I've been wanting a device like this for a long time, it's awesome we're seeing these hitting the market. After reading various reviews, I decided to pick up a ROG Ally yesterday from Best Buy.
- I love how the device looks and feels
- I also liked the simple and clean box design. I read some people were disappointed with how it was packaged but I don't see why you'd want anything different than how it currently is
- The speakers and sound quality are incredible!
- I love how fast it charges (it seems like it's fully charged after 15 minutes); but I hate how fast the battery drains. Hopefully a bigger battery in future models is something being looked into
- I've been using Performance Mode, for the most part. I turned off the RGB lighting, lowered the screen brightness to 50% but kept audio at 75%. I feel like the battery still drains excessively fast just by doing basic stuff in Windows...I don't see how people are getting more than 2hrs of battery life from the device (let alone 5)... ~1hr seems to be my average
- This is out of Asus hands, most likely, but hopefully Microsoft will work with companies making handhelds to make Windows 11 more handheld friendly (and less resource intensive) for better battery life as well; a "dumbed down" version
- There really needs to be a way to save the device settings in the Game Profiles for each game (performance mode being used, FPS, resolution, etc.)
- Does RSR actually help? I turned it on for a while with both games I tested but I didn't notice a difference in performance or battery life. I read on another forum that it only actually does stuff when you're playing on 720p
- Adding another "app" in Armoury Crate that displays only battery life would be awesome (vs. having it tied to all of the other performance monitoring tools like fps, temperature, etc.)
I've only had time to test a few games so far, since I've spent the better part of two days tinkering around with different settings, updates, etc.:
Diablo IV (BIOS 319)
This game runs flawlessly, for the most part (Blizzard has been having login issues and apparently a DDOS attack, so I haven't been able to play it as much as I'd like). It defaults to medium settings and I played it on Performance Mode, 1080p, 60htz, 60FPS max (though it never came close to that, ran between 25-40). I feel like I could only get ~1 hour play time before the battery got to 5-10%.
When I started playing around with the settings to get a longer battery life, issues started popping up. I lowered the game graphics to low and initially turned it down to 720p (the text in the game became blurred, which was annoying, so I turned it back to 1080p). Messing with the graphics settings made the speakers start to crackle. After reverting the graphics back to medium and resetting the device a couple times it finally stopped (I also changed the audio in the game from "default" to the sound card; I've not had the crackle on my PC before, but I have had games and Discord try to use my GPU for audio for some reason).
Halo MCC (BIOS 319)
This game runs fantastic for about 15 minutes, then it completely locks up the device and you have to do a hard reset...I've tried running Turbo Mode (vs. performance) to prevent this (while also lowering graphics in game) but that doesn't seem to help. I read here that limiting it to 60FPS and 60htz fixes this issue but I haven't had time to test this theory yet (this is where system settings saved to a Games Profile would come in handy).
Heroes of the Storm (BIOS 317)
It's been a while since I've played this game, it seemed like it would be an awesome addition to a handheld though. I failed to remember that it relies heavily on the mouse for a lot of things and does not support a controller at all. So, while the game does load and appears to run smoothly, you literally can't do anything (you can just sit in the spawn and cast a spell by tapping on it).
