Customer Ratings & Reviews

Absolutely love this. I bought it because I didn't always want to be upstairs in my computer room so I could move around the house with it. That being said the battery is pretty bad it can die in 2 hours if not plugged in. Plays basically any game that I want. The controls are actually pretty nice and the placement doesn't hamper anything. The screen is great. It performs fast. The storage is the biggest issue on this device

As a father of two, free time isn’t scheduled — it just happens. Ten minutes before school pickup. Twenty minutes after bedtime. A rare quiet hour on a Sunday afternoon. So when I bought the Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme, I didn’t need a toy — I needed something powerful, portable, and comfortable enough to actually fit into my life. After months of using it, here’s my real-world take. First Impressions — This Isn’t a Toy The first thing that hits you is the 120Hz screen. It’s smooth. Like, really smooth. Games feel fluid and sharp in a way that makes you forget you’re holding a handheld. The 1080p display pops, and when you fire up a AAA title or even a fast indie game, it feels closer to a gaming laptop than a portable console. And that’s the magic: it’s basically a full Windows gaming PC in your hands. Steam, Game Pass, Epic — my entire library came with me. No rebuying games. No watered-down versions. For a dad who doesn’t have time to sit at a desk for hours? That’s huge.

Great handheld gaming. I use this to mostly play Diablo IV, Elden Ring, Fallout, and Starfield and it does so flawlessly on high settings. - Keep in mind it is a tiny handheld computer without a massive GPU, so no, it is not going to run Cyberpunk 2077 at 4k, but it will run most games in high settings at 1080p. - The launch screen conveniently has all of your apps like Steam, Battle.net, Ubisoft Connect, GOG, and your games tiled on the screen making it easy to click or touch them as soon as it boots up. - The battery lasts about an hour to an hour and a half, the USB-C charging cable is a decent length, and it fast charges in about 45 minutes. - The WiFi works great. Our router is in my wife's 1st floor office and I have no issues with connectivity in my office on the 3rd floor. - The screen looks good with minimal backlight bleed when the screen is in a pitch black scene of a game. - Comes with 1TB of space, which is plenty of space to play 5 or 6 games. - Games load quickly. - It is ergonomic and fits in my hands nicely. - Has some nice official peripherals you can buy for it, like the charger dock that allows you to charge it and connect it to an external monitor and the ROG Pro Controller. - Bluetooth works well with keyboard & mouse and headphones. - Works fine with my iPhones hotspot. Making gaming on planes and long car rides a nice experience. Cons: - Unless you are accustomed to using Windows 10/11 with a touch screen device, it can take some getting used to. - It makes a really loud logo splash screen noise when you turn it on. Usually ASUS allows you to turn this off in the BIOS and/or in the Armory Crate app; However with this, I have not been able to do so. - Although a nice touch to have them, the Z / Trigger Buttons on the back of the device are incredibly loud. So if you are trying to game quietly in bed next to someone, this and the logo-sound can definitely wake someone up. - When the Ally was first released it had some issues switching between touch screen mode and gamepad mode, but that seems to have been resolved. - Not really an issue, but keep in mind, it is literally a small computer that needs to breath. So, it gets hot and you can brick it if you keep the fans covered by leaving it on a thick blanket or anything else that can obstruct the fans airflow. The only big issue I had with it has been fixed via update, so overall I would rate this a solid 5/5 for mobile gaming. and maybe a 4/5 if you are trying to game light night quietly.

My beautiful wife bought me one for Christmas, and I love my ROG Ally! I have had it for about six months now and I have to say the performance is surprisingly good in every game I have tried and I generally do not use the highest performance mode. Currently playing Diablo 4 and it looks great and game play is nice and smooth. Which has also been the case with other games I have played on it. Can get a bit warm, particularly if you don’t give it room to breathe, but this hasn’t been a problem for me. Battery life isn’t great, so don’t expect to play more than an hour or two on a charge. But other than that, it feels good in my hands, the controls are comfortable and responsive, and the Asus user interface makes accessing your games easy with virtually no advanced configuration needed to play games from Steam, PC game pass, EAPlay, Blizzard, or any other source. You can also connect it to just about any USB C laptop dock and play games with a keyboard and mouse, or just use it like a regular computer. I use mine with Dell dock and dual monitors occasionally and haven’t had an issue. I highly recommend it for gamers like myself that love PC gaming but can’t sit at the desktop and zone out because we don’t want a divorce or kids with daddy issues. No keyboard and mouse sucks, but sacrifices must be made for the greater good. *Echo from the background* “The greater good.”

The ROG Ally Z1 Extreme was a really good experience for me, but I ended up selling it because I didn't find myself using handheld gaming devices as much as I thought I might. It was great for a vacation or two, but I found myself either at home where I preferred my desktop gaming PC or out places with other tasks in mind, and so didn't use it. Cool features to know: it's Windows 11 based, and pretty much any program that runs on Windows runs on this, including all the major DRMs (I used Steam, EA, and GOG). It will also run screen accountability software if your children are using it and you want to monitor what is coming across the screen. The screen was superior to the 1st gen Steam Decks, and the processor was faster. The audio quality of the built in speakers was amazing as well. Opportunities for growth. Not as many control options as a Steam Deck, the battery life was shockingly short, and the device got hot in the hands regularly with basic games. Overall, it was a good experience.

I sold my steam deck and got this as a replacement. The first thing I noticed after coming from steam deck is how much lighter and smaller this is, very nice to hold and play. The screen is vibrant and looks great even at 720p (1080p looks amazing). The setup was slightly more difficult than starting up a steam deck but once it's set up games look and play fantastically. Battery life can be short if played at the 25w turbo mode but can be extended if played at lower wattages. I usually play plugged in so I don't have any issues wth the battery. Overall I love this product and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a high end handheld pc

I was hesitant on purchasing this handheld, all because of the price point, but I am glad I did. I wanted something that I could play my games anywhere without being tethered. I've had the Rog Ally for almost a year now and it's still performing great! The color and resolution is crisp and clean. The availability of optimization for the graphics settings is very helpful when playing different types of games. Touch screen is a life-saver on this handheld. The portability is a plus. It is basically a PC on the go. I love the built in controller. It took some time getting used to compared to my usual Xbox controller. The audio is pretty loud and clear on the highest setting. My complaints are, the top triggers began squeaking after some time. On turbo mode, the handheld can get quite hot and lets out really hot air from the vents, so be careful. Since the ROG Ally runs on Windows, there are times things will glitch, but a restart usually fixes it. Without a mouse and keyboard, you are limited to the games you can play. Overall, I am happy with my purchase and would recommend others to give it a try if they are looking for portability for gaming.

So I’ve always wanted one of these, even before they were an actual thing. I love my pc games but much prefer to play on a handheld system and this has finally made it possible! It’s a pretty straightforward setup just like a pc and it’s easy to use between the onboard controller and the touch screen ability. The battery life isn’t great so if you intend on taking it out with you make sure to bring a decent sized battery bank or try to scope out spots that have outlets near you so you can plug it in. If you dont want to deal with upgrading the ssd or paying the $ for a micro sd card (the ones that work the best with this device are pricey and kind of hard to find) then I suggest getting the 1tb option. I haven’t had any issues with games running on this but I mostly play stuff like Fallout, ( Doom Dark Ages will play but it’s not a good experience). All in all I wanted something I could sit on the couch and play while my husband sits next to me and games on the xbox, and something I could take to work with me to play in between clients, this does that! I’m no longer strapped to my desk in my office at home trying to balance time with my family and gaming, or trying to adapt my work schedule to have time to game!

Hey, this thing is amazing. It is literally just a laptop in the palm your hands. The portability is great, its powerful and can run games with 40-60 fps no problem depending on the settings. Confusing to set up at first, but thats what Youtube is for. I will say, the battery life is absolutely atrocious. Even if playing or using it with low wattage, It will die within the hour. You'll most likely need to keep it plugged in or docked. Or, buy yourself a new battery, or a portable battery of some sort. All in all, if you like using Windows, and you're also a gamer, this thing is a beast.

The Rog Ally has been a very fun device to play with and use since I have been on disability from work it's comfortable to hold it's lightweight it plays all my games no problem the screen quality is amazing the buttons feel very comfortable the battery life is fair for what it is

I had been waiting and expecting so much from the Asus RoG Ally, that when I first received it, I was floored as to how incredible this little package is. Apparently I was not the only one, but some users have cast a dark shadow over this great device. I believe that these people were expecting something different, more like a portable, proprietary gaming device. This is not what the Ally is. To begin with, there were many complaints that the OS of the machine is a copy of Windows 11. Now, you could argue that it was a "poor" choice, but by doing so, Asus left the users actually to do whatever they want with it (in the pure spirit of PC gaming). It doesn't matter if you game on Steam, GOG, Epic or any other platform: The Ally will be able to run it. Unlike the Steam Deck which uses its own operating system which locks you out of everything else but Steam and only some chosen games. Not all will work with it either as it runs (the custom Linux distro) SteamOS. This limits your choice to whatever Valve can deliver. In all honesty, the Ally had a rocky start and updates were pouring in from Asus at a steady pace. This is not a bad thing, it means that Asus listens to its customers and tries to iron out the biggest issues. I could name a load of other systems that had a bad start but ended up being widely adopted after maturing. If you are at least a little bit computer savvy, you will quickly realize that if you remove unessential parts from Windows, your experience will be much, much better. You can also do away with many other programs which would be useless for a gaming rig or laptop. In terms of potential power, the Ally comes with an amazing custom APU, the AMD Z1 Extreme. A CPU/iGPU combo with 8 cores and 16 threads. It can chew through pretty much anything with the proper settings. Even AAA titles are playable in great quality. Most of my games run at the native FHD (1080p) resolution of the gorgeous touch screen. The internal M.2230 SSD is a bit light as it can only contain 500 GB. This being said, it's easy to clone the original SSD onto a bigger one (it'll void your warranty, but it's really worth it). You can also opt for a fast Micro-SD card to expand your storage (which I use for smaller games). The biggest "problem" is the battery life. Yes, it's far from great. Yes, you can adjust your settings to pump less when you're on the go and yes, placing the charging port on the top was an odd design choice when you're gaming with the Type C power adapter plugged in. Also, on a personal note, I'm not a big fan of the controls. The sticks feel a bit wobbly and the buttons aren't anything to write home about. But all that being said, Asus has delivered way more to power users than just a gaming tablet. It's quite possibly the most versatile, portable, gaming oriented device ever made. I don't regret my purchase and I would recommend it to every gamer out there who like to play their favorite games on-the-go.

It’s a lot of fun. Runs classic games great. Super easy to setup for emulation gaming. As long as the game is compatible with an Xbox controller it’ll do great. If not it’ll require some tinkering with the button configuration. The software does a great job with this. Especially steam. It sees it as an Xbox controller and you can download profiles for games that don’t support it and are pre-defined to get you going. And they can be easily changed. It’s windows 11 on a handheld. If you can use windows 11 you will adapt well to this. It is a bit cumbersome to use when first setting it up until you learn the hot keys, so I suggest looking up the button combos for the keyboard and such ahead of time. When you put it into turbo mode and turn it all the up in manual, it’s gets hot. And by hot, almost too hot to put your wrist on it. Battery life is terrible playing demanding games. But if you run a 80s/90s console emulator it’ll last 4-5 hours. It’s meant to be on-the-go gaming, but I am hesitant on taking it out of the house. You can do streaming within steam if you have a gaming PC already you can easily connect to it and enjoy gaming that way too. Get a high quality micro SD card. The Samsung pro is advertised to handle 60C temps. This thing is known to cook SD cards! It’s a solid device. I don’t feel buyers remorse at all, although I think for several hundred beans it should have 1TB of storage. Games are huge these days! If you made it this far thank you!!

Fun product, albeit somewhat niche. If you're looking for something handheld and powerful to game with and plan on having access to an outlet/power regularly it's a great product. Very easy to use in bed, lounging around the house, or short stints out and about. Less great for on the go gaming where you're unlikely to have access to power for a couple hours or more. If you're looking for handheld gaming, this thing is awsome. If you're looking for mobile gaming, it may not hit the mark for you. Defiantly a nuanced product; if you're not comfortable having to deal with windows or fiddling with the fan/overclocking settings via Armory Crate you're likely not going to enjoy it, but if you're willing to put some time into configuration and setup it can make the product stand out well against something like the Steam Deck or Switch. I primarily did handheld gaming on the switch lite, and I highly prefer the Ally to it now. It does almost require you to mess with the settings though via Armory Crate. If not, particularly if you don't mess with the power settings, you're likely going to see suppar performance where you're either getting poor performance from things being turned down too much or situations where you get throttled due to the thing hitting 90c cause the fans don't seem to go to 100% with any of the default power settings for some unexplained reason. A custom power/fan configuration can easily smooth out performance while keeping heat a lot lower than the poorly optimized 40 watt turbo mode. The display is crisp and clear, sound quality is a lot better than I expected, and the controls are fairly decent. It's a little heavier than I would have loved, but that's a tradeoff I'm willing to accept. Overall a month in and with 50+ hours of gaming with it I'm very happy with the product.

Had a few years with a lot of travel and this handheld was awesome. I was narrowing down between this and the steam deck and chose the ROG ally for a few reasons: - I needed easy windows integration because I play games across different platforms and didn’t want to be limited to steam. I know you can bootload windows on the steam deck but honestly I bought this for convenience and if I have to reconfigure it to work for me and constantly mess with the system. - the device is the perfect size for travel, its light, super comfortable to use on planes, and fits easily in my bag. - the screen is vibrant and bright. The colors pop and the lines are so crisp. - the way ASUS baked in controls for touch and controller are well thought out. Out of the gate, it auto-configs how the buttons and joysticks behave but you can dial it in the way you like. Most of the time I just use the default, it is good at recognizing what you’ll want unless it’s a one off emulator program. All in all, it’s a solid well built and super convenient travel companion that surprises me with how well it can run modern games.

This review is coming for a steam deck user Pros Better performance Better screen It’s more light and in my opinion more comfortable And the stock joysticks are better Along with the option to add a portable gpu Cons It’s early in it’s life so problems Software can be funny and all over the place My unit seem to have sd card issues (many are experiencing this according to the discord and group chats Overall get this if your okay with waiting for the software to catch up

This is a great handheld held back by a few things to be a 5 star for me. The sd card reader can be defective on most units hopefully Asus fixes it soon. It also eats through battery life… The screen is great and It’s powerful and plays almost anything I throw at it. Please don’t expect a console like experience with this. If you’re used to pc gaming and tinkering this is a great addition especially if you already have a desktop gaming pc.

I am enjoying this alot. Sometimes it’s just too much work to get all the way out of bed, walk over to my pc, turn it on, and then have to sit up to play games. This is a solution to the dilemma that gave me many sleepless nights. Do I want to have better quality in games, access to pretty much all games, a bigger community, discord and many more things… or do I want to stay on console and be able to play in bed? Well the ROG Ally fixes that. Now I can play PC… IN BED. And if that’s not worth it I don’t know what is. Now it still has some issues such as melting sd cards, the sticks have grooves worn in them from the edges of the socket which was noticeable after about 20 hours of warframe play, it has abysmal battery life, screen is a little small and hard to see things, it gets HOT so don’t even think about laying it on like a pillow to play… that’s all the negatives I can think of at the moment. But it has plenty of upsides too. You can play any game you want. Mouse heavy games like league of legends and runescape are hard to play but you can get used to it after a little practice, plus the ability to remap all of the buttons on the device really aids in this. It has good graphic processing and high enough frame rates, native upscaling, and all sorts of cool features. It has a couple little bugs with operating system but overall it runs really smooth in my opinion and I have little to no issues. Glad I picked one up.

Im sure no one will read this but here we go Pro's: - COD, Fortnite, GamePass, Discord, etc all without weird work arounds - Windows-- anything you want to install from your desktop you can install here - Have yet to find a game I cant get to play at a locked 60 FPS as long as you are willing to tweak some settings - Great download speeds... Downloaded games from steam at over 850 mbps over wifi, xbox gamepass 250-350, even Fortnite was over 200 most of the download - Great screen - Great speakers - Love the button layout, much easier to use for FPS/competitive games - Fingerprint reader is pretty handy and has worked almost every time so far Cons- - Battery life is pretty rough... 45-50 mins on F1 23 1080 low/medium settings. It is better with lighter games, but the reason we bought this is because of the extra power over the steamdeck. - Cloud Backup was ridiculous, had to update bios (No big deal) before swapping SSD's which required setting up windows just to download and then have to do it all over again. Not to mention it took 4 tries and over 2 hours to get the cloud download to complete... I assume server issues? - No case included (even the cheapest steamdeck has a half decent case, my 256 SteamDeck is still in that case) - Armory crate is pretty glitchy, love the idea but needs updates. Using the D-Pad regularly gives double or even triple "clicks" when navigating games causing you to skip over what you are trying to do - Mouse/joy stick control goes away when clicking on Steam or Xbox apps causing you to use touch screen - 512gb SSD isnt horrible, but for the money would have loved to see a 1TB. I would have happily paid a little more for a larger SSD since I spent another 150 on one and upgraded right away Overall, I am happy with my purchase and giving my steamdeck to my wife... but cannot wait until more updates come to fix some of the bugs I am seeing as of now.

It’s actually impressive how well this handheld runs Triple A titles with demanding graphics. I’ve yet to run into a game this device couldn’t run, and since it runs on windows it is compatible with just about every game. That being said there are some downsides. The first downside is Windows itself, and how the device makes controller buttons work for windows. It does work but it is a bit clunky, and windows has a bunch of bloat you will never use on a handheld, aka office 360 software…I’m not writing a paper or making a presentation on my handheld…why on earth was that included…it will take you going through the OS and removing the nonsense to get the most out of your handheld. The second is the battery life…it’s not great. 2 hours at max if you are playing a game that is not graphically intensive, if you are, closer to 1 hour. It does come with fast charging and a long power cord on USB-C, so as long as you are near a plug or have a battery pack you should be OK. The last main issue is the Micro-SD card reader. The vast majority of the devices are having problems with it. It’s right by a vent port so it could be a thermal issue, not smart design, but I also think it’s a software issue because mine will not read the card 99% of the time, and then will just randomly pick it up, so basically as of me writing this, you are limited to the build in storage, though that may change with future updates, and you can upgrade the built in storage to something larger if you want. Those are my main gripes, but all in all I think it’s a step in the right direction, and I think they did a lot of good things with this device as a whole. I had the option of returning it, and I chose to keep it, so that alone speaks volumes.

Product Name: ASUS ROG Ally Price: $700 Pros: • Powerful performance • 1080p touchscreen display with 120Hz refresh rate • Portable and lightweight • Comfortable controls • Runs Windows 11 • Supports external GPUs Cons: • Short battery life (3-4 hours) • Software can be buggy • Expensive Overall: The ASUS ROG Ally is a good handheld gaming PC. It is powerful, portable, and has a great display. However, the battery life and software could be improved. If you are looking for a powerful and portable gaming PC, the ASUS ROG Ally is a good option. However, if you are looking for a long-lasting gaming PC with a bug-free software, you may want to consider other options. User Reviews: • "I love the performance of the Ally. I can play most of my favorite games on it, and it even handles some newer titles pretty well." - u/The_Gaming_Nerd • "The display on the Ally is amazing. It's bright, clear, and has great colors. I really enjoy gaming on it." - u/Avid_Gamer • "The battery life on the Ally is pretty short. I only get about 3-4 hours of gaming on a single charge." - u/GamerGirl123 • "The software on the Ally can be a bit buggy at times. I've had some issues with games crashing or not launching properly." - u/PC_Gamer Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Recommendation: The ASUS ROG Ally is a good option for gamers who are looking for a powerful and portable gaming PC. However, if you are looking for a long-lasting gaming PC with a bug-free software, you may want to consider other options.