Highlights from the ROG Ally livestream

Asus wanted to get this thing below. 600 grams. And we did a lot of stuff to bring it down. Then we got it down to 608 grams. We did not reach our goal there. We had to sacrifice our lofty goals and go with 608 but I think 608 is still pretty good. It’s still very lightweight. But I mean, that was one of those things where, you know, we really really wanted to hit that 600 grams and just couldn’t quite do it with everything that we wanted to pack it with.

We don’t have an answer for you. We don’t have a yes. We have not announced a black edition at this time. But we can’t say no and anything couldn’t happen. Absolutely. I’ll also say the white version is, really really nice. I know a lot of people were like worrying about like show dirt or something and look if you’re white device is showing dirt, you need to wash your hands more often. Um, the thing about white oh my the white plastic is that the white plastic doesn’t show like fingerprints and stuff. So it always looks pristine. Um, so I understand that people want different colors, you know, you want a pink one, you want a blue one. Just keep asking
on social media.

That has been fixed. It will not be present on units that go out for sale on June 15th. Yeah. Fixed!

None of us have experienced this ourselves but the team is investigating that, that’s all I can say there. I have not experienced that on my Ally at all.

Our team is also investigating the discrepancies and performance between the Z1 Extreme and the AMD Ryzen 7840U which are similar chips and they are performing a little bit differently or a viewer found that they were performing differently for him at lower wattages. The team is still tweaking and optimizing. They’re releasing more updates going forward. In fact, we released an update like yesterday that boosted performance at 10 watts and there’s still more to come. Efficiency in battery life is a big priority for us right now. They’re working on it, I promise you that as well.

Yeah, we’ve been streaming all month long. A variety of games from Cyberpunk to Stardew Valley like you know, we’re going for a super high refresh rate with games like Hades and start doing that. We’re going for super high fidelity with games, like Cyberpunk. So you can buy any USB-C hub. There I have one here, it has an HDMI out. That’s the thing you need. So You’re basically running out of the USB port on the top, of your USB hub. And again, we’re going to be selling an official adapter. That also has an HDMI hub out. And then you run that HDMI cable Into your capture card and then you split that capture card and then run that straight to your PC, or if you want to run it to your TV as well, you can do it that way.

We have the case and the USB-C with an HDMI charging dock. Those are coming. We have the XG mobile line of external GPUs. We’re currently selling one with RTX 4090 laptop GPU and the Radeon 6850XT. Some people asked about screen protectors, I don’t believe we have any first-party options, but I know that dBrand already has a page up for their screen protector they and doesn’t miss the beat ever. They never do. I hope they have skins too.

Yes, you can absolutely install another OS whether it be SteamOS, or if you want to install some other OS, or Linux, whatever on the Ally, absolutely do that. Just like you can on any of our laptops. We don’t block even doing that. It is your device, you own it. One of the beauties of PC, the PC platform is the ability to do things like that. Um, remember like Jacob and I enthusiasts, um, we have a company full of enthusiasts. I love seeing what kinds of crazy things people do with their gaming gear.

So while we don’t block you from installing SteamOS or Linux, we also don’t fully support it in the literal sense of like, if you need to obtain customer support from us, if you need to contact us because you’re having issues, I mean, it’s a case by case basis. But, um, If you’re, you know, if you are running SteamOs in the Ally and you have an issue with SteamOS, we can’t help you with that because it’s not running the software that we built into the Ally, right? Okay, someone on asked for dual booting, I haven’t tested that. I imagine it would work the same as any Windows PC.

You will be able to download Armory Crate SE from the Asus site, just like the drivers and software. I don’t recommend reinstalling Windows from scratch and then getting the drivers. If you can, like, if you still have your recovery, partition on the device, my recommendation would be to use the reset this pc feature in Windows, if you want to reinstall Windows because then it comes with all that stuff built in and you know what’s going to work properly because it’s like still the original image. My official recommendation is to use the reset to this pc feature because it works beautifully. We do it all the time.

We plan to give robust support to the Ally just like we do all of our laptop’s graphics drivers. We will continue to provide regular updates to Armory Crate just like our laptops. It’s great and if you have a laptop that’s 3 years old, it’s still getting new features. So that’s not going to change with the Ally. We have a lot of updates and optimization plans between now and the launch and we plan to continue supporting it after launch as well. No questions. Just make sure that that is clear.

Secure boot is on by default, but in the BIOS, there is an option to turn it off. You’ve got other kinds of typical BIOS stuff. You’ve got smart settings drive and boot configuration options, network boot options, and legacy USB. There’s an option in the BIOS to turn off the boot sound at boot.

We’re still producing BIOS updates for this, so that’s not like an all-encompassing list but yeah, it’s there. It’s easy to access. It has options. A lot of people ask, are we able to upgrade the SSD? Yep, it is just Regular Philips head screws in the back. In fact, we’re going to do a teardown video in a few weeks. We don’t have the exact date for you yet but we’re going to do a live test today.

Yes, obviously, you can install any Windows software. But more importantly, uh, the Ally already has screen recording and screenshot features built-in. They use Xbox game bar. Our software is that they’re built into the command center. So while I’m playing a game, I can click the command center button. Press the record screen right there and it’ll start recording the screen for me. I don’t need to like Alt+Tab out of the game with my screen recording effort or whatever, you know. Yeah, so that’s how I would recommend making it. But if you have supporting software, you like, if you want to use OBS, you can do that. It’s windows, right? Install it, do it

It is a BMI 323 with a polling rate of 40 milliseconds at 25 hertz. That’s it. Gyro support right now it’s not built into the software yet for manual mapping into games. I believe, it only works with games that have gyro support built-in for now. So um, if you’re like a huge gyro user, it’s there but it’s not necessarily fully featured yet. Again, we’re optimizing. We’re updating.

It is something that the team is working on adding to the Armory Crate SE right now. This is so it’ll allow you to like to disable and put down the number of cores that are available, which can improve the performance or battery life to some extent. So that’s going to be a very fun game, team. So the option will be there.

Yes, it can!

Officially, the Ally supports up to 4 controllers and you can use any controller that would be compatible with Windows. Um, the one thing that you do have to do is because the Ally has a built-in controller. If you’re going to hook up more controllers, you want to disable the Ally’s controller. There will be an option for that in the Command Center. Even if you’re like, hooking it up to a TV to play with friends.

Yes, it is called game profiles and can be found under the games list.

If I could, I would man. We’ve had console wars for all of eternity, right? That’s been a thing. And console wars have kind of ended, right? You don’t have this feud between PlayStation and Xbox anymore, so it was only natural for a new war to begin.

There can never be a world without a war. Now, we’re in the handheld wars. You know, this is just really crazy. They congratulated us on the launch. So awesome, so wholesome, like, The only reason I didn’t buy a Steam deck is that 720p is not for me. That’s like a deal breaker, but for plenty of people, they don’t care. That’s good enough. And if they love it, right? All my friends bought Steam Decks, not gonna lie. Few of them might have sold them when we announced the Ally. I think that you know, they’re both great devices and, you know, the Steam Deck has absolutely opened the door for a new war. Yes, a new war. I love people being proud of the device that they love. That’s all. That’s all that. You know. It it’s good to be proud.

Yes, yes. So it automatically populates the art, um, for games. But if you want to put a different banner or like cover art in there, you can do that.

Yes, there is not only an in-built microphone but Armory Crate has all of our AI noise cancellation options in the mic options like cardioid mode and stereo mode and omnidirectional mode. So you can kind of customize how the microphone works and how much noise you’re canceling from the outside world.

Yeah, in fact, we’ve already worked with some um, we’ve worked with Capcom, we worked with Blizzard, we’ve worked with some other small publishers. Yeah, to ensure that the games are running well on the Ally. We have a number of development partners that were almost talking with. I mean, Microsoft was a huge part of helping us do this together, right?

I personally have been waiting at least a year to buy a handheld, I have been in the market for a handheld. So, in my personal opinion, and that’s what you ask, my personal opinion, taking off my ROG hat. I still think that it is time to order a handheld, like the Ally, specifically the Ally because I think this is the big inflection point for these handhelds.

The right time to buy something is when you need the thing. Okay, it’s like buying a phone. Like oh, should I buy this year’s model but next year’s model might have this. Maybe I want to wait. And you’re gonna be like, well, well, I heard the next year, the best model is going to have an even higher refresh rate or even more, you know, whatever. If you do that, they’ll just drive you crazy.

We took everything and said, what are the things that we think most gamers are going to need? We know that there are people some people want some features, some people want others, and some people don’t want others. Some people are like, literally, some guy asked me why we had a 120-hertz screen. Like everyone has their stuff. We could have but we hit a price point.

I don’t necessarily have the answer right away. Um, that option is not currently in the bios that I have, but they’re still updating some stuff.

It is a VRR screen so it will adapt to whatever FPS you’re getting in the game from zero up to 120 hertz. So if you’re running below the VRR range, which is around 40 to 120 hertz, it’s still going to use VRR. So, what we do is have an fps limiter in on the Ally.

You can’t like type in a specific value. You might be able to do that in like the AMD drivers.

Ally supports an offline mode. Um, you just have to connect to Wi-Fi but I think it’s over two weeks. Yeah. You just need to like, authenticate, your device. I think it’s like a two-week window. Once you’ve done it, you’re good.

It doesn’t have local dimming or anything like that, that would make the device heavier. So no, it does not have that kind of HDR.