I've been put in a really difficult position here I love my Rog Ally it's my
go-to handheld PC and after spending
some time previewing the allyx it is so
much better that what I want to do is the same thing I did last time and tell
you guys run out and buy it right now but what if ASUS does the same thing as
last time what if there's a flaw in the hardware and they not only refuse to
issue a recall but refuse to acknowledge it at all they've got some serious
commun trust issues to address and my hope is that by the time we release this
video they will have taken decisive action that I can display on screen
right now to help set their company on the right path because if they can do
that the Alli X is sick I mean our
Hardware isn't technically final but guys they have fixed everything chassis
more comfortable thumb sticks better materials and replaceable with Hall
effects from ghil kit expensive XG mobile expansion interface replaced with
industry standard USB 4 and guys that's just for starters now given that this is
a preview ASUS wouldn't authorize the publication of graphs but hey they did
leave the device in our hands and we do have a testing lab so I might make some
let's call them predictions about performance that are going to blow your
mind even if you feel like you can't trust Aus right now speaking of
companies you can't trust how about our sponsor dbrand those freaking guys I
half expect something to pop out of it and like stick into my eye they recently
launched their kill switch case for the original Rog Ally and it's getting rave
reviews over on Reddit it dramatically improves the digging in of the bottom
corners and the grippiness is just outstanding check out dbrand.com
Killswitch if you want to grab one for your ally or steam deck or hey if you
don't want to buy anything and you just want to harass them to make one for the allyx
let's begin with what the Alli X isn't it isn't the Alli 2 so there's no major
Leap Forward for gaming performance in order to achieve that ASUS would have
had to wait for AMD's strix Point mobile chips which would have increased the
devic's price dramatically it also isn't
a major leap in screen quality in fact ASUS says that they not only are aren't
using an OLED display they're using the exact same panel as last time with that
out of the way there are performance improvements and some of them are big
we're getting more memory at faster speeds and a truly impressive doubling
in the rated battery capacity and all of this is somehow without tipping the
scale it is heavier than both the old Ally and the steam deck OLED but it's
within Striking Distance of the original steam deck and honestly guys to my hands
it doesn't really feel that noticeable
now we were very interested in how gaming battery life would be impacted by
this changing capacity and here comes my
first prediction I predict that the Lix will
not last three times as long as the original but that it will last
considerably more than twice as long both in endurance and in full stress
situations so I predict that you will no longer be stuck plugging in if you want
a game at full performance for longer than about 45 minutes absolute game Cher
and while we are still limited to AMD's Z1 extreme Apu the additional 8 gigs of
ddr5 for a total of 24 gigs running at
7500 megat transfers per second should
result in a few more FPS in your favorite titles now not every game is
going to see a big uplift for example I predict that grid Legends will test
basically the same on both devices but while the unit that I'm holding is still
defaulting to 10 15 and 25 watts for
each of the stock power profiles ASUS has told us that the plan is to launch
the new ally with each profile increased by 2 to three Watts since they've got
all that extra battery headro now that should result in minor but measurable
increases across pretty much every
game let's play with it I got to say the
color it's not as striking it definitely looks more generic almost like They're
copying the MSI claw now but white is
not a good color for something that you're going to have your grimy meat
hooks all over I want to do a blind test for weight okay okay blindfold me wait
no I have a better idea I'm going to take this wonderful dip eye hoodie from
LTT Store.com and do this with it how many
fingers am I holding up three no he's wrong all right he's blind I'm going to
have to be careful not to touch the bottoms cuz it's more rounded on the new one I like that way better so I'm just
going to kind of grab them like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle here's the first one okay so this is one okay okay
you got that here's the other one oh man
when I held that first one I was like oh that's definitely the new one but now
I'm not sure number one feel like I'm at the option okay and
two this is the original yeah okay
you're right it's really close let's have a look at some of our other changes
here I can't say that I particularly know notice the difference in material
on the joysticks but with that said plof you didn't mention the ring on the top I
actually really like that how it kind of Cups the tip of your thumb a little bit
better big fan of that oo and they're
tighter so you can replace them with
thumb sticks from ghilly kit but you may not want to at least not until they die
ABX y button sit a little bit higher you
know what I think I like that too I remember remember having this debate
with the Ian Neo guys they switched over to more of a a micro switch style button
and I was like oh guys I really don't like that and they're like well we do
and I was like okay cool I guess I'll daily an ally now this is even more
better for from my perspective ooh triggers are
bigger ooh yeah that's nice and these
rear buttons are a lot smaller as someone who doesn't really use them
honestly I consider that an improvement I'm going to hit them accidentally way
less often you can actuate them from any
direction oh oh interesting you can mash
them like that like that like that or
like that or just press them yeah the old ones do not have that
capability more venting cool cool I'll
never say no to that standing in basically the same spot in Ghost of
sushima running at 1080p medium without any frame gen or any kind of dynamic res
ution scaling or anything like that I predict that we will see frame rates
anywhere from about 5 to 10% better it's
not a lot and it might not even be the kind of thing that you would notice day
today but it is measurable even if we
couldn't measure it it's definitely heavy but so was the old
Ally I think the deck might be a little stiffer not by much and this is
technically pre-production but it's good I didn't know notice how much thicker it
was for how little more it weighs of course ghost of sushima is not a game
where we're going to be able to take advantage of the high refresh rate display unless we're running it very
very low detail settings so let's close this down and try something where we can
all right that is smooth I suspect that
this is going to be something of a controversial choice because hey the
steam deck OLED it's OLED it's HDR you
get none of that here but what you do get is 120 HTS and something that I
think is maybe more important than any of those things on a handheld you get
variable refresh rate and when you're going to be dealing with frame rates in
the 20 to 40
range it's something that can make a very very noticeable difference in
animation smoothness how about this ASUS
two versions H allix allio it's emulation
guys especially later consoles like the PS3 it's heavy cuz it not only hits the
GPU hard it hits the CPU super hard as well so having that extra battery man
makes it a much more viable use case here's Demon Souls running an rpcs 3 am
I seeing a difference in performance no
but am I seeing that PS3 emulation is totally a thing on these devices yes now
guys the keite among you will have probably noticed that in addition to the
other changes we've talked about already we've now got two USBC ports on the top
this left one is just USB 3.2 gen
whatever uh but the one on the right is a full fat Thunderbolt compatible
hopefully USB 4 port and there are a
couple of reasons why this is freaking awesome the first is that with two ports
you're a lot less dock dependent if you want to plug in PC peripherals or in my
case on that long flight to Japan plug in an external USBC Monitor and charge
at the same time the second is that the
ability to plug in an egpu via Thunderbolt will allow you to
supercharge this thing for gaming on a bigger screen without being stuck paying
desktop prices for laptop grade XG
mobile gpus oh and while the battery may
have doubled charging time hasn't thanks to 100 watts of power delivery Support
over those USBC ports now unfortunately
though the included charger didn't get leveled up at the same time so you'll
need a third party one in order to take advantage of that boo now a second thing
that you Keen IR probably noticed is that the micro SD card slot has
moved about that thanks to this article
from hackaday that was published on May the 4th it looks like someone is finally
shining a light on what the heck was going on with those Ally failures even
if ASUS refuses to do so if hackaday is
correct which I predict that they are
The Thermals were never the issue the issue is that they used a certain model
of PTC fuse that is prone to failure now
we're going to have the article Linked In the description down below and what
we're also hopefully going to have is a strong decisive statement from ASUS that
acknowledges the situation and lays out a path forward that takes care of their
many Ally customers or as I'll be calling them allies in fairness to ASUS
they have covered the SD failures so far and they've increased the coverage for
that issue from one year to two but that's not enough what I want to see
from them here and going forward is better transparency we have no idea what
percentage of the original allies were or will be affected and ASUS still
hasn't formally acknowledged that it's a hardware flaw which I predict that it is
and if it's a hardware flaw that sounds to me like the kind of thing that should
either be recalled or proactively dealt
with so until this gets cleared up and ASUS manages to demonstrate that they
can be trustworthy again it doesn't matter how much I might like the Ally X
like okay have you guys ever heard someone say don't hate the developer
hate the studio I feel kind of the same way here the Alli EX Team should be so
proud of this they should be so proud that they helped ASUS finally find
incredible but even if I might make the personal choice to buy one I'm not going
to be able to recommend it even though I really want to I predict that The
Thermals will improve by more than five but less than 10° thanks to larger heat
pipes and more fan blades the board and
Chassis have been redesigned so we can fit a double-sided 2280 SSD and here
guys you can put up to an 8 terabyte SSD
in this thing and speaking of capacity it comes with one Tab out of the box now
which is double the previous generation it's 100 bucks more for fundamentally
the same cor specs but this is more than
the sum of its parts which actually I wonder is it more
serviceable why don't we take it apart find out oo
wow that's a lot of battery look at it go
I like this here's the daughter boards for the joysticks so replacing those is
as simple as I mean what did I take out six screws plus another three per
daughter board and a little ribbon cable that flipping awesome these fans are
tiny based on how much quieter it sounded to my ear that is not what I was
expecting to see I mean how often is that ever happen you make a smaller fan
make more or less noise like sure I guess so heat pipe sticker there's the
big SSD slot that is so awesome I I was
really irrationally so but really upset
that the original Ally Only supported 2230 it's just like really you can't
make it just a little bit bigger so we can put a fullsize SSD in this thing and
they're cheaper too right the 228s just because of the economies of scale they
they make a lot more of them there's more competition in 2280 vrms have
thermal scho there one thing I would like to know is if the Wi-Fi card is a
separate card I doubt it I suspect it's soldered but I wouldn't mind knowing
that uh Wi-Fi chip is soldered that's
all I really needed to dig further to find out kind of a bummer we saw this
with the steam deck where the OLED came in like yeah we've got like way better
download speeds now dude like yeah but if you had
just had a mini PCI slot on the board in the first I understand I get it
integration saves cost you know
but I would like to see replaceable Wi-Fi modules on these in addition to
replaceable storage the more I like this thing the more disappointing it is that
ASUS just can't get their reputation in line I guess the Silver Lining is that
they've still got time the Alx doesn't actually launch for about another month
and I'd like for a moment to directly address ASUS leadership here to say that
I look forward to seeing a commitment to real lasting change and I also look
forward to telling telling you about our sponsor dbrand they say their Rog Ali
kill switch case is practically
indestructible this poor table
not bad dbrand not bad check it out at the link
in the video description thanks for watching if you guys enjoyed this video
maybe take a look at our ion Neo coverage that we've done over the last couple of years they make neat little
handhelds just even more expensive