Let me start by saying I don’t usually write reviews for anything. But I felt a device like this could use my two cents. I am coming from a Steam Deck experience. I also own a few GPD devices, every kind of Switch, a desktop gaming rig, a few laptop gaming rigs, a PS5, and a XSX. I am stoked that devices like this are finally becoming mainstream. Not sure if it’s the new toy excitement or what, but I have not been able to put this thing down since my purchase a couple weeks ago. With that said let’s get into the details.

As a precaution from all the horror stories on the internet regarding the heat output and the almost guaranteed MicroSD card reader failure rate. I decided to open the device and made some thermal modifications prior to even powering the device on the first time. (I’ve provided pictures for anyone who is curious) From what I can tell, the Ally has a major design flaw in regard to where the card reader is located. On literally any other device the SD card slot is usually at the bottom or side of the device, and nowhere near the exhaust. In the case of the Ally, the motherboard with card reader is nearly resting on the exhaust fins of the heat sink with no heat shielding whatsoever. It’s also located on what appears to be the hotter exhaust side of the two.(left side) For a company that has a decent amount of experience in PC manufacturing, this design oversight is rather unacceptable. While digging around inside the Ally. I also took the opportunity to create a factory never booted recovery image of the 512gb Micron SSD via the clonezilla Linux distribution. I also reapplied a more adequate amount of thermal paste to the APU. There was literally almost none on my device and it was already crusty and dry.(again unacceptable) Once the device was reassembled, I began my testing.

Let me start by saying I am not a fan of Windows 11 by any means. I don’t use it on any of my machines. The Ally being no different. I feel Windows 11 is a buggy mess, not matured enough, and has no place on any device especially a handheld without the typical mouse/keyboard inputs. I did all the updates and made a dump of all the installed drivers, tested a few games such as GOW, Sackboy, GTA V, and Cyberpunk. Although the games played pretty well once finally running. The pick up and go experience I have grown accustomed to from the Steam Deck just simply wasn’t there. Especially with the typical Windows 11 shenanigans. So I ditched Windows 11 altogether on this device.

My first alternative to test was ChimeraOS. It gave a near identical console like experience of the Steam Deck except with more power. However between the lack of a decent desktop mode to make any real changes and no ability to conveniently change the TDP settings, RGB settings, or run 100% of my game library. I found ChimeraOS to not be a good fit for me either. So I installed Windows 10.

After getting all the drivers settled, changing the VRAM to 6GB in Armoury-Crate, and modding the minimum VRR threshold to 24fps with CRU. I felt the device finally started to open up and perform as expected. I immediately noticed the device not only ran much smoother and more responsive. But I was also running cooler. On Windows 11 the fans were always spun up pretty high with hot exhaust despite the device being idle on the desktop. Between the display panel actually being true landscaped, the amazing color gamut, and VRR. I have yet to find another handheld device that plays games like the Ally. Games are rendered at such a level of buttery smoothness that I have never seen in any handheld. I don’t feel even the Legion Go with it’s integer scaling instead of VRR will be able to perform like the Ally despite having the same exact APU. Which is unfortunate and a huge oversight on Lenovo’s behalf. I hope I am proven wrong when that device releases.

Starfield on the Ally has been amazing! However I’m not sure I like the graphics driver (v31.0.21029.6002) Asus provideds in order to play Starfield. The previous driver (v31.0.14058.4001) to me was the better driver across the board. Almost every game I’ve tried on the previous driver ran at a much higher frame rate. The newer driver from Asus seems to restrict the Ally’s overall performance. So I manually installed the latest graphics drivers (v31.0.21031.1005) with HYPR-RX support directly from AMD. This didn’t bring back all of the performance I was getting on driver .4001 but it’s definitely better than the latest graphic driver from Asus.

My verdict on the Ally is although not perfect, just like the Steam Deck there isn’t anything currently released that performs the way the Ally does. For this reason I decided to keep the Ally alongside my Deck. Currently there just isn’t THAT perfect device that checks all boxes as far as ease of use, amazing battery life, performance, screen, etc. The power efficiency, ergonomics, and console like experience of the Steam Deck is still unmatched. So it will always be the platform where all my childhood retro games via emulation are played portably in a console like fashion. But for those moments when I want to play a modern game at or over 60fps with better image fidelity on the go, I reach for the Ally. I hope whoever takes the time to read this review finds it helpful or at least insightful about the Asus ROG Ally.