ASUS ROG Ally Powered by AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme Priced at $700

[FeelinFroggy]

The RAM is shared between GPU and CPU on top W11.

I would not call it a future proof investment.

It's a handheld tablet. None of them are future proof. But at 1080p with reasonable graphics settings, the RAM and VRAM will be adequate to game for a long time.

Only something that can be upgrade could be even considered future proof.

 

[CosmicWanderer]

No remorse here. I enjoy my Steam Deck. I think Ally will be great for the 9 people that will buy it.

Lol, let's change that to "fan boy with buyers remorse" then.

The Steam Deck isn't even available globally for people to buy it. I would have bought one had it been available. I bet a ton of people in Australia and New Zealand would have bought one too if it were available. Most people don't like to buy from scalpers.

So yeah, I'll place my bets on the Ally selling more. Especially at $699 which is absolutely insane.

 

[bug]

In order to get real Atmos, the minimum amount of speakers are 5.1.2 (2 front, 2 back, 1 center, 1 sub, 2 ceiling), any lower amount of speakers is faking Atmos.

Do you have a source for that?

 

[junglist724]

The RAM is shared between GPU and CPU on top W11.

I would not call it a future proof investment.

It's not something I'd really be buying to primarily play future games. I plan on using it to play through my backlog.

 

[enb141]

Do you have a source for that?

Yes, go over youtube, there's a video of a guy showing it, also you can ask at AVR forums.

 

[bug]

Yes, go over youtube, there's a video of a guy showing it, also you can ask at AVR forums.

Dolby Atmos - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The simplest Dolby Atmos setup is 3.1.2, the most professional one is 24.1.10.

During playback, each theater's Dolby Atmos system renders the audio objects in real time based on the known locations of the loudspeakers present in the target theater, such that each audio object is heard as originating from its designated set of coordinates. By way of contrast, conventional multichannel technology essentially burns all the source audio tracks into a fixed number of channels during post-production.

 

[enb141]

Dolby Atmos - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

3.1.2 wont give you surround, the real minimum is 5.1.2

 

[bug]

3.1.2 wont give you surround, the real minimum is 5.1.2

This device carries the Dolby Atmos logo, so clearly that's not the minimum. Real or otherwise.

 

[Mindweaver]

"9 people that will buy it" Do you read your comments when you type them???

Did you read the rest of my comments? I went on to say that saying that was a little harsh. Again, I hope it succeeds but I'll have to wait and see. We really don't have that long to wait. I don't think the price is bad at 700 bucks it's clear they are subsidizing the Ally. What I don't think anyone is looking at is that if you buy the lowerend model for say 599 that's pretty steep jump from the 399 steam deck price. The Asus top of the line Ally has 12 CU's which is nice and it's on zen 4 where as the steam deck is has 8 CU's using Zen 2. The main part that I don't like is that the lowest Ally model will only have 4 CU's.

I'm not saying 700 is bad for the level of hardware.

Lol, let's change that to "fan boy with buyers remorse" then.

The Steam Deck isn't even available globally for people to buy it. I would have bought one had it been available. I bet a ton of people in Australia and New Zealand would have bought one too if it were available. Most people don't like to buy from scalpers.

So yeah, I'll place my bets on the Ally selling more. Especially at $699 which is absolutely insane.

Have you looked at my spec's? I own a lot of Asus hardware. Also, let's not stoop down to calling namef because someone disagrees with you. I do agree that 700 is a good price for the top end hardware. Read what I wrote above. So again one more time I have stated what I'm worried about which is Software, Battery life, and how well it stays cool at max power. I know it's been stated that you can lower the performance but what's the use in spending more to lower the performance. They do say it has 8 hours battery life and if that is true then that will be amazing, but if they have to turn the performance down a lot to get 8 hours then it's a bust for me. One of the big selling points for me is the 120hz display, but if I have to turn it down then it's no better than the Steam Deck.

 

[Nordic]

@Mindweaver I am not sure if you or others here know that valve shared that the vast majority (75%+) of pre-orders were for the 512gb version. I don't remember the exact percentage but it was a lot. Valve even said that they did not think the more expensive versions would sell well. This showed Valve and apparently Asus that there is a market for higher end handhelds in that $650-$750 range but cheaper than the Ayo handhelds at $1000+.

I am curious if that trend continued. Were early adoptors willing to spend more than the general sales? With 3 million units sold Valve has done better than they ever thought they would. Valve thought they would be lucky to sell a million units. Now that Valve has shown there is a market, Asus has come with a compelling alternative. Alienware has made a prototype. Valve will make a Steam Deck 2 when they are ready. I'm excited to see what they come up with when facing stiff competition from Asus and maybe others.

 

[R0H1T]

Well looking at what Apple sells & have continued selling for nearly 3 decades now it's not that surprising ~ people pay for experiences, a lot!

 

[Mindweaver]

@Mindweaver I am not sure if you or others here know that valve shared that the vast majority (75%+) of pre-orders were for the 512gb version. I don't remember the exact percentage but it was a lot. Valve even said that they did not think the more expensive versions would sell well. This showed Valve and apparently Asus that there is a market for higher end handhelds in that $650-$750 range but cheaper than the Ayo handhelds at $1000+.

I am curious if that trend continued. Were early adoptors willing to spend more than the general sales? With 3 million units sold Valve has done better than they ever thought they would. Valve thought they would be lucky to sell a million units. Now that Valve has shown there is a market, Asus has come with a compelling alternative. Alienware has made a prototype. Valve will make a Steam Deck 2 when they are ready. I'm excited to see what they come up with when facing stiff competition from Asus and maybe others.

I did see that, but completely forgot about it. Thanks for reminding me. Looking at numbers now it looks like they sold over 3 million Steam decks. That's a pretty good lead. I saw in a recent interview Valve stated that they are not interested in making a Steam Deck 2. I hope the focus is leaning more to XR with what leaks say are calling the Deckard which they are saying it's a new VR HMD. I hope it has XR as well.

 

[Nordic]

Well looking at what Apple sells & have continued selling for nearly 3 decades now it's not that surprising ~ people pay for experiences, a lot!

You can say that in hindsight sure. Almost everyone thought the Steam Deck would be a flop. W1zzard thought it was, paraphrasing, a stupid device. Look at the first steam deck news posts. Valve thought it was a gamble. Valve never thought it would do this well.

I did see that, but completely forgot about it. Thanks for reminding me. Looking at numbers now it looks like they sold over 3 million Steam decks. That's a pretty good lead. I saw in a recent interview Valve stated that they are not interested in making a Steam Deck 2. I hope the focus is leaning more to XR with what leaks say are calling the Deckard which but they are saying it's a new VR HMD. I hope it has XR as well.

To clarify, valve has said that they don't plan to release a second version any time soon. They want to wait for significant hardware updates to be available without specifying what those were.

 

[R0H1T]

Could be waiting for zen5/6 + Radeon4 so maybe 2 years from now?

Valve thought it was a gamble. Valve never thought it would do this well.

It was right to be conservative given the massive undertaking it was at the time, also Covid may have actually helped them. Now for next gen they can be at least little more aggressive/ambitious with the hardware.

 

[enb141]

This device carries the Dolby Atmos logo, so clearly that's not the minimum. Real or otherwise.

What I'm saying is, if you want Atmos, the minimum is 5.1.2, lots of sound bars have Dolby Atmos logos, also my smart TV can decode Dolby Atmos, but just because can detect and down convert Atmos doesn't means I'm getting the real Atmos experience.

So yes, this device can detect and process atmos but is not the real experience.

@Mindweaver I am not sure if you or others here know that valve shared that the vast majority (75%+) of pre-orders were for the 512gb version. I don't remember the exact percentage but it was a lot. Valve even said that they did not think the more expensive versions would sell well. This showed Valve and apparently Asus that there is a market for higher end handhelds in that $650-$750 range but cheaper than the Ayo handhelds at $1000+.

I am curious if that trend continued. Were early adoptors willing to spend more than the general sales? With 3 million units sold Valve has done better than they ever thought they would. Valve thought they would be lucky to sell a million units. Now that Valve has shown there is a market, Asus has come with a compelling alternative. Alienware has made a prototype. Valve will make a Steam Deck 2 when they are ready. I'm excited to see what they come up with when facing stiff competition from Asus and maybe others.

That Alienware prototype looked awesome, but apparently is smokeware because I haven't seen any news since they showed that prototype.

Well looking at what Apple sells & have continued selling for nearly 3 decades now it's not that surprising ~ people pay for experiences, a lot!

Yes but mostly in high paid countries, in my country apple products are a niche, maybe 1% or 2% of computers are apple.

 

[Nordic]

Could be waiting for zen5/6 + Radeon4 so maybe 2 years from now?

They were never clear but they were hinting longer. Maybe 5 years. We will find out eventually.

That Alienware prototype looked awesome, but apparently is smokeware because I haven't seen any news since they showed that prototype.

I'm sure there are many companies making prototypes. Imagine an Xbox branded handheld. The business math might not have worked out for alienware.

 

[enb141]

I'm sure there are many companies making prototypes. Imagine an Xbox branded handheld. The business math might not have worked out for alienware.

Well if it's working for valve and hopefully will work for Asus, I'm wondering why Dell (Alienware) stopped their development.

 

[dockdropper]

This is ot boys! My Steam Deck replacement! And it matches my Zephyrus G14 perfectly!

$699 for more tFlops than PS4 Pro in the palm of my hand? Take my $700!!!!

Windows 11 natively? Yes take my money!!!!

You are right it might be lower. j/k Yeah, that's a little harsh. I hope it sells well. I like Asus hardware and I expect this to be a great portable gaming device. I'll just need to see reviews before making any judgement. I just wish they could have offered the lower end model with the same iGPU. I think the lower end model with the cut down iGPU is going to struggle.

The low end model still has more tflops in gpu power than ps4.

You are right it might be lower. j/k Yeah, that's a little harsh. I hope it sells well. I like Asus hardware and I expect this to be a great portable gaming device. I'll just need to see reviews before making any judgement. I just wish they could have offered the lower end model with the same iGPU. I think the lower end model with the cut down iGPU is going to struggle.

The low end model still has more tflops in gpu power than ps4.

They dropped the ball hard with RAM size. Make it a 1K$, but ship it with 32GB shared memory pool.

Also... the screen does not look promising really... it is meh by 2023 metrics.

It doesn't need more than 16gb of ram. This is an APU so it not exactly high end graphic capable.

Can't beat the 1+ year old steam deck & a microSD in value, but still really good, specially if you want the extra performance

The cheap model doesn't make much sense tho, it's easily outperformed in gaming by other devices, including the steam deck, while being more expensive than the last one

The cheap model is more powerful than the steam deck.

In order to get real Atmos, the minimum amount of speakers are 5.1.2 (2 front, 2 back, 1 center, 1 sub, 2 ceiling), any lower amount of speakers is faking Atmos.

This has nothing to do with the Ally and everything to do with how it decodes the audio.... it will be dockable and have eGPU support so as long as your receiver is Atmos compatible it gets Atmos decoded audio.

This isn't complicated. If you dont like it move on instead of trying to convince others they don't like it.

 

[enb141]

This has nothing to do with the Ally and everything to do with how it decodes the audio.... it will be dockable and have eGPU support so as long as your receiver is Atmos compatible it gets Atmos decoded audio.

This isn't complicated. If you dont like it move on instead of trying to convince others they don't like it.

What I'm saying is that this device doesn't has real Atmos, if you dock a eGPU, then the eGPU will connect to an HDMI cable, then the receiver must process atmos.

By the way I don't care if has atmos or not, because I know that in order to get real atmos I need 5.1.2, I was just explaining to others that.

 

[dockdropper]

What I'm saying is that this device doesn't has real Atmos, if you dock a eGPU, then the eGPU will connect to an HDMI cable, then the receiver must process atmos.

By the way I don't care if has atmos or not, because I know that in order to get real atmos I need 5.1.2, I was just explaining to others that.

Fair enough, but I'll leave this here if you'd like to have a good read on how well atmos works on a multitude of devices..

Can Dolby Atmos Actually Work on a Laptop? - HomeTheaterReview

We all know what Dolby Atmos sounds like with a roomful of speakers. But can the technology actually add anything to the experience of listening on laptop speakers or a good set of cans?

hometheaterreview.com

 

[kapone32]

Do we know how expandable this device is? Is there an ability to access the MB for storage options or even RAM.

 

[enb141]

Do we know how expandable this device is? Is there an ability to access the MB for storage options or even RAM.

Ram, as far as I know all devices like this have soldered ram, SSD yes (not confirmed but very likely) that uses m.2, they said that normal thumb sticks could be upgraded in the future, I hope so because I would like to get hall effect thumb sticks instead of normal drifting ones.

 

[Mindweaver]

This isn't complicated. If you dont like it move on instead of trying to convince others they don't like it.

How about you don't tell people what not to like we all can express our doubts. Nobody is saying it's going to be bad but we have our doubts that it can deliver on everything. Again, I really like Asus hardware for the most part, but I will wait for the reviews on the ally and I suggest everyone else to do the same. I'm not saying don't buy one. I would just wait to see reviews. I mean if you have the money buy it as soon as possible if you want you can always come back here for help. It is a pc after all.

 

[Nordic]

Nobody is saying it's going to be bad but we have our doubts that it can deliver on everything.

I fully expect the Ally to have worse battery than the Deck and have worse software support. I don't see how more power hungry hardware in a lighter body, given that the battery is the heaviest thing, will have better battery life. Windows on these devices isn't great. Valve's support and constant updates are nothing short of amazing. The overall package looks really good though. Great hardware and a great screen in a nice handheld form factor. Asus did well.