Customer Ratings & Reviews

recently purchased the ROG Ally from Best Buy, attracted by its sleek design and promising features. However, my experience with this controller left me with mixed feelings. On the positive side, the ROG Ally boasts impressive build quality and ergonomic design, making it comfortable to hold during long gaming sessions. The buttons are responsive, and the overall feel is premium. Unfortunately, my enjoyment was marred by a persistent issue with the right analogue stick. Despite initial smooth operation, I found that it would intermittently drift, causing frustrating moments during gameplay. This problem persisted despite multiple attempts to recalibrate the controller. While the ROG Ally has the potential to be a top-tier gaming accessory, its reliability falls short of expectations. For now, I've returned it to Best Buy and will be exploring other options. Overall, the ROG Ally offers a blend of quality construction and functionality, but its inconsistency in performance, particularly with the drifting analogue stick, leaves much to be desired. Proceed with caution if considering this controller for your gaming setup.

I've had this little guy for a few months now, and it is holding up fantastically. The battery life isn't the best, but I usually have it plugged in so it's not an issue. Overall I would recommend this to others looking for a handheld pc.

This device has been a definite blast!!! It’s been a great little gaming handheld and it has been extremely helpful for getting to and through my back catalogue of games. I highly recommend this device but only if you can get it on sale especially with the ally x right around the corner

Better display and more power than the Steam Deck. Yes, Windows isn’t ideal, but its fine. More compatibility than SteamOS. Battery isn’t great but adults know how to manage.

Love it. Up to now I play anything I’ve been wanting to play. Which the battery life was longer.

First of all, I got this on release day as an impulse buy. Had no idea about it nor did I do any research. I own two Assus laptops and have been very happy. I mean its Asus! How bad can it be? Well, pretty bad it turns out. The product is made out of cheap feeling plastic. The joysticks have no tension at all. I have no idea how they get back in center position on their own. I literally can't feel it move sometimes. The thing gets very hot and loud. Battery life is insanely bad, just keep it plugged in. There is a 3 sec delay to register input 80% of the time. Armoury crate is an abomination, but I already knew that. If I knew that's what they used I would have never purchased it. I have only Steam installed because when trying to install other platforms like Ubisoft I literally can't type in my login info. It simply doesn't register. Same goes for Rockstar and GOG Galaxy. After reading the reviews I have come to realize that, apparently, it is perfectly acceptable to charge $699 plus tax and be a beta tester for Asus. People are expecting that the device will be great in about a year (assuming Asus dedicates enough effort into maintaining and improving this product) and thus rating the device positively. Maybe I'm old school but for this kind of money I expect a premium feeling device with smooth user experience and top notch performance. You literally get none of that with this device. Complete trash. Will be returning it.

I love the light weight, color, and display. The only complaint is the buttons and joysticks aren't that good.

Tinkerers dream. I really enjoy playing games. Its a lot more powerful than the steam deck even though battery lige is pretty bad

This thing is very light. I love how it looks. I appreciate being able to navigate windows with the thumb sticks. VRR is a nice thing to have as well.

Great for on the go gaming or relaxing on the couch. Super powerful plays everything I throw at it. Diablo 4, Starfield, Enshrouded ect...

This is a great little piece of hardware, or at least it has the potential to be. When I first got it, it was novel. I enjoyed loading my games onto it and played a couple of them as the picture is beautiful; seven inches at 120Hz FHD looks phenomenal. It's also blazing fast, even running Windows 11. The AMD Extreme processor that it comes with tears through even non-game related tasks and it also has a sufficient amount of RAM to make game playing at FHD smooth and fun. To ASUS's credit, the ROG Ally also runs Windows 11 natively and the hardware all has drivers written to work with Windows which allows a much broader swath of games to be played (Steam, GOG, Xbox PC Games, Amazon, EA, etc). I was excited for the prospect which blinded me to its faults. My one big complaint about the Ally, was the size of the SSD that came with it. It's only 512GB which in this day and age is virtually nothing. But I figured once it was out of warranty, I could upgrade the SSD to a larger one myself and move on with playing my games. So, in liue of a larger SSD, I kitted out the device with a 1TB MicroSD card and loaded the games i was eager to put through the paces on the Ally to that. Before the ROG Ally was even released, I got a first gen Steam Deck. I put windows on it to try for additional gaming platforms but because the APU is so customized for Steam, there are no native drivers for Windows for most of the on the Steam Deck hardware. This means that if you're not playing games through Steam, you had better connect a keyboard and a mouse because the control sticks, D-pad, mouse pads, and secondary triggers do not work for other gaming platforms. And intention is the mother of all screw ups. I got the Ally intending to play games on it but the Steam Deck and it's myriad of Steam games was still calling my name even through the novelty of the Ally. So, after the Ally showed up and I got it setup and the games installed that I wanted to play on it, I turned the majority of my attention back to the Steam Deck. Over the course of the next nine months, I powered on the ROG Ally around twenty times, mostly just to exercise the battery to make sure it didn't die. During those power ups, I played exactly two games on it. I didn't spend of lot of time with the Ally because I was still infatuated with the Steam Deck despite its obvious weaknesses when compared to the Ally. Three months ago, I finished the last game I was playign on Steam Deck, put it aside, and powered on my Ally, intending to FINALLY get some use out of it. Much to my chagrin, however, all of my games were gone. I tinkered with Windows, I rebooted, I reinstalled Windows but the card reader was gone; it had failed and it took the card that was in it with it. I tested 1TB MicroSD card in two different readers, and the card was not even recognized as a piece of hardware. When I attempted to open the card after it was inserted into the readers, Windows simply said, please insert a MicroSD card. The card was toast. And I mean that in an almost literal sense. What I didn't realize, as I excitedly popped in my very expensive (for the time) 1TB MicroSD card, is that the MicroSD card reader in the ROG Ally is sitting directly on top of one of the heat exhausts for the unit's graphics card, processor and chipset. That would be bad. I realized way after fact, that every time I powered on the device, I was literally cooking my MicroSD card because of where the MicroSD card reader was placed in the device. Eventually, the card and the reader both failed becuase of the excess heat. Well, I surmise it was from the excess heat. After the reader failed, I hit the net and down the rabbit hole I went. There are literally thousands of complaints on the net around the heat that's absorbed by the reader and the card it contains by it being placed on top of a heat pipe. I came to the conclusion that mine was another failure caused by proximaty to an excessive heat source. Fortunately, my Ally is still under warranty. I took it, through the direction of the ASUS website, back to Best Buy to have it fixed or replaced. They sent it off and when it came it had received a new motherboard to repair the card reader. The system was lauded as being full repaired by the technician that worked on it. I picked up my unit two weeks ago (after four weeks in the shop) and when I got it home, I powered it up and as I suspected they had wiped the SSD and I had to setup Windows again which I did, only to find that the card reader still doesn't show up in the Windows Device Manager. It either failed again after they repaired it, or the Geek Squad engineer said it was repaired but it never was. At this point, I'm unsure sure which to believe. I've made another appointment tomorrow, Saturday, June 01, 2024, to take it back in again. I'm going to ask for a replacement this time instead of it being repaired. If Best Buy doesn't grant that request, I may change my name to Karen and throw a stink fit. But I'll decide that in the car on the way over. If I get a new unit and it's functioning as prescribed, and doesn't fail again, I will update this review. I really, really do like the ROG Ally, but the layout of the hardware just isn't conducive to heavy long-term use. The failure rate is just too high. To top that off, ASUS has been remarkably silent on the issue of the misplaced card reader. They haven't admitted that there is a defect in their design. That, couple with the actual hardware failures I've experienced, leaves me with no choice to rate this device only two stars.

Excelent device, run everything at almost 100 fps but the battery is maybe its downside if u use it at its full power, overall its a good deal

Blown away of how well this runs. It has to be on medium setting for most games but re4 and 2 remake are very good on medium. Elden ring and dark souls 3 run very well on medium settings. Also the dead space remake is very well ran on medium settings. Havent had good luck with call of duty but the severs in that game are really bad even for my pc most of the time. Been having lots of fun witb it definitely recommend goving it a try for that on the toilet, in the bed, or front porch gaming experience

I bought the Asus ROG Ally for my son as a Christmas present. It was a gift he did not even know he wanted. He was asking for the Sony PS5 compatible handheld. With this he's able to access Xbox, Steam, Nintendo, and PC Games, as well as access his Playstation online friends. If he wanted to he could use this as his laptop with a few accessories. He loves this thing. Took it on vacation with us and I used it also. I wish this was around when I was a kid. He told me: "Dad this was such a great present, I didn't even know I wanted it".

This is a great windows based handheld pc. If you use more then steam and don’t want to mess around in Linux this worked for me right out of the box. After a few months of use I easily replace the ssd with no problems. Battery life is highly variable but I see 1.5 to 2 hours most of the time but I’m not trying to maximize at all.

Really enjoy this handheld! Of course it cant play everything out there but being able to play assassins creed shadow, space marines 2, should be enough to say how much it can handle. Definitely reccomend this for anyone wondering if its worth it

i love it. its a handheld pc with just about any laun her tou could think of. only downside os the battery life

It is great to have while on the go windows gives you the opportunity to play a lot of game you can’t play on a steam deck but unfortunately it’s not a very durable handheld I’ve had is 3 months the buttons and triggers have stopped working and it’s beginning to overheat more then normal it’s a good buy but you will have to replace parts

I have a number of handhelds now including the steam deck and oneXplayer mini 6800u. After using this about a few weeks I can say this is by far the better machine. The cooling alone and how quiet it is when using it makes it the best as of now. You can get more fps due to the ability to raise the power in the armory crate manual mode. I normally play plugged in and it can boost to 50w making this thing put out higher fps than all other competitors.I would definitely recommend this to anyone!

As someone who is a pc gamer and have tried many portable options (steam deck, asus flow z13, laptops and nintendo switch), I can truly say that this device has the most power. My steam deck runs windows as well and has a hard time playing cod but the ally can on low medium settings. To be able to add the asus egpu will better expand the chances for higher resolution and ugraded settings. I would recommend this device to others but as long as you know how to work windows to get the best out of your experience.