Got the ASUS Ally today. Haven't had too much time to play games on it, plus that stock 512 GB SSD (had 420 GB after all updates and debloating) just isn't enough space- I have a 2TB SSD coming next week though.
Had a rocky start with it, but I am liking this device so far. When I first turned it on and started setting it up, the on-screen keyboard failed to come up and I couldn't do anything until I plugged a keyboard into it. After a few minutes, one of the ASUS-related processes crashed (I hadn't even gotten past the Windows setup yet lol) and it rebooted itself, then started working normally. It crashed one more time when Windows began loading the desktop, too. But after installing all the various Windows updates, Armor Crate updates, and My ASUS updates (which included two forced BIOS updates), it's working nicely. A friend of mine got his today too and said he also had the keyboard issue, plus when he turned it on for the first time, it was asking him which device to boot from.
The Ally is noticeably lighter than the Steam Deck and is a bit smaller. It's pretty comfortable to hold and doesn't get too hot (when playing games), plus the fans are pretty quiet even on turbo mode. Similar to the Steam Deck, there's dedicated face buttons for accessing system-related options. One button brings up the command center, which gives you on-the-fly options like performance modes, control modes (mouse, controller, or auto select), keyboard, FPS limiter, AMD RSR, etc., and the other is the "Game Library" mode, which is a Steam OS-like interface that adds application tiles you can select to go into games, making it so that you can easily get into games no matter if they're on Steam, Epic, Battle.Net, or something else.
The screen is 1080P/120 FPS and is pretty nice. Definitely a step up from the Steam Deck for sure- but I wouldn't expect to get that out of most games. Stuff I've tried so far:
-Diablo IV: With FSR on performance, I got 60-80 FPS at 1080P. Looks great!
-Street Fighter 6 on 720P was no sweat, but I still need to tweak the settings a bit more to get 1080P/60 FPS out of it- got close at 55 FPS.
-Call Of Duty Modern Warfare II (hey, it runs! This is unplayable on Steam OS) benchmark at recommended settings with FSR enabled at 1080P had an average of 94 FPS. This was very impressive!
-Control: On higher settings at 1080P, it ran around 40 FPS. Dropping down to 720P netted around 50 FPS. Putting most settings on medium and then borderless with Vita rendering resolution (960x540) gave me framerates above 60. Around 70-80 FPS on average. Still looks pretty good, too.
-Cyberpunk: Needs some tweaking. It defaulted to 1080P with FSR on. I changed to performance. Most of the settings were on medium or high and it ran at 40-50 FPS with some dips into the 30s. Felt pretty playable and looked crazy good at this resolution.
-Wo Long- On FSR1, it ran at 50-60 FPS (with dips into the 40s) at 1080P, but looked pretty blurry. FSR2 is very sharp, but framerate takes a hit and it's more in the 40s.
-Yakuza: Like A Dragon- 45-55 FPS on medium settings at 1080P. 50-70 FPS on high settings at 720P.
