A new product is supposed to be exciting, right? I get to tell you about all the cool new features,
like the massively upgraded 80 watt hour battery,
the second USB-C port that does 40 gigabit per second
and can even work with Thunderbolt external GPUs, and of course the minor improvements to everything
from buttons to ergonomics to specs. But the Ally X is so flipping expensive
and comes so closely on the heels of the original Ally
that if I'm anything like you and I've got a first generation Ally,
which I do, I'm looking at this thing going, oh my God, you want my money again?
And for a 10% performance improvement at 1080p?
Oh, the battery life, guys, that's the standout to us.
This thing manages 14 hours in our endurance battery life
test and two hours in our stress test. And somehow it manages to do that
while only being about 11% heavier.
In fact, when I did my initial impressions of this,
I had a hard time picking out whether I was holding the Ally or the Ally X.
And a big part of that is that they haven't changed the ergonomics that much.
The ABXY buttons sit a little bit more proud to the face.
The D-pad has been improved with more clear delineation
between all eight positions and the joysticks have a little bit more resistance on them.
Although that does come with a benefit. They are now rated for two and a half times
the number of rotations compared to the ones on the original Ally.
We've got Hall of FET triggers again. Click here, nicer feeling shoulder buttons
and a big improvement to the back buttons.
Now they can be actuated really however you want. You can kind of slide across them,
you can push down on them, really like this. We've got larger air intakes, a thicker internal heat pipe
and a third exhaust grill that together contributed to both quieter and cooler operation in our testing.
And up at the top for IO, we've got a fingerprint sensing,
Windows Hello Power button, a headphone microphone jack. Ah, yes, the Micro SD card slot
that led to so many challenges with the original Ally. Although to ASUS's credit,
they have finally addressed that with the community.
Volume rocker and of course that second USB-C port
that I was really happy to see. And normally it doesn't matter,
but every once in a while I run into a situation where I'm like, I wish the Ally had a second USB-C port.
I came on a plane, I got a portable monitor and I realized I forgot to bring a dongle
that supports pass-through charging. So I had no way to charge the Ally
and also output to my portable monitor. No one seems to feel bad for me.
Okay, it's a champagne problem, but a problem nonetheless, and one that ASUS has addressed.
Got a 65 watt charger, which is nice to see included at all,
but doesn't support the maximum charging speed of the Ally X which is 100 watts
and that you're definitely gonna want if you're ever in a hurry when you're charging
because an 80 watt hour battery is flipping big.
Ah, yes, warranty information form.
Awkward. There, now I'm done with accessories and I can get back to what matters.
The Ally, oh, okay, no, I'm sorry. There is one, two more accessories.
There's no kickstand on the Ally X itself,
but ASUS does include little cardboard stands
and you get two just in case you lose one. Apparently these were included with the original.
I never noticed. Maybe because they aren't very good.
You can't even adjust the angle. You know, I was expecting the display
to be the first thing that stood out to me, but as I launched Steam Big Picture,
it's actually the speakers. They've got a much fuller sound than the original Ally
and as one of those monsters who does the vast majority
of my handheld gaming with speakers rather than headphones, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, everyone.
That makes a pretty big difference to me. I'm actually gonna go crab rave before I even fire up a game here.
Operating Windows on a handheld gaming PC is always gonna be awkward.
That's something that the Steam Deck just does so much better than any Windows handheld
can do at this time, but one of the reasons that I daily drive an Ally instead of a Steam Deck OLED
is that game compatibility is damn near perfect
and that's only gonna get better with the improved hardware in this new iteration.
They still don't compare to something like a MacBook, but they're definitely better than the old one.
Okay, let's maybe we'll go forza. You may not proceed without being signed into a profile.
Well, what am I allowed to do? There's no option to close the game.
God modern gaming sucks.
The device is upgraded. It's now available with up to a one terabyte SSD
out of the box and supports longer 80 millimeter sticks
so that you can put it up to an eight terabyte drive. It has 24 gigs of RAM instead of 16 gigs of RAM
this time around and it even runs at a higher 7,500 megatransfers per second
which when you're using onboard graphics which uses your system RAM
can make a significant difference to system performance. In fact, at 1080p we saw an approximately 10% uplift
in FPS in games. However, on a device like this
you oftentimes wouldn't be running at 1080p. You'd be running at 720 in order to get the best performance
and at 720 we found that we ran into other system bottlenecks
before that increased memory clock speed really made a difference.
So just like the original Ally it clocks down from 30 watts to 25 watts
when you're away from the wall even in its turbo operating mode.
But to take advantage of the bigger battery in the lower performance modes
it goes up to 13 and 17 rather than 10 and 15
which does result in a measurable performance improvement
while still maintaining better battery life than the original Ally.
There's other quality of life improvements. It's easier to access the SSD for upgrades.
It runs quieter and the display now gets dimmer
if you're the kind of person who games in the dark and doesn't want to melt your eyes
out of their freaking sockets but none of those things are big enough
to overcome two major obstacles that are facing the Ally X.
One is that the original Ally offers a lot of the same experience
and two it does so at a much lower price.
The Ally X is coming into a marketplace that is absolutely flush with competition
from the likes of Valve, Zotac, Ionio, Lenovo.
There's so many players in this space now. It might still be among if not
the best handheld gaming PCs but $800 before I even put a decent sized SSD in it?
Good Lord. What's a one terabyte Steam Deck OLED?
$650 and yeah, this has advantages
but so does the Steam Deck OLED. I mean, that's screen, oh, so nice.
And making things even more awkward we're already starting to see rumors
of what the performance of our DNA 3.5 mobile graphics
are gonna be. Now the word on the street and I didn't hear this from ASUS
is that AMD's upcoming Strix Point processors that feature those graphics are gonna be so expensive
that this would have been more like $900 but I've got to wonder guys
with how much more performance it would offer would that be more justifiable as an upgrade?
As it is now, if I'm looking to buy a handheld gaming PC and I have a functionally unlimited budget
this is gonna be a strong, if not the contender
but if I'm upgrading from something older I don't know if it has enough on offer.
I know the battery life, damn it, the battery life is incredible.
It's so much better than it should be on paper. Like it's double the size
and yet it manages three times the real world performance.
That and I have one of the OG allies that has the dimmer 400 nit screen.
As it is now the later model one seem to use the same 500 plus nit screen.
I think only you guys can judge. Is this thing worth the increase?
I mean, yeah, sure. You get rid of the proprietary XG mobile external GPU connector
that costs so much but you add a Thunderbolt connector
that you're gonna need an enclosure for for your GPU that costs so much.
It's a really complicated story. What's not complicated is subscribing to ShortCircuit.
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