WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.280 As an ROG Ally Z1 Extreme owner, I skipped the X. 00:00:03.280 --> 00:00:06.680 It wasn't much of an upgrade, but now that Xbox and ASUS have teamed up 00:00:06.680 --> 00:00:11.680 to give us the ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X, 00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:16.080 I might be due for an upgrade. Let's look at the box here. 00:00:16.080 --> 00:00:20.760 We've got ROG Xbox Ally. This is the white one is the Ally, 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:25.760 which is the weaker one. It's got a Z2A processor instead of the new Z2 Extreme, 00:00:25.760 --> 00:00:30.160 but we'll get more into that later. Their code name is RC73YA. 00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:36.680 I'm actually writing the review for these units now, and that's why my unit is actually already opened. 00:00:36.680 --> 00:00:40.080 The main difference between a fully new experience 00:00:40.080 --> 00:00:44.080 and what I've got here is there's normally some plastic that kind of covers the device. 00:00:44.080 --> 00:00:48.160 You just peel that off, and there's some plastic around the box. That's it. 00:00:48.160 --> 00:00:51.280 For this SC, we're doing a more of just, you know, 00:00:51.280 --> 00:00:55.640 open the thing, check it out, take a look, and see if it actually feels or plays any good. 00:00:55.640 --> 00:01:02.240 If you want the more full review, check it out on LTT. We've also got, similar to the ROG Ally and Ally X, 00:01:02.240 --> 00:01:05.400 it does come with a little stand from ASUS. 00:01:05.400 --> 00:01:11.200 Otherwise, that's it in here, but past the handheld itself, we get our charger. 00:01:11.200 --> 00:01:16.240 Yep, 65 watt right there. My only complaint here is that the prongs aren't retractable. 00:01:16.240 --> 00:01:21.320 Let's see how long this cable is. Probably about six feet. Definitely long enough for you to plug this into an outlet 00:01:21.320 --> 00:01:24.920 and then stay tethered to the wall. And what's in this other box? 00:01:24.920 --> 00:01:29.360 I actually never even looked through these when I opened it. I had all the cables I needed, so I just kind of like took the handheld out 00:01:29.360 --> 00:01:34.200 and started using it. A little gaming handheld guide. 00:01:34.200 --> 00:01:40.600 That's basically it. That's what you get in the box. And honestly, the big stand out for me is the kickstand. 00:01:40.600 --> 00:01:44.280 It's got a little soft piece of like felt or something 00:01:44.280 --> 00:01:49.760 on the frontier or foam, so that you're, even though your screen is sliding into it, 00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:54.000 you're not gonna damage it. And while it is covering part of the screen, 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:58.960 that's actually really just the bezel and the ROG logo. So you're not even losing any screen real estate 00:01:58.960 --> 00:02:02.880 when you pop it in here. So overall, really nice inclusion. 00:02:02.880 --> 00:02:07.080 You don't need it, but hey, I'd rather they include it and not need it than need it and not have it. 00:02:07.080 --> 00:02:11.680 But there isn't just the Ally. There's also the Ally X for a significantly higher price 00:02:11.680 --> 00:02:14.720 that we'll touch on later. And unlike the white one, this one's black. 00:02:14.720 --> 00:02:18.400 Also the unboxing experience is basically the same. You've got your card here. 00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:20.560 The whole device is wrapped in some plastic. 00:02:21.920 --> 00:02:25.520 Also includes a 65 watt charger. And I believe the kickstand as well. 00:02:25.520 --> 00:02:29.360 And otherwise, yeah, it's the same. You just pull the device out and there you go. Well, look at these little guys. 00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:32.400 Aren't they cute together? They're almost the exact same 00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:37.080 aside from the black and white color schemes. We'll start with the regular Ally. 00:02:37.080 --> 00:02:41.360 Non-X, 672 grams, okay, very good. 00:02:41.360 --> 00:02:45.640 And then our X-Backs, 720 grams. 00:02:45.640 --> 00:02:48.860 So yeah, there's a not insignificant difference in weight. 00:02:48.860 --> 00:02:52.320 And that's probably because of the 80 watt hour battery 00:02:52.320 --> 00:02:55.820 that's in here, which is gonna be a little larger than the 60 watt hour battery in this guy. 00:02:55.820 --> 00:02:59.640 But what it costs you in weight, it makes up for in performance, but we'll get to that later. 00:02:59.640 --> 00:03:03.560 Because first I wanna tell you guys about the rest of the construction and everything. 00:03:03.560 --> 00:03:07.480 I actually had a really cool meeting with ASUS where they showed us all the different 00:03:07.480 --> 00:03:10.820 like prototypes they've built and the internals of this thing. 00:03:10.820 --> 00:03:16.120 So I've seen it torn down. It is pretty repairable with just a few screws. 00:03:16.120 --> 00:03:19.440 I think one of them's captive. The only thing that you might have to worry about 00:03:19.440 --> 00:03:23.080 if you're gonna open these things and change out the SSD or swap the sticks 00:03:23.080 --> 00:03:27.320 or something like that is there's a tiny ribbon cable that you wanna watch out for when you're opening it. 00:03:27.320 --> 00:03:30.760 So when you do get the shell separate, don't rip it open. 00:03:30.760 --> 00:03:35.120 Just slightly lift it up and then look for the cable, disconnect it and you're good to go from there. 00:03:35.120 --> 00:03:39.040 Aside from the obviously different controller grips, which we'll talk about later, 00:03:39.040 --> 00:03:42.700 this is very similar to an ROG Ally. So if you've seen one of those, 00:03:42.700 --> 00:03:46.960 then you've already kind of seen one of these. The main differences are the face buttons 00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:50.080 are nice and big and chunky, like a real controller. 00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:53.320 Your preference may vary. I prefer these bigger ones, Linus doesn't like them, 00:03:53.320 --> 00:04:00.720 but that's, you know, to each their own. The thumbsticks feel significantly better than the ROG Ally. 00:04:00.720 --> 00:04:05.200 They're not nearly as loose and I was playing a lot of skate on these things 00:04:05.200 --> 00:04:09.000 and it just, oh my God, it was night and day playing on this versus my Ally. 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:15.440 The screen is the same. It's still a seven inch 1080p, 120 Hertz display IPS. 00:04:15.440 --> 00:04:18.920 It's not bad. Obviously it's not an OLED. I know everyone wanted this thing to be OLED 00:04:18.920 --> 00:04:23.960 even at the price point, but I promise you, if they made it OLED, it would cost more than it already does. 00:04:23.960 --> 00:04:27.120 As for the top IO, we've got our power button and fingerprint sensor, 00:04:27.120 --> 00:04:31.880 headphone jack, micro SD card slot on the other side of the device, 00:04:31.880 --> 00:04:34.960 like they fixed with the Ally X, volume rocker. 00:04:34.960 --> 00:04:40.000 Now we've got our two USB-C ports. The one right here is USB 3.2 Gen 2. 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:43.880 And then this guy with a nice little 40 next to it 00:04:43.880 --> 00:04:47.080 is Thunderbolt 4. So you're gonna be able to connect this 00:04:47.080 --> 00:04:51.240 to an eGPU, no problem. They've taken away their XG mobile connection 00:04:51.240 --> 00:04:54.920 and now we're just using Thunderbolt, which is way more universal and easy to use. 00:04:54.920 --> 00:05:00.600 And then on the bottom, there's nothing but screws. I would love having the second USB-C port. 00:05:00.600 --> 00:05:03.600 That's actually a huge improvement over my 00:05:03.600 --> 00:05:07.380 Ally Z one extreme, because now I can connect both a keyboard and a mouse 00:05:07.380 --> 00:05:11.760 if I wanted to. Or you know, you can charge it while you've got a keyboard attached because 00:05:11.760 --> 00:05:15.440 mouse, fine. I can deal without having a mouse on these things, but without having a keyboard, 00:05:15.440 --> 00:05:18.480 it is really a nightmare to type in like passwords and stuff like that. 00:05:18.480 --> 00:05:23.640 As for the rest of the shell and the plastic itself, we've got this little ASUS logo down here. 00:05:23.640 --> 00:05:27.480 And then something I'm actually just kind of noticing now on the black one. 00:05:27.480 --> 00:05:31.800 Yeah, I never noticed this once on the white one. It's almost impossible to see. 00:05:31.800 --> 00:05:37.160 But on the black, it's super obvious. You've got this like Xbox ROG scribed all along. 00:05:37.160 --> 00:05:41.400 And I don't know how well the camera will pick it up. That's just kind of a nice little touch. 00:05:41.400 --> 00:05:45.880 And then the back is actually textured really nicely. So you feel like you've got a good grip on this thing. 00:05:45.880 --> 00:05:49.440 I mean, you're gonna kind of need it because like holding it like this is fine. 00:05:49.440 --> 00:05:53.120 But I can tell you there's a scuff on this guy because I was holding it like that. 00:05:53.120 --> 00:05:56.120 And it's not thumbstick snagged on my jeans 00:05:56.120 --> 00:05:59.440 and it dropped it at the floor. It's okay. Don't worry about it. 00:05:59.440 --> 00:06:03.520 And we've got a couple of front speaker grills here. I don't think they did a major update on the speakers, 00:06:03.520 --> 00:06:08.560 but they're pretty solid. We'll get to those later. One thing they have seemed to improve is the rumble. 00:06:08.560 --> 00:06:12.200 And I don't know if it's just having it in a bigger handle that I feel it more, 00:06:12.200 --> 00:06:16.560 but or if they've actually improved the rumble in it, but it's significantly better than the other units. 00:06:16.560 --> 00:06:20.320 And then the final kind of touch is just like ROG 00:06:20.320 --> 00:06:24.640 on the side here. What's actually really surprising me that I didn't notice while gaming on it. 00:06:24.640 --> 00:06:30.000 And it's only once I've started looking at it more closely is how much like ROG and ASUS stuff is on this thing. 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:33.120 Like ROG, ASUS ROG logo. 00:06:33.120 --> 00:06:36.320 They've got the ROG logo on the back here. 00:06:36.320 --> 00:06:39.640 And then for Xbox or Microsoft for that matter, 00:06:39.640 --> 00:06:44.360 you've literally got the Xbox button right there. And then for the non-X, it's almost the same 00:06:44.400 --> 00:06:51.600 except these USB-C ports are a little different. Instead, both of them are USB-C 3.2 Gen2. 00:06:51.600 --> 00:06:54.720 And the DisplayPort that we get on the DisplayPort one 00:06:54.720 --> 00:06:59.040 is only DP 1.4, unlike the 2.1 we're getting on the other guy. 00:06:59.040 --> 00:07:02.440 To be clear, these things are, unless you're hooking it up to an eGPU, 00:07:02.440 --> 00:07:07.760 I don't think they're gonna need anything bigger than DP 1.4, but it's nice to have it and not need it, 00:07:07.760 --> 00:07:11.800 then need it and not have it. All right, enough about design. Let's talk about power. 00:07:11.800 --> 00:07:15.360 And unfortunately, there's only a Z2A 00:07:15.360 --> 00:07:20.360 in the white non-X ally versus the Z2 Extreme 00:07:20.440 --> 00:07:25.320 in the black ally X. And there's a pretty massive performance difference 00:07:25.320 --> 00:07:28.680 between the two, both on the CPU side and on the GPU side. 00:07:28.680 --> 00:07:34.200 At 599 on the ally non-X, you are essentially getting a beefed up steam deck. 00:07:34.200 --> 00:07:39.060 With the Z2A chip, you're getting four cores, eight threads on the CPU. 00:07:39.060 --> 00:07:46.000 And then for the GPU part of that APU, it's RDNA 2 and you're only getting eight cores. 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:49.480 And while this has the same 1080p display I mentioned earlier, 00:07:49.480 --> 00:07:52.840 this one's only gonna go up to a max of 20 watts 00:07:52.840 --> 00:07:56.160 because it just, it can't go higher than that. 00:07:56.160 --> 00:07:59.920 That is five watts higher than the steam deck. So I was being very serious when I said 00:07:59.920 --> 00:08:03.640 it's a juiced up steam deck. Whereas with the Xbox ally X, 00:08:03.640 --> 00:08:10.840 you're getting an eight core 16 thread chip and 16 RDNA 3.5 graphics cores. 00:08:10.840 --> 00:08:17.600 This thing is kind of a beast. And yeah, it's $1,000. 00:08:17.600 --> 00:08:22.360 But to be clear, if you want something higher end than that, you're almost doubling the price. 00:08:22.360 --> 00:08:27.800 As for memory and storage, the white one's got a 512 gig SSD, which is fine. 00:08:27.800 --> 00:08:31.640 You're gonna be playing more, you know, AA or indie games on this thing. 00:08:31.640 --> 00:08:37.040 And most of those aren't very big anyway, versus the one terabyte that comes with the ally X. 00:08:37.040 --> 00:08:41.800 The nice thing about both of these is they've got 2280 millimeter NVMe drives back here. 00:08:41.800 --> 00:08:45.260 So if you do want to make an upgrade, it should be relatively easy. 00:08:45.260 --> 00:08:49.440 They've got micro SD cards. So buy a one terabyte micro SD card. 00:08:49.440 --> 00:08:52.580 If you're really worried about storage, pop it in and never worry about it again. 00:08:52.580 --> 00:08:58.160 And then the nice thing about the Xbox is that this thing can juice up to 35 watts. 00:08:58.160 --> 00:09:02.080 That's a lot of juice. But enough about the numbers, let's turn these things on. 00:09:02.080 --> 00:09:07.720 Now they are basically Windows devices. So that's the thing is to be very clear here, 00:09:07.720 --> 00:09:11.360 Xbox is making a lot of mistakes recently. Don't worry about that. 00:09:11.360 --> 00:09:14.600 Just look at this as a Windows handheld. And you're totally fine. 00:09:14.600 --> 00:09:20.360 You don't need to use any of the Xbox related stuff at all. One major difference, if you do already own an ally 00:09:20.360 --> 00:09:25.480 or an ally X, they swapped the buttons for like armory crate and pause and stuff. 00:09:25.480 --> 00:09:30.080 Really annoying. It didn't take me super long to get used to it, but I did a lot of like, oh, positive. 00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:33.560 Nope, that's not pause at all. Oh, that's not armory crate at all. It's pretty cool. 00:09:33.560 --> 00:09:36.960 You can have your device set so that it just launches straight into Xbox mode. 00:09:36.960 --> 00:09:40.120 So you never even see a Windows desktop. It's not super seamless. 00:09:40.120 --> 00:09:46.760 If you go to launch a game that you own through Steam, for example, it does keep your entire library in one space. 00:09:46.760 --> 00:09:50.840 So it's really easy to keep all your games together, even if you have multiple different platforms 00:09:50.840 --> 00:09:54.600 that you go to. But if you go to launch a game and you're booting the system up for the first time, 00:09:54.600 --> 00:09:58.200 it'll then go to launch Steam. And that's actually like waiting for a little while. 00:09:58.200 --> 00:10:01.400 Like it even tells me, Steam, Steam, Steam, Steam. It's not perfect. 00:10:01.400 --> 00:10:04.440 If you want a bit of a deeper dive, definitely check out the LTT 00:10:04.440 --> 00:10:10.400 because me and Linus both have our own list of complaints. But overall, it's better than I expected it to be. 00:10:10.400 --> 00:10:14.360 And if you don't want to use this at all, because you don't have to, you just hold the Xbox button 00:10:14.360 --> 00:10:20.400 and then instead of Xbox full screen experience, you hit Windows desktop, continue. 00:10:20.400 --> 00:10:25.080 Boom, now Windows handheld, super simple. It doesn't always do a seamless transition, 00:10:25.080 --> 00:10:28.640 but Skate was loading. So I expect it to be a little upset with me right now. 00:10:28.640 --> 00:10:32.120 You know, FSR quality, everything else is set to low, 00:10:32.160 --> 00:10:35.520 30 FPS target frame. Let's, you know, put it to 60. See if it can do it. 00:10:35.520 --> 00:10:38.920 I don't think it can. 720p feels a little floaty, 00:10:38.920 --> 00:10:42.280 but that's also just kind of Skate. There was a big update, so I wonder if it's changed at all. 00:10:42.280 --> 00:10:46.160 But we'll try it on the X afterwards, because yeah, 20 Watts, 00:10:46.160 --> 00:10:51.000 I'm getting like 80, 75 FPS, which is totally pretty solid. 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:55.600 Oh yeah, it's already feels better. Oh, and I'm only on 13 Watts. Man, this thing is such a beast. 00:10:55.600 --> 00:11:00.280 I gotta blame Linus for this. He didn't update the device properly. So we don't have all of our FPS numbers showing properly, 00:11:00.280 --> 00:11:03.320 but like I can tell you right now, all the settings the same. 00:11:03.320 --> 00:11:06.120 It's handling so much smoother. 00:11:07.560 --> 00:11:11.600 God, everything feels so good. Yeah, I like your beard belt. It still feels a little floaty, 00:11:11.600 --> 00:11:15.600 so I'm not sure if I'm just used to playing on PC. This feels great. 00:11:15.600 --> 00:11:20.920 If you wanna see actual proper game benchmark results, please check out the LTT that we're also uploading today. 00:11:20.920 --> 00:11:25.440 But what I wanna know right now is how good these speakers are. Oh, we'll use Microsoft Edge 00:11:25.440 --> 00:11:30.200 because there's no Chrome on this bad boy yet. It should be the same speakers on both devices. 00:11:30.200 --> 00:11:35.920 And on top of the vibration feeling pretty solid in the grips, there's also in the AllyX vibration motors 00:11:35.920 --> 00:11:37.120 and the triggers as well. 00:11:40.440 --> 00:11:41.440 That's pretty solid. 00:11:46.120 --> 00:11:49.400 They're pretty good. Now, I'm pretty sure they're the exact same speakers, 00:11:49.400 --> 00:11:52.000 but we'll check it out on the non-X as well. 00:11:55.720 --> 00:11:59.520 That sounds the same to me. If you're picking which one to buy, 00:11:59.560 --> 00:12:04.160 it's kind of a tough call. But the real big improvement is just 00:12:04.160 --> 00:12:08.320 the Z2 Extreme versus the Z2 A. 00:12:08.320 --> 00:12:11.480 I don't really recommend the non-X. 00:12:11.480 --> 00:12:15.960 I think that if you want this level of performance, you're kind of better off just buying a Steam Deck 00:12:15.960 --> 00:12:21.080 for like 320 bucks, especially cause, you know, the OLED Steam Deck is like what, $600? 00:12:21.080 --> 00:12:24.360 So it's around the same price as this anyway. If you're out there struggling 00:12:24.360 --> 00:12:29.720 to make up your mind right now, make sure to check out the LTT for a bit more in-depth benchmarking and information. 00:12:29.720 --> 00:12:33.800 And if you want to check out any other handhelds that we've looked at over the past couple of years, 00:12:33.800 --> 00:12:36.600 check them out on ShortCircuit. We've unboxed a lot of them.