Friday, April 14th 2023
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ASUS ROG Ally Could Launch Sooner Than Expected
ASUS is keeping the hype up for its upcoming ROG Ally handheld console, and now it has confirmed the worldwide release and teased that it could come sooner than anyone expected, which is pretty impressive. Announced on April 1st, the ASUS ROG Ally has impressive specifications, running on yet to be detailed AMD 4 nm custom APU based on Zen 4 CPU and RDNA 3 GPU architecture.
The ASUS ROG Ally measures at 280 x 133 x 39 mm and weighs 608 grams, making it shorter, narrower, thinner, and lighter than its competitor, Valve's Steam Deck. It has a 7-inch display with 1920x1080 resolution, 120 Hz refresh rate, 5 ms response time, and 500 nits of brightness. According to earlier hands-on previews of the prototype from Dave2D and LinusTechTips, ASUS did a great job with the dual-fan cooling solution, making it very quite. It will also have a dedicated PCIE Gen 3 x8 XG connector, which allows it to connect to the recently launched XG Mobile GPU, an external RTX 4090 GPU which retails at $1999.99 in the US. Linus also noted that the ROG Ally will offer 50 percent higher performance at 15 W and twice the performance at 35 W, compared to the Steam Deck. As noted, ASUS has now confirmed that the ROG Ally will launch worldwide, and that it might be sooner that we expect, linking to Best Buy for those that live in North America.
Sources:
ASUS ROG Twitter, via Videocardz
The ASUS ROG Ally measures at 280 x 133 x 39 mm and weighs 608 grams, making it shorter, narrower, thinner, and lighter than its competitor, Valve's Steam Deck. It has a 7-inch display with 1920x1080 resolution, 120 Hz refresh rate, 5 ms response time, and 500 nits of brightness. According to earlier hands-on previews of the prototype from Dave2D and LinusTechTips, ASUS did a great job with the dual-fan cooling solution, making it very quite. It will also have a dedicated PCIE Gen 3 x8 XG connector, which allows it to connect to the recently launched XG Mobile GPU, an external RTX 4090 GPU which retails at $1999.99 in the US. Linus also noted that the ROG Ally will offer 50 percent higher performance at 15 W and twice the performance at 35 W, compared to the Steam Deck. As noted, ASUS has now confirmed that the ROG Ally will launch worldwide, and that it might be sooner that we expect, linking to Best Buy for those that live in North America.
43 Comments on ASUS ROG Ally Could Launch Sooner Than Expected
and yeah I agree for just simply cursor movement to navigate menus with and such they do come in handy.
Doom 2016 is a fast twitch shooter that occasionally requires fine aiming, so I figured it would be a good thing to try the (right) trackpad with and I wasn't disappointed.
Honestly, try any first-person or third-person game you enjoy. I would actually recommend massively reducing the amount of momentum the "flick" feature has, so that it has less momentum slows down after 180 degrees of turn or so. Also, my personal preference is to set the X and Y scales differently so that the Y sensitivity is about half what the X sensitivity is. Doing fast flicks to spin around in a hurry had a tendency to look up or down too much for me at first. Maybe I'll get better at it, but the band-aid of reducing the vertical sensitivity is working very well for me.
One thing I can't get my head around is the gyro control. YMMV but I didn't like it on either the thumbstick or the trackpad.
and i positively hate the touchpad, to me touchpad left should be D-pad, touchpad right should be analog right ... the rest is mostly fine ... (i blame muscle memory ... ) well indeed i am one to use the Xbox layout since the Duke (and i considered the Duke small :laugh: even when it was launched ;) ) and yeah the d-pad on the steamdeck is my main grip (no pun) well so is the ABXY, thus why the ASUS ROG ally has a superior layout to me ...
but i will probably never buy one :D i don't really need either one, but if someone would gift me one ... then i should influence them into buying the right one :laugh: or propose them alternatives (i.e.: other hardware for the same value :D )
Personnaly the left stick is a little bit too far but i have "small" hands, i have played a lot of Spyro, breath of the wilds and nier automata and the layout could be a bit better but it's really not a problem for what you get.
The thing i'm sceptical with the rog is that i didn't see a lot of grip on the back, it will probably be like the nintendo switch. So, if it's heavier than the switch, it will be very bad to use it if you don't let it rest almost horizontally on your hand.
Having the possibility to use the trackpad is great, having choice is always better if it has almost no impact on the main goal. The Asus will be less usable in desktop mode without a mouse. It's not the main goal but when you have to go on desktop, not being "forced" to connect a mouse is really nice.
But yeah, different usage and ergonomic is key on the handheld market.
even my phone gamepad, 2 Moga 1 pocket 1 xp5-x have that layout, although i could also get something that go on each side of the screen "a la" Switch or Steam deck and they would have all the same layout, either turtle beach ATOM or Moga xp7-x plus or ... ergh ... Razer Kishi (v1 preferably although it would be my least favored choice due to the brand )
tbf the Steam Deck control felt like they where too high on the device (not a hand size problem, mind you)
as for the trackpad being a nice replacement for a mouse ... yeah but somewhere else (funnily enough i liked the PS Vita back touchpad) and i manage quite well to use mouse mode with analog sticks, specially on a handeld device :p the Asus will be perfectly fine in desktop mode for me ;)
ergonomy is subjective indeed (aside the superiority in ergonomics of the Xbox layout over the Dualshock layout which is total cra... OKAY OKAY, i'm joking ... alright :laugh: )
tho, it's not the ergonomics or the price that prevent me to buy a Steam deck (or the Ally once it's out) ... i doubt i would ever use it if i bought either one ... i pondered for a while on buying a Switch Lite ... but nope ... never found a decent argument in favor of it. well, since the touchpad (not trackpad but it's probably the same ) was on the other side of where the screen on the chassis, it was quite interesting in games that supported it ... although it was somewhat limited in games ofc,
nonetheless i tested with Vitashell and ScummVM and mousemode worked fine (single finger drag move pointer, single finger tap right click, double finger tap left click and triple finger drag : drag-n-drop )
think of having a thin sheet of paper and running your finger under it, interesting indeed (and better to using the front touchscreen of the Vita) ...
sad that Asus did not think of that ... but i guess for thermal reason, they could not ...
edit: i still was BOTHERED by the Vita Analog/D-Pad (left side) layout ... which is why i did not use it for long ... :laugh: