Pro tip Dank: run a custom wattage setting in armory crate for 18w. Anything above or below that is just diminishing returns for FPS and that seems to be the sweet spot. It’ll save you a bit battery on the go as well
Wonder how tools like ThrottleStop (which I still use to get my modern (i7 with E-Cores / big.LITTLE) to work. Yes, I'm aware that ThrottleStop is just CPU, and it's been around for more than a decade. The desktop I'm typing this on now has an Asus board and I personally hate armoury crate, like 2GB of memory and SSD storage for literally no use to me. It probably works like a charm on the Ally though.
The Switch is actually not a bad device. It's cheap, it's simple, it just works, and Mario. Or Zelda. It doesn't have as much power as a PC handheld, sure, but the DS had even less power and people still love the Gameboy of all things. Now that games have switched from being fun to being pretty, a huge part of the fun of gaming now is upgrading your hardware and your specs to get the most optimal machine and I respect the grind because it's fun! Technology is exciting. But in the end I just want to have fun and graphics are better when used as an artform than when they're used to replace your real life grass in your front lawn which your Amazon driver is more well acquainted with at this point. The Switch gets me there more than my Steam Deck, and of course that's completely subjective, and yes the Deck has objectively more power for only about $50-100 more, but if you grew up a PC gamer, don't underestimate how much playing PC games with a controller will feel off. For emulation, someone will kill me for saying this but I feel like the Switch and Steam Deck are about on par, the Steam Deck winning only because of the library missing from Nintendo's offerings. I'm going to get cancelled 30 years from now for saying that
@therealwhite Switch is really only for Nintendo games. It's too weak to run a ton of games that the steam deck can, and you don't get access to nearly a billion indy games. I have both, and use the nintendo switch only when I want to play smash. Hell, even when I had the switch but no steam deck, I still never use the switch for anything other than smash. The games I wanted to play were either too demanding, or just straight up wasn't on the switch. I stand by the fact that there is next to zero reason to buy the switch over the steamdeck for anything other than exclusives.
@@therealwhitemy switch has dead zone issues because the switch was made so badly. Nintendo even admits it. Took me forever to load into New Horizons while the DS was a speedy convenient boi.
I am living for this modern trend of gaming PC handhelds. Whether it's the Steam Deck, the Ally, the Legion, or any other thing I don't happen to know about, it's just awesome that more people can get the freedom PC gaming brings with all the conveniences of console gaming.
If anyone is wondering why he didn't even mention the Steam Deck, it's most likely due to the Steam Deck not being officially avaliable in Australia as of the time of writing.
@@WiseAcres-qk3ik The complaint about a single usb port is fair, but I know Android phones can multitask just as well as a PC can. Heck, even Samsung Dex turns your phone into a PC that is limited to phone apps. It's really good! I use split screen and floating apps on my Galaxy Note 9 all the time, and the only real issue I run into is screen space.
@@Martin_the_Warrior alot of the songs are officially uploaded on the JSRF ost album, other songs like im not a model are actually licensed from other artists so check if they have them
Even after 6 months, when I open my Macbook Air in bed and get a whiff from a distance of that new smell. God, I want to have it forever. Make it a perfume concentrate, someone, please! I left it open at the office for 1-2 hours and a colleague smoked in the same room. When I opened it at home the smells combined. I cleaned it front to back and after a week or so it slowly got away and the new smell came back somewhat. Guess who's always closing his laptop and puts it back in the sleeve after every use.
Be very careful about using a SD card in the ROG Ally. There has been a growing amount of people having a problem where the Ally is literally cooking the SD card and the SD card slot rendering them not usable.
I will say that the Steam Deck definitely has the upper hand on the software front, their Linux skin is just much less janky than Windows. Hopefully Asus hasn’t made Linux drivers an issue for this device, running Valve’s software on this hardware would be great.
Asus sadly usually isn't very good with linux support, and I talk from experience. However I also never seen anyone testing Linux on the Ally. Is it even possible to boot other OSs on it?
@@azenyr yeah it is, chimeraOS is a steamOS like distro using gnome not kde, that has been getting optimizations for the Rog Ally, but its not at all a project affiliated with asus, Asus could not care less.
It's not Windows problem though. Tonnes of people have gone into details and it's actually rogs software incompatibility issues and tonnes of other stuff. They don't make good software
@@SteOhara Microsoft also don't make good software, so it's jank all the way down. I can't speak to the quality of the ROG software, but even if it were perfect, Windows itself isn't very well suited to a device like this, and it comes with issues that you can't fix by just slapping a launcher on top of it.
@@Desugan69 If that's a real, in box copy of Action 52 I doubt he's 1 Gritting it any time soon. I'd wager it's more likely he borrowed it for the gag tbh.
The amount of excitement I got when I saw BeamNG in the game library was incomprehensible. There's a joke among my friends and I where I only watch DankPods and play BeamNG sometimes both at the same time. Now that I know that my favorite TH-camr has played one of my favorite games is amazing
i think of beamNG a lot like i think of Stardew Valley. its kinda one of those games that even if you dont play much of it, it was cheap enough and hugely popular enough to warrant buying
portable gaming is amazing. Just two months ago I got an used PSP on a whim and fell in love with the concept. I admit I didn' understand before, but now I do. If playing FFVI on my way to university blew my mind, I can only imagine what the Deck or Ally can do
I know some people don’t get it, but honestly playing a game outside or something is really nice. Sometimes I load my onewheel onto the back of my motorcycle, ride to the beach or park and then onewheel around and find a spot to picnic, post up with a lunchable and my Nintendo switch or iPad and just enjoy the outdoors while I play Zelda or Skyrim… it’s amazing. I hear from people “why don’t you actually enjoy the outdoors” or whatever… but… I am! My way!
I remember not very long ago in 2020 when I got into handheld emulators I was looking for something exactly like the Steam Deck. Then Steam announced the Deck, and I wanted one since day one. Last year I bought one, and its absolutely perfect with nothing I could even think of changing. I'm loving that there's competition now so people can decide which one they like more.
i mean i love my deck but it has many issues. the main steam mode hates games with launchers, which is a lot of them and the desktop mode can't maintain a decent wi-fi signal to save its life, constantly cutting out and signal searching, despite the fact i've done the developer fixes. Any time ive wanted to just, check the internet, watch youtube, or download something off of Firefox like old PS2 ROMs or fan fixes for games, its been easier to just download them to my external hard drive using my PC or laptop and transfer them over. Lots of games that should work just don't and fiddling around with fixes and mods is a lot more frustrating than it should be. That said, when it works, its astounding. Beating challenging Elden Ring bosses or playing through older Rockstar games like Bully feels excellent with the deck.
@@quinnmarchese6313 That's an interesting experience, I've never had any of that really happen. Launchers have only been mildly aggravating because of using an SD card instead of onboard storage, but even that for me has just taken a bit of tinkering for maybe 30min max which for me at least is fun, but for most of just suggest getting a higher capacity model. For your wifi issue my only idea would probably be checking the actual hardware, because that's a strange issue I've never encountered. Hope you can figure it out, and once things work they work great and it's worth the work imo
@@HawkEM2 launchers are a bad idea in general because they screw with gpu control software like AMD adrenalin and NVIDIA whatever and just add time before you can play the game but certain anti cheats also really suck for the deck. as long as you can add "-skiplauncher" to the launch options or circumvent it with mods or some other way its usually fine, but like Rockstar games and plenty of others are marked unplayable. i recognize that unplayable doesn't really mean unplayable, rather that it'll take effort and fan fixes to work, it still sucks just how many of my games are just not rated to work even though they should. Also the suggestion to just "get the better model" is valid but entirely tone deaf--i got the cheapest model for a real world reason and its not on me for it work as intended. my current solution is to use my external drive and desktop to download anything non-steam and wait for valve to fix it, because my research has led me to the conclusion that its a rather common software issue that i cant just return it for, plus _its still good_ despite everything ive said, its just not worth more than the cheapest model for me regardless.
Windows really dragging this thing down. The biggest strength of the Steam Deck as far as I’m concerned is SteamOS. Hopefully they’ll open up the OS to other manufacturers at some point. Especially since they’re excluding so many countries by not selling The Deck worldwide.
You can put steam os on the Ally but then you do loose compatibility with certain windows games. I personally have a steam deck because i like the trackpads and am tired of windows
Windows was never built for this kind of system. SteamOS literally was, and had like a year of configuration to work well :/ What’s dragging this thing down, is Asus not making the “ROG menu” better, and giving the thing a sliding screen with a keyboard under it. Windows is literally made for regular PCs and laptops, not for these things. They would’ve had to make a special version of windows for these to function well. But at least you have big picture mods to avoid this.
@@Thewaterspirit57 I did hear windows for these type of devices is slowly getting better but some linux with proton is the only good way to go currently. Maybe a virtual windows machine for the few games that don't work. Another too is that ASUS probably changed a bunch of stuff in windows and made it not work as good as it could. Like getting the time wrong is really wierd.
The sweet spot is 18w TDP, get awesome performance and decent battery life. Its enough to play most AAA games. Finished RDR2, Dragons dogma and Cyberpunk 2077 all on this device portably so far. Steam cloud save is also a godsend especially when you play both on desktop and on your ally. Plenty of bolt on mods out there to upgrade your storage to beyond 2tb.
Ive got the steamdeck. But the lenovo leigon go is likely what ill upgrade to when it comes out. You can detach the controllers and use one as a mouse!
Lol I just got a steam deck, realized I'm not interested in playing most steam games handheld, loaded up batocera on the SD card and it's become a very expensive emulation handheld for me to play the hell out of tony hawk 3 😂
I also have a steamdeck, but i would love ROG ally better... if it were linux instead. There are problems with both OS sure, but at least on linux i can fix them, or the community already did and you can do it for yourself. The offical windows solution for most of the problems is to just reinstall it...
I have a steam deck, and I’ve really wanted to know what someone who just shows their experience would think of the ROG ally, like normal reviewers don’t give you the actual vibes of the day to say, dankpods is THE go to feel good youtuber for me
@@nobodynoone2500Rog has doubled performance plugged in, it’s smaller, lighter than SD. The joystick is on a more natural position. If u don’t play FPS, dislike the track pad thing on SD then Ally is ur pick
@@zihechen3111 yeah but the ally is more than double the price right? because at that point id feel it'd be better just get a gaming laptop? now that said im not trying to argue im trying make sure i am informed so is it truly worth more the double the base steamdeck?
@@H4L0GUY117 it doesn't get double the performance, but it's not double the price. its around like 50-70% faster in best case scenarios, but like for like storage wise the ally is like 200 aussie bucks more. 1100 vs 1300. if you buy the cheapest deck with only EMMC storage then its 500 cheaper, but you will need to get a bigger ssd
Been using my Ally for months now. No regrets. Swapped out the SSD and am literally using this as my work desktop with 4 monitors. THE best purchase all year.
That's not really a flex it's a really sad "I paid a lot for this device when I could've gotten a laptop with way more power than it for the same price" Gigantic oof.
@@inuyasha331 you're definitely the type that is "I am just jealous because he is happy on what he bought and I am just here sad and broke so I just spread hate on the Internet".
My Steam Deck is basically my main for Cyberpunk. You can also install a 1200p screen and hall effect sticks with 0 dead zone. It’s just so easy to pick up whenever
I have a Steam Deck myself and it's great. I wouldn't want it as my main gaming unit, but for travel it plus a thin and light laptop is much nicer to carry around than a chonky gaming laptop! I feel like Windows is the main thing holding these handhelds back, which is one of the big advantages to the Steam Deck, it being a Linux based and all. One way or the other, it's such a cool class of computer and I'm glad you're enjoying them too!
This video alone made me decide to get the deck. The work valve and the community do to create a seamless experience is everything when it comes to personal devices. handhelds are learning what the mobile phone market had to learn the hard way, you need a custom OS for mass adoption
Had mine since launch. Love this thing. Been playing stuff that i wouldn't have bothered with on my desktop. Just finished Starfield which was very Bethesda'ish and now having a blast with Phantom liberty which runs beautifully. Just beware of the SD card issues, mine got a divorce and refuse to see each other.
Try another card. If you're old one wasn't temp rated it likely just cooked that particular card, a pretty common issue with all hot devices accepting SD, thus they have advertised operating ranges
Starfield runs on the Ally? I’m gonna have to give that a shot. I tried playing hogwarts legacy on it and it was a no-go so I just wrote off any new titles
@@Fetidaf I played on 1080p medium. FPS dropped a bit below 30 sometimes in large cities. Everywhere else it was fine. I read that some people played on ultra with performance mods, but it didn't work for me and i didn't feel the need to mess with it.
@@TheTyisawesome It was Sandisk pro or smth like that. Pretty sure it was good enough, it's a widespread problem, often it's the reader itself that gets fried. Just got a 2tb ssd and gave up on it.
real ones remember the PS Vita; that thing was a beast, Sony just didn't support it long term. It had PS3 quality graphics and a damn good Uncharted game, among others and a huge chunk of the PSP library as well.
Wrong, the only external GPU you can run is ASUS's "XG Mobile" unit via their proprietary interface. The $2,000 USD XG Mobile 4090 is actually a laptop 4090 limited to 150W. It gets outperformed by a *desktop 4080.* The eGPU support is such a letdown when you actually do research into it.
@@Spork0 the ROG site says 150W max tdp....regardless, it's insanely overpriced for 4070ti performance and a USB hub. And stupid that they didn't just put thunderbolt on the thing for true eGPU support.
Hearing you saying what you like and what you dont about the ROG, and also the overall issues, I think you'd love steam deck even more. Its much less fuffling about, since its not windows, you get much better battery life (at cost of the resolution) and all the controls feel like specifically made to gaming on the go. You can just press the sleep button, and then press it again whenever, and continue where you left off in like 2s. Oh, and the touchpads, are so nice, you can actually play mouse only games on them. If you're alright if a downgrade in performance, 99.9% of the games works the same as on windows (or sometimes even better) , and even some older games that wont run on windows, work flawlessly. If they are marked as "Not tested", most of the time they still work. Other small stuff, like on the go switching of the sd cards, so you can have your whole library on seperate sd cards, additional control regarding performance/battery life settings, ability to just rebind all the controlls you want, to customize your expierence, changes this from a "neat" concept, to something being an actual product you will want to use regularly. Also, Asus is known for releasing something, then dropping all support for it after 1-2 yrs, so hopefully that doesnt happen, since I would love to have competition on the market.
i didnt even know that last thing about asus but yeah i imagine thats going to be a problem, valve has a pretty good track record when it comes to support (except for tf2 :p) so i think the steam deck will have a longevity that the ROG couldnt possibly dream of
Hey dank, there is actually a product that solves the key problem you seem to be having with the ally out the box, the hardware itself is worse unfortunately but valve's steamdeck actually runs linux out the box! Edit: as multiple people have pointed out, the steamdeck is not available in AUs, though soon enough all of the steamdeckOS alternatives will get ported to ally(my personal favorite is bazzite)
I'd agree, but the problem is they aren't selling the Steam Deck in as many regions and I'm pretty sure Australia is one of many countries yet to be graced with it
I definitely love my Steam Deck. I'd heard the software experience on the ROG was janky, and it sure seems that way from this vid. Also, I'm a huge fan of the trackpads on the Steam Deck. In fact, I have over 1,000 hours in Skyrim using the Steam Controller with its trackpads. Best controller ever made.
Watch out for that mSD damage from the excess heat defect. The whole unit is poorly put together (as is standard with ASUS). There's barely enough thermal paste on the APU.
Since you mentioned you like to play Jet Set Radio Future, I strongly recommend Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. It is the spiritual successor the JSR and a truly great game. The modding-scene is also amazing and added multiplayer in the first week of release, with custom maps being build on as well. And it runs great on handhelds, I 100% it on the Steam Deck
I own a ROG ally and I've had so many technical issues between drivers breaking due to windows, trouble getting a 120hz signal to a TV, or a dead joystick, and after all of that I can say that I love this device. It has quite a bit of issues (which to be fair a lot of it is windows jank) but when it's all working which is most of the time it is just amazing how much power is crammed into such a tiny device.
But it's not Windows jack as shite as Windows is. People just put it down to that because they don't wanna admit their favourite company can't do software. If rog worked on their compatability issues it would be great
I am used to Windows at this point. Had the Deck and sold it when the Ally launched. Cannot say I miss the Deck even slightly. But in all honesty if you are not tech savvy and don't have a PC already the Deck is a good option too.
I just got a Steam Deck during the last Summer Sale and it has been fantastic for playing older games, emulation, and indie titles. All a very different types of games from what I tend to play on my PC. As someone who didnt have any consoles with two joysticks growing up, using a traditional controller is difficult and cluncky. The gyro and the track pads are the only thing that convinced me to ultimately pick one up.
Plays newer games pretty decent too, but both are gonna struggle with challenging games. ROG has a bit more power, but steamdeck has lower overhead. a wash in most games.
@@nobodynoone2500 True, though the newer games toll on the battery life is a bit too much for me. If I am playing a AAA title on it then I am usually game streaming from my PC for slightly better graphics and that meaningful boost in battery life. Though the current wifi chip can sometimes hinder that experience depending on the room I am in.
I got the Steam Deck, fucking LOVE the thing, it's my daily driver for playing any non-Nintendo stuff, and even my EMULATED Nintendo stuff, AND IT'S MY WHOLE PC SETUP TOO. I'm so glad you got to experience the joy of the "Portable PC" nugget for the first time, especially since it seems like the Ally, the Steam Deck, whichever one, all seems pretty evenly matched.
Be careful with that SD Card. Idk if you know this but when playing graphically intensive games, it heats up in that unfortunate location because it's right behind the vents and a lot of heat tends to come out of there....and yeah, mate, your SD card might just get fried if you leave it in there too long and during more intensive sessions.
I love how happy Wade is about it! I have a steam deck, love it. Considered upgrading to an Ally but decided the performance jump for the price wasn’t worth it.
if the ally ran anything other than windows, it'd probably be worth it. Windows has a habit of just eating RAM. the drawback of steamos is the linux fiddling and the increasing amount of companies making their own launchers
@@zihechen3111 I'd probably still run my games at 720/800p anyway if I upgraded to the ally Yes, it's worse, but it does make the power upgrade much more substantial cause it doesn't need to handle more than the Deck
@@zihechen3111 yeah but you can’t run a lot of games at 1080p that equal performance to the steam deck at 720p. Besides where I live the Ally is 800€, where the Steam Deck is only 420€. I also find the Steam Deck much more ergonomic
Got mine a month ago, came with a broken right joystick. was going to get hall effect sticks for it anyways, shipping the sticks from china just took almost a month. but the insides are EXTREMELY easy to work inside. it's suprisingly spacious inside, they could have had a larger battery, but that might have pushed the weight or had thermal implications, dunno.
You mention 2 of my all time favourites games. Jet Set Radio Future, back in the day. I played that game to death and STILL never completed everything. There was so much to do. A million places to explore atop skyscrapers a mile high. You really had a sense of the height too. Every district was awesome. The unique look has given it a timeless quality and even though I haven't played for decades, it would still be fun. Damn dude. I need to dig up my old XBox and see if it still works. ♥ Second gem of a game. Skyrim. And, you play like me. Modded to fuck. ♥ Pottering about in Skyrim is more fun with mods. I play games like Skyrim a certain way. First time I play, I play mod free. Second time I play, there's no limit to the amount of mods I'll use. It's kind of like getting two games for one. Remarkable how much mods change the atmosphere of a game. Great channel. consider me subscribed.
I had a gaming laptop in college, and I missed the ability to take it places and game on the go, even if the opportunity to do so was rare. This and the steam deck looked cool, but they are expensive. I upgraded my PC recently and had an old i7, 8GB sticks of ram, and a 980 TI laying around, so I bought a mini ITX board and built a computer in an ammo can. I bring it to my parents when I stay the night on the weekends I bring my daughter over to visit, so I can game after everyone else goes to bed lol
buying this and a Meta Quest would still run you less than a VR-capable laptop, but you'd still be better off using that to build your own rig. one of these just isn't worth much if you dont already have a decent computer/have had a decent PC in the past 10 or so years since your library is just your PC library and the limited space both internally and of SD cards means you'll still be doing a lot of game streaming.
@@quinnmarchese6313 Well considering most people have never owned a gaming PC I think devices like this could serve as a decent entry point. The biggest strike against them is the crap battery life. Kinda defeats the purpose if you're lucky to manage 2 hours before reaching for a charger.
@@no_misaki the deck will get about 3 or so hours of Elden Ring, and thats the most intensive game i play on it. i can get like 6-8 hours on a game like Bully depending on frame limit and brightness. its not great but it still beats the heck out of the switch oled, which admittedly is a lot more consistent in general (the big games dont usually drain the battery much faster than older ones), but still. the real big reason i say you should own a pc beforehand (aside from just building a game library) is that the deck is so limited in what games have been made to work with it. Luckily 9 times out of 10, the controls work fine, but so many games require you to go into desktop mode and download fan fixes or mods, and having some knowledge of computer OSs, how to diagnose and fix issues with games, etc takes the deck from like a strong 6.5/10 device to like an 8.5
I actually never had any problems at all with windows. And i think the ally borks so badly is because there isn't a Windows version ready for handheld pc's. There might be an xbox handheld being announced after handheld windows is done. So that wil make it clear when it's done
Exactly fom a PC user perspective the Ally is clear choice with Win 11 being a benefit and something you're familiar with rather than a hindrance. I have the Ally and don't have issues with my windows experience any more than I would on a laptop or PC, it's literally the same with different controls...
Its really cool to see PC handhelds in normal stores. I remember way back in the 2010s where the only one around was the GPD Win that would cost upwards of like $1000. I am so happy that this market is finally a thing for normal joes to just pop into a store and grab. much better from the Steam Deck reservation queue hell from last year :,)
Seeing all the "because Windows" makes me pretty happy with my steam deck purchase (got it recently and picked it over the ROG Ally because I only ever saw comments on Ally videos from people who love their Steam Deck).
To be fair it's nvdia's fault. They made a weird rule where if they are specifically selling a mobile GPU they will only do it to the laptop GPUs not the main ones
@@hihellothere9569 it's not only nvidia's fault. Nothing is stopping ASUS from making an enclosure that uses that connector, that you can plug normal desktop GPUs into. They just don't want to
I like this for the same reason; that it can be bought at JB HiFi, not the grey import stuff for the Steamdeck through Kogan. But id kinda like detachable controllers like the Switch, there’s just something infinitely more comfortable being able to prop the Switch’s screen somewhere and then use the controllers free of it.
then the Lenovo Legion Go looks like the perfect thing for you. only thing is it'll be another 200 on top of the Ally's already steep 1300 for the same speced device.
steamOS is based on Arch so its butter smooth and incredibly configurable, its going to be fun to see more and more cool steam deck rices get made and posted
I have a steam deck and honestly it's one of the best purchases I've ever made. I'm not able to have massive gaming sessions anymore so it's perfect for a casual session on my bed, on couch etc. Turn on, play, easy. Runs so many triple a games smoothly too 🔥 ROG seems a bit more clunky simply due to windows tho
upsides and downsides. windows is clunky as shit, and armoury crate doesn't help, but you never have to worry about game compatibility since it is just windows. Whether that is worth the tradeoff will depend on the games you play mostly.
This is the other side everyone should watch if wanting something , standard reviews which put graph after graph on screen and talk about specs for ages are fine but just seeing someone have fun with the thing and show some cool things on it and the gripes seamlessly is just more fun and for me i think more useful. After watching linuses video, gamers nexus ect i wasn't really interested in this because i have a pretty op pc at home but now i kinda want one aha. The game button was an important mention too thank you
I love that you love this device. Such a cool area that is just now growing. Sucks that the Steam Deck isn't sold in Australia but the ROG Ally is a great device too. In my opinion on battery it's 18w or below but most games shine at 12w or above for this device. 10w is great for so many emulators and 2D titles, lower end 3D games and pre 2015 titles. I love these PC handhelds
One thing the switch got on it is the pick up and play factor, going from standby to play is under a minute, by the time this boot up you be playing already on switch 🤷🏼♀️
I've got a steam deck (basically the same thing as the ROG) and it's very nice to have my whole games library on the run. Very nice for the busy gamers out there
I had one of these, for a day. The Windows 11 mobile experience was enough to make me not enjoy the unit overall. Something like this definitely benefits from its own Linux-based OS more than just baking stock windows into it.
Given the recent removal of online services from the 3DS and Wii U, I look forward to how well things like this and the Steam Deck will age. You'll never lose the ability to game on the go, even online. It's still a bit pricey for me, but I'll be happy to pick one up on sale sometime down the line.
The steam deck has some pretty good discounts during the steam summer and winter sales, the winter sale will start on December 21st so it might be worth checking it out then
Tried out a friends Ally and personally I prefer my steam deck. Yes less games are compatible but the experience is so much better due to not relying on windows. Also, at least for me, the Decks ergonomics and stick placement are better. But it's a great device for when I travel. I do use it less at home versus my desktop PC but it's great to have and I've done a few little upgrades to it.
@@TheTyisawesomeIt really doesn't. It might replace a cheap low-end laptop, but it's not nearly powerful enough or power efficient to replace an actual gaming PC. Plus, doing anything on Windows besides gaming with the device is hell. That's Widow's fault though, not the device's.
@@Daktyl198 what are you talking about? I have one... Lol. I definitely has the power to out perform most gaming laptops. It will never replace a new gaming tower but the price points are so far apart it's not even a worthwhile comparison.. It games 1080p 60fps which is my standard albeit an old one now but I quite literally have not turned on old gaming PC since I have gotten an Ally. Also I have experience doing full days of work work using MS office, web browsers, PDFs etc doing basic PC stuff is the easy thing especially when docked it's literally just a PC.
Nice to see that dankpods plays video games exactly like you’d expect him to - complete with frank and the digital equivalent of piles of nuggets from cashies.
Surprised you picked this up over the steam deck, especially considering the reported sd card issues this was facing before. Normally people say they got this because it runs windows but that seems to be your least favorite feature.
Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that. he even said he was able to go pick the Asus at a local store. Australia is always getting the short end of the stick, you can even buy the Steam Deck in stores at Japan but you still have to import to Australia. Fucking nutty.@@isthatrubble
I'm here for the age of handheld gaming PCs. Love my Steam Deck for finally working through my backlog and 100% legitimately obtaining old games for money and not for free
I like the steam deck because it doesn't have windows. I thought the early deck bugs were bad, but yikes. The only problem is that Windows only games with anticheat don't work sometimes. Even though its a simple toggle for the devs to allow Linux.
Something I like about it is that you can buy it at retail stores, unlike the steam deck. Idk why I do, I just like buying stuff on my own and not have to worry about shipping
Yeah I was in the same boat for a while, til Kogan stocked Steam Decks. So glad I got a Deck and not an Ally just because of all the problems that come with it being a windows device. Steam Decks custom OS should be called Todd HowOS cause "It just works"
Real Pro tip here from an Ally owner: 1- Boot games from steam big picture mode(very useful), when you open steam from the command center it goes into big picture mode and it makes the system easier to use. 2- Treat command center just as a tool to tweak the ally on the go, it isn't great. 3- Debloat windows to remove trash features(very useful) 4- Do custom profiles for you power, portable at 18 watts will play for up to 4 hours with little drop on performance; it gets even better if you drop the resolution to 900p from 1080p 5- Turn off the scheduled maintenance on hard drives, windows won't do it to the ssd but it will do it for the microSD and it will cause issues. It's better to turn it off permanently. You can do this by doing a right click on your ssd or SD > Properties > Tools > Optimize > then on "Scheduled Optimization" hit the "Change Settings" and uncheck the first box to turn it off. Game on!!
I’m happy for people that enjoy their ROG allay but for me I decided to stay on my steam deck because personally I wasn’t getting an extra 300$ ish value to upgrade
I'm not sure about this but it might be possible to run steamOS on this. Might run games a slight bit worse but at least doing literally anything on it wont suck ass :)
steamOS would probably actually run games better because it uses much less power and RAM, but it has its major frustrations regarding going through Linux stuff. I legit think the best option for most of these devices would be to debloat an older windows, like 7. they would better suit the fact that people just know Windows better than linux-based distros and also use less resources. would probably be more vulnerable to viruses and such though.
My partner randomly brought one of these last weekend. The staff at JB was playing BG3 on it behind the counter so she knew it must be wroth it. Turns out it was just about the last ROG Ally is stock at a JB in Brisbane cause all the JB staff had been buying them up as fast as the customers. By all accounts, it's a solid machine.
Dude, I drive for my job. I got a Steam Deck so I could play games in between stops, and honestly it was the best purchase i've made in a while. Having a switch style device with PC games on it is amazing! It's not the most powerfull thing in the world, but I have gotten sooo much mileage out of it that it has paid for itself over and over. It got me back into gaming, and i'm finally chipping away at my Steam back catalog.
Personally, I think the steam deck is better, but it really depends on your play preference. if you really like PC then get the ROG if you want to consul like experience get the steam deck. But either way, I’m happy that you found something that allows you to play games. But if you could please do a review on the steam deck
It’s the opposite, SD is more for FPS player can’t use controller to aim. Its trackpad is designed to be used like a mouse. If u don’t use keyboard and mouse for gaming. U prefer console like experience u pick Rog ally. If u use a mouse. If u r a pc player and have hardly used controller in ur life u use SD
Unfortunately, in the distant land of Australia, Valve doesn't sell the steam deck. The only way to get it is to use an importer, incurring a lot of tax and losing your warranty. The end result is that the Steam Deck costs ~900 AUD while the Rog Ally costs ~1200 AUD, with the ROG Ally being available from local stores with a warranty. It makes the steam deck way less attractive for us Australians.
@@zihechen3111 oh, I just thought it was more convenient with what I use it for. I do actually play a lot of first person shooter games so I guess it is a little biased on my end. But either way as long as you have fun with it, then there’s really is no difference.
@@zihechen3111 eh, software wise the deck is far more fitting for a console user, alot less headaches since steam OS isn't slapped together by 700 drunk software engineers like the Ally is.
Pro tip Dank: run a custom wattage setting in armory crate for 18w. Anything above or below that is just diminishing returns for FPS and that seems to be the sweet spot. It’ll save you a bit battery on the go as well
second
cringe@@bxck
Says no-one. 25w is the sweet spot at 900p for demanding games.
Wonder how tools like ThrottleStop (which I still use to get my modern (i7 with E-Cores / big.LITTLE) to work. Yes, I'm aware that ThrottleStop is just CPU, and it's been around for more than a decade. The desktop I'm typing this on now has an Asus board and I personally hate armoury crate, like 2GB of memory and SSD storage for literally no use to me. It probably works like a charm on the Ally though.
@@SimonNemeth th-cam.com/video/3SwkrM-FpG8/w-d-xo.html
With the Steam Deck, the Ally, and the upcoming Legion Go. The handheld market is getting so good.
The Switch is actually not a bad device. It's cheap, it's simple, it just works, and Mario.
Or Zelda.
It doesn't have as much power as a PC handheld, sure, but the DS had even less power and people still love the Gameboy of all things.
Now that games have switched from being fun to being pretty, a huge part of the fun of gaming now is upgrading your hardware and your specs to get the most optimal machine and I respect the grind because it's fun! Technology is exciting.
But in the end I just want to have fun and graphics are better when used as an artform than when they're used to replace your real life grass in your front lawn which your Amazon driver is more well acquainted with at this point.
The Switch gets me there more than my Steam Deck, and of course that's completely subjective, and yes the Deck has objectively more power for only about $50-100 more, but if you grew up a PC gamer, don't underestimate how much playing PC games with a controller will feel off.
For emulation, someone will kill me for saying this but I feel like the Switch and Steam Deck are about on par, the Steam Deck winning only because of the library missing from Nintendo's offerings.
I'm going to get cancelled 30 years from now for saying that
@therealwhite Switch is really only for Nintendo games. It's too weak to run a ton of games that the steam deck can, and you don't get access to nearly a billion indy games.
I have both, and use the nintendo switch only when I want to play smash.
Hell, even when I had the switch but no steam deck, I still never use the switch for anything other than smash. The games I wanted to play were either too demanding, or just straight up wasn't on the switch.
I stand by the fact that there is next to zero reason to buy the switch over the steamdeck for anything other than exclusives.
@@therealwhitemy switch has dead zone issues because the switch was made so badly. Nintendo even admits it. Took me forever to load into New Horizons while the DS was a speedy convenient boi.
if you consider the switch good then you forget about the ps vita 80% as powerfull and literally 7 years older than it
Bro the steamdeck plays switch games better than the switch.
I am living for this modern trend of gaming PC handhelds. Whether it's the Steam Deck, the Ally, the Legion, or any other thing I don't happen to know about, it's just awesome that more people can get the freedom PC gaming brings with all the conveniences of console gaming.
The mobile industry ruined dedicated handheld game consoles, I'm glad we can make PCs small enough to be portable now lol!
I'm loving it too. Picked up a deck this July, and I went from maybe gaming 3 hours a week to at least an hour a night
But which one is the best?
@@coastaku1954steam deck, not even a competition
@@coastaku1954Probably the Steam Deck.
Tough to beat Valve's software support.
If anyone is wondering why he didn't even mention the Steam Deck, it's most likely due to the Steam Deck not being officially avaliable in Australia as of the time of writing.
it's crazy how we've reached a point where we can make something like this so compact & yet have great specs
@@gotmilkbutt technically yeah but all that will ever happen gaming wise is the same match 3 garbage till the end of time on those devices
@@Yousie6have you seen the iPhone 15 pro
@@RAILGUNSHOOT yes
@@WiseAcres-qk3ik The complaint about a single usb port is fair, but I know Android phones can multitask just as well as a PC can. Heck, even Samsung Dex turns your phone into a PC that is limited to phone apps. It's really good!
I use split screen and floating apps on my Galaxy Note 9 all the time, and the only real issue I run into is screen space.
It hasn't got great specs though. It's essentially a 1060 gpu
He's so excited about it, it's adorable.
amazons pfp spotted !!
Yugh
big fan of the direction of dankpods where its just “wade shows us stuff he likes”
He's a danky treasure's treasure.
JSRF is unexpected, yet entirely on brand for Wade
I wonder if he knows about Bomb Rush Cyberfunk.
Fly like a butterfly.
JSRF is fun but I find it hard to get into on og Xbox these days.
@@GestersmekI CCd him a comment to his Patreon. It may take a while, but he'll know!
@@Martin_the_Warrior alot of the songs are officially uploaded on the JSRF ost album, other songs like im not a model are actually licensed from other artists so check if they have them
Glad I'm not the only one who shoves my nose into the vent ports on every new piece of technology
You will never be alone
That sweet-sweet smell of new electronics
thank you for making me laugh with that mental image
Even after 6 months, when I open my Macbook Air in bed and get a whiff from a distance of that new smell. God, I want to have it forever. Make it a perfume concentrate, someone, please!
I left it open at the office for 1-2 hours and a colleague smoked in the same room. When I opened it at home the smells combined. I cleaned it front to back and after a week or so it slowly got away and the new smell came back somewhat. Guess who's always closing his laptop and puts it back in the sleeve after every use.
My new laptop smells like hot glue when it warms up.
I'm a little scared.
Be very careful about using a SD card in the ROG Ally. There has been a growing amount of people having a problem where the Ally is literally cooking the SD card and the SD card slot rendering them not usable.
Let him learn the hard way. Maybe we’ll get a cool video about it
Oh no it is the Samsung galaxy s3 again
My dad bought a 64gb (VERY big back then) and the phone killed it almost immediately.
Just like they cook AMD CPUs.
@@Muhluri You mean a hot video?:P
@@chevron-vw5rn 🥵
I will say that the Steam Deck definitely has the upper hand on the software front, their Linux skin is just much less janky than Windows. Hopefully Asus hasn’t made Linux drivers an issue for this device, running Valve’s software on this hardware would be great.
Exactly, all that Windows 11 overhead (and never ending system updates) can't be good for performance or battery life.
Asus sadly usually isn't very good with linux support, and I talk from experience. However I also never seen anyone testing Linux on the Ally. Is it even possible to boot other OSs on it?
@@azenyr yeah it is, chimeraOS is a steamOS like distro using gnome not kde, that has been getting optimizations for the Rog Ally, but its not at all a project affiliated with asus, Asus could not care less.
It's not Windows problem though. Tonnes of people have gone into details and it's actually rogs software incompatibility issues and tonnes of other stuff. They don't make good software
@@SteOhara Microsoft also don't make good software, so it's jank all the way down. I can't speak to the quality of the ROG software, but even if it were perfect, Windows itself isn't very well suited to a device like this, and it comes with issues that you can't fix by just slapping a launcher on top of it.
Dank having Action 52 is so on-model for him.
he prb has 3
1 to 1grid
1 to be dissapointed to and 1 to hate and scream at
@@Desugan69 If that's a real, in box copy of Action 52 I doubt he's 1 Gritting it any time soon. I'd wager it's more likely he borrowed it for the gag tbh.
@@Joe90h James?
The amount of excitement I got when I saw BeamNG in the game library was incomprehensible. There's a joke among my friends and I where I only watch DankPods and play BeamNG sometimes both at the same time. Now that I know that my favorite TH-camr has played one of my favorite games is amazing
i think of beamNG a lot like i think of Stardew Valley. its kinda one of those games that even if you dont play much of it, it was cheap enough and hugely popular enough to warrant buying
YES
@@quinnmarchese6313yeah. I got stardew but never really got into the rhythm of it. As for Beam I just hit 500 hours of play time
Among us🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😯😯😯😯😯😯😮😮😦😦😦
Having almost 3200 hours in Beam, i approve!
portable gaming is amazing. Just two months ago I got an used PSP on a whim and fell in love with the concept. I admit I didn' understand before, but now I do. If playing FFVI on my way to university blew my mind, I can only imagine what the Deck or Ally can do
psp is a goated handheld. whenever i go on a trip i always take my old psp.
@@hamzasajjad6792 i still do it too. I love it and i wish i could upgrade the screen to IPS or OLED
Havent had a handheld since the ds and psp. After owning a ps3 and ps4 i got a switch lite and then the oled. Verry nice consoles.
Hacked my vita, then bought a 3ds and hacked it
I know some people don’t get it, but honestly playing a game outside or something is really nice.
Sometimes I load my onewheel onto the back of my motorcycle, ride to the beach or park and then onewheel around and find a spot to picnic, post up with a lunchable and my Nintendo switch or iPad and just enjoy the outdoors while I play Zelda or Skyrim… it’s amazing. I hear from people “why don’t you actually enjoy the outdoors” or whatever… but… I am! My way!
9:15 Wade was in such a video game vibe he even impersonated crash bandicoot
I remember not very long ago in 2020 when I got into handheld emulators I was looking for something exactly like the Steam Deck. Then Steam announced the Deck, and I wanted one since day one. Last year I bought one, and its absolutely perfect with nothing I could even think of changing. I'm loving that there's competition now so people can decide which one they like more.
i mean i love my deck but it has many issues. the main steam mode hates games with launchers, which is a lot of them and the desktop mode can't maintain a decent wi-fi signal to save its life, constantly cutting out and signal searching, despite the fact i've done the developer fixes. Any time ive wanted to just, check the internet, watch youtube, or download something off of Firefox like old PS2 ROMs or fan fixes for games, its been easier to just download them to my external hard drive using my PC or laptop and transfer them over. Lots of games that should work just don't and fiddling around with fixes and mods is a lot more frustrating than it should be. That said, when it works, its astounding. Beating challenging Elden Ring bosses or playing through older Rockstar games like Bully feels excellent with the deck.
is the emulation good?
@@quinnmarchese6313 That's an interesting experience, I've never had any of that really happen. Launchers have only been mildly aggravating because of using an SD card instead of onboard storage, but even that for me has just taken a bit of tinkering for maybe 30min max which for me at least is fun, but for most of just suggest getting a higher capacity model. For your wifi issue my only idea would probably be checking the actual hardware, because that's a strange issue I've never encountered. Hope you can figure it out, and once things work they work great and it's worth the work imo
@@HawkEM2 launchers are a bad idea in general because they screw with gpu control software like AMD adrenalin and NVIDIA whatever and just add time before you can play the game but certain anti cheats also really suck for the deck. as long as you can add "-skiplauncher" to the launch options or circumvent it with mods or some other way its usually fine, but like Rockstar games and plenty of others are marked unplayable. i recognize that unplayable doesn't really mean unplayable, rather that it'll take effort and fan fixes to work, it still sucks just how many of my games are just not rated to work even though they should. Also the suggestion to just "get the better model" is valid but entirely tone deaf--i got the cheapest model for a real world reason and its not on me for it work as intended. my current solution is to use my external drive and desktop to download anything non-steam and wait for valve to fix it, because my research has led me to the conclusion that its a rather common software issue that i cant just return it for, plus _its still good_ despite everything ive said, its just not worth more than the cheapest model for me regardless.
That ROG joke was so stupid yet it left me in stitches! Bravo! 😂
Same here cannot stop laughing
I knew he'd say "rog" but I still wasn't prepared for his setup/delivery
ROGROGROGROGROGROGROGROG
Pro Tip Dank: The never-ending restart is most likely due to bios needing an update
And he force restarted it...
Nah that's just Windoze 🤣
@@edtuckerartist to be fair yeah that's just a typical windows bork
Linux never forces updates on you (Steam OS does though, but the updates never stall and are usually done within 5 minutes at the very most.)
@@polocatfanI hate Linux
Windows really dragging this thing down. The biggest strength of the Steam Deck as far as I’m concerned is SteamOS. Hopefully they’ll open up the OS to other manufacturers at some point. Especially since they’re excluding so many countries by not selling The Deck worldwide.
This. The ally is junk
Biggest thing about the steam deck aside from the OS for me is the versatile touchpads. Using them for emulation especially is a game changer
You can put steam os on the Ally but then you do loose compatibility with certain windows games. I personally have a steam deck because i like the trackpads and am tired of windows
Windows was never built for this kind of system. SteamOS literally was, and had like a year of configuration to work well :/
What’s dragging this thing down, is Asus not making the “ROG menu” better, and giving the thing a sliding screen with a keyboard under it.
Windows is literally made for regular PCs and laptops, not for these things. They would’ve had to make a special version of windows for these to function well. But at least you have big picture mods to avoid this.
@@Thewaterspirit57 I did hear windows for these type of devices is slowly getting better but some linux with proton is the only good way to go currently. Maybe a virtual windows machine for the few games that don't work. Another too is that ASUS probably changed a bunch of stuff in windows and made it not work as good as it could. Like getting the time wrong is really wierd.
I did not expect to see you play Pogo. Thanks for playing!
Gogo Pogo!
The sweet spot is 18w TDP, get awesome performance and decent battery life. Its enough to play most AAA games. Finished RDR2, Dragons dogma and Cyberpunk 2077 all on this device portably so far. Steam cloud save is also a godsend especially when you play both on desktop and on your ally. Plenty of bolt on mods out there to upgrade your storage to beyond 2tb.
Ive got the steamdeck. But the lenovo leigon go is likely what ill upgrade to when it comes out. You can detach the controllers and use one as a mouse!
Lol I just got a steam deck, realized I'm not interested in playing most steam games handheld, loaded up batocera on the SD card and it's become a very expensive emulation handheld for me to play the hell out of tony hawk 3 😂
I also have a steamdeck, but i would love ROG ally better... if it were linux instead. There are problems with both OS sure, but at least on linux i can fix them, or the community already did and you can do it for yourself. The offical windows solution for most of the problems is to just reinstall it...
@@imjustapotatoleavemealone I'm guessing you can run SteamOS on it
@@SomeRandomPiggo Can, but without any OEM support... Basically a ROG device wihtout the ROG in it...
5:45
Did Dank really just reference a Tom Cardy song? The australians are starting to converge
Right!! I heard that!!
I got so thrown by that haha
All we need now is for them to appear in an aunty Donna sketch featuring Jazza
7:04 the closest dank's gotten to cursing
A couple of his older videos he did swear but it wasn't anything that bad
I have a steam deck, and I’ve really wanted to know what someone who just shows their experience would think of the ROG ally, like normal reviewers don’t give you the actual vibes of the day to say, dankpods is THE go to feel good youtuber for me
The ROG is a teeny bit faster, but I love the ergos and OS on the steamdeck way more.
@@nobodynoone2500Rog has doubled performance plugged in, it’s smaller, lighter than SD. The joystick is on a more natural position. If u don’t play FPS, dislike the track pad thing on SD then Ally is ur pick
@@zihechen3111 yeah but the ally is more than double the price right? because at that point id feel it'd be better just get a gaming laptop? now that said im not trying to argue im trying make sure i am informed so is it truly worth more the double the base steamdeck?
like in your honest opinion
@@H4L0GUY117 it doesn't get double the performance, but it's not double the price. its around like 50-70% faster in best case scenarios, but like for like storage wise the ally is like 200 aussie bucks more. 1100 vs 1300.
if you buy the cheapest deck with only EMMC storage then its 500 cheaper, but you will need to get a bigger ssd
@2:00: "You've got the marks on your arm from a watch you've been wearing."
Smiles... that deserves a subscribe *click*
Been using my Ally for months now. No regrets. Swapped out the SSD and am literally using this as my work desktop with 4 monitors. THE best purchase all year.
That's not really a flex it's a really sad "I paid a lot for this device when I could've gotten a laptop with way more power than it for the same price"
Gigantic oof.
Mans is happy with the purchase he made and the money he spent and that is a “gigantic oof” ur a joke guy
@@inuyasha331 you're definitely the type that is "I am just jealous because he is happy on what he bought and I am just here sad and broke so I just spread hate on the Internet".
@@inuyasha331
Bruh you really wrote this.
🤓
I also replaced my old gaming PC with one of these it's the best!!
Fun fact: I'm pretty sure he's been doing his gaming vids on this. If you look at the screen at 3:00, you can see that tuk tuk thing he did a bit ago.
I got so excited when I heard that Tom Cardy reference. I would absolutely LOVE a collaboration between you two!
I was gonna say the same thing!!!
Aussies supporting Aussies
It’s at 5:45 btw
My Steam Deck is basically my main for Cyberpunk. You can also install a 1200p screen and hall effect sticks with 0 dead zone. It’s just so easy to pick up whenever
I have a Steam Deck myself and it's great. I wouldn't want it as my main gaming unit, but for travel it plus a thin and light laptop is much nicer to carry around than a chonky gaming laptop! I feel like Windows is the main thing holding these handhelds back, which is one of the big advantages to the Steam Deck, it being a Linux based and all. One way or the other, it's such a cool class of computer and I'm glad you're enjoying them too!
Yeah SD has been a great experience for me.
This video alone made me decide to get the deck. The work valve and the community do to create a seamless experience is everything when it comes to personal devices. handhelds are learning what the mobile phone market had to learn the hard way, you need a custom OS for mass adoption
Yeah linux on the deck is sweet, being limited on titles you want to play is so awesome
@Twist3d420 it's mainly games that have anti cheat like most first person shooters
@@illicitburn9386 So the better APU making every game better on it isnt worth it also? Only advantage steam deck has is battery life lol
Had mine since launch. Love this thing. Been playing stuff that i wouldn't have bothered with on my desktop. Just finished Starfield which was very Bethesda'ish and now having a blast with Phantom liberty which runs beautifully. Just beware of the SD card issues, mine got a divorce and refuse to see each other.
Try another card. If you're old one wasn't temp rated it likely just cooked that particular card, a pretty common issue with all hot devices accepting SD, thus they have advertised operating ranges
Starfield runs on the Ally?
I’m gonna have to give that a shot. I tried playing hogwarts legacy on it and it was a no-go so I just wrote off any new titles
@@Fetidaf I played on 1080p medium. FPS dropped a bit below 30 sometimes in large cities. Everywhere else it was fine. I read that some people played on ultra with performance mods, but it didn't work for me and i didn't feel the need to mess with it.
@@TheTyisawesome It was Sandisk pro or smth like that. Pretty sure it was good enough, it's a widespread problem, often it's the reader itself that gets fried. Just got a 2tb ssd and gave up on it.
@@Kasper0822 on a handheld I’m fine with 720 low lol, that’s pretty impressive
Handhelds are actually really cool when they are powerful! I remember when I used a switch is was amazing
real ones remember the PS Vita; that thing was a beast, Sony just didn't support it long term. It had PS3 quality graphics and a damn good Uncharted game, among others and a huge chunk of the PSP library as well.
The USB port supports external GPUs so you can use a literal RTX 3090 with more ports than your most average USB-C hub
Wrong, the only external GPU you can run is ASUS's "XG Mobile" unit via their proprietary interface. The $2,000 USD XG Mobile 4090 is actually a laptop 4090 limited to 150W. It gets outperformed by a *desktop 4080.*
The eGPU support is such a letdown when you actually do research into it.
@@adriandotexeI think it’s 175w, but around where a 4070ti desktop card is.
@@Spork0 the ROG site says 150W max tdp....regardless, it's insanely overpriced for 4070ti performance and a USB hub. And stupid that they didn't just put thunderbolt on the thing for true eGPU support.
@@adriandotexe because money.
Hearing you saying what you like and what you dont about the ROG, and also the overall issues, I think you'd love steam deck even more.
Its much less fuffling about, since its not windows, you get much better battery life (at cost of the resolution) and all the controls feel like specifically made to gaming on the go. You can just press the sleep button, and then press it again whenever, and continue where you left off in like 2s. Oh, and the touchpads, are so nice, you can actually play mouse only games on them.
If you're alright if a downgrade in performance, 99.9% of the games works the same as on windows (or sometimes even better) , and even some older games that wont run on windows, work flawlessly. If they are marked as "Not tested", most of the time they still work.
Other small stuff, like on the go switching of the sd cards, so you can have your whole library on seperate sd cards, additional control regarding performance/battery life settings, ability to just rebind all the controlls you want, to customize your expierence, changes this from a "neat" concept, to something being an actual product you will want to use regularly.
Also, Asus is known for releasing something, then dropping all support for it after 1-2 yrs, so hopefully that doesnt happen, since I would love to have competition on the market.
i didnt even know that last thing about asus but yeah i imagine thats going to be a problem,
valve has a pretty good track record when it comes to support (except for tf2 :p) so i think the steam deck will have a longevity that the ROG couldnt possibly dream of
Hey dank, there is actually a product that solves the key problem you seem to be having with the ally out the box, the hardware itself is worse unfortunately but valve's steamdeck actually runs linux out the box!
Edit: as multiple people have pointed out, the steamdeck is not available in AUs, though soon enough all of the steamdeckOS alternatives will get ported to ally(my personal favorite is bazzite)
it’s not available in australia sadly, he could look into installing chimeraos though.
I'd agree, but the problem is they aren't selling the Steam Deck in as many regions and I'm pretty sure Australia is one of many countries yet to be graced with it
Or Bazzite once Ally support is ready.
@simplybloxxed you can still get them but just not through official means... I got mine off ebay.
@@simplybloxxed oh jeez, i didnt think of that
This is the most unexpected Dank topic I've seen in a while
I definitely love my Steam Deck. I'd heard the software experience on the ROG was janky, and it sure seems that way from this vid. Also, I'm a huge fan of the trackpads on the Steam Deck. In fact, I have over 1,000 hours in Skyrim using the Steam Controller with its trackpads. Best controller ever made.
It's 100% a rog software issue, not a Windows issue ,like dank thinks, for the most part
@@SteOhara Windows in itself is an issue. Add some ROG issues on top of that and you have an issue pancake
@@SteOharai mean steam os was made for linux so it could definitely be windows fault
Love the Tom Cardy reference there mate. "He's just lying there isn't he?" 5:43 "gonna loot that body yeah"
Watch out for that mSD damage from the excess heat defect. The whole unit is poorly put together (as is standard with ASUS). There's barely enough thermal paste on the APU.
I use a steam deck and I love it but I've heard so many great things about the ally and this video was perfect
As someone who owns neither, I'd rather have the Steam Deck.
@@sirbaconbusterstill not available in Aus, so we don’t have much choice
I have both devices, and they’re great devices.
@@sirbaconbuster As someone who owes both I would rather play on the Ally.
@@transatlant1c that's a very sizable oof.
Let's gooooo. I also bought an ally about a month ago and it's amazing. I'm genuinely surprised by how much power they could fit in such a small size.
This guy never fails to entertain. We love you bro
Thanks dank !!!
We lover you too
Lover? Don't you mean love?
@@jerryesposito Grammar police
@@jerryespositoit's okay, I lover you two
@@l.a.c.l.u.s.t.rIt’s alright, we all have to learn to lover each other.
Since you mentioned you like to play Jet Set Radio Future, I strongly recommend Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. It is the spiritual successor the JSR and a truly great game. The modding-scene is also amazing and added multiplayer in the first week of release, with custom maps being build on as well. And it runs great on handhelds, I 100% it on the Steam Deck
+1 fire game
I own a ROG ally and I've had so many technical issues between drivers breaking due to windows, trouble getting a 120hz signal to a TV, or a dead joystick, and after all of that I can say that I love this device. It has quite a bit of issues (which to be fair a lot of it is windows jank) but when it's all working which is most of the time it is just amazing how much power is crammed into such a tiny device.
But it's not Windows jack as shite as Windows is. People just put it down to that because they don't wanna admit their favourite company can't do software. If rog worked on their compatability issues it would be great
@@SteOharabut I hate Linux
After seeing your issues with windows (and me hating it) im really glad I went with the steam Deck. The support from Valve is amazing.
I am used to Windows at this point. Had the Deck and sold it when the Ally launched. Cannot say I miss the Deck even slightly. But in all honesty if you are not tech savvy and don't have a PC already the Deck is a good option too.
Bro you are missing out. Especially on the PC experience... So much you can't do on steam OS.
@@TheTyisawesomelike what?
I have a windows PC I just hate windows and the Deck is what I use for Portable games and emulation@@TheTyisawesome
@@SEVENTEENPOINT1 I am tech Savvy I just don't like windows or microsoft
I just got a Steam Deck during the last Summer Sale and it has been fantastic for playing older games, emulation, and indie titles. All a very different types of games from what I tend to play on my PC.
As someone who didnt have any consoles with two joysticks growing up, using a traditional controller is difficult and cluncky. The gyro and the track pads are the only thing that convinced me to ultimately pick one up.
Plays newer games pretty decent too, but both are gonna struggle with challenging games. ROG has a bit more power, but steamdeck has lower overhead. a wash in most games.
@@nobodynoone2500 True, though the newer games toll on the battery life is a bit too much for me. If I am playing a AAA title on it then I am usually game streaming from my PC for slightly better graphics and that meaningful boost in battery life. Though the current wifi chip can sometimes hinder that experience depending on the room I am in.
That Action 52 box sent so many AVGN memories back into my head
"I'm having fun as a grown man? Impossible." Bout sums up my gaming addiction perfectly.
6:15 Skyrim moment
skyrim is like gmod
I got the Steam Deck, fucking LOVE the thing, it's my daily driver for playing any non-Nintendo stuff, and even my EMULATED Nintendo stuff, AND IT'S MY WHOLE PC SETUP TOO. I'm so glad you got to experience the joy of the "Portable PC" nugget for the first time, especially since it seems like the Ally, the Steam Deck, whichever one, all seems pretty evenly matched.
Yep this video made me so happy i got the steamdeck instead of the others portable pcs
Be careful with that SD Card. Idk if you know this but when playing graphically intensive games, it heats up in that unfortunate location because it's right behind the vents and a lot of heat tends to come out of there....and yeah, mate, your SD card might just get fried if you leave it in there too long and during more intensive sessions.
I love how happy Wade is about it! I have a steam deck, love it. Considered upgrading to an Ally but decided the performance jump for the price wasn’t worth it.
Sell SD the performance boost is massive and you'll notice the resolution and weight difference immediately
1080p and 720p has big differences. And the performance doubles, yes when ally plugged in, it’s fps is 2x comparing to SD
if the ally ran anything other than windows, it'd probably be worth it. Windows has a habit of just eating RAM. the drawback of steamos is the linux fiddling and the increasing amount of companies making their own launchers
@@zihechen3111 I'd probably still run my games at 720/800p anyway if I upgraded to the ally
Yes, it's worse, but it does make the power upgrade much more substantial cause it doesn't need to handle more than the Deck
@@zihechen3111 yeah but you can’t run a lot of games at 1080p that equal performance to the steam deck at 720p. Besides where I live the Ally is 800€, where the Steam Deck is only 420€. I also find the Steam Deck much more ergonomic
the fact you could pick this up at a Jb Hi-Fi is awesome, definitely gonna keep this in mind if I'm thinking about buying one of these
I love the Rog Ally, best handheld device for your money.
Got mine a month ago, came with a broken right joystick. was going to get hall effect sticks for it anyways, shipping the sticks from china just took almost a month. but the insides are EXTREMELY easy to work inside. it's suprisingly spacious inside, they could have had a larger battery, but that might have pushed the weight or had thermal implications, dunno.
You mention 2 of my all time favourites games. Jet Set Radio Future, back in the day. I played that game to death and STILL never completed everything. There was so much to do. A million places to explore atop skyscrapers a mile high. You really had a sense of the height too. Every district was awesome. The unique look has given it a timeless quality and even though I haven't played for decades, it would still be fun. Damn dude. I need to dig up my old XBox and see if it still works. ♥
Second gem of a game. Skyrim. And, you play like me. Modded to fuck. ♥ Pottering about in Skyrim is more fun with mods. I play games like Skyrim a certain way. First time I play, I play mod free. Second time I play, there's no limit to the amount of mods I'll use. It's kind of like getting two games for one. Remarkable how much mods change the atmosphere of a game.
Great channel. consider me subscribed.
I had a gaming laptop in college, and I missed the ability to take it places and game on the go, even if the opportunity to do so was rare. This and the steam deck looked cool, but they are expensive. I upgraded my PC recently and had an old i7, 8GB sticks of ram, and a 980 TI laying around, so I bought a mini ITX board and built a computer in an ammo can. I bring it to my parents when I stay the night on the weekends I bring my daughter over to visit, so I can game after everyone else goes to bed lol
Oh god, he has Action 52. That...thing....still unnerves me to this day
Love that the video is 13:37 long! Nice touch indeed.
Dank made me realise i can use this thing much more than a laptop , if it can be docked it's perfect! It also kinda handles VR
buying this and a Meta Quest would still run you less than a VR-capable laptop, but you'd still be better off using that to build your own rig. one of these just isn't worth much if you dont already have a decent computer/have had a decent PC in the past 10 or so years since your library is just your PC library and the limited space both internally and of SD cards means you'll still be doing a lot of game streaming.
@@quinnmarchese6313 Well considering most people have never owned a gaming PC I think devices like this could serve as a decent entry point. The biggest strike against them is the crap battery life. Kinda defeats the purpose if you're lucky to manage 2 hours before reaching for a charger.
@@no_misaki the deck will get about 3 or so hours of Elden Ring, and thats the most intensive game i play on it. i can get like 6-8 hours on a game like Bully depending on frame limit and brightness. its not great but it still beats the heck out of the switch oled, which admittedly is a lot more consistent in general (the big games dont usually drain the battery much faster than older ones), but still. the real big reason i say you should own a pc beforehand (aside from just building a game library) is that the deck is so limited in what games have been made to work with it. Luckily 9 times out of 10, the controls work fine, but so many games require you to go into desktop mode and download fan fixes or mods, and having some knowledge of computer OSs, how to diagnose and fix issues with games, etc takes the deck from like a strong 6.5/10 device to like an 8.5
I actually never had any problems at all with windows. And i think the ally borks so badly is because there isn't a Windows version ready for handheld pc's. There might be an xbox handheld being announced after handheld windows is done. So that wil make it clear when it's done
Exactly fom a PC user perspective the Ally is clear choice with Win 11 being a benefit and something you're familiar with rather than a hindrance. I have the Ally and don't have issues with my windows experience any more than I would on a laptop or PC, it's literally the same with different controls...
Its really cool to see PC handhelds in normal stores. I remember way back in the 2010s where the only one around was the GPD Win that would cost upwards of like $1000. I am so happy that this market is finally a thing for normal joes to just pop into a store and grab.
much better from the Steam Deck reservation queue hell from last year :,)
The Rog Ally is like €850 so no, ordinary people can't just buy one but the Steam Deck is very affordable seeing as it's like €450 in my country
Seeing all the "because Windows" makes me pretty happy with my steam deck purchase (got it recently and picked it over the ROG Ally because I only ever saw comments on Ally videos from people who love their Steam Deck).
0:52 "look it's got my dog's catchphrase. ROG" dude ya killed me
Fun fact: that weird connector next to the USB-C is fir an external GPU dock, so this thing can be docked to become desktop-level powerful!
Except the external gpus are proprietary and the 4090 one costs 2k :(
to the 4090 only egpu card for it
To be fair it's nvdia's fault.
They made a weird rule where if they are specifically selling a mobile GPU they will only do it to the laptop GPUs not the main ones
@@hihellothere9569 it's not only nvidia's fault. Nothing is stopping ASUS from making an enclosure that uses that connector, that you can plug normal desktop GPUs into. They just don't want to
This guy is what I would imagine my dad playing modern video games for the first time😂
I like this for the same reason; that it can be bought at JB HiFi, not the grey import stuff for the Steamdeck through Kogan. But id kinda like detachable controllers like the Switch, there’s just something infinitely more comfortable being able to prop the Switch’s screen somewhere and then use the controllers free of it.
Lenovo Legion Go
then the Lenovo Legion Go looks like the perfect thing for you. only thing is it'll be another 200 on top of the Ally's already steep 1300 for the same speced device.
Thats the best thing about the steam deck, its running a custom linux distro which is a lot smoother than windows
steamOS is based on Arch so its butter smooth and incredibly configurable, its going to be fun to see more and more cool steam deck rices get made and posted
This is the second new video I've seen today that unexpectedly referenced Loot That Body. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
The other one was Secret Galaxy's He-Man video that just came out publicly an hour ago, for those keeping score.
I have a steam deck and honestly it's one of the best purchases I've ever made. I'm not able to have massive gaming sessions anymore so it's perfect for a casual session on my bed, on couch etc. Turn on, play, easy. Runs so many triple a games smoothly too 🔥 ROG seems a bit more clunky simply due to windows tho
upsides and downsides. windows is clunky as shit, and armoury crate doesn't help, but you never have to worry about game compatibility since it is just windows.
Whether that is worth the tradeoff will depend on the games you play mostly.
This is the other side everyone should watch if wanting something , standard reviews which put graph after graph on screen and talk about specs for ages are fine but just seeing someone have fun with the thing and show some cool things on it and the gripes seamlessly is just more fun and for me i think more useful. After watching linuses video, gamers nexus ect i wasn't really interested in this because i have a pretty op pc at home but now i kinda want one aha. The game button was an important mention too thank you
I love that you love this device. Such a cool area that is just now growing. Sucks that the Steam Deck isn't sold in Australia but the ROG Ally is a great device too. In my opinion on battery it's 18w or below but most games shine at 12w or above for this device. 10w is great for so many emulators and 2D titles, lower end 3D games and pre 2015 titles. I love these PC handhelds
One thing the switch got on it is the pick up and play factor, going from standby to play is under a minute, by the time this boot up you be playing already on switch 🤷🏼♀️
i actually thought he's gonna bring out a steam deck and start comparing lol
I've got a steam deck (basically the same thing as the ROG) and it's very nice to have my whole games library on the run. Very nice for the busy gamers out there
I love how he gets an expensive gaming device and he chooses to showcase 10+ year old games and shovelware lol
The back catalogue is insane. Insanely good! 😺 We've got enough to play for a lifetime.
We truly live in an age of wonders
6:55 And that ,ladies and Gentlemen, is the reason you install SteamOS.
I had one of these, for a day. The Windows 11 mobile experience was enough to make me not enjoy the unit overall. Something like this definitely benefits from its own Linux-based OS more than just baking stock windows into it.
Given the recent removal of online services from the 3DS and Wii U, I look forward to how well things like this and the Steam Deck will age. You'll never lose the ability to game on the go, even online. It's still a bit pricey for me, but I'll be happy to pick one up on sale sometime down the line.
Emulating on these is amazing.
Nintendo players won't have to pay subscription services to play games they've already bought.
The steam deck has some pretty good discounts during the steam summer and winter sales, the winter sale will start on December 21st so it might be worth checking it out then
@@readyforlolis the emulation good? like xbox360/ps3/switch level? i might save for one if so
Tried out a friends Ally and personally I prefer my steam deck. Yes less games are compatible but the experience is so much better due to not relying on windows. Also, at least for me, the Decks ergonomics and stick placement are better. But it's a great device for when I travel. I do use it less at home versus my desktop PC but it's great to have and I've done a few little upgrades to it.
I had both and got rid of the Deck. Don't miss the Deck even slightly.
Thing is you had Ally you would use your PC less cause it literally replace it
@@TheTyisawesomeIt really doesn't. It might replace a cheap low-end laptop, but it's not nearly powerful enough or power efficient to replace an actual gaming PC. Plus, doing anything on Windows besides gaming with the device is hell. That's Widow's fault though, not the device's.
@@Daktyl198 what are you talking about? I have one... Lol. I definitely has the power to out perform most gaming laptops. It will never replace a new gaming tower but the price points are so far apart it's not even a worthwhile comparison.. It games 1080p 60fps which is my standard albeit an old one now but I quite literally have not turned on old gaming PC since I have gotten an Ally. Also I have experience doing full days of work work using MS office, web browsers, PDFs etc doing basic PC stuff is the easy thing especially when docked it's literally just a PC.
@@TheTyisawesome Not really, as someone with a high end PC and the Ally, it is my PC away from home.
Opens ROG ally:
BeanNG on desktop
100% on brand, Tony crash compilation when.
Nice to see that dankpods plays video games exactly like you’d expect him to - complete with frank and the digital equivalent of piles of nuggets from cashies.
Surprised you picked this up over the steam deck, especially considering the reported sd card issues this was facing before. Normally people say they got this because it runs windows but that seems to be your least favorite feature.
people in the comments are saying that's not available here, I assume that's why he got this instead
Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that. he even said he was able to go pick the Asus at a local store. Australia is always getting the short end of the stick, you can even buy the Steam Deck in stores at Japan but you still have to import to Australia. Fucking nutty.@@isthatrubble
0:53 That joke was just terrible! Really ruff...
1:10 BEAM GANG
I'm here for the age of handheld gaming PCs. Love my Steam Deck for finally working through my backlog and 100% legitimately obtaining old games for money and not for free
In terms of handheld emulation I would have had you pegged as an RG35XX guy for the Nugget Factor alone.
I like the steam deck because it doesn't have windows. I thought the early deck bugs were bad, but yikes. The only problem is that Windows only games with anticheat don't work sometimes. Even though its a simple toggle for the devs to allow Linux.
Something I like about it is that you can buy it at retail stores, unlike the steam deck. Idk why I do, I just like buying stuff on my own and not have to worry about shipping
Yeah I was in the same boat for a while, til Kogan stocked Steam Decks.
So glad I got a Deck and not an Ally just because of all the problems that come with it being a windows device. Steam Decks custom OS should be called Todd HowOS cause "It just works"
Bro the deck is worth it if you don't have baby hands.
Real Pro tip here from an Ally owner:
1- Boot games from steam big picture mode(very useful), when you open steam from the command center it goes into big picture mode and it makes the system easier to use.
2- Treat command center just as a tool to tweak the ally on the go, it isn't great.
3- Debloat windows to remove trash features(very useful)
4- Do custom profiles for you power, portable at 18 watts will play for up to 4 hours with little drop on performance; it gets even better if you drop the resolution to 900p from 1080p
5- Turn off the scheduled maintenance on hard drives, windows won't do it to the ssd but it will do it for the microSD and it will cause issues. It's better to turn it off permanently.
You can do this by doing a right click on your ssd or SD > Properties > Tools > Optimize > then on "Scheduled Optimization" hit the "Change Settings" and uncheck the first box to turn it off.
Game on!!
Dankpods, mate, you should TOTALLY make gaming videos regularly. I am absolutely hooked
DANK PLAYS BEAMNG, SO AWESOME, LOVE THAT GAME, MY MOST PLAYED
I’m happy for people that enjoy their ROG allay but for me I decided to stay on my steam deck because personally I wasn’t getting an extra 300$ ish value to upgrade
$50*
@@SEVENTEENPOINT1 I have the cheapest steam deck and a micro SD card
@@Henry7Madsen Not comparable.
@@SEVENTEENPOINT1 It's absolutely comparable.
@@reaperreaper5098 High speed NVMe vs eMMC from a Chromebook. No shot lol.
You singed mine at LTX!! I love the Ally
Wait Fr? He did?
I'm not sure about this but it might be possible to run steamOS on this. Might run games a slight bit worse but at least doing literally anything on it wont suck ass :)
steamOS would probably actually run games better because it uses much less power and RAM, but it has its major frustrations regarding going through Linux stuff. I legit think the best option for most of these devices would be to debloat an older windows, like 7. they would better suit the fact that people just know Windows better than linux-based distros and also use less resources. would probably be more vulnerable to viruses and such though.
My partner randomly brought one of these last weekend. The staff at JB was playing BG3 on it behind the counter so she knew it must be wroth it.
Turns out it was just about the last ROG Ally is stock at a JB in Brisbane cause all the JB staff had been buying them up as fast as the customers. By all accounts, it's a solid machine.
Wow that says a lot of the staff themselves love it
Just discovered your channel among your other channels and i'm mad at myself, i didn't discover your amazing content sooner. I just like your style.
Dude, I drive for my job. I got a Steam Deck so I could play games in between stops, and honestly it was the best purchase i've made in a while.
Having a switch style device with PC games on it is amazing! It's not the most powerfull thing in the world, but I have gotten sooo much mileage out of it that it has paid for itself over and over.
It got me back into gaming, and i'm finally chipping away at my Steam back catalog.
Personally, I think the steam deck is better, but it really depends on your play preference. if you really like PC then get the ROG if you want to consul like experience get the steam deck. But either way, I’m happy that you found something that allows you to play games. But if you could please do a review on the steam deck
It’s the opposite, SD is more for FPS player can’t use controller to aim. Its trackpad is designed to be used like a mouse. If u don’t use keyboard and mouse for gaming. U prefer console like experience u pick Rog ally. If u use a mouse. If u r a pc player and have hardly used controller in ur life u use SD
Unfortunately, in the distant land of Australia, Valve doesn't sell the steam deck. The only way to get it is to use an importer, incurring a lot of tax and losing your warranty. The end result is that the Steam Deck costs ~900 AUD while the Rog Ally costs ~1200 AUD, with the ROG Ally being available from local stores with a warranty. It makes the steam deck way less attractive for us Australians.
@@zihechen3111 oh, I just thought it was more convenient with what I use it for. I do actually play a lot of first person shooter games so I guess it is a little biased on my end. But either way as long as you have fun with it, then there’s really is no difference.
@@zihechen3111 eh, software wise the deck is far more fitting for a console user, alot less headaches since steam OS isn't slapped together by 700 drunk software engineers like the Ally is.