Portable gaming handhelds are really starting to take off following the advent of the Steam Deck, and one of the most hyped introductions so far has been the Asus ROG Ally. It has a few differences from the Steam Deck that make it an exciting prospect for those who want a more powerful alternative, with a Ryzen Z1 processor, a 120Hz IPS 1080p display, and native Windows support
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However, while it is most certainly an upgrade in terms of performance, it's not as simple as saying that the Asus ROG Ally is a better device. There are a number of caveats that make it a worse selection for a lot of users, and nearly all of them come down to the fact that Windows is simply not good enough in this form factor. On top of that, given our own experience and anecdotes from users on Reddit, it would seem that Asus' quality control may not be up to par just yet.
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The Asus ROG Ally is an interesting device in terms of look and feel. It's made of hard plastic with vents at the top, along with front-facing speakers at the bottom. The display is a 16:9 1080p 120Hz IPS, and the joysticks have RGB rings around them that can be controlled with Aura Sync. At the top of the device is a headphone jack, XG-Mobile port for an eGPU, USB-C port, and a microSD card slot. There isn't anything at the bottom or at the sides, and the bottom fits nicely into the basic dock that you get inside the box.
The ASUS ROG Ally feels solid, without any major flexing in the build when gripping it tightly. It's comfortable to hold for long periods of time, and it's not all that heavy either. In fact, it comes in lighter than the Steam Deck at 608 grams. The buttons on the back, while useful, aren't ones that I ever see myself using.
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The Asus ROG Ally is like most other gaming handhelds that aren't the Steam Deck in that it uses Windows, not Linux, which has a whole range of advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage is that pretty much all games are made for Windows, meaning you'll have pretty stellar compatibility thanks to games being able to actually use the DirectX APIs they were programmed to use rather than relying on a compatibility layer like Proton. Games that make use of an anti-cheat won't be a problem either, and I even got VALORANT, a game with a pretty invasive anti-cheat, running perfectly on this machine.
