New one just came out, but they’re $1,600. This is nearly half the price.
$1,100 at JB currently.
A saving of about $250 might justify the potential warranty hassles of a US import for some.
CamelCamelCamel.
Would they send it off overseas to fix or locally?
You’d have to send it back to US. Probably for a refund. Still easier than dealing with ASUS warranty though lol
No it's being sold by Amazon AU, just they are pulling the stock from their US warehouses. The returns will be to Amazon AU (usually in NSW it goes to Chullora). Can't say however if Amazon themselves would ship the product back to US.
@congo: They ask YOU to ship it back to the US, or they provide shipping materials for you that end up back in the US?
I was thinking about returns rather than fixes - you may be right that anything to be fixed always goes back to host country. Anything I've ever returned got returned within Australia, no matter where it was shipped from.
@jirskyr: Depends on which Rep you get.
The first time, they ask me to post back to US and they will reimburse me the shipping fees.
The second time, they provided a label and I had to take to parcel point.
It was for failed drive that was probably damaged in transits.
I had to contact them several times later to ask for the refund. They claimed that I didn't return in.
It wasn't straight forward but I ended up with the refund after I made some complaints and provided photo evidence that I returned it.
But generally, if you got it from Amazon US, Amazon AU would ask you to send it back to US, they don't want to deal with the issue and see Amazon US as a different seller.
@congo: This is for orders from Amazon US via Amazon.com, Amazon US via Amazon.com.au they treat as if it's local.
You would get a label and take it to the dropoff point, then Amazon would refund you.
Amazon only does returns, not repairs.
Kind of ridiculous JB are still attempting to flog these at a "sale" price of $1100, especially after the release of the new refreshed model. $1000 and it'd still be a very hard pass. $900 and MAYBE people will start to reconsider.
But $861 is on par with the all-time low for the Steam Deck OLED so pretty good!
Are these better? TIA.
Ally is 1080p compared to 800p
Ally is Windows so all drivers work compared to Linux were almost all work
Emulation on steam deck is better last I used it
Customisation on steam deck is really cool and has very good support
Ally has better processor so more FPS but much worse battery life
Ally has a problem with the SD slot stopping working (fixed in the new black one)
Steam deck has OLED screen where Ally has LCD
Sorry for the crappy formatting and there’s probably more I can’t think of
No no, you're right, this was perfect thanks! Things to note as I'm starting to perk up and pay more attention to these handheld posts.. 😅 Always completely ignored them but I'm finding less time to jump on a PC so might need to invest in one of these badboys finally. I bet it'll he a hell of a upgrade from my last handheld back in the late 2000's with the PSP.. 😆
Sorry for the crappy formatting
The formatting reads fine for me but if you like in future posts just put an asterisk (*) and space before every point and they'll turn into bullet points :)
Adaptive sync is the most important feature IMO.
These machines do not have the power to run 120hz. They barely do 60hz.
When a non-adaptive screen goes under 60fps, it flips to 30hz, giving you a stutter.
When an adaptive screen goes to 58fps, it just runs the screen at 58hz for that frame, no stutter.
All the other handhelds without freesync are basically (profanity) irrelevant because of this. Adaptive sync should be mandatory on low powered handhelds.
@MagnamoniousRex: Entirely dependent on the game, mine runs regularly at 120Hz on quite a few titles i play
The most important thing is that you can load Linux on it and run the steam deck OS on it. So it is like a more powerful steam deck. However the battery life in this one is so bad I'd prefer to pay for the X version. But not its RRP
To add to what Nutty said:
Can you recommend what Dock to get to display to TV and monitors? Or does it just require Hdmi cable to TV that's all?
JB hifi is always ridiculous. The only time I went in store were all those pick-ups either bargain smartphone or cheap monitor which is not even on display
Hijacking this comment to say I ordered and got one. They sent me the Rog Ally Z1 (Not Z1 Extreme) which is a cheaper version with a shittier chipset, not the one which is commonly sold in Australia, so abort abort. I'm gonna have to go through Amazon returns now. Do not buy from this link.
I did a search and this link appears genuine with Z1 Extreme. I will need to send an enquiry about it though just in case. They haven't shipped it yet.
It's possible that they just sent me the wrong model, but you should double check. I had to go through the lengthy process of setting it up, checking the system info (just in case the box info was wrong) and then resetting it to start the returns process. It was a long and disappointing experience. Though the description from the seller says it's the extreme, the actual model number at the end is the Z1 model. Also if seems from reviews, other people have had similar problems. So, I could just be unlucky, or possibly something has gone wrong on their end. Do follow up though.
@Momoduke: I called today just to make sure rep put a note on the system ensure its the right z1 extreme model since packer might make mistakes
Not posted yet but I confirmed warranty handling it's under under Amazon AU
@Momoduke: Hi mate looks like you are correct. I got this model :RC71L-ALLY.Z1_512, the cororect model should be: RC71L-ALLY.Z1X_512
Do you remember this was waht you got too?
This is a good deal. My only drawback with the Ally is the screen size when compared to the Legion Go, especially when using Windows. I own both and am drawn to the Legion Go as the go to handheld.
Crazy that people are still trying to sell these second hand at $700-$850 on marketplace.
I'm either going to buy this or the OLED steamdeck but still on the fence but considering this deal came up first I might not be able to wait 👀 . Variable refresh rate on the ROG and not being worried about if a game is supported might push me this way.
Really depends if this batch still has the MicroSD card slot issue. I have the Steam Deck OLED, and I do find the want for more GPU power though, especially with Helldivers 2.
No handheld can run Helldivers 2 smoothly.
Given the well publicised hassles of warranty support in the US, I don't know if I'd be willing to risk that to save a couple hundred bucks but risk having a paperweight (or potentially losing it in transit to get it fixed).
And then I go and spoil it all by saying somethin' stupid like MicroSD card issues…
:3
It’s a good point to make. I had that issue with mine, but it was a launch one. To this day I have no idea if the newer batches still have the same problem.
I bet they still do as it was a design flaw having the sd card reader in that location.
I read this in Mark Corrigan's voice from Peep show 😂
Why use an SD card for games though? Upgrade the internal SSD if you really need more storage.
I'm kind of in the market but torn between SD Oled or the new Ally X. If only the latter doesn't cost an extra kidney… smh
If image quality is important to you, I would look at the Ally X's reviews. I am finding that I have to lower the quality on my SD OLED for Helldivers 2, plus use FSR performance just to get it playable at 30+fps.
I bought my Ally in Nov last year for $1100 at JB. Absolutely love it. I have the SSD right angle mod to install a 2280 SSD. Also have not had any issues with the SD-Card. I believe this was fixed in all devices made after September last year. I had the original Steam deck before this but sold it. I prefer the Ally because of Windows, VRR screen and better performance. Steam only accounts for 25% of my game library.
Wouldn't touch these with a 10ft pole after hearing about all the warranty and repair issues with Asus.
I had a good experience with Asus Australia. This was before the exposé. MicroSD card reader failure. 2 week turnaround.
Not sure how they handle international units.
Sounds like I should not use that SD slot
I had a great experience too. Just over a week turnaround time.
Better than having an Intel 13900k or 14900k atm… The MicroSD card is NOT an integral part of the device, and if you grab the 2TB 2230, you'll have plenty of space remaining without resorting to slow flash memory.
can you stop comparing Asus Murica to Asus Australia?
You watch too much Drama Nexus
For the price, it's the best all-rounder Windows handheld.
Just got an update to Armory Crate. It's the best supported Windows handheld in terms of software.
Legion Go is about $150 extra (on sale), might be worth it as you get a larger screen.
No VRR and honestly the screen on this is large enough given it’s right in your face.
How smooth is VRR on Ally?
@congo: If you dont have VRR, you end up getting stutterring when your frame rate, lets say, is 40fps, but your screen displays at 60Hz.
That means that some frames will be held on the screen twice as long as other frames, as you would average 0.67 frames per screen refresh 'tick'.
i.e. you might end up getting, where each letter is a new frame but the | is the refresh rate.
| a | a | b | c | c | d | e | e | f | g | g | h | i | i | j |
This means your screen may stutter or flicker, since some frames are being held on the screen for twice as long as the others.
VRR will match your display refresh with the frames generated, so it wont have the similar stuttering effect.
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j |
Which place is it on sale?
"1 left in stock" currently, better get in quick if you want it!
Seems to keep fluctuating. There’s 4 now.
Price will likely fluctuate too as Amazon update their conversion rates.
A saving of about $250 might justify the potential warranty hassles of a US import for some.
Was a little bit surprised that no one has mentioned the recent saga which Gamers Nexus went through with their ROG Ally.
In my own opinion, there is absolutely no way this amount of savings would be worth dealing with ASUS on this, but your milage may vary. I really do hope no one has to go through the process in the original video [1].
I didn’t mention it because I figured it’s widely known. I also had a great experience getting mine fixed in about a week, but that was locally purchased from JB.
It's only been mentioned multiple times in the comments on this post
Yes right from the start
i'm surprised people keep comparing Muricans' experience to our one where we have actual consumer laws
is it possible windows iot would be better handling power management?
Also the non-extream version is selling for $630 from amazon de: https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B0CDZYWZG9
I an owner of the Asus Rog Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, 2 Steam Decks & my i9/RTX 4090 PC + other handhelds.
Of all my toys the Asus Ally has been the worst in hardware quality assurance had to exchange under warranty due to faulty fans after 1.5 months. This is in addition to unusable SD slot.
Software support wise, the Ally is better than other brands in the PC handheld space which is surprising nothing Armoury crate on my old Asus laptop is crap vs. Legion Vantage on PC.
My recommendation is if this is the ONLY PC machine you’ll have to game on (in which case might be your first), then get the Asus Ally but be prepared for hardware issues and possibly warranty exchange.
If you like me have more powerful PC as main or already own several PC gaming machines, then DO NOT BUY Asus Rog Ally or even Ally X. Use that money to upgrade to a OneX Fly which runs on 8840u with better AMD OEM drive support than Asus Z1E (which is a stripped down budget version of 7740u without AMD OEM support - hence cheaper).
If you’re seasoned PC gamer then I actually recommend Lenovo Legion Go. That one is more premium and if you are happy to tinker etc. outperforms Asus Ally (without AFMF running on native screen). The Legion Go also supports AFMF on external monitors.
Z1E is the 7840U with a disabled AI component to reduce power consumption, not a budget 7740U (Does this even exist?).
And if you have a main PC, your recommendation should focus on HANDHELD gaming. Nobody should be buying the Legion Go for handheld gaming, its a brick and doesnt have VRR.
No, the 7740U doesn't exist
Thats 6800U, so must be older version. Z1E is much much better than the 6800U
I have the Legion Go and love it!
From my research the latest revision of this Ally Z1 Extreme has a hardware workaround for the thermal issue on sdcard. Otherwise can just ignore that slot.
As for warranty this is via Amazon Au so the warranty should be handled locally if they need to post back to Amazon US then they should do it.
Dealing with Amazon is better than Asus themselves
I'm only getting this because I also got a switch, PS5 and an old gaming laptop from 2018 which barely runs the latest games. It's a good replacement for it without forking out too much money. Medium graphics is good enough for me.
Portability is what I want
Tempting, but the SD issue is a deal breaker for me. Interested in the newer model once the price stabilizes.
With an upgradable SSD, I never had to use the SD slot once. It’s really not a big problem in practice.
i don't know, after hearing about all of the warranty issues with ASUS, I don't want to open the thing up and give them a reason to make the warranty process difficult if something else were to happen. I much prefer to use an SD card, especially considering how cheap SD cards are getting nowadays.
I also like the idea of having different SD cards for different functions. i.e. have an SD card with emulators, then a different one with steam games etc.
Aside from all that….i'm buying a new product, i don't want anything on it to break (regardless of if it's used often or not) in the first couple of years of using it.
Its funny because ASUS has a video showing you how to open up the ROG Ally, and then goes on to show you how to install windows from a new SSD. If they didn't want you doing this, not sure they would have this video.
@ATangk: I know they have a video aswell as a step by step tutorial, however after seeing how they handled that GN incident, id be worried that they would try to pick at anything to get out of a warranty claim, even potentially going to the extreme to say there was damage caused when replacing the ssd.
"If they didnt want you doing this, not sure why they would have this video"….nobody here said they dont want you doing this, but like i said, after thr GN incident i wouldnt put it past them to take advantage.
Keeping in mind, i addressed other reasons for my decision, not only the ssd.
How easy is it to replace the SSD? It seems only 2230 modules work and not sure if you can reuse the old one somewhere else as that's non standard for laptops and desktops!?
Never did it myself, but apparently there’s a 90 degree mod that allows other SSD types.
It’s easy if you’ve done it before or have upgraded your PC in the past. If this is your first PC & first time opening a relative expensive device up then it can be daunting.
I upgraded my Ally to a Micron 2TB 2230 SSD with excellent speeds & TBW. About 4 weeks afterwards my Asus Ally fans failed & had other issues on top of the unusable SD card slot (had already permanently corrupted 2 SD cards by then). I had to then remove the upgraded SSD from my first Ally, out back in the stock SSD, CMD diskpart & erase the stock SSD (essentially forcing OS to write 1s & 0s onto your SSD so data can’t be recovered for security) & return it for my now 2nd Ally (repeat upgrade SSD process again) lol…
I recommend if you’re new to this kind of stuff watch plenty of videos first. Visualise the steps. You’ll need a iFixit kit or just a screw driver kit + medium/hard tipped guitar pick. You’ll need steady hands. You’ll need to clone your old drive to your replacement SSD (or you can use Asus online recovery option but it’s prone to issues). You might need to disable bitlocker, you might need to have your recovery code ready if you didn’t disable bitlocker. You’ll need a USBC hub that can do PD charging (especially if cloning drives) +!NVME SSD enclosure for your new 2230 SSD if cloning. You’ll need a 2230 SSD, you’ll need to be mindful of grounding yourself & unplug battery/replug during install (unless Asus bios now offers a way to disconnect battery in bios for specific purpose of maintenance - I know Lenovo BIOS has this feature).
It’s not hard but it’s also not hard to make an error that can cause a lot more issues…
@Devaust: Wow it sounds like a lot of work. I feel like I will just skip using the sdcard slot and put up with 512 GB for now to avoid these issues. Returning the unit for warranty will not be pretty. This isn't local stock so I'm not sure how Amazon handled it via US.
this is an ok deal however personally i bought a certified refurb for ~850 a few months ago on ebay and felt that had better value.
if you do get this first thing you should do is upgrade the SSD, 512 GB is not enough
The value proposition for the Ally X does not stack up for me, for ~600-800 extra you get
Pro
-more battery life
-more vram (performance)
Con
-heavier device
-larger device
Debatable
-ergonomics change
-no xg mobile interface (USB TB4, less bandwidth than xg mobike)
also a smart person recently developed a xg mobile interface dock, https://github.com/osy/XG_Mobile_Station, which means you can operate any desktop GPU via the xg mobile port, which the ally x does not have.
Correction, more (and faster) RAM, VRAM is the same.
Right, but the ally x has usb 4 (thunderbolt) so you can just use any old thunderbolt gpu dock or pcie adapter - much more accessible
Do you know how to get this thing in the TV, what's a good budget dock to buy for it?
Saw the refurbished ones they have much shorter warranty
If the handheld costs over 1k you might as well buy a desktop
Can someone advise if I'd be able to claim tax back on these if i was flying overseas soon?
Considering these are shipped from US, im going to assume not right?
Amazon should be including LVIG on imported goods so I think you should be able to claim it:
https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/help/customer/display.html?node….
How does this differ to this one at ~$630?
ASUS ROG Ally Console, 7 Inch FHD + 120Hz IPS Display, Ryzen Z1, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, AMD Radeon Graphics, Windows 11, White https://amzn.asia/d/0cd4MSb7
That’s a Z1. This is the Z1 Extreme model. I’d give the regular a skip but check out some comparisons online.
Ordered one Monday morning but still hasn't shipped. Anyone else had any luck?
Hi mate, did you ever get it? Was it the extreme version?
So I guess everyone been getting free games on GOG, Steam, Epic games then run on this thing?
There’s no free games on Steam other than the free to play titles & when occasionally a paid game transitions to free. I have over 800+ games purchased on Steam & in 10 years I’ve seen maybe handful of paid games that Steam ran as a limited time ‘free’ promotion.
You’re better off buying from Epic Games or GoG as they both offer same refund policy as Steam but you get bonuses like cash back rewards etc
Yeah agree Epic games, and GOG has free games
You can also install any other PC Games outside of those launchers which is handy
Has anyone actually received their unit and confirm its Z1 Extreme not the incorrect one?
Tempting but without USB 4 it lacks longevity..
Can anyone who have received it confirm whether it was the standard Z1 or the Z1 Extreme ?
Warranty should be able to be handled through Amazon