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The ROG-LIZ-1 has been criticized for being underpowered, overpriced, and do you really

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need a third thing? That's kind of enough reason to not like it. But I disagree. Well,

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I don't disagree that it's overpriced. And I don't disagree that it's underpowered.

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But I think there could be a justification for its existence. Let's start by taking a look at

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what comes included though. Power adapter, fixed cable, because why would you ever want to replace

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it with a longer or shorter one? If this cable is good enough for you, it's good enough for you.

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We're developing a bit of a tone in this video, okay? Warranty information form,

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that'll come in handy. Who would fill this out? Moving on to the device then, there's a lot to

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like here. We've got a power button with a fingerprint sensor, volume rocker, XG mobile

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interface allowing you to hook up an external graphics card to the ally, microSD slot, talk

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about that later, headset jack, vents for the shockingly quiet cooling system, then flipping

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around to the face, we have again, surprisingly good stereo speakers, an Xbox alike layout with

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full sized joysticks, a serviceable d-pad and ABXY buttons, then the whatever this button, ROG

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button, I don't know, whatever, it brings up their command center allowing you to adjust

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quick settings like the power profile the device is running in, the operating mode of the joysticks,

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radio and super resolution toggle, even toggles for the display resolution and refresh rate.

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You see, natively, it runs at 1920 by 1080 at up to 120 hertz, but these toggles can be useful so

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that games don't get confused and try to run at anything higher than 720, 60 hertz. And the reason

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I say that games would have to be confused to do that is because this, for those of you who have

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not been paying close attention, is the ROG Ally Z1, not the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme, which means it

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has everything that's good about the ally that I reviewed about six months ago and have been

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using very actively ever since, except the high-powered processor. We get cut from eight CPU

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cores down to six, and the onboard graphics processor goes from 12 CUs down to just four.

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By the way, I realized I didn't finish going through the buttons, more Xbox buttons and then

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this will return to the desktop. I believe this one's programmable though, so your mileage may

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vary on that one. Now, I thought that maybe other reviewers overlooked a potential outstanding

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use case for this version of the ally because one of the things that I don't like about my Z1

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Extreme Ally is the extremely short battery life. Most of the gaming that I've done on that device

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has been playing Sea of Stars and playing Chained Echoes. Both of which are pretty light games,

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and not being able to get more than a few hours away from the wall has been kind of a downer.

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So I thought, okay, why don't we give this thing to the Labs and see if there's a way for us to push

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way better battery life out of this, thanks to its same-sized battery unit, but much less

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powerful hardware. And unfortunately, I ended up sorely disappointed. Let's look at these

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performance numbers. As expected, at 15 or 30 watts, it lags behind significantly,

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though I was surprised to find that at 10 watts, the Z1 actually not that far behind,

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which seems to suggest that the Z1 Extreme, for all its extra CUs, has to throttle clock

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speed down even further in order to achieve the same kind of power envelope, looking good so far.

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Where things fall apart is when we do our battery life endurance test playing back YouTube videos,

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and you can see that even with all that extra horsepower on board with the Z1 Extreme,

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it ends up lasting for the same amount of time. Now, that's not the case in our CPU or GPU stress

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tests, where we managed over 20 additional minutes of battery life on the Z1 versus the Z1 Extreme,

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which seems to suggest that my idea of this being a way more power efficient handheld for

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people who just want to play light games on the go is not entirely wrong, but where it falls apart

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is in the raw numbers, guys. 20 to 25 more minutes away from the wall when fully loaded,

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that being an absolute best case scenario, this thing would need to offer me double the

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battery life to justify the fact that it performs so much worse when it's running in high power mode

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and only costs $100 less than the full fat Z1 Extreme. And that ignores the fact that by the

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time ASUS actually managed to get this thing out into the wild, it turned out that Valve had a

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refreshed steam deck waiting in the wings that was going to make it look absolutely pointless.

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I mean, at least the screen is good. It manages to hit the claimed 500 nits peak brightness.

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It's quite accurate, especially compared to the original steam deck, and especially or being

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able to run at high refresh rate means that in games that support it, you can get a much smoother

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gaming experience. It's just that the new steam deck, the OLED one, makes all of those numbers

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look kind of like child's play, except the refresh rate. It's only 90 versus 120, but 90

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hertz on an OLED. Yeah, I would take that over 120. We'll have a full video on the new steam

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deck OLED over on the LTT channel. Valve also isn't dealing with a micro SD card controversy.

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Cards have been dying in the original ROG Ally, and again, we were hoping that the Z1 version

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would run much cooler and therefore not have the same issues. But as it turns out, nope,

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the Z1 really is just a crappier binned chip and it does suck back power and it does get hot.

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So any issues that they would have on the Z1 extreme version are probably going to be replicated

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here. Now, ASUS says that they do have a BIOS fix coming for this, but I don't think that has

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materialized yet. Credit words due to ASUS. Their command center thing has been shockingly not buggy.

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Like Ioneos one used to be really good back in the day, and now last time I used it was a piece

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of garbage. This is what that's supposed to be. Oh, let's turn up to 120 hertz. Like look at that,

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seamless. Not bad. Those six cores turbo pretty good. If you only play very light games on the go,

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you want to hook up your eGPU whenever you're docked, except if you can afford one of ASUS's

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XG Mobile eGPUs, then you can afford the extra hundred bucks. I mean, it needed to be like $250

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less expensive, but I also understand why it isn't. I get it. Everyone complaining. Yeah, it needs to

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be $250. But you got to understand guys, this is exactly the same tooling. This is exactly the

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same hardware other than just that chip change. So unless AMD is charging $200 plus dollars less

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for that chip, it's not happening. You know what? This is not nearly as bad as I thought it was going

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to be. You know, if it wasn't for Steam Deck OLED being so good for the price, maybe I've talked

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myself back into it. I could see people buying this one. Yeah, you're only saving $100 or whatever,

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but you're saving $100. Yeah, it was kind of silly of them to use the exact same hardware other

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than the processor because that makes the cost so high. But the flip side of that is they're

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using the exact same hardware. It's really good hardware. It feels great. It's a great gaming

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experience other than it's a little slower. A lot slower. Overall, there's a lot to like,

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but the truth is I'm only making a video about this right now because it's still in my queue

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and I need to get it done before I move on to more interesting ones like the Lenovo Legion Go.

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