I needed another device for gaming like I need another hole in my head, already having each of the current generation’s consoles, as well as a bunch of what are now considered ‘classic’ or ‘retro’ generations, but I also have just had the desire to play some of my old favorites lately. A few years ago I updated my PC, and found out that even though it’s business focused, it had the ability to run some things like Halo quite well. It’s in the basement though and I often don’t want to sit down there unless I’m working on a project, or am logged into work..
On Black Friday, Target had a great sale on the ASUS ROG Ally – which if you’re not familiar is a handheld PC that functions as a console essentially. The buttons are laid out in the configuration of an Xbox Controller, and with the ASUS drivers it’s detected and functions as one does as well.. If you run Steam in ‘Big Picture Mode’ it works in a similar fashion to the Steam Deck (I’m going to touch on that more in a little bit).
There are two models of it, one with the AMD Z1 processor, and one with the Z1 Extreme, this may be where I went slightly wrong, as I opted for the lower tier Z1 model. The positive first, this is a great, budget friendly option, and after cashing in some points and gift cards I had laying around, I actually only walked out paying $50 for the thing, with a sale price of $250 puts it pretty close in price with the Nintendo Switch Lite while being able to play AAA, current generation games. Think about this to yourself, on a 7″ screen, are you REALLY going to notice a huge difference between 720p and 1080p? And if you are, does it really matter? You’re gaming on a handheld, meaning you either are just relaxing and playing for fun, or you’re traveling and want something to occupy your time.
The negative? Well, to test speed and potential drawbacks I made sure to play some more current games like Cyberpunk 2077, which are graphically intense even at 720p, and to run smoothly at 30 FPS requires you to turn down some of the additional graphics settings such as shadows and textures. These, again, are not the end of the world on a handheld console, but can be a little irritating at times, and is where the Z1 Extreme would benefit everyone. I could see where this might be a little frustrating in a scenario where you were playing on a TV using a dock and external controller.
The battery life leaves much to be desired, which I’ve heard has been fixed in their newer lineup (which I frankly didn’t even hear get announced) – playing Cyberpunk I was getting a mere 45 minutes on battery alone, the Outer Worlds was about an hour and a half, but on the bright side, games that are less graphically intense like the original Half Life or Dark Forces II… well… I didn’t actually drop below 50% in about 2 hours of play time.
All in all for what it is, and what I paid for it, it is a fantastic little device for gaming, and not to mention, it does run a full version of Windows, which is both good and bad. On the positive, you have a fully functioning PC, bring yourself a USB dock and a keyboard and mouse and you have something ultra portable to plugin anywhere. The drawback though is that it runs a full version of windows, which means that while new versions of windows are less bulky, you’re still allocating a chunk of your CPU to running Windows OS on top of whatever game you’re playing. This brings me back to Steam – Valve announced that they’re opening up Steam OS to be installed on many more devices, so this seems like an ideal candidate to try and slim down some of the bulkiness that Windows adds in place of Steam OS. The drawback of that is that you’re limited to Steam for your gameplay, which removes the option to play from GOG, EA, Battle.net, etc., but where you decide to play is up to you.
All in all, it was a good buy that’s been fun to play around with – I may migrate it into the Rover for a slim PC, that battery life may prove to be a concern though, maybe we’ll give it a test run in June..
Roving On 