you need to do is purchase a $20 or-$40 SD card to have more storage. Its such an easy system to use and allows people to experience Linux and explore all the optomized apps ....etc.
Just to note Windows will probably kill the ROG Ally simply because....Its Windows! with all the legal malware, telemetry collecting data collectors running in the back ground garbage. Are we not trying to get away from windows and welcome a new competitor? The question is not when Windows will update a mobile version for mobile devices, but rather, When will Valve release Steam OS as a competitor to Windows becasue it is a more optomized no nonsence OS for the mainstream.
Think of the days when Intel controlled the market by pushing out AMD while releasing super expensive chips and adding a (+) at the end even though it wasnt really that much better than the last? until AMD came back swinging while the giant was sleeping. Valve has a chance to make a nice dent in the PC industry with Steam OS.
I think you'll read this and maybe saying that's right but I don't know what you will say : it's clear that R O G Ally is faster and the screen is bigger and better, that's because the steam deck is about a year older, I'm so tired of hearing your fuss about a device that can run cyberpunk, my steam deck does at this time of writing when there are any specifications it is always easier to make a new device better and it is the same between Samsung and Apple it is one device is always better than the other won you are a friend turn it and the same is this the case with handheld gaming machines, one is better than the other, that's how it is now and that's how it will always be, it's nothing new under the sun because that's how it's always been and that's how it will always continue to be so I don't understand why in the house so I say hello I'm so up it's really nothing to be so excited about so in a year there will be a device that is better than R O G Ally or in two years it might be the second generation of steam deck then we have the talk again about one device being better than the other it's a long screw with no end And it will go on forever but will you please write back to me under my name : because I am curious to hear your opinion I have written a comment it is the same one that is written here under your answer and your name is waiting for your opinion on this and if you think almost the same as I do I look forward to finding out of you must have a really good day/evening I look forward to hearing from you
This ROG Ally is not the final product you need to wait for the final product before judging it also updates can fix all windows handheld problems specially that windows handhelds is booming now not being able to play anything you want is a deal breaker. Your buying a game to play all your PC games and not limiting you. All steam games is 100% windows and probably 70% Linux at the same time you can play other platform games as well because it is windows. If all your games work on Steam Deck then good for you but others don't. ROG Ally is not only more powerful and can play all games in PC it is also has 1080p 120hz can set it for older games or not that graphical games. And yes because all my device is 1080p TV, Laptop, Smartphone I can see the difference between 1080p and 720p.
Lol I played 100hrs of cyberpunk on the steam deck. It absolutely runs
2:29 wtf are you talking about I literally played through the CP2077 campaign on my Deck it was literally a smoother experience than my first playthrough on my PC back during patch 1.1
It didn't worked at the beginning but then the game got the stem deck video setting and optimization in proton.
@@DaleonM4 I'm willing to believe that, I only got my Deck 5 months ago but even that's before it was "Verified" and it was already running pretty great. It definitely has gotten better since.
Here in Germany the cheapest SD (420€) is almost half the price of the Ally (800€). And it already comes with a carrying case. I'll probably buy one if they drop the price under 400 during the summer sale.
The ally is nice, but on 10-15W performance is really similar and I won't use it docked. The 1080p and 120hz won't really be used a lot on the go.
Same in UK. 350 Vs 700... That's a massive difference for 'double the power' at double the watts
Actually, Matt cyberpunk does run on steam deck
Honestly as someone who owns a Deck already…. The hardware on the Ally of course is great. You would hope that a system that came out 1-2 years after the Deck is more powerful and it is. That being said, I don’t think it’s enough of a jump to justify running out and buying one of these if you already have a deck. Yeah it’s a boost in performance but it’s not an enormous generational jump. The deck still plays the majority of games you would want to play on these devices just fine. If you need AC on deck that badly you can always dual boot, it might not be glamorous but it does work. My personal plan is to wait for the next generation of the deck.
I think the real great value will be picking up cheap steam decks off of eBay that people are dumping to get this thing. Imagine picking up a steam deck for like $200 slightly used. That’s where the value is gonna be.
I partially agree with you. I own also the SD and it is fabulous. But for some games especially AAA I really would need a bit more power to get at least 40fps - for me the sweet spot - to have a more smooth gaming experience. Let's see after some driver updates if the Ally will improve gaming experience. But in Germany you will not find any used Steam deck under 400€. Most of them will be sold around 500€ so really price stable 👍 let's see the upcoming days if the SD will get an equal opponent 😊
@@rogert250 I think when (or if) we get some windows updates to work better on these types of systems and after the OEM programs like Armory Crate work out all the kinks then these devices will be pretty appealing. By then, we might be looking at another HW revision.
As for AAA, I don’t really ever use my deck for that. It’s more for budget/indie games or emulators honestly, although if you play AAA on it, more power to ya. Different strokes for different folks.
I can't wait to pick-up somebody's deck for cheap in the nearish future!
This coming out has actually made me lean more towards finally getting a Steam Deck.
You just got your deck?? After seeing a lot of videos on the ally? I’m in limbo over what to get.
Same. Just got my Deck. For 400 bucks you get a way better experience. For raw power I have my high end desktop.
Same! Was planning on picking up Asus attempt but I've been convinced to pickup the Steamdeck. I got more power machines for demanding games and the community around the deck is what convinced me.
@@BushTurkeyProduction I’ll be choosing closer to the holidays. I’m still in a high limbo. It should give them both more time to improve. The deck would be a much easier decision. But I wouldn’t know what’s really better for me. I hate being patient!
With the Ally coming in a couple weeks.I see tons of people dumping Steam Decks online for pretty good deals, make it much more tempting
I agree with Matt on this one. We live in a world where conveniency is king and with all the little things a lot of people will not want it. I’ve lived this and that’s why I love my steam deck cause it’s easy to use and at work on breaks I can play for a bit but if I have to spend half my break fiddling I’m not gonna use it.
I completely agree with Matt, the hardware looks great, the problem with it is Windows. I have my doubts that any amount of tweaking will solve the Windows problem. It needs a new version of Windows specifically designed from the ground up and optimized for handheld. Without that, the ROG Ally is just wasted potential.
Haha I doubt that Microsoft would make a new version of Windows from scratch just for handheld gaming, you're talking about the same guys that didn't bothered to change legacy elements from the UI until now
There is one. Windows S .
@@user-ot7wb8sy1v Never heard of Windows S. But I have heard about S mode. If you're talking about that, probably would gimp it more than help it.
And that's where SteamOS comes in, i really hope windows does not improve at all, its been a monopoly since forever anyways, time to make a change once in a while.
Now not saying windows will suddently go obselete(duhh), not soon or ever really, just a small increase in steamOS/linux market share, but boy i really hopefull for the future of linux than i ever would for windows due to its long unsunstaneable model from now on.
You don't need a new version of Windows. Just flip a switch in settings that goes into a different gamepad GUI. There is no reason to change anything under the hood
The Ally is is perfect for me. I have a series x. Ps5 and switch. But I don't have a decent computer. Just a very old laptop. But I have 2 monitors, a hub, a gaming mouse and keyboard that I use for my work from home set up. So I can use this in handheld then dock it after work and weekends. I'm mainly going to use it for emulation and old games.
Plus, you can get a GPU for it if you dock it so you could play more demanding games if you wished to do that.
@@TheOmegaRiddler gpus are more expensive than a comparable PC-tower😅
@@biglevian here's the thing about the XG Mobile - it's $2700 total for a 4090 mobile vs $4000 for a 4090 laptop - you could actually get the 45in LG OLED curved monitor and have a pretty bad ass set up. Excited to see Linus's vid on the 4090 XG. ETA Prime used the cheaper card and it was really good performance.
@@j_dun4830 you should really compare it to the 4080 desktops but your point stands. I've said the same thing.
@@j_dun4830 The 6850 XT's price drop is appealing for a device in this class. $1500 total would not be a terrible price for a full sized laptop with a 6850 XT.
If I didn’t already have a Steam Deck and Switch both with huge backlogs I’d definitely be onboard with the ROG ALLY, there’s simply no room in my gaming rotation for a new handheld but I hope it’s a contender because I’ll probably jump in later down the line.
In fairness your Steam Deck backlog would be the same as your ROG Ally backlog
@@mechanicalmonk2020 in fairness, he said he already has a Steam Deck. So no really huge need to ditch the deck for the additional cost of an Ally at this point I think is what he is saying.
Don’t have either , but Rog Ally can emulate switch perfectly. I’ll be picking it up for sure .
I have both a Switch and Steamdeck. Thr Ally plays all thr games in my steam library much better.
Re Rockstar launcher crashing: does that almost daily on my Steam deck. As far as standby on Steam Deck, I literally leave mine sleeping in my bag for a week to 10 days at a time sometimes and it’ll still have 35% battery. Standby on Steam Deck is epic at sleeping, it’s like the housecat of handhelds. Sleeps great, awake at a moments notice ready to roll.
I completely agree with Austin on this. This isn't a console. It's a PC. Its just like any PC. You will mess with the settings when you are setting up the game to either get the best graphics or the best performance. The best part is that you have those options and you have the power to give you what you want. This is very similar to a laptop. Except laptops die a lot faster than any of these handhelds. There are many advantages to using windows. The only thing that windows is really missing is a handheld mode. Like I mentioned before, a lot of people using these windows handhelds have not used them as their every day device. A lot of the issues they speak of already has fixes
I hope we get more of the per-game settings options like we have on the Deck. That part was huge for me. Custom controllers, custom performance settings loaded when you start the game. And community-based controller schemes, you can download and test alternative controller layouts.
You can 100% run Cyberpunk on the Steam deck... easily.
Came here to say that. Cyberpunk even has a Steam Deck preset in the settings, how was this guy unable to get it working?
Yea this guy needs to be fact checked, I’ve been playing it for about 2 weeks on my steamdeck!
I was able to play CyberPunk just fine on Steamdeck..
Cyberpunk literally has a Steam Deck graphical setting. It is definitely playable on Steam Deck.
Something you didn't mention at all - the steam deck isn't available in many countries. The ROG ally is available pretty much everywhere, and can be bought at bricks and mortar retail stores.
Add the fact that this can actually use your non steam launcher (gamepass/xbox, origin/ea, uplay/ubisoft connect, battlenet, unreal launcher, gog, etc), and can also be used as a regular windows computer.
Bro I can't find an ROG Ally here in the Philippines yet. 😅
As a heavy Steam Deck user I really appreciate the Rog Ally it looks cool and it's great to see handhelds constantly getting better and more importantly cheaper which is great for us
yeah but windows sucks! they should be using steamos instead... way better to control and you have the option to use its desktop version...but with windows it does not work at all! adm popups showing all the time! things just doesnt work on a tv... and the handheld experience is horrible with no touchpad
@@bilihileydson agree totally, love SteamOS and the 0 overheads
@@bilihileydsonit doesn't suck 😂
It gives you a total OS aka full deskop and it's capability over a crappy limited OS
Plus you have access to modding xbox games pass and the fair bit of extra power over the steamdecks fast aging hardware.
The price maybe a bit to much fir some but it's totally worth it imo especially for the long run.
Cyberpunk absolutely runs in steamdeck. Currently playing it on the deck, having a good time.
i dont know why he said it doesnt run , mine looks great running at 45 fps
I switched to GE proton on my Steam deck and it has made a WORLD of difference with game compatibility and playability
I can't believe there's still people out here with a steam deck and not using protondb
Yep, the game compatibility issue is only an issue for existing PC gamers, Steam Deck already has compatibility with more games than any console
@@crashdude7589 well it's still technically an issue even if you're a console player because of stuff like destiny 2 or cod not being supported on it for no real reason
@Sinus Lebastian sure but then you just do what console players have already been doing since the start, you just find a different game to play, alot of popular PC titles weren't on console, they just had to play something else.
@@HearMeLearn But those games only matter if you play competitive games online, which will always offer a better experience on Desktop anyway
You can absolutely run Cyber Punk on Steam Deck……
i literally played 98 hours of the 111 hours of it on my steam deck with a solid 40 fps and textures on high and it looked great. I WAS SO MAD WHEN HE SAID THAT BRO HAHAHA IM GLAD I FOUND YOUR COMMENT
I’m gonna wait. I preordered it twice and cancelled. I have a Steam Deck and it’s nice. If they figure out the software, it would make sense to upgrade, but not before.
Canceled it also once 😂 But now I will keep the second order and will build myself an opinion about the Ally. Too many tests and different opinions like for the Steam deck at release. After I had the hands on my SD I couldn't give it away anymore 😂 Maybe it will be love at second sight with the Ally 😅
@@rogert250 I’m sure it’s nice, I just don’t think we need to go crazy with preorders. I don’t think it’ll be sold out for months and months. And the Steam Deck will tide me over until I see some software updates that makes it more competitive.
@@rogert250 I feel like ASUS must have produced a ton of these, hence the preorders still available and the $699 price point.
@@j_dun4830didn't Asus say they aren't selling as many pre orders as they hoped?
14:00 That's such a great feature of the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch. Every console, handheld, gaming device needs this going forward.
Yeah, people will have so much hate when they pull out their rogue ally to play on the plane, and it turns out to be incredibly hot with a dead battery.
@@TheRealStus"I KNEW I SHOULD'VE BOUGHT A STEAM DECK!!!"
Steam Deck has better quality of life features fr.
You can hibernate windows
Being able to sleep mode and not have to quit my game is a big feature for me with SD. I literally take it everywhere and play when I have the chance.
Considering you can still pre-order one and get it day one I don’t think they are selling as fast as ASUS thought they would be.
Didn't think of this until I saw your comment, I agree. Been almost a week since their launch event and start of pre-orders and can still go on Best buy and order one for day one arrival for like $760 and change (cause of tax).
I would've thought by now there would be a bit of a wait for arrival.
@@vic8230 it's an early adopter device that's targeting Windows PC gaming max power bros. The problem is those people are already rocking Aya Neos, OneXPlayers etc.
On the other side the base Deck is half the cost and is upgradeable to double the storage for an extra 100 notes or so. The price is better than I expected in the US but in the UK it's £130 more expensive than the 512GB deck and doesn't include a carry case. So more like £160/£170 more expensive by the time you're done. Which compared to the base deck just makes it worse.
I think the Steam Deck is like the Game Boy from the old days. It's not the most powerful, it doesn't have the best display, but it's got the most value and that's what matters. I think the Ally will not be successful, or at least it will not outsell the Steam Deck.
I mean…. obviously it won’t outsell it, because it’s at a higher price-point.
Most value of all has the Nintendo switch with its crazy sales that touch 140 million copies
@@dimitrismitalakis2803The Switch is the best value? Is that a joke? I love my Switch but it’s not even close
Steam deck still is more efficient at 10 watts and below. Also keep in mind, gaming on the Ally at 1080P and 120 hertz, you can expect about 45 minutes of Run time!
The best case perfect scenario for batter life on Ally is about 4 hours, and steam deck is about 7.
If you are wanting a decently long game sesh, you will need to drop settings down nearly identical to steam deck settings, and even then get considerably less battery time than SD since it's chip is less efficient.
If you can only game 45 minutes, is it even considered a portable device?
I can also game everything at ultra on my laptop with 144 hertz panel, but only for 45 minutes, and I DO NOT consider my laptop portable.
Battery life is part of the equation that defines a devices portability!
so. I recently got the Deck. I would still get it. I use the trackpads in every game I have except Forza horizon 5. so therefore that's the only game I consider would be better for me on Ally. I just hate using joystick instead of mouse/trackpad for fps games. although I do mostly just use it plugged in. I bought a 10 foot cable and it beats wearing the battery down for when you may actually need it. I prefer to just have it charged and charging if I can. so that is a benefit of Ally. the extra performance with that. maybe steam will let you overclock or something with the deck plugged in.
a person of discerning taste, I also partake of the 10 ft cable couch club, I hope for your sake the cable has a 90 degree bend, or you're using an angle adapter, it makes a world of difference in terms of wearing out the charging port with mechanical stress
Battery for gaming is over now, more than a decade. We must forgot that we played for around 6 or 7 hours with Nintendo DS. I will certainly use my Ally as a remote stream for my PS5.
I have windows on my steam deck, it was super easy to install. And I love windows, having all the games and gamepass, that's where the steam deck really shines, so the rog ally will be awesome to anyone getting it.
Awesome, can't wait to get mine!!!!
Well said !!!
Really shines with Windows? No thanks
You're missing a few things for sure. Since Valve has their own operating system they can push game-specific performance improvements, like Elden Ring had stutter issues on every PC at launch but it was fixed in SteamOS right away thanks to Valve. Due to the hardware being the same they can distribute shader caches to Deck games to reduce load times or stutter depending on the game. They can curate games and inform customers that they run great out of the box with the Verified Badge similar to a seal of quality.
The whole point of it is that they have made a console that is also open. If you want to be curated you can and have a good experience without doing anything extra, but you can also tinker if you want and do anything else that Valve hasn't tested like on a PC, it's the best of both worlds.
The Ally is good, I would never knock it and I can even excuse Windows not having a handheld gamepad mode. But I find it odd that some people ignore the benefits of curation.
P.S. I'd like to have the Ally but can't justify it since I couldn't play many of the games as well as on the Steam Deck due to the lack of touchpads. Huge omission IMO, this way you are basically limited to console games, or I should say games that don't greatly benefit from having a mouse and hotkeys
@@Generic_TH-cam_Username_ wrong, and windows has gamepass.
It would've definitely been a contender if it didn't have that silly proprietary port.
If they had just thrown thunderbolt onto this thing and let people connect it to any GPU enclosure with USB-C outpu, it would've been a game changer.
Edit: I played through Cyberpunk when they verified earlier in the year on my Steam Deck. I had no problems with it. Solid 40fps the entire time. Maybe you guys were using the wrong version of proton or something? I've also tested RDR2, Elden Ring, Dark Souls 1/2/3, Sekiro, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Biomutant, and Death Stranding, which are all playable to varying degrees.
The problem with ally is the lack of track pads. Not just to use as a mouse but they have a range of options. As in mapping buttons to them. I use them as hotkeys for some shooters.
Never used the trackpads on the deck when I had one.
@@SEVENTEENPOINT1 cope then you probably just play console games on it
@@SEVENTEENPOINT1you were missing out. I use them in almost every game I play. Kind of like the back buttons. But if the game your playing has a hot key bar you can map those numbers to the track pad. Or games that don’t have controller support.
@@traestephen7276 Projecting much?
@@CaptAxolotl I have a Steam Controller, the trackpads on the deck are a total downgrade. Way too small to be useful. Used gyro instead for aiming. I also just use joystick mouse for games that need a mouse. Works fine.
You can run Cyber Punk on the steam deck. I've played it myself.
He said he wants plug and Play....
We're at the turning point where new games are so shit it's not even worth buying a new PC or new console for them. So these handhelds are able to perfectly run the best games already. I honestly hope these things get more popular and easier to use because it feels like it just makes more sense to have these things as your all-in-one device.
That's pretty much the reason I want one. The new games are god awful however, with what's already currently available + the fact that it's an emulation beast, I can have pretty much every game I want on a single, tiny, portable device. Since the Ally uses Windows 11, compatibility should be fine so it's easier to use unlike the Steamdeck and for older games, it's better to emulate them, whether a PC port exists or not to avoid headaches and troubleshooting.
My only complain is that the batteries aren't quite there yet which is unfortunate. I hope ASUS can mitigate this problem and hopefully I will get one later this year, perhaps a revision model of the Ally.
its only good for some console type games... its useless to me without trackpads. I use the trackpads on my Deck for everything, they are awesome... can't live without them.
Love your chat here. Just wanna say, Matt, it's not defeating the purpose of handheld device. Let's say if suddenly Switch gives you an option to tune the TDP, but you can still game as usual if you don't touch that, do you say it defeats the purpose of handheld? Both the Steam Deck and this Rog Ally can run games without tuning anything. But it's just that the vendors now give you open options to tune it the way you like, does not defect the purpose of handheld.
I think his point was that to make it playable for long periods due to poor battery life and bad UX, you have to plug it in and even use an external keyboard (and at times, an external display), then it's no longer a handheld, it's an underpowered gaming PC.
@@mda187 this. a 30 watt gpu mode with a 40wh battery gives you less than an hour of gameplay. if you are plugged ito the wall why not have a discrete GPU with even more power?
@@mda187 these pc handhelds are all underpowered gaming pcs. Honestly I am not really sold on the whole pc handhelds after getting the deck. If games were optimised for this hardware (like the switch or something) it would be a bit better.
@@168original7 Deck Verified is the answer
ShareDeck is very useful for a bunch of popular games, hope it gets more contributions. His point was that the Ally's advantage is better performance, but that performance isn't worth much is you can't get any battery endurance. The extremely bad performance at low power is the problem.
Ironically if the Deck performed the same as now at lower wattage but got a big boost when docked, people would be praising it. It's about freedom of choice, and when your choices are "bad performance vs bad battery life" some people are going to complain. I mostly expect 3-4 hour battery life on my Deck.
Im having a hard time finding that video you made @austin on what exploits to use to make it a gaming pc. Any chance you could link it?
Got the Ally (z1 extreme version) and the performance I get out of this is astonishing. Everything looks and plays so good at 900p (even Crapfield). I always play docked cause I want the max performance and I haven’t felt anything less that this being an equivalent to a good gaming laptop (cause everything looks great and crisp on this screen even on low-medium settings). VRR also plays a major role in the feeling of variable framerate!!!
What's funny is most TH-camrs say "ohh it's only $50 more than the deck" but no, it's not
If you buy a $400 steam deck and upgrade it, the total cost to get it to be "maxed out" (basically same spec as the $650 one) it'll be like $550-600 at most for good quality products(aftermarket SSD and screen protector and microSD and other stuff)
The overwhelming number of people are not going to "upgrade" a $400 Steam Deck beyond adding an SD card. So yes, the Ally is only $50 more for most potential buyers.
@@JB-tp6uj 256gb model is also very popular. Considering most people don't pay taxes for the Deck this is still a $200 difference.
@@mechanicalmonk2020 But it's still not a 1 to 1 comparison. Of course there should be a difference in price...that model of the Steam Deck has half the storage and less power and IO than the Ally. The real comparison is between the 512gb SD and the Ally....and in that comparison, it's only $50 more for the overwhelming number of potential buyers.
People will go and get it but then realise it’s to early and then sell it because is windows.
I’m never getting rid of my steam deck. I love it. Plane, car, Motorhome the steam deck is awesome
People will keep it for the same reason, i didn’t like how restricted steam deck was out of the box. And no, I don’t have the time to tweak it, I am 35 years old and have way more things to worry about than get games to work
@@TerrannotOP Generally you know in five minutes if a game will run well. And with per-game settings, you only need to fiddle with stuff once. You can also get premade controller maps from the community if you don't like the default. It's painfully easy for me and I consider myself to be very busy.
It is ASUS though, so how is the warranty and how big is the fireball when they explode?
The Ally actually performs *worse* than the Deck at the lowest power profile. Being better than the Deck in docked mode is nice, I guess, but it would still very much perform like an entry-level PC, which is unsatisfying on a big screen or a 4K TV. I just think the Ally doesn't know what it wants to be. Consider that even Nintendo made the Switch Lite specifically without docking ability.
"The Ally actually performs worse than the Deck at the lowest power profile." - For now... and its not even launched live yet with more optimizations coming Im sure.
@@derekdrozdzakIt will get better but won't beat the SD. Dave2d mentioned that the SD is better at lower power because it has a custom built chip designed for low power. Ally is using a customized laptop chip that's designed for higher power usage so it becomes very inefficient at low power. No amount of firmware update can make up for hardware inefficiencies like that. That's the price of higher on paper specs, you have laptop specs but dont have the same power as a laptop.
1. For me ROG Ally cost almost 2x price of Steam Deck (i paid like ~400$)
2. I got Win 11 Pro on my Steam Deck with few plugins/addons and all work "almost" perfect(I mean it's great but whole devices have some issues).
3. Spare parts - I can find almost all parts for my Deck on iFixit, ASUS didn't said single word about it and im like 99% sure they will be not available in my country.
4. COLOUR - White? No jokes.
I wonder how long, if possible, till some modder/hacker gets steam os running on this.
Never gonna happen 😂😂😂 just buy a steamdeck already 😅😅😅
Never said I wanted any of them
pretty quickly and easily... it won't be hard at all, its just a PC and HoloISO is hacked version of SteamOS people are using on other devices already.
Just got mine yesterday, and i feel most,if not all, the "problems" they are bringing up have been fixed. Prices have come down too since this vid came out. I got a practically new open box z1 extreme version from best buy for $499. Brand new sealed was $599. I think alot of em had an issue with a sticky bumper button, so ppl just returned em. Which mine did have that problem but it was such an easy 10 min fix. Im absolutely loving this thing!
Yep, Windows has always been the problem for these type of devices. At first, I didn't agree with Valve's decision to go the Linux route and bake in their own software but after that released and after all the tweaks and optimization, I totally understand why they had to do it. You can't get what they've achieved simply by tweaking Windows. Asus wasn't the first to try this, and they won't be the last.
Valve is trying to kill WIndows, so there's that.
If Microsoft actually optimizes the system, as well as the UI, for handheld gaming it might give Valve a run for it's money. However that's very unlikely. At least it's unlikely that Microsoft will put as much effort into it as Valve has been doing.
@@nathanlamaire which is a good thing, holy shit we would no longer need to worry about a single massive corporation abusing or doing anything we disagree with our software
It's a bit more than tweaking because Linux is open source Valve can look at the code, identify improvements/new ways of doing things and then code and test them. Submit those changes to kernel maintainers/driver teams/ get the changes peer reviewed and eventually accepted. You just can't do that with a proprietary O/S and drivers.
Windows run greats on the steam deck and who the hell doesn't use windows to game on pc wtf.
What do you mean you can't play Cyberpunk 2077 on the Steam Deck? There are so many videos showing it in action on the Steam Deck and it has its own "Steam Deck" mode for the settings.
I have cyberpunk on steam deck on steam os. Plays freaking awesome and looks awesome
i literally played 98 hours of the 111 hours of it on my steam deck with a solid 40 fps and textures on high and it looked great. I WAS SO MAD WHEN HE SAID THAT BRO HAHAHA IM GLAD I FOUND YOUR COMMENT
Every time I see people ok with 40fps, I cringe. Why are people ok with so little. I can never understand people that demand so little. 60 hz is the minimum for gaming. Under 60 hz is unplayable in 2023.
So like, what happens if you plug into a battery bank performance wise? Does it think it's 'powered' enough to get the 35w performance?
you have a good question right there. Arent the large watt battery banks fairly expensive? I would just plan to plug in the ally to a wall outlet most of the time anyways if the extra power is needed that badly. If I get 1-2 solid uninterrupted gaming sessions any more its a blessing anyways.
Watch for a sale, you can get an Anker jumbo bank for a decent price. Or some other reputable brand. The key is it needs to offer minimum 25W output, preferably more like 40W just for Performance mode. You want something like a "laptop power bank".
With my Deck I can tuck a 76Wh pack into the notch in the case, that gives me 10-15 hours of total playtime in most of my games. Even running uncapped I still get around five hours plus, which should be similar to the Ally in Performance mode. Ally in Turbo might only get 2-2.5 hours with the same pack.
I think it will be more interesting when Valve releases a more general installer or imager for Steam OS (at least for OEMs), and we start seeing seeing manufacturers coming out with their own versions of a Steam Deck-like device. I think I heard OneXplayer wants to make one, and are just waiting for the day Valve releases that version of Steam OS.
If it's coming pre-installed there shouldn't be a wait. It doesn't matter if you need to be a "power user" to install steamOS/holoISO of the manufacturer is doing it for you ahead of time. The process isn't intensive so while it requires some competence you'd think that the hardware makers can figure out how to pre-install an OS
Since I treat the SD as a console, I might wanna wait till there is an SD 2 or SD pro
the things i love about my steam deck are cokmpletely lost on this ally like quick resume and support im prolly going to cancel my preorder
"Well running is a generous term for the switch" LMAO Subbed!
I believe the pioneer in this space was GPD with their Win series
YES! I remember it's been there way longer than Aya.
This. I’ve considered selling my steam deck for a gpd win 4
The first GPD Win released before the Switch did in 2016 at a price of $350, and I ended up not getting a Switch because Skyrim with mods for $0 sounded more appealing to me than Skyrim without mods for $60. I was really hoping for PC handhelds to take off, I didn't really expect it but here we are. So cool.
@@CaptAxolotl - The New ones with 7840U have better performance than Ally at lower TDPs like 10 watts
The first one was fine for Starcraft and such, worked okay. Problems with defective batteries, a lot of people had to replace theirs. And just like the SD it was a rotated portrait-format screen so some games didn't work properly. The SD's secret sauce is the OS and the presentation layer silently compensating for whatever the game needs.
At. 3:00 he says he couldn't get cyberpunk 2077 to run on the steam deck. I put in at least 100 hours of cyberpunk 2077 on the steam deck. With a mixture of high medium and low settings at mostly 30 frames per second
I can’t wait to get a Steam Deck.
I can't wait to sell my SteamDeck 🤪
@@j_dun4830Someone can't wait to buy it from you and be happy
@@j_dun4830 already sold mine. Waiting on the rog ally
@@Rizh-Sha good move - it's perfect the guy buying mine asked if early June is cool - couldn't work out any better.
@J_DUN rog is for people who know how to use computers pretty much for pc gamer who wanna handheld but if you not familiar with computers I wouldn't do it, imma stay with a steam deck I have a gaming PC and laptop if I wanna play a game I'll just download it
I want to buy an handheld gaming device and right now im tempted on getting a steam deck to game on the 10 watt mode to maximize battery
From what most other reviewers have mentioned, while the Ally can overpower the Deck at max TDP, the Deck outperforms the Ally at low (sub-10W) TDP. So if you actually intend to use these as a mobile device, you’d be better off with a Deck.
EDIT: According to Dave2D (5/29), even with the newest drivers that substantially improve 15+W performance this still holds true for sub-10W. Obviously Elden Ring or Cyberpunk at 3-5 W is a pretty bad idea, but plenty of games-for example, turn-based, indies, and puzzle-are going to do just fine and won’t benefit all that much from the higher end.
That's not true, the Ally can run over 10w unplugged so its more powerful whether plugged in or not
@@conner_productions yeah but way less battery at higher tdp
@@grantmckenzie787 I mean it'll overpower the deck at just 15w, theoretically you'll get 2 hours or more out of that. That's totally fine for a powerful pc gaming handheld
@@conner_productions If I want high fidelity, I have a desktop rig for that. The entire point of a mobile device is that it’s mobile. 2 hours is hardly acceptable, and it’ll be even worse a couple years from now as the Li-ion battery degrades, as all Li-ion batteries do.
@@bubbledoubletrouble 2 hours of great 40-60fps gameplay is 100000% acceptable
I hate fiddling with settings. I also dont see anything that runs windows to be good with how much resources it takes. If ally was like steamdeck with mousepads/mappable buttons running steams OS i think I'd consider the ally. All the roundabout things id have to do to play games I'm just not feeling ally.
probably gonna get one since Valve won't sell me a deck, and probably going to end up throwing ChimeraOS on it once the drivers are sorted. Watched ETA Prime's video on it and it seemed to be running fairly well already, and I imagine it'll get better once devs get their hands on the devices. I absolutely do not want to mess around with windows on a handheld, I'd just get horrible windows CE flashbacks or something
I have an "old" Aya Neo Pro with ChimeraOS, and it works pretty well, though ChimeraOS hasn't really made an easy way to control TDP for that device. The only other thing is that I like the Steam Deck controls much better overall. The Ally does have full sized sticks though, so that should be an improvement.
I find that the offset joysticks on the Aya Neo Pro can be aggravating when you end up hitting the right stick while you're pressing buttons in some games (many games this doesn't matter in because the stick doesn't do anything during the parts of the game where you would be hitting buttons). The other thing is the missing controls. There are no trackpads on the Aya Neo, and the gyro doesn't work as a control method in tandem with the X-Box controls. Perhaps the offset joysticks on the Ally are far enough from the buttons to not be accidentally activated, but I don't believe there are any gyro controls so far, and there certainly aren't trackpads.
I think we need something like XBOX OS - stripped down windows 11, laser focused on gaming and XBOX Gamepass
PlayStation needs to make a new handheld with an oled screen that can play any PlayStation 5 games at 720p
He try to sell bad device, next! I’ll wait for version 2 or 3. While I’m waiting going to pick up 64gb steam deck and upgrade SSD.
I agree with "The hype is here, it will sell out for now but then it will die down". I like that steam deck is not getting a yearly refresh. More games will be optimized for steam deck compared to other handhelds.
One literally runs windows meaning games will always get optimized not to mention driver updates
Umm cyberpunk definitely runs on the deck, played it on PC and on deck and I'm surprised at how well it actually runs considering it can struggle on a full PC. Not saying it's perfect but to say it full out does not work is blatantly false.
I personally like the fact that it runs Windows and have already planned on getting a compact mouse and keyboard I can use with it when needed.
You finna need it most of the time, gonna need a big carrying case for that battery bank too, Goodluck lugging all that around
@@JDabz96 I didn't say anything about a battery bank? But alright
@Kenjionigod ohh based off everyone's input about battery life. It's a must
The software improvement of the Ally will depends on the ROG and the community, which is both a question mark right now. How good and committed are ASUS on software side of thing and does the community exists, and does ASUS support the community.
Also, with Steam Deck, you can have the power profile settings per game now. Is it already like that at the moment? If not, then you will have to fiddle with it everytime you change game.
Controller mapping too, and community-made controller maps.
I’ve also played a lot of games through the epic game store. You have to do a work around using heroic game launcher as a non steam but I have also had no issues with that either
Last time I checked THPS 1+2 doesn’t work.
@@SEVENTEENPOINT1I haven’t tried that. Have played a few games through epic.
@@SEVENTEENPOINT1 It works now.
Dude on the left sold me on Steam Deck, but damn, this ROG Ally does look REALLY nice. With the bangin' processor, I could also use it for SDR type stuff listening for aliens. There is no question that software will always improve, and major companies will start to optimize for stuff like it.
With a Linux-based OS, you can compile the kernel and tweak and system configuration to EXACTLY what your hardware needs, meaning improvements to battery life and performance. You can't do that with Windows
I think developers need to start focusing on Linux as at very least a second-class citizen for gaming.
The ROG Ally is a impressive piece of handheld, but I really think they should have went with a custom Linux system just like Valve.
And if they went with that route, I believe the price would be higher. The reason why they managed to cut the price down because Microsoft subsidized it, so it can be "official" Game Pass handheld machine.
@@OneWingedVic yeah, this is the real reason why they didn't do it. Custom Linux development, even with the help from Valve, may have significant cost because of the need to manually develop a compatible solution. Not to mention, the need to publish the source code to Linux mainline (except you wanna be a dick like Nvidia, of course)
Nah men, you bump it up to turbo mode and yes you can play 10+ fps than the steam deck but battery just die. I rather play on my steam deck at stable 10 less fps but battery is better
I'm extremely happy with my Deck. If something comes along that absolutely unquestionably eclipses it and makes it obsolete then I will be first in line, but I don't think this is an enormous step forwards. If I didn't have either device then I would definitely have been tempted towards it, but as it is I'm not giving up my Deck.
i would say ROG is sidestep .... kinda a product for bit difference audience ... with its focus on high on paper specs insteand of portablity .
But both aswell as the chinese deviced (GPD, Aya, OneX) are signs of quite amazing and interesting future for handheld PCs
Steam Deck will always be unbeatable, especially if they make a Steam Deck 2 Electric Boogaloo in a few years. SteamOS is so seamless, and the huge amount of buttons and trackpads means it can even effectively absorb keyboard control schemes. Community configs are a godsend too for a device like the deck especially, though even on the Ally and stuff they can be nice
To get the convenience, you can boot right into the big picture mode? It'll behave almost like the stream deck then?
Matt needs to research more before he talks cyberpunks runs great on the steamdeck
Matt is right. I am not buying something to fiddle with the settings. I am not a PC gamer. I turn on my switch or PS5 and play. That's why I like them. I don't want to waste my time doing setting adjustments.
Steam Deck usually works immediately, in the worst case you play around with settings for a few minutes and choose a community-made controller setup. It can store performance and controller settings for each game so you DON'T have to keep changing them around for different games.
@@passintogracegoldenyearnin6310 Is it worth the price? It seems a bit pricey for a first handheld. I wanted to wait for the next one to see if they work out the issues with it.
@@Kikibrat2 Depends, really. Sounds like it will be at least a year before the next Switch, but you could also say the next Switch is finally only a year away.
I would say, in terms of value....the Switch Lite is cheap at 200 but the real Switch for 300 is better. Docked mode, bigger screen, replaceable controllers. Switch OLED for 350 is also an upgrade in picture quality and better kickstand.
So then the Steam Deck is 400, plus like $30-40 for a 256GB MicroSD to get decent storage. $50-100 more than Switch OLED. It can technically emulate a Switch, but mostly it can play lots of games made for PC. You will get better picture quality and better frame rate on Steam deck. You also may need to change some settings the first time you run a game, mostly to change the controls or improve battery life. Downloadable controls are built into Steam and you can have the Deck save different power settings for each game based on your preference. There is a small, but real chance that an update will temporarily break a game (this happened with RDR2). It does not have as good of battery life as the Switch but it's better than most handhelds.
You can install other games stores and various emulators on the Steam Deck. You may be able to play spme games you already own. Steam has sales up to 75% off regularly. Overall playing on the Deck is cheaper than Switch because the games can be much cheaper.
Ally is 600 for the base model and 700 for the extreme model, with no independent testing on the base model yet. It sounds like there are updates fixing some of the early reported issues, software is improving. At medium power it's faster than the Deck and at high power it's much faster, but at LOW power it seems to run very poorly. It's between the Switch and the Deck in terms of size and weight. I think the battery life is a big problem if it can't run well at low power, and if it needs to be plugged in I could get a 3050 Ti laptop or an HX80G mini desktop for the same money.
I think the Steam Deck still rules the game for now. Switch is cheapest up front but the games are expensive. Ally is more expensive and doesn't seem like a real leap in _handheld_ gaming unless you're willing to stay plugged into a 3m USB cable at all times. The big thing with the Deck is making sure any new game runs well while you're still in the refund window.
The biggest power play Valve could do, is to release SteamOS to the public before this release and support for the new chip. I'm going to buy this and intend on running steamOS(HoloISO) instead of windows besides a handful of games that can't run on SteamOS.
I'd love for them to do this just to see if Asus tries to lock it down and keep you from booting into Linux. It's pretty obvious that Microsoft is subsidizing the price on this thing (if you don't think this is the case, why is the Head of Xbox Hardware, Roanne Sones, sitting in their launch event interview?). It looks bad to Microsoft if people start installing Linux on it after probably propping this release up.
@@mda187 you know, it's entirely possible that both the Deck and the Ally just cost less than their price to make.
We've been conditioned so much with decades of the "loss leader" myth that we're unwilling to believe that a good deal could just be a result of good design and economies of scale.
@@mechanicalmonk2020 Very possible, no "NVidia tax" on the Ally. I've gotten full size Ryzen 7 laptops for about $600.
Also for the SD, Gabe said the goal was to "not lose money on each device". Their original sales model estimated the $400 model would be the most popular, so the base model should cost less than that to produce and ship. The $530 and $650 models would therefore have about $100 and $180 better margins at least. Based on high sales of middle and best models, they probably paid off the development cost already. They said a lot of testing was volunteer hours.
But as the Ally is being sold in retail and not directly, when you also include the "retail tax" yes it's likely that their open partnership with Microsoft includes a subsidy. Even $20 per unit is an extra $20, right? The bigger question is whether the Microsoft partnership includes some real help with improving the interface and battery life.
The Steam Decks track pads makes me never want to switch. It's so useful. The Rog Ally not having them really is a shame.
Can't wait to load SteamOS on the Ally.
@@Generic_TH-cam_Username_ sir, it's not the "why"; it's the "why not"! Also, I have a Steamdeck thats been modified heavily already, I love the thing, but... The Steamdeck isn't an Ally running SteamOS because... Windows is just awful at handling handhelds like this. Also, when is my Steamdeck going to to support Thunderbolt, Gabe!?
@@Generic_TH-cam_Username_ Thunderbolt is a fabric logic. It does more than "eGPU's". However an eGPU would be nice but isn't necessary for the Steamdeck. My biggest issue is connectivity that the Steamdeck is sorely missing. However, it's still in the top five handhelds world wide (in my book).
@@Generic_TH-cam_Username_ Well, one of the issues that you have with using a USB3.2 gen 2 port is the lack of fabric logic. Thunderbolt can chain up to four linked objects at once. For instance, my main machine (Intel i7 laptop 13th gen) is chained to a Drive bay, a 10gig network adaptor, an eGPU, and docking station. When I would get home at the end of the day, I would like having the laptop geared for work at work but, while at home I connect it to a docking station that has all of that connected to it, and keeps my games separate from my work machine. Now, sense I work from home all the time, no one can see the machine I like to main line.
I would like the deck to take the laptops place in my home computer usage BUT... Till Thunderbolt is supported, that's not going to happen. Technically, I could just live with the Drive bay (for games) and the eGPU for graphics power, however I would like to see the Deck take over as my main compute unit, (also yes, I do know that this is a niche part of the market, but I love it).
If this really is Gabe I'm talking to, I hope you hear my words, and understand my main complaint about Valves Steamdeck which, this is where the Ally has that machine beat... I would love to have the hardware of the Ally and the friendliness of the Deck... Like a Deck-ally... Decally... Or De-Calico, like the cat species. Anywho, thank you for reading and entertaining me with the brain storming moment.
5:15 I didn't have any problems setting it up unless someone doesn't have a XBOX/Microsoft account but other wise, no issues on my part and the online keyboard didn't have any problems at all
I have the Steam Deck and I absolutely love it.
I upgraded my internal ssd to 2tbs and it was shockingly easy. Migrating everything over was way easier than anything Windows has ever come up with.
I'm now looking into the DeckHD screen.
I am curious as to which device will be a better purchase in the long term. Being able to upgrade is a huge bonus in my eyes.
3 months later and we still have this issues on the software side with addition of design flaws that can potentially kill your microSD cards.
Thank you Matt for your skepticism and input on this device! Too many ppl are promoting it as the greatest instead of from a Ease-of-use standpoint. I appreciate both opinions, tbh.
Same!
I’ve been playing cyberpunk 2077 for about 2 weeks now on my steamdeck, on default power settings, using the “steamdeck” graphics preset in game and I get a pretty solid 30 fps, in fact I’m playing it right now in a hotel with it docked to my hotel TV. So I’m a bit confused on how he claims his steamdeck won’t run cyberpunk at all…
Also the epic games store works fine on my steamdeck, I recently just finished “A plague Tale: innocence” from the epic game store on my steamdeck. He really needs to get his facts straight, or maybe go into more detail on whatever problems he had, otherwise he’s just spreading misinformation…
Being able to play way more games because of windows is a big factor. I love gamepass on my pc, ive been able to play so many new good games because of it. So to me the game compatibility potential is enormous
You can boot into windows on a steam deck. From an SD even and it runs great. I have an SD with windows and anti-cheat games like Destiny 2 and Game Pass games installed on it. Valve actually released all the drivers for the Steam Deck for windows so people could to this. Then, when not playing games that need windows, I just reboot back into Linux and SteamOS.
@@mda187 Windows doesn't run great on Deck . I love my Deck but Windows is not good on it. Let's not lie to ourselves ...
@@losteden6390 this I gave up after all the bugs running it on an external ssd.
@@losteden6390 it'll be marginally better on the Ally... That's the problem
Windows itself has compatibility issues. Especially for older games.
You see people on reddit talking about how all they do on their steam deck is fiddle with the settings. So that is a dumb point to keep complaining about on the rog ally.
No because The Steam Deck still has it's place in the software department.
I'd argue with Matt, while yes being portable is nice, like 95% of my usage of the Steam Deck, and even the Switch, has been plugged in. I rarely if ever don't have access to a charger. Plus you can get some rather hefty battery packs. Plus, how long do you think it'll take for the community to get SteamOS/HoloISO working on this? I know I'll be swapping over to SteamOS as soon as it is viable on my Ally.
I mean even on battery if you don't mind tweaking your settings a little I managed to survive a 5 hour flight from Miami to Phoenix a few months ago just plugged into the seatback, yeah it doesn't charge at full speed but it was enough to slow the battery drain I still had like 14% when I landed and my new Baseus 65W 20kmah power bank just came in the mail.
But yeah the majority of my gaming hours are logged on the couch, with a 10 ft 90 degree bend cable with aftermarket 65w PD charger.
@@matthamende6359 would this Baseus 65W 20kmah power bank work just fine for the Ally you think?? The Ally comes with its own 65w charger so this should work fine for a power bank?
@@derekdrozdzak I mean I don't know for a fact but assuming that the Ally charger is 65W Power Delivery USB-C I would have to assume it works. The Steam Deck OEM charger that it includes is only a 45W, and the other charger I have is also 45W and it will stay 100% charged while I'm playing with full power draw. And at least from what I've read about the Ally it seems like the upper limit is about 35 to 40 TDP so it seems like it would still be fine. Seems like it goes on sale. I got it for $47 last week. So keep your eyes open or set up some tracking
Actually, GPD WIN (and subsequent GPD devices) are the true pioneer on this...Ayoneo kind of out competed GPD and is the current leader on this form factor on the higher end hardware (Steam Deck have less powerful hardwares)
They made mention of GPD at the end of the video, and said that they don't really recommend them because all the product they've had of theirs have died.
My favorite thing about watching these this is videos is trying to figure out which is Matt and Austin, which one is mom and which one is dad 😄
Their both Dad, trying to explain their choices to mom 😅
No youtube even said about most SD sold is the 64 GB and the Ally that they are reviewed is the highest model.
SD 64GB is 399 and ROG Ally highest mode is 699. It is 57% more expensive.
Lower model on ally will come out later, I think SD still holds up really well againts this new comer.
Not to mention asus is well known for their shitty support, and so far with SD, Valve actively supporting theirs and not to mention the community is awesome.
Matt tried to make a mountain out of spending a few seconds changing settings, yes I will absolutely take the performance over a few seconds of convenience
I’m with Matt on this one - I have 20-30 mins to game each night max. Fiddling with settings or updates would eat into that. I just want to pick up the device and game. Steam Deck & Switch allow that.
funny thing is that the screen on the ROG handheld is bigger than the first Eee pc.
701 was a beast.
I have a Steam Deck and I love it BUT being unable to play Windows dependent games is brutal. I find myself using my laptop more for that reason. The Ally hardware is superior and the main issues are the software which can be fixed. TLDR: I will be buying one eventually after they fix the software issues
You never dual booted windows on the deck? It's super easy and I got any game I want
Nice discussion. Just one thing bothered me. You can't play cyberpunk on the steam deck?? I've spent countless hours playing the game at solid 40-45fps and it's a great experience... Anyway... Rog ally it's a no go for me. It will cost around 920$ in Germany (cause need to buy a 40$ case)