Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme Review - Gaming handheld with 120 Hz display and AMD Zen4

[Redaktion]

The Asus ROG Ally is a powerful gaming handheld and a direct competitor for Valve's Steam Deck. Thanks to powerful hardware from AMD, which is based on the latest Zen4 Phoenix mobile processors, the gaming handheld even handles modern games smoothly.


https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Ally-Z1-Extreme-Review-Gaming-handheld-with-120-Hz-display-and-AMD-Zen4.716680.0.html

[Yeshy]

I would like to see 720p (or 800p) medium settings benchmarks in "recent" games (any of Returnal / Spiderman / Control / Witcher / SotTR)

having 60fps vsync/frame capped power results would also be interesting where applicable

(esp. compared to normal 780M and 680M)

[Vilmir]

Less than 1 hour of gameplay on battery.
So you have to play near a plug, all the time. And for that price, you can get a way more powerful 15' with a 3060.
I am really puzzled by this new product category.

[Abc]

Less than 1 hour of gameplay on battery.
So you have to play near a plug, all the time. And for that price, you can get a way more powerful 15' with a 3060.
I am really puzzled by this new product category.

Well yes. If you can lug a 15" around you can get better performance. In fact, a desktop at $600 can have even more impressive performance if you do not care about portability at all.

[nbcheck_fan]

Amazing review! Thank you for your hard work! I am now waiting for the AOKZOE A1 Pro test and comparison. :)

[jihadjoe]

I wonder if the TDP is configurable. Phoenix Point is certainly more efficient than the SoC in Steam Deck, if the Rog Ally can be configured down to 25W or even 15W this should result in much longer battery life when playing less demanding games.

[Sivious]

Less than 1 hour of gameplay on battery.
So you have to play near a plug, all the time. And for that price, you can get a way more powerful 15' with a 3060.
I am really puzzled by this new product category.

1. Have you considered you can just turn the resolution down or cap the FPS to get more battery life?
2. People want to play games laying down.
3. Seems like the Steam Deck's sold about a million units, so a lot of people are not nearly as puzzled as you are.

[Kairoku]

What is the freesync range?

[GameXGR]

Less than 1 hour of gameplay on battery.
So you have to play near a plug, all the time. And for that price, you can get a way more powerful 15' with a 3060.
I am really puzzled by this new product category.

At 15 watt it already handily beats the steam deck and will get 2-3 Hours easily (almost all gaming laptops have worse battery life when gaming than that) , Turbo mode is only useful when hooking up an eGPU or docking it up (so it won't use up the battery), and laptops have to be plugged in as well to be anywhere near being up to their speed, and not to mention that a desktop is better if you care about price/performance. People still buy gaming laptops with <1 hour battery life and much worse price/performance than desktops because they want something portable, so people will buy Handhelds with worse price/performance and battery life (unless you are smart enough to not blast it in turbo all the time), for more portability.

[Rawr]

Less than 1 hour of gameplay on battery.
So you have to play near a plug, all the time. And for that price, you can get a way more powerful 15' with a 3060.
I am really puzzled by this new product category.

Gaming laptops will have around 1-2 hours of realistic gameplay when on battery too, not to mention a big hit on performance when on battery.

The steam deck has similar battery life so there is a demand for this.

Besides, if you play less demanding games, I can easily see this lasting 3-5 hours like the deck.

[TMMM]

Does it have HDR screen?

[ViktrDm]

When will the xg mobile 4090 benchmarks be added?

[SAimNE]

Looks like a somewhat solid piece of hardware, but it's really really strange that the steam deck wasn't in all the comparisons... it's kinda the most important benchmark to compare with.

Anyway it seems like in the vast majority of cases you'll still be playing on low, and with less optimization than you get with steamOS. I.e. hogwarts legacy ran at 40+ on steamdeck even before the performance patch and now runs at 60+.

I would think a more important comparison on these heavier games would be what this handheld gets at 720p, because almost everyone will sacrifice resolution to stay around 60fps or higher.

[Will G]

I see resizeable bar disabled ?

Does it not support this feature. If it did what performance improvement would it give ?

[asdflkjg]

Looks like the depth comparison may be off. Maybe you're using steam deck's max dimensions (including triggers and joysticks) vs. the Ally's min dimensions?