Asus ROG Ally review: Superb handheld PC gaming marred by Windows

The ROG Ally is a perfect option for PC gamers who don't mind tinkering and tweaking. It's not for everyone though.

We were pleased when we heard about the launch of the Asus ROG Ally. After all, we'd thoroughly enjoyed the Steam Deck and PC gamers don't often get to enjoy the thrills of PC gaming while away from their keyboard.

So if nothing else the ROG Ally means more options for PC gamers and for the mass market too. Especially considering that the device is competitively priced and only marginally more expensive than a Steam Deck - yet of course significantly less than a full-blown gaming PC or gaming laptop.

On paper, the ROG Ally is a more powerful option too, packing in a Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor and RDNA 3 graphics technology as well as some other nifty specs that make it a superior choice. Crucially, by running Windows 11, the ROG Ally gives gamers access to a wider catalogue of games - not just through Steam, but also Epic Games, EA Play, Ubisoft Connect and, of course, Games Pass.

So is it worth buying? We've been gaming with it to find out.

The Asus ROG Ally is a PC gaming handheld that runs on Windows 11 and a custom AMD chipset. It has a Full HD display and can play PC games from multiple platforms.

It's immediately obvious that the Asus ROG Ally is designed to be a portable gaming powerhouse. Under the hood, it packs some serious specs considering the price. This handheld is designed to delight in all sorts of ways, from its impressive 7-inch 1080p 16:9 display to its sheer processing power and the potential for a 120Hz refresh rate.

The tech is crammed into an eye-pleasing and comfortable chassis with a classic Asus ROG aesthetic. Yes, that means there's some RGB and yes that means it also comes pre-installed with Armoury Crate SE.

When we first got the Ally out of the box we were impressed by its weight in the hand but also the comfort of the grips and the layout of the buttons. It'll be immediately familiar to anyone who's used an Xbox controller in terms of the thumb stick positioning and button placement, so it's easy to get used to.

The front fascia also has space for a front-facing speaker setup that includes Smart Amplifier Tech that ensures you can hear your game and not the fan noise.

The quieter cooling setup was also one of the first things we noticed. When we'd first played with the Steam Deck, the fans were noisy and unpleasant. That's not the case with the ROG Ally and you spend less time thinking about the hum of fans and more about just losing yourself in the game.

The Ally also has built-in microphones with AI noise cancellation, meaning you can chat with your friends and family easily when gaming - without too much noise being picked up. We used this setup during several games of Fortnite and it worked a lot better than we expected, showing that the Ally is full of little surprises.

To many PC gamers, the Asus ROG Ally will be appealing because it's essentially a compact gaming laptop. Where the Steam Deck is locked down to Steam OS, the ROG Ally runs Windows 11. This means you've got access to install a lot more games from a lot more places, as well as all the freedoms that Windows offers.

Our initial experience wasn't great though. Windows is fine on a laptop or gaming desktop, but it's not perfectly suited to a small-screen device.

The ROG Ally has a touchscreen that makes it easier to use, as well as a virtual keyboard to type on. But we found simple things like setting up and logging into the various game platforms to just be a faff. Tap on the email field, on Epic Games, for example, and you can pop your login details in, but when you need to enter your password you find the virtual keyboard pops up and covers over the field and then you can't click into it or see what you're typing. You can resize and reposition the keyboard, but it's not user-friendly and ends up being frustrating.

Similarly when you've launched a game and just need to get back to Windows or switch between applications or do other simple things, it's just not that straightforward.

Don't get us wrong though, Asus has thought of this and made life a little easier with a couple of buttons. On the left side of the screen there's a button you can press that opens up some shortcuts and gives you access to various things. From here you can change the performance mode settings, adjust sound and brightness, tweak the refresh rate, take a screenshot and more. You can also pop up the virtual keyboard, then change the settings on it to a full-size traditional keyboard and ALT+Tab or pull off other Windows shortcuts.

On the right side is another button that opens up Armoury Crate SE. This app works not only as a place to grab the latest ROG Ally firmware and software updates (we'd highly recommend doing this when you first get the device) but also as a central launcher for all your games. If you've installed games from Epic, Steam, EA and Ubisoft, they'll all appear here and you can just launch them from here.

On the rear of the ROG Ally are two paddles known as macro keys. These can be reprogrammed for secondary actions to be used in games, but as standard, they give you access to various shortcuts. They are:

These shortcuts are well worth knowing as they'll make life much more pleasant when it comes to setting up and using the ROG Ally on a daily basis.

As a PC gamer, it's great to be able to relax on the sofa and pick up where you left off with your favourite game and not have to sacrifice too much.

The ROG Ally seemingly ticks those boxes. With the offer of 1080p resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, Adaptive-Sync and both RSR (Resizable BAR) and FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution), it should be capable of running most games in a smooth and satisfying way.

Indeed we found that to mostly be the case. We played a variety of different games ranging from Forza 5 to Chivalry 2, Spiderman, Need for Speed Heat, Cyberpunk 2077 and more besides. Of course, you can't get the same performance on a handheld that you can from a full-blown gaming PC. We found we had to play around with the settings a lot in order to get it right depending on what we were playing.

There are different performance modes that you can switch to in order to boost FPS, but these sacrifice battery life. You have the option to run games at 1080p and 120Hz, but from our testing, we'd say these settings are better reserved for indie games or less graphically intensive titles than they are for AAA games.

If you try to run Forza 5 at 1080p, 120Hz and on high settings then you'll get less than 30FPS. But if you drop down to 720p, turn on FSR 2.0 and set the game to medium settings then you can get around 70FPS. You don't really need to set the game to 1080p in order for it to look good on the screen either. FSR and RSR settings can help upscale and improve the visuals for you, and on the smaller screen, 720p looks great anyway.

If you're the sort of gamer who prefers ultra settings on the latest games then you might also be disappointed with battery life.

The ROG Ally claims as much as nine hours of battery life if you're doing something simple like just watching YouTube videos on it (which look great by the way), but don't expect the same for gaming. Indeed playing our favourite games we got around an hour of play before it needed charging. Which seems pretty paltry, but that was with higher settings to make the most of the visuals.

If you're more sensible and drop the screen brightness, limit the FPS, switch to 720p and choose the lower performance mode (like 15-watt performance mode or 9-watt silent mode) then you can eke the gaming sessions out to two hours. If you're an indie gamer or prefer easy-to-pick-up titles, then you'll probably get longer.

This is one of the other user-experience frustrations we have with the ROG Ally though. It takes time to experiment with the settings and see which works best to balance visuals and battery life - and this can vary from game to game. We found there was far less of this messing about on the Steam Deck than there is on the ROG Ally, but then that's the trade-off you're making. The freedom to play more games and do more comes at a price.

This handheld has a USB-C charger that gets it back to full battery in an hour and indeed if you plug in and play you'll have more power, better FPS and a better experience too. The ROG Ally also has compatibility with ROG's XG Mobile external GPU setup as well. So you can upgrade your handheld, dock it and enjoy a more satisfying experience on a bigger screen. Unfortunately, that wasn't something we were able to test, but that's also an expensive additional purchase as well.

Of course, there are plenty of highlights to the experience of this handheld. Running Windows means you can easily connect a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for easier controls. You can also take the ROG Ally out of the house and game on it - just run Steam in offline mode to play your games or tether your phone as a hotspot and play that way. So it certainly has more freedom than something like the Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld, which needs a Wi-Fi connection.

Indeed we took the ROG Ally out and played Spiderman in the woods. With 500 nits brightness, the screen is capable enough to be used outside too. So whether that's casually gaming in your garden or on the train, the ROG Ally should be fun wherever you are.

One of the highlights of the Asus ROG Ally is the storage. It has up to a 512GB NVMe SSD, which is a great size for current games. We went for a smaller option with the Steam Deck and quickly filled up the storage, but that's not as easy here. This drive can also run at gen 4 speeds, meaning it could offer as much as 4,500MB/s read speed. So quick loading games in most cases and that's certainly something we found.

The drive is upgradable (it's an M.2 2230 SSD) and Asus says this is easy to do as well. But if you don't want to tinker there's a microSD card slot for fast additional storage space solutions. It won't be as fast as NVMe but it'll still be pretty nifty depending on the microSD card you purchase.

Some other reviewers have commented about issues with the buttons sticking on the ROG Ally. We've not had that problem. Though we do think that the buttons and sticks on this handheld aren't as pleasant as those on the Steam Deck. That's not to say they're bad though. The layout is comfortable and familiar and it's easy to play with, but they just don't feel as premium.

What is cool though is the Armoury Crate software allows you to adjust the actuation point for the main triggers as well as tweak the dead zones for the thumbsticks. So you can customise the controller to suit your own playstyle.

That's the same for a few other things as well. You can adjust screen profiles for different visual modes depending on the game you're playing and you can obviously tweak the RGB lighting rings around the joysticks as well.

We have mixed feelings about this gaming handheld. The ROG Ally is a perfect option for PC gamers who don't mind tinkering and tweaking. It's not for everyone though, as the user experience frustrations caused by Windows might annoy some. The amount of adjustment you have to do to the settings to get games running nicely might also make the ROG Ally a struggle for the less technically savvy.

The battery life is also not what we'd hope for, but fast charging and docking might alleviate that misery.

That said, if you don't mind those things, then this is a great handheld. It's clearly powerful and capable of running modern games on reasonable graphics settings. If you plug in and play with it in powered mode the experience is even better and there are a lot of things to like. The screen is fantastic, as is the audio and the cooling. And the access to masses of games on the go is a big plus.

If you love the Steam Deck but want more freedom then the Ally is a great upgrade, but similarly if you like how easy the Steam Deck is to use then you might want to hang onto it.

Adrian has been a tech enthusiast since the 90s with a particular passion for gaming that developed thanks to his first gaming outings on Pong, Zork and Space Invaders.In the years that followed he dabbled in various games consoles and personal computers starting with the humble Commodore 64 before moving to Sega Mega Drive, Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, PlayStation 2 and then into the world of PC gaming. His gaming outings online in the days of dial-up modems included Command and Conquer and Battlefield 2 before he found the joys of gaming communities and started Enemy Boat Spotted over 10 years ago.Over the years, Adrian's passion for technology has grown. He has built multiple gaming PCs by hand, and equipped his home with a variety of smart devices. He has been writing about tech and gadgets for the last few years and enjoys sharing that passion with anyone that will listen.Adrian is currently obsessed with Virtual Reality and is excited to see the future that holds for all of us.