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The ROG Ally is a hot mess.

Kadve

Member
GPDWin handhelds have been around for a loooong time but never took off
Very different thing. GPD makes no secret that their Windows Palmtops are for a niche audience and not a competitor to stuff like the Steam Deck (in fact they are directly comparing the WIN 3 to tablets, not game consoles on their website). They are priced accordingly and very much successful in said niche.
 
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Silver Wattle

Gold Member
I have about 500 games in the Microsoft Store, 20 in the Epic Games Store, 30 on GOG and 5 games on Steam.

I have no doubt that these less than 1% of my library "just work". Not exactly a compelling premise though.
mad mark wahlberg GIF
 
Not if the controls stop functioning in Armory Crate.

Oh, and I've had this thing for a whopping 6 hours. Excuse-moi for only discovering the tip of the iceberg.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/excusez-moi

6h sounds a bit too early to be that sour about it. Any time you start messing with Bios it's a cointoss if you'll start running into issues.

Did you get an official approved Bios or you're just winging it at this point?
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go are both shackled to Windows and Windows is pretty shit as you've discovered. Switch and Steam Deck are both superior because they don't run Windows.
I want to go on the merry round and crap on windows as well but as far as desktop goes, absolutely no problems. Like on these dedicated handhelds, valve is the only one that really has a grass on how to do anything properly. And the bad part is for the other competitors, maybe they're working on something to run on these handhelds and if anybody would be the one to have something ready you would think it'd be Microsoft, but they are lacking. Lacking. If they made something specific and tweaked just for portables like this, we might not be having as much of this discussion. Or we would also be having the discussion and just calling Microsoft out for being incompetent and not being able to make a more compact windows experience.

But you have to give steam a lot of credit because much like desktop, they've done so much for the portable handheld space. And people are probably just waiting for steam to release their installable operating system, but that just is a fix for a problem that none of the other ones are willing or have been able to fix. In a way, I commend valve but in another way I would rather them keep their operating system just on the steam deck and let the others put in the work. Clearly valve has.
 

GHG

Member
I have about 500 games in the Microsoft Store, 20 in the Epic Games Store, 30 on GOG and 5 games on Steam.

I have no doubt that these less than 1% of my library "just work". Not exactly a compelling premise though.

This is not normal.

I didn't even know there were 500 games on the windows store.

Why are you purchasing them there when it's always the most expensive place to buy PC games and it has some of the worst DRM on the platform?
 

Klosshufvud

Member
I thought the complain would be something legitimate like the shit battery life on the Ally.

I got the Steam Deck and and AOK Zoe A1Pro, same apu as the Ally basically. The deck is a brilliant form factor, unfortunately too underpowered when compared to the A1Pro. I left it on the shelf basically as the A1Pro can play the same games and much more at better resolution and frame rates.

Also so much easier to get launchbox and emulation working well on windows, too much fucking around in linux to make things work and then 1 update later they stop working again.

I hope Valve keeps it up though and hopefully we could entirely ditch windows for handheld gaming devices, but for now it is as it is.
Another A1 Pro brother! It's a marvelous handheld in so many ways. I jump from Chivalry 2 to Wreckfest to MHW to Octopath 2 all in one session and I have to pinch myself at times realizing this level of handheld gameplay is now possible. And yes, the performance gap is huge once you take advantage of the 15-20W power span. It's smaller than Deck yet houses a way bigger battery and fans. It's a no-bullshit kind of deal.

The SDOLED is great in many ways but primarily for those solely using Steam launcher and SP games at that.
 
Another A1 Pro brother! It's a marvelous handheld in so many ways. I jump from Chivalry 2 to Wreckfest to MHW to Octopath 2 all in one session and I have to pinch myself at times realizing this level of handheld gameplay is now possible. And yes, the performance gap is huge once you take advantage of the 15-20W power span. It's smaller than Deck yet houses a way bigger battery and fans. It's a no-bullshit kind of deal.

The SDOLED is great in many ways but primarily for those solely using Steam launcher and SP games at that.
You Know It GIF by MOODMAN
 

N1tr0sOx1d3

Given another chance
That really depends on the age of the title. The farther back in time you go, the more compatibility issues you'll experience.
Didn’t know this. Thanks for the heads-up. I assumed rightly or wrongly that only games fully compatible could be visible/played.
 

Darko

Member
Get the deck.. with windows it requires too much tinkering for my liking. Especially the legion go.. my god
 

Thaedolus

Gold Member
I sold my Steam Deck for this reason. It doesn’t just work. Couldn’t easily do Gamepass games, Epic Games was a nightmare to get working, lack of power etc etc. Battery life on Deck is leagues better, but my overall feeling is the Ally is the better device for ME. Do wish we had OLED on Ally, but at least it’s 1080p/VRR.
Fair enough if you’re trying to play games on those services; I’ve just stuck with Steam games and emulators and it’s been smooth as hell for me. I do wish it had VRR and, well, now there’s an OLED but I have the glare reduction first gen model and it’s good enough. Battery life has never been an issue for me, the longest I’ve played in a day was most of a 9hr road trip where I wasn’t driving and the car had an AC plug so eh.

Oh and another thing that just works: cloud saves, and streaming from PC. I went back and forth between my Deck and PC all the time playing Persona 5. The slow slice of life sections are great chillin in bed, but sometimes the dungeon crawling sections or whatever were more fun on the big screen. Zero issues swapping back and forth, almost as smooth as just docking your Switch
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Fair enough if you’re trying to play games on those services; I’ve just stuck with Steam games and emulators and it’s been smooth as hell for me. I do wish it had VRR and, well, now there’s an OLED but I have the glare reduction first gen model and it’s good enough. Battery life has never been an issue for me, the longest I’ve played in a day was most of a 9hr road trip where I wasn’t driving and the car had an AC plug so eh.

Oh and another thing that just works: cloud saves, and streaming from PC. I went back and forth between my Deck and PC all the time playing Persona 5. The slow slice of life sections are great chillin in bed, but sometimes the dungeon crawling sections or whatever were more fun on the big screen. Zero issues swapping back and forth, almost as smooth as just docking your Switch
VRR will be nice to have in the new model, the real next gen Steam Deck 2, but HDR + OLED and the ability to change the refresh rate of the panel (and many other options) per game (per game profiles are super easy to set) and put a frame rate limiter helps a lot (achieving 80% or more of the results of true VRR for people). OLED and HDR (I also have the anti glare first generation model I look to now sell, having received the 512 GB OLED version because although well implemented the anti glare process does mute colours noticeably) were the two biggest thing I wanted out of the Steam Deck: having the unit lighter and with longer battery life + additional performance + joystick and touchpad improvements are a nice and welcome boost (screen at up to 90 Hz is also welcomed ;)).

I tried Steam large player mode or whatever the desktop mode is called and well, no, it is not quite the experience you get on the Game Mode Steam Deck UI and how it integrates with the Deck’s own overlay system. Steam Deck makes a lot of what is normally painful (Windows gaming has a lot of opportunities and people developing utilities for it sure, but lots of headaches too… let’s not talk about Linux desktop gaming or implementing customisable control schemes, per game profiles, per game performance customisations, etc…) easier and accessible. The 16:10 aspect ratio is great to maximise compatibility and the 800p display resolution (especially if the game has good AA) ensures you are not wasting performance and it helps compatibility of older titles. HDR should allow for some nice custom CRT filters too.

As more games implement LFC (or they figure out a solid system level version of it) then the usefulness of VRR will truly shine on portable consoles (it helps address the issues with OLED displays and VRR with regards to brightness / gamma fluctuations when you drive the panel at low refresh rates). With LFC as long as you can keep framerate at or above 24 FPS you are effectively golden.
 
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Tams

Member
Windows isn't great on such a small screen, but you can get used to it (I used an 8" Windows tablet for years) and there's always stuff like Steam Big Picture.

I use a GPD Win Max 2 now. It is hit or miss. It does what it needs to do very well. It's just some of the extras over the competition... like OCuLink and the second USB C port... don't work properly on mine. And getting it swapped is nigh on impossible.
 

StereoVsn

Member
I have virtually none of the issues on my Ally as OP.

The updates take a few minutes here and there. I've never had either a wired gamepad, or the onboard controls not work. I've never had to reset my Windows PIN.

OP, it's possible you got a defective unit.
Yeah, not the biggest fan of Windows on a handheld but haven’t had these issues at all.

I recommend resetting the device and reloading the image which you can do through the BIOS directly which is very handy.
 

graywolf323

Member
Obviously it's doable, but 100% not straightforward.

Sure the retroarch is quite fine as a stand alone, but playing around with Ryujinx and a few others it's a pain in the ass. Needing to go to desktop mode to install and update shit, then being a cointoss whether things still work in steamOS. I haven't fucked with it much since earlier this year, so hopefully things are more stable now.
Granted, that is a pain in the arse :messenger_tears_of_joy:
why not just use EmuDeck 😕

 

Altrnte

Neo Member
That really depends on the age of the title. The farther back in time you go, the more compatibility issues you'll experience.
Agreed, but enabling proton experimental or hitting up ProtonDB will usually result in a quick fix.

Im also using Decky to run plugins like ProtonDB Badges so that the link to ProtonDB for a title is right on the game page. Makes it very convenient to find fixes or quality of life enhancements at a moments notice.
 

phant0m

Member
I have about 500 games in the Microsoft Store, 20 in the Epic Games Store, 30 on GOG and 5 games on Steam.

I have no doubt that these less than 1% of my library "just work". Not exactly a compelling premise though.
Cool, my recommendation was for OP’s situation.

I also think you’ll find yourself in the severe minority here.
 

Schmendrick

Member
Sounds like a defective unit.
Building from scratch and setting up a complete desktop system costs me less time than what OP has described...
 

Mr Hyde

Member
I've had a ton of issues with the ROG Ally, but it's been mostly when in tandem with the XG Mobile dock I have hooked in. Very glitchy and unreliable, although most of the issues seems to have been sorted out by Asus now thanks to a series of updates. Now it's a pretty stable setup but the first 6 months were rough. I even had to send the Ally and XG back to Asus for repair because the dock nearly bricked my Ally. It was a faulty unit. As a standalone handheld device though, I think ROG is pretty good but the lack of battery life, sleep mode and general ease of use have made it so I have it permanently docked. If I want to play handheld I use my Switch, it's far more convenient and has a nicer screen and better battery life. I don't think I will ever purchase anything from Asus again, just too much headaches for a pretty steep price.
 
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TrebleShot

Member
Complete on agree with OP

Had my ally since launch, took it on a few trips and it’s absolutely crap , exactly as you say constant constant bullshit tinkering the complete antithesis of a handheld.

I had a SD prior and now an OLED it didn’t take long to go back to the deck and despite it being weaker it’s just better in every way.

These handheld PC that run windows are absolutely awful , the experience is crap there’s no two ways about it.

Wish Linux on PC was more widely supported for games with anti cheat etc.
 

lordrand11

Member
I always strayed away from PC gaming, not because it was over my head, but because the hassle of customization and finagling to get things working properly. Its a shame we went from day 1 nes/snes flawless, patchless full game releases without any hassle, into everything is a cobbled mess of custom settings and they eat half your memory as well. Even consoles are becoming pc structured.

I got an oled steamdeck last week and it's been revolutionary so far. Its not a requirement to tinker with customization, its an optional feature! You can boot up games without stress (provided they are deck supported) and its like the good old days. But switch to desktop mode, and theres the entire system bare for tinkering. Its sometimes inconvenient to figure out control layouts, and not all games are fully playable and/ partially playable. Thats still in the works from what I understand.

I will say its great that handhelds are making a comeback, and yea its a rough field right now as the newcomers are entering the market. I was eyeballing the GPD mini but settled on steamdeck because of the new oled model. It rules. I am now in a hybrid phase of sony and steam, and its great to play older games on a beefy system, its like hd remasters everywhere.
I wouldn't quantify the Deck and Rog as *real* PC gaming and more of a niche handheld PC sector, they're fun devices (at least the Deck is LOL). Most PC games generally tend to just work straight outta the cloud with hardly any finagling unless you're planning on running Linux only on your machine. Add to that the ease of graphics optimization through Nvidia Geforce Experience and it's become a much different and easy landscape than it was in yesteryear.
 

Poppyseed

Member
Fair enough if you’re trying to play games on those services; I’ve just stuck with Steam games and emulators and it’s been smooth as hell for me. I do wish it had VRR and, well, now there’s an OLED but I have the glare reduction first gen model and it’s good enough. Battery life has never been an issue for me, the longest I’ve played in a day was most of a 9hr road trip where I wasn’t driving and the car had an AC plug so eh.

Oh and another thing that just works: cloud saves, and streaming from PC. I went back and forth between my Deck and PC all the time playing Persona 5. The slow slice of life sections are great chillin in bed, but sometimes the dungeon crawling sections or whatever were more fun on the big screen. Zero issues swapping back and forth, almost as smooth as just docking your Switch
Cloud saves just work on Ally, btw. I play a game there, quit game, and can go pick it up on my desktop PC a second later. I found there to be no noticeable difference between Deck and PC/Ally in this regard.

Actually, my favorite feature of the Ally is using Hibernate. For example, I turned off my Ally in the middle of playing Yakuza Zero a few days ago, by tapping the power button. Several days later, I turn on my Ally, it takes under 10 seconds to quick boot right back into the game, - battery still at 100%, - there’s zero “standby” drain unlike a Switch or Deck in sleep mode. Just fantastic.

Valve has done a tremendous job with the Steam Deck, and the OLED looks fantastic, but once the Ally is set up, you really can boot straight into Big Picture mode in Steam, and it feels nigh identical to the Deck, with all the additional benefits (twice the resolution, 120hz VRR, and no standby drain when having to shut down in the middle of a session).

It makes me look forward to the next Deck. I hope Valve can put in a proper powerful APU, and also higher res with VRR.
 

Gamezone

Gold Member
The Ally uses Armory Crate? YIKES
I hate Armory Crate
Armory Crate on the Ally isn't as bad as being forced to Armory Crate trough a Asus motherboard. It's actually quite useful.

And after getting past the initial update and download setup on the Ally, I really started to enjoy the device. The screen is much better than the old Steam Deck, and it's more powerful than the OLED Steam Deck. But I wish third party manufacturers like Lenovo and Asus were able to adopt Steam OS for handheld devices.
 
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bender

What time is it?
Agreed, but enabling proton experimental or hitting up ProtonDB will usually result in a quick fix.

Im also using Decky to run plugins like ProtonDB Badges so that the link to ProtonDB for a title is right on the game page. Makes it very convenient to find fixes or quality of life enhancements at a moments notice.

Sometimes. My past week has been this:

-Pnumbra crashing just past the intro. There are workarounds but it comes at the expense of lighting which is really important in the game.
-Manhunt crashing during the tutorial. Haven't tried the workaround for this on ProtonDB but it is a bit of a hassle.
-Enclave not launching. Switching to an older version of Proton fixed this.

And for each of these you will have idiot-proof explanation what to do in order to make it work flawlessly. Even if you make the same with ROG it can still crash because lol

The point of contention is that "it just works" for the Deck. You can often tinker to success but not always (see above of Virtua Tennis 4) but the Deck experience is far from pickup and play, especially for legacy titles.
 
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Reallink

Member
Ally is a full fledge Windows PC and requires much of the same setup and troubleshooting issues you'll run into with any new laptop or desktop. A little less actually, cause it has far less bloatware than most oem systems. It's not a console experience (neither is Deck), and you should at least have a basic understanding of managing a gaming PC and Windows optimization, which OP clearly doesn't.

For starters you shouldn't be bitlocking/encrypting a portable gaming device or signing into a system wide Onedrive bloated Microsoft account in the first place, and shouldn't be storing sensitive shit on it to need such. Make a local account without any sort of login password or pin, then it'll launch straight to desktop/armorycrate/bigpicture everytime. In the 1 in a million chances it gets lost or stolen, just change your game store/launcher passwords.
 
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Chiggs

Member
ROG Ally all boxed up and ready for its big return to Best Buy. Luckily, my family didn't take it too hard when I asked for the gift receipt. :messenger_tears_of_joy:

In its place arrive two contenders later this week:
  • 1 TB OLED Steam Deck
  • 1 TB Legion Go
The Steam Deck is the keeper for sure, but my curiosity got the better of me with the Legion Go. I won't put up with 10% of the bullshit I did with the ROG Ally before I send it packing, though.
 
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PsyEd

Member
I had it....killed 2x SD cards...this is on DAY 1. Was an uphill battle trying to prove that until ppl in reddit and official rog forum also started complaining. Before that I was just a "shill". Then finally I got approved for RMA and the replacement device...I said to the company doing it in aus to test it themselves before sending it and I'm happy with an open box.

The next day I got full refund....so yeah that was my "experience" with it.
 

Guileless

Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
It definitely requires patience. I don't mind tho as a heavy Gamepass user who likes Play Anywhere games.
 
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SScorpio

Member
That really depends on the age of the title. The farther back in time you go, the more compatibility issues you'll experience.
I've mainly experienced the reverse where Proton will run old Windows games better than a modern Windows system. The main issues are down to licensed media codecs Valve can't distribute. But install Proton-GE which includes them, and everything plays back without any issues.
 

phant0m

Member
ROG Ally all boxed up and ready for its big return to Best Buy. Luckily, my family didn't take it too hard when I asked for the gift receipt. :messenger_tears_of_joy:

In its place arrive two contenders later this week:
  • 1 TB OLED Steam Deck
  • 1 TB Legion Go
The Steam Deck is the keeper for sure, but my curiosity got the better of me with the Legion Go. I won't put up with 10% of the bullshit I did with the ROG Ally before I send it packing, though.
Smart move.
 
You know what really chaps my ass? I'm on Best Buy's website right now and I see a TON of open box deals on the ROG Ally, and we both know why that is.

What's ironic is that when I return this one, the lucky SOB who picks it up will get it for $100 off, and all of the hard work will be done. :messenger_tears_of_joy:

And yes, on the Steam Deck OLED....I just wish it was sold in retail stores.
Give em the Chiggs Chiggs and remove all the hard work. Leave a. Txt file that says "this device sucks" and leave them with a dead red pixel.
 

Enviidisnucca

Neo Member
I received the ROG Ally (Z1 Extreme) as an early Christmas present this afternoon. My initial jubilation has since turned into annoyance and frustration.

Does anyone here remember that scene in As Good as It Gets, when Jack Nicholson storms out of his psychiatrist's office and comes to face to face with all the sad sacks of shit (including himself) that are waiting in the lobby, then, in a moment of sobering clarity, utters the title of the movie? If not, here you go:



And that's me right now...after several hours of :
  • Updating both Windows and Armory Crate (great fucking name, by the way...sure it did great at the focus group with John Q. Undersexed and his basement full of Doritos and Dew).
  • Constantly resetting my Windows pin because the BIOS updates seemingly wipe it out entirely.
  • Trying to figure out why the fucking controller stops working sporadically in the settings menus.
  • Wondering what dickhead at Asus pitched the idea of RGB on the analog thumbsticks...fucking rad!
    • Yes, I know you can turn them off, but please see the bullet point above about the controller sporadically working.
  • Praying to God that the Castlevania Advance Collection will finally fucking run on this thing.
At this point, I'm left wondering what the point of this goddamn device is, and just who the target audience is. From my admittedly brief experience, it blends together the worst of PC gaming and the worst of console gaming. I know the Steam Deck had its early hiccups, but it was NOTHING like the bullshit I've put up with tonight. Oh, and the SD card thermal issue is just the cherry on fucking top.

Looking for any decent reason NOT to exchange this fucker out for a Meta Quest 3.

Havent had any issues with mines upgraded my ssd got the dock did all the updates i had to do within the 1st day i got it runs perfect the only back draw from the rog ally is the battery dies quicker than anything else but iam happy with my purchase got xbox game pass get pc games for free ☠️ if u know u know lmao iam good to go
 

coffinbirth

Member
Am I missing something here?

I've been emulating everything on the Deck since I've had one from the Atari 2600 onwards, never had any problems and it's the easiest I've ever set up a retro handheld.

No idea how you got to a point where it was too much fucking around. And updates never broke it either.
EmuDeck updates have broken multiple emulators multiple times for me, personally. Super annoying if you are wanting to jump into a game only to spend the next 1/2 hour repathing BIOS files and the like. Had my Yuzu saves disappear twice now too. Things have been stable for the last few months, but I always fear it will strike again.
 

justiceiro

Marlboro: Other M
The controller not working aside, explain to me how many times you need to update bios, windows or armory crate? Is this your first time with a PC ever?

If you think doing updates is inexcusable annoying for troubleshooting, setting up VR with the meta quest to work with all the different VR sources will give you a heart attack out of stress.
 

Drew1440

Member
This is not normal.

I didn't even know there were 500 games on the windows store.

Why are you purchasing them there when it's always the most expensive place to buy PC games and it has some of the worst DRM on the platform?
A lot of games on the Microsoft Store are Xbox Play Anywhare enabled, so if they have an Xbox One then it makes sense since they can share the same game between console and PC.

Xbox Play Anywhere titles
 

StereoVsn

Member
ROG Ally all boxed up and ready for its big return to Best Buy. Luckily, my family didn't take it too hard when I asked for the gift receipt. :messenger_tears_of_joy:

In its place arrive two contenders later this week:
  • 1 TB OLED Steam Deck
  • 1 TB Legion Go
The Steam Deck is the keeper for sure, but my curiosity got the better of me with the Legion Go. I won't put up with 10% of the bullshit I did with the ROG Ally before I send it packing, though.
Lenovo is a lot less stable vs Ally. Current Ally software is much better and has a lot less bugs vs Go.

If you thought Ally was bad with variety of issues, good luck with Go lol.

I don’t have many issues at all with the Ally. Do I want OLED and bigger battery - yes. Is that a huge issue at the end - no.

Edit: I did install a 2TB drive into Ally as I didn’t want to chance on SD card issue.
 
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