Customer Ratings & Reviews

Absolutely love this thing. The screen looks great! Ergonomics are great! The only downside is battery life. I get about an hour and a half on AAA games at 25watts... So if you're looking into getting into PC handhelds, this is a great buy. It's a little older, so it's cheaper, and the only downside is the battery life, but other than that, it's a great PC handheld!

I have had the Ally for about 3 months now, and I also have the Steam Deck, the ally is definitely more performant, I usually leave it at 15W most of the time, I don't use it with Turbo mode, and I get good battery life, about an hour and a half - two hours (depending on the game), the fan does not get loud (unlike the steam deck), it does not get hot, and it very comfortable to hold, since its smaller. The screen is awesome, VRR is definitely a plus. The only complaint I have is the SD card issue, even when RMA it still breaks (from reports I've seen). I tried using the SD card and the SD card eventually got corrupted, and it was a new card from Samsung, I ended up formatting it again and not using it, and just upgraded the internal SSD instead. Overall I'm pretty happy with the purchase. Hopefully the Ally 2 (if it even comes out) addresses the SD card issue.

My prmary reason for buying this versus a Steam Deck was the timing. I could go down to Best Buy and pick this up the day I decided to buy it. To that end, I bought an open box edition of this device and have had no problems. I'm just using it to play games from Steam and have found that any game with a decent playable or verified rating works fine on this device. My only complaint is the lack of battery, but reviews of the Steam deck suggested the same problem. So far, I've been fortunate to be able to play while plugged in. So the battery isn't much problem. I bought it as a handheld gaming device to manage stress while traveling. It looks like it will work well for that. Ps. There does seem to be a problem where the Microsoft os doesn't understand the controller input 100%, but the touch screen fills in those problems easily.

The ROG Ally Z1 Extreme has a lot going for it—powerful hardware, a gorgeous 120Hz display, and a sleek, comfortable design. Windows 11 support means access to a massive game library, and the performance is solid for a handheld device. When it works as intended, it’s an amazing portable gaming experience. However, it’s held back by some frustrating issues. Battery life is disappointing, often struggling to last beyond a couple of hours during demanding gameplay. Windows 11 isn’t optimized for handheld use, leading to clunky navigation and occasional software headaches. ASUS’s Armoury Crate feels half-baked, making system management more complicated than it should be. For those willing to tinker and overlook some rough edges, the ROG Ally Z1E is a powerful handheld gaming PC. But out of the box, it doesn’t quite deliver the seamless experience you’d hope for at this price point.

It's been great so far! I'm able to play games anywhere with comfort. The ROG Ally is surprisingly light, and impressively powerful (especially when docked). The screen graphics quality is crisp, and the audio is astounding.

Pros: Portable AAA gaming in small form factor, full Windows functionality, easy to mod. Cons: Ventilation, low ram, lack of accessories Gaming on this is easy as long as you tweak around the settings and find the sweet spot with the 6gb normal folks use for GPU and the rest for CPU. Albeit at low / medium settings I get easily 50-60 FPS for intense GPU games and 60+ for 1+ Year old titles. The heat is manageable from the two fans, I’ve never ran into issues with over heating. It’s better by a few degrees if you add an aluminum heat sink and change the back case to increase area for the second fan that’s carved out with the ROG logo. I’ve noticed minor differences with both those mods. So that’s negligible at most. The SSD increase is a must. Toss in a 2TB and you are golden for at least 10 games. Maybe 2 if you think about COD. Hah. There is a possibility to use the normal m.2 SSDs, just add the adapter and you have plenty of space for that upgrade as well. Modding is easy; the back case is accessible by taking off the 6 screws (5 actually cause the 6th stays attached). Cons: Battery life could be better, the GPU could have been better it’s rated as on par with a Nvidia 1650. Granted yes I understand it’s a “switch” form factor PC, so anything above 1080 is moot on a screen this size but still. The option to have greater fidelity would be nice. Most games you’ll be lucky to get a few rounds on performance mode, let alone turbo off plug in power. So consider any potential “portable gaming” to be near a wall outlet to be remotely lasting. The most annoying bit is the joy sticks rub off on the circular LED glow rings and leaves black residue in the small crevice you can’t quite get with pointed tools unless you take the front face apart to clean. It’s just normal wear and tear of a joy stick controller. After some time, the SSD tends to also forget there is an OS on itself so it’ll go into a BIOS/ UEFI state as if nothing is on the SSD. Fully shut down and it might work normally but it’s annoying when it happens frequently. Overall this is a tech persons toy, honestly anyone else might get really annoyed or frustrated in figuring out the nuances of such a device. This isn’t a plug and play console. It’s a small PC. If you aren’t versed in pc gaming and can’t trouble shoot basic problems or aren’t the go to IT for your circle…look at streaming devices like the Logitech go, PlayStation portable, or iPhone attachments for easier accessibility to your console via data driven connection.

I am coming from a Steam Deck to the Ally. I enjoyed my Deck but didn't like not being able to mod my games while relying on a compatibility list to check for titles. Adding games from Epic or Ubisoft was a pain, and I always wanted more performance. Playing something like Cyberpunk would net me about 80 minutes of battery life. It was only when I could drop down to 5-10W where I would start to see 2-3 hours of battery life. I pre-ordered the Ally after reading reviews and, so far, it's been a solid console with one big issue. The Steam Deck wasn't a smooth launch. It ruined one of my 512GB Samsung microSD cards and an external 512GB SSD due to the way Steam OS was formatting external storage. Both the SSD and SD card are completely lost, there was no getting them back. Valve has since patched the issue, but you can still have issues with SD cards when queuing up multiple game downloads to it. I'll get the big negative out of the way. My Ally is currently with Asus, they're repairing my SD card reader. It fried one of my SanDisk 512GB microSD cards (as in completely fried) and the SD reader no longer works. I had to go through Asus's RMA program since I didn't purchase Geek Squad. In hindsight, I wish I had spent the extra $140 for that piece of mind. Just spend the money and get it. Being able to swap for a new unit in-person is better than taking 20 days through Asus's RMA service (5 days to get there, 10 business days in repair, and another 5 days to get back to you). At least Asus is fixing it. Valve didn't offer me anything with m Deck despite ruining $120 worth of storage. They shrugged their shoulders and told me not to use my Deck's SD reader until it was patched. I still think the Ally is worth it if you're after a one and done handheld. Asus has upgraded the firmware over time so that, watt-for-watt, it outperforms the Deck. Battery life is atrocious when running at 25W. I was getting 70 minutes of use playing Spider-Man at normal settings, scaling resolution (somewhere between 480p and 720p), and getting 40-45fps. That's only 10-20 minutes less than the Deck running at 15W and getting worse performance. I'll take that trade off. The Ally's 120Hz FreeSync display is the real killer feature here. I think 1080p is too high for a display of this size, they could have dropped it down to 720p and been fine (though navigating Windows would have been a mess). However, the FreeSync display makes it adaptive. I never noticed when I experienced frame drops going from 45fps to 35-40fps in some areas of Spider-Man, Cyberpunk, or other AAA title. The game still felt smooth, smoother than playing at 30fps on a 60Hz display. Other games, like Shredder's Revenge, play at 70-80fps and the display makes them feel smooth. Again, better than playing at the same framerate on a 60Hz display. For me, the 120Hz FreeSync display is what really pushes the Ally. The Z1 Extreme is a great little APU. It's powerful enough to handle modern AAA games at mostly medium settings rendering at 720p and using FSR to play at 1080p. I can play game the Deck never could thanks to the added power. I know some people moan about it, but Windows opens things up even more. It's easy to install Epic, Ubisoft, gog, Xbox, and various other game platforms. No need to jump through hoops to get them showing up in Steam under Steam OS (Linux). Just download their setup files and go like any other system. All game mods carry over and are compatible with Windows, you won't have issues with trainers or similar programs, and you can run other programs. I have Office installed with access to my OneDrive. I don't need it in handheld mode, but I have used it docked to a display with a keyboard and mouse. The Z1 Extreme is so powerful, it can be used as a desktop for medium to heavy work. Editing 4k videos in DaVinci is smoother than I expected, and it supports using AMD's APU for hardware accelerated encoding. Photo editing in Photoshop is also smooth. That's the advantage of the Z1 Extreme and, when plugged in, the APU will run at 30W with higher turbo boost. It has become my go-to for working outside my house knowing I'm going placed with a display I can plug into. I picked up a portable keyboard and mouse to take with me. Battery life when you aren't gaming is solid. I will often drop the APU down to 10W for watching movies while turning off Wi-Fi and I can easily get 5-6 hours out of it. Start using Office and that will drop to a solid 5 hours. It's only when the APU runs at 25W when the battery life tanks, but that's to be expected. Despite having the SD reader issues, I still can't recommend this enough. I was frustrated with Steam OS, the Deck's performance, and the low-quality display in the Deck. It's a great device, but I wanted more. I spent more time tinkering with it to get games running than I did actually playing games. Aside from the last week, it's been the opposite for my Ally. I spent an hour setting it up and have been playing more games and running more programs than I have tinkering with it to get things running. Get the Geek Squad though. You're already getting a $600 handheld, spend the extra $140 and at least get the 2 year option.

Overall, the rog ally is good, very good even, but there are a few things holding it back. The good aspects of it are obvious, but the bad aspects can be harder to nail down unless you have used it for a while. Setup: the process of setting this up is no different than any other windows laptop, except for the fact that you have an onscreen keyboard instead of a real one, which is problematic if it doesnt pop up when you click on text boxes. Luckily pressing one of the buttons on the back of the device and up on the d-pad should bring it up. Ease of use: Not very good. Unless you have experience gaming on pcs and know your way around windows very well, getting everything out of the ally will be troublesome. For instance, you have to open three different apps and install windows updates to even get the expected performance, let alone having to scuffle through windows to be able to disable cpu core boosting to improve battery life. It just isnt easy to use. Battery life: Bad. You are going to buy this device because of its performance, not because you want to play a light game for 5 hours. If you want that, buy a steam deck or a switch, they are simply better devices in that regard. Given that, I think the argument that if you play light games at 5 watts the battery life is good, makes little sense when the games you want to play on this have to be at 12 watts minimum. The best battery life you can expect playing the games you want is about 2 hours, and thats at 12 watts which wont perform nearly as well as 25 watts. 18 watts is a good sweet spot for me. An external battery pack is pretty much essential if you want to play away from an outlet for a while. Screen: Very good screen, minimal backlight bleed, though some can be possible, and 120 hz feels very good browsing around and when you have a game that can utilize it. The most important thing here is variable refresh rate (vrr). Thanks to this, alongside low framerate compesation, games will feels smooth enough all the way down to 30 fps, which is awesome. In the armory crate software there is a setting to change the color mode of your screen, and I personally think the vivid setting looks the best. Also make sure to use the 120hz refresh at all times or vrr will not be enabled. Use in game frame rate limiters or leave it unlocked. Ergonomics and controls: generally good, the device fits well in my hands and have not had any cramping, though I imagine there are things they can improve. Everyone will feel differently so I recommend testing out a display model before buying. The controls are generally quite good for me. I very much like the feeling of the buttons and have had none stick after over 2 weeks of use, the sticks are very easy to move and while it takes some getting used to, ive grown to like it especially while holding the device in bed where I dont want to use much pressure to move them. The bumpers and triggers are both good, especially the triggers. The D-pad is good to me, at least to the point where ive had no issues. In terms of issues, my left stick does make a little clicking sound when I rotate it around and my left bumber sounds a bit different than my right one. Both minor issues that hopefully get ironed out, but arent dealbreakers or even medium considerations, but I wanted to mention in. There are some people that have issues with deadzones, but I have had no issues and this will likely be resolved in time, its something to be aware of though. Performance: Beyond expectations, even after seeing all the reviews. If you expect maxing every game out and getting a bunch of frames, buy a laptop or something. But if you want acceptable performance from any triple A game at 1080p with some upscaling and graphical setting changes, you will be more than satisfied. Remember that this is a handheld device. Software: generally decent, their armory crate is usable though it can be buggy. There are a lot of cool features in there though, especially regarding the ability to change your allocated vram, I recommend 8gb if you want to play diablo 4. Also as a side note, there seems to be an issue with sd cards so I would avoid using them until they sort it out, but 512 gigs should get you by for a time, which I also think is enough storage for the money, but hopefully they add a 1tb option or a 32 gig ram option for the next one. Final thoughts and considerations for the future: I love the device, despite all the issues. I personally give it a 9/10, assuming they fix all the major bugs within a month or two. I do wonder if 16gb of ram will be enough in a couple years, as it would suck to pay 700 for something that only lasts a year or two, I guess thats up to the developers in terms of optimization, but extra headroom wouldve been nice. I certainly recommend this over any of the other windows based handhelds, but I still think the steam deck is valid for those on more of a budget, or for people that like playing smaller games with more battery life than the ally. Im sure asus can improve the battery life some with optimizations, but I doubt it can ever get to the steam decks level, let alone the switch. If you get one, i highly recommend finding tutorials and little tricks you can do to get the most out of yours, because I think this device deserves it. If you dont need an ally now, and are willing to wait a year or two, I imagine the ally 2 will be phenomenal given how much they got right on the first one, but if you want one now, then get it NOW. Dont let anyone tell you what to do with your money as long as you did the proper research and know what youre getting into. Good luck!

This is a great choice for a handheld gaming PC! It is powerful enough to handle the latest AAA game titles, the screen is vibrant and bright, and the controls are good. It is great for the price. I wish it had more storage, but you can upgrade it. I also wish it had a larger battery and more memory. There is a new model coming out sometime soonish that does have more memory and maybe some other upgrades.. I am thinking about getting it because Iove this one so much! You won't go wrong buying this one though!

I’m going to start this by saying, I’ve been a PC gamer since the old Sierra quest games; king’s quest, space quest, hero’s quest, manhunter, etc. If you had told me then that in my lifetime I’d have an actual x86 computer that fit comfortably in my hands back then, I’d have laughed in your face. That said, here I am now with my shiny new Asus Rog Ally Z1 Extreme based handheld. I’ve now had it for about a month, as I wanted to get a good indication for the system before I reviewed it here. So with that in mind, let’s take a look. Obviously, you can’t discuss something like this without first talking about the setup. It didn’t quite go as smoothly as I would have hoped, as for some reason during the initial setup where it asks for your wifi key, it wouldn’t bring up the keyboard to type. I was able to find a work around by holding the M2 button on the back and pressing the up arrow on the dpad to manually bring up the keyboard. This isn’t a huge ordeal, but it probably should be included in the set up manual. Beyond that, everything went fine. There was, admittedly, quite a few updates to install after getting it set up, but that’s to be expected. As for actual usage, the ally is surprisingly easy to use and navigate thanks to the asus software package. All games you have installed show up on this app, and can be opened from here. This gives it a console like feel even though it’s still windows 11 based. For steam, epic games launcher, and windows store apps, this is pretty effortless to deal with. It’s come a long way since the launch, that’s for sure. Of course, we then have to talk about the primary usage for a system like this; games. In this regard, I have to say, I love it. I’ve primarily been playing Helldivers 2, diablo 4, and killing floor 2 on it, and all three actually handle surprisingly well. To be sure, you will not have the horse power here to max out something like helldivers 2, but, if you aren’t afraid to turn down the settings you can get to that magic 60fps average when plugged in, which is astonishing for a device of this size. For older titles, this thing will play them without issue maxed out pretty easily even on battery. That said, unfortunately, the battery is the weak point. If you are playing a demanding game and have to kick up the TDP to the higher settings and are also running a high brightness, you’re looking at around 1.5 hours, which is still plenty feasible considering it charges via usb c. It’d be nice to have a higher result here, but, I haven’t had any issues in that regard and rarely am playing out of reach of an outlet anyway. Of course, there is a way around that battery life situation, the Sunshine/Moonlight ecosystem. If you already own a gaming computer, you can set up a sunshine server on it, then set up the moonlight client on the ally. What this will allow you to do is connect to your gaming desktop and let the desktop do all the heavy lifting. With this combination, you can set the TDP mode to silent on the ally and get 4-5 hours of battery, while playing at whatever framerate your desktop is able to muster. Combined with my desktop RTX3090, I am getting 120fps locked in games like Helldivers 2, diablo 4, and pretty much any other game I’d like to throw at it. Even Tekken 8 runs hardlocked at 60 fps in this mode. That said, you do need a home network capable of handling the bandwidth for this to work, Wifi 6e should handle it without issue. I also strongly suggest that your desktop be hardwired, just to remove variables. Input lag on my home network for this is under 10ms, and doubtful you’d notice it in actual usage. Of course, this does assume you’re at home to play, but if you are then this makes the perfect, well, Ally for your desktop. It’s nice to be able to play my games in maximum quality from my bed when winding down after a long work day. I’d also note, the sunshine/moonlight setup will work just as well with the non-extreme Z1 version of the Rog Ally. All in all, I can happily say the Rog Ally Z1 Extreme is a great product, and I’m happy to recommend it.

I started out with a steam deck and kept running into it's limitations. I felt like there was something missing and I was missing out on a true PC game experience so I took the leap and got the Rog Ally. It has done everything that I need. So far my biggest gripe is that the internal memory doesn't last long when you're really thinking about the sheer size games in their updates can have this is without mods and anything else luckily I already had an additional micro SD to expand its memory but so far I've got no complaints. It's a fun lightweight system with a nice amount of battery, it is a lot less restrictive then the steam deck. Thoroughly enjoyed no regrets.

I see a lot of returns strictly based on people expecting a Switch like experience. The Ally and all other PC handhelds like it are not a Switch. They are all Windows based computers in a handheld format. If you understand that and know what PC entails then you are in for a real treat! I have not come across a single game I can't play, from any storefront etc. Its a godsend of a gaming device for parents who can't lounge on the couch anymore and game or sit at a desk with a tower pc. BUY IT

I was thinking about the steam deck. But then I seen this and saw that it runs on windows 11 which means its a smaller computer. It runs well. Had a bit of a problem with the sdcard thought it was the issue these have had with the card reader malfunction due to heat stress. But it was just the card. I bought this really to play Baldurs Gate 3 when I go into work. This thing runs the game superbly at mid to high settings. The feel of the console feels firm durable. I love holding this thing in my hands. I will say though the keyboard feature and touch screen can be a little buggy at times. Would I buy this again? Yes would I buy a steam deck? Yes. This does have a horrible battery life but given the type of chipset and gpu it has. There are compormises that have to be. You cant have your cake and ice creme and eat it too. I normally have it plugged in all the time anyways so I can run at turbo mode. Even in the car.

The Asus Rog Ally is a great handheld with some minor issues. I do not recomend this device if you do not llike to tinker in windows and you prefer a console experience. It takes some times getting things set up and running the way you want. There are still issues related to the sd card not reading, crashing or slowing the handheld while the sd card is inserted. The screen at 120hz variable refresh rate is great even if the fps is slower it feels smother then the steam deck. The controls are great although the thumb stick is not as good as the xbox controller. The gripe is not as grippy as the steam deck, but still passable. Performance is great. Overall would recommend to people that like to game on pc, or even console gamer if you like to tinker.

I’ve made the swap from a Steamdeck to the Ally and I do not regret this choice one bit. The Steamdeck was good, don’t get me wrong but the incompatibility with a lot of games really just made it more difficult to play the games I want to. AAA games played on the deck were only able to play Low-Medium settings. On the other hand, the Ally can play basically ANY game that runs on Windows and the games run at a good medium-high settings depending on the game. Games run at an average 41-100fps give or take depending on the game of course. I’ve yet to find a game that runs poorly on this thing. I’ve been using the Ally to lay on the couch and just game since I’ve bought it. Pros: can run almost any game Windows based SSD can be upgraded Cons: Battery life Battery life Battery life

More powerful than you think. Not enough marketing around this beast of a handheld. For the price, it's a solid win that's only topped by upgraded or newer versions. Access to any game library you want, full PC functionality, dock to any screen, and ease of the windows 11 OS. If you need something portable that you can do some legitimate on the go gaming with, best choice. Few cons, it runs hot... Very hot under some loads so watch your legs and fingers and the only other problem I have is a very sus USB C connection, for taking such a high wattage power supply and being intended to be used excessively between docking to display, charging, or simply running on turbo I would have expected a much more robust feeling of a connection, in my opinion it feels the type of loose like you'd expect on a much cheaper device and does not instill a feeling of longevity for the USB port.

This is an amazing piece of equipment. The fact that it can out perform laptops that cost more while being as portable as a switch is almost mind blowing. It does, however, come with room for improvement. Storage is the biggest issue. The 512 GB doesn't last long and the SD slot over heats and cooks the disk to death. This leaves you with too little storage or the need to open up your device and swap in a new drive. I have not opened mine up, so I can't comment on the difficulty. Overall, I would certainly recommend this over a Switch and I'm happy to have selected it over a Steam Deck, though I've not used one.

In my experience within the first 10 days I had a couple hardware issues. The SD card reader stopped reading SD cards. My right trigger didn't register as being fully registered unless you pressed it extremely hard. To the point it was uncomfortable putting that much presser on the trigger thinking it may break. And lastly it kind of seemed half of my battery cells were dead. At 15-25w the battery life was only 45 minutes. Which was about half of what other reviews were getting. I do feel being a launch device things like this can happen and I do not feel the device as a whole is bad. The screen is decently bright and is color accurate. The controls are good, while the sticks are a bit to loose for my usual liking they worked fine. The speakers for their size have good sound depth and volume. Overall feel of the device is good. The performance potential is really good, while not quite there yet as long as AMD and Asus continue to support the device with firmware and software updates it could be an amazing device. Sadly I did return my Ally within the return window due to the hardware issues with the plan to pick up another one down the road. There are a lot of other Windows gaming handhelds out there but I feel that Asus and AMD working together can make the Ally great and having a local brick and mortar store to aid in support is the way to go over internet only purchasable handhelds. Good start but needs a little more time to become what it can be.

Never a single issue in the 16months of owning the z1 extreme. I use it daily, 30w manual mode plugged in all the time. Very seldomly do i have a need to run on battery. You also get better performance plugged in. I have a backup power brick just in case there is no outlet nearby. Ppl buy these handhelds, no matter who the manufacturer is, and then get upset because the battery doesnt last… if you wanna pump out the power to run demanding titles, your going to drain any battery in no time. Fact of life. The purpose of these is to have the convenience of enjoying your hobby almost anywhere. The internal batteries on any handheld can only do so much. So invest in a power brinck, or more outlets lol. 10/10 one of my favorite gaming devices.

First of all, I own a steam deck, and have owned a Logitech G Cloud. They lack the power I want, so i bought the ally. Its angular design is uncomfortable for me. The battery life is poor, and YES I run it at Turbo, otherwise no point in buying it over the steam deck since the deck is better at 15w. The G cloud is easily the most comfortable. Im having to return it since it gets very hot and shuts off. It gets hot not only around the command center and armory crate buttons, but oddly a little around the back grips. I did appreciate the updates (except the recent one that reduced performance by roughly 30%) The sound was the best ive ever heard. The buttons are nice overall. Mapping the back buttons make my life easy. I was getting about 1080p Mid settings 35-45fps Turbo non plugged in on Elden ring. Plugged in got me 45-55fps. Battery is horrible. Not sure I believe its the same as the steam deck. Overall, battery sucks, comfort isnt great, and the obvious heat defect is an issue ive even read elsewhere (likely fan problem). The look is awesome, sound is great, screen is nice, oh and xcloud streaming looks better than G cloud (likely due to 6E support), and theyre supporting it well so far. Would be a 3.7 star if not for the defect.