The ROG Ally – a pocket size computer that can play all of your games. You might recognize the
ROG acronym from the phones that keep snapping in half over the years. You know...the ROG Phone 5,
and the ROG Phone 6. So while this Ally might be a portable computer that can be taken anywhere,
surviving being taken anywhere is a whole other story. Today we'll commence with a
JerryRigEverything durability test to see how well it can structurally stand up to everyday
life. And maybe we'll even toss in a tear down voluntarily, or involuntarily We'll let the Ally
decide. Either is fine with me. Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Let's get started.
[Intro]
Right off the bat I'm shocked to see this is actually a full
fledged Windows machine. I was expecting a more watered down mobile OS or something,
but here we are. Immediately upon booting up a game I hear the dual fans spin up on the inside,
and it's kind of shocking how hot the screen and air coming out of the fan gets....like almost
uncomfortably hot within minutes. Hopefully there's an update or something that fixes
the temperature situation or people are going to have some cooked fingers. In order to see
what the screen is made from we have to perform a scratch test with the Mohs scale of hardness. If
it's plastic like on the Nintendo Switch, it'll start scratching at a 2 or 3. If it's sapphire,
like on the Garmin watch, it'll scratch at an 8 or 9. And if it's glass, like we saw on the
Steam Deck, it'll start scratching at a level 6, with deeper grooves at a level 7. And indeed,
the ROG Ally is using Gorilla Glass Victus. Gorilla Glass is everywhere.
The Ally also has something called a DXC coating on top to help reduce glare. You
can see that the coating is actively changing the bright white of my desk
lamps into a slightly yellower shade so it is definitely reducing reflections. So far so good.
As we know, glass is glass and glass can break. So applying a tempered glass screen protector
can help prolong the life of your Ally just like a helmet prolongs the life of your head.
An expendable glass layer can help absorb impacts so nothing gets cracked or scratched
underneath. My channel sponsor, dbrand, supplies two screen protectors in each box.
One, of course, for installing, and the second one for breaking.
Personally I like to buy two and break both, but that might just be me.
Link is down in the description.
I think the RGBs on this ROG are pretty lit. At first glance I thought the rear strip was also
going to be illuminated, but it turns out it's just a cool little color changing holographic
sticker. No complaints though. Decor is décor. The grippy joysticks are extremely well coated
in rubber. This stuff can't even be sliced off so no worries about long term durability here.
The direction pad is made from plastic.
And the little menu buttons next to the screen are either painted or laser etched. But these
icons will probably end up rubbing off since the image on the buttons isn't all that deep. The top
trigger and buttons are both made from plastic. Definitely some nice feeling texture up here.
We also have the headphone jack, expandable micro SD memory card slot,
and a mindblowing custom PCI Express Port for connecting external GPUs,
like the 4090 for extreme gaming or video editing. Huge thumbs up for that. We have
the 65 watt USB-C port and the white plastic volume rocker. Along with the power button with
the built-in fingerprint scanner. Making your way over to the second set of menu buttons. We
finally have the same scratchable icons, and the same solidly thick rubber on the joystick.
Now one issue that I've heard people have already is with the A, B, X, Y buttons. These are getting
stuck during gaming. Mine personally feel pretty good, but we'll have to check out how they're
assembled from the inside here in a second. The exterior plastic of these buttons is very hard,
with a clear transparent layer over the letters. It looks like an epoxy resin table. Kind of cool.
My JerryRig Knife can only scratch the buttons and not shave anything off due to how hard the plastic
is. These will last a very long time. And since the letters are on the inside, they'll never wear
away. The RGB Halo around the joysticks is made from translucent plastic. Normal LEDs shine up
into the circle and get diffused by the cloudy material. The bottom corner has another color
changing holographic sticker with the ROG logo. The back panel of the Ally is made from plastic,
and the colorful, reflective sticker can indeed be damaged and removed. But it probably won't
ever be falling off on its own...unless the heat from the console melts the adhesive,
because my unit is still abnormally toasty and I'm not even gaming.
There are two front firing speakers which is nice. Making your way over to the screen, we find that
all 7 inches of it is 16x9 1080P 120 Hertz, and an IPS LCD that lasted literally 3 seconds under the
heat from my lighter before going black. Normally this takes about 10 seconds but I cannot stress
enough how hot this machine is getting right out of the box. It's so hot it's basically performing
the flame test on itself. Hopefully this isn't normal. Speaking of normal, let's continue with
the durability test. Since this whole thing is made from plastic it's hard to know if the Ally
will survive. With a forceful bend from the back we can see that both edges of the ROG Ally start
to separate at the corner. Flipping it around, a bend from the front, we do hear one little snap
which turned out to be the thin line of plastic near the PCI-e and USB-C. But since the screen and
the console still appear to be functional it's looking like the ROG Ally is going to survive.
The separation on the corner is concerning, but there is no chance of it actually snapping in
half. The Ally is solid, minus the little piece of plastic that broke. Definitely
nothing to lose sleep over though. Since we couldn't access the insides with violence,
let's try a more methodical method. The ROG Ally has 6 of the longest mobile sized phillips head
screws in existence that are holding the two halves together. And once those are out we
can simply pull the back plastics away from the body. The plastics contain the rear intake vents,
covered with some mesh. The back panel also has the rear triggers and back buttons, with some
interestingly molded hexagons into the hand grips. We all know that hexagons are the best-a-gons.
ASUS has also graced us with a gloriously red motherboard.
Why this console is not transparent I will never know. Hiding hardware this gorgeous should be
illegal. I'll unplug the battery and remove 4 screws holding down our tin foil covered unit. I
decided to disassemble this part first because it specifically says “do not disassemble.” Underneath
the foil we see that our dual cell battery gives us 40 watt hours worth of energy. The Steam
Deck also has 40 watt hours. The Nintendo Switch, however, which was released 6 whole years ago has
16 watt hours. With the battery out of the way we get a better look at the dual turbo fans and heat
pipe as well as the modular 512 gig M.2 drive. To remove the joysticks, each side has 4 screws
and a very small little white ribbon that snakes through the board to power the RGB ring around the
joystick. With that unplugged we can get our first look at the linear vibrator mounted directly to
the thumbstick board. So not only is it going to shake the whole unit, but it should get especially
vibratory right on the thumbstick itself. And this is true on both sides. There is another equally
sized vibrator attached to the opposite thumbstick as well. Balance is a big part of this design. Two
fans, two battery cells, two vibrators. And even the two stereo speakers in the bottom corners.
To see how the A,B,X,Y buttons are mounted we have to remove the 9 little black phillips head
screws. We can detach the display ribbon and before we can shimmy it entirely out of the
housing we do have to remove the black and white antenna wires that are up on
top of the board. And we also have a plug for the loudspeakers on the opposite end.
I'm just going to hold this up so we can all appreciate it just for a second longer. The
first thing I'll do as president of the United States is mandate red circuit boards on all
technology across the globe. One major difference between the buttons we have here on this Ally,
and the buttons we find on every other controller and console, is that these buttons on the Ally
are all the same shape with 3 very tiny equally spaced notches. This means that technically the X
could be swapped with a B accidentally. There is an arrow on the back to help the assembler know
which direction is up so the button gets clocked directly and in the correct spot. But with the
tabs being so small it could very easily slip or rotate in its shaft. And even a small rotation can
cause the tiny tabs of the button to get caught and stuck. Both the Nintendo Switch and the Steam
Deck have buttons with tabs that are much larger. ASUS is probably going to regret making their
tabs so small, especially since the buttons already have some play inside of their slots.
The rubber that provides the button spring, however, is pretty much invincible and is how
gaming controllers have been made since way back in the original Nintendo days. Overall the OG Ally
seems to be a pretty sweet little unit. It looks even better on the inside than it does on the
outside. Yeah, the buttons getting stuck is probably going to come back to haunt ROG and I'm
still not sure why my unit feels like the surface of the sun. Maybe Windows was just being Windows
and downloading some updates. I do, however, like that everything inside is modular and super easy
to repair, if, of course, ASUS decides to supply parts, the Steam Deck has already provided nearly
every single component possible over on iFixit's website so it would be cool if ROG did the same.
With everything reassembled in the back cover in place it looks like the Ally is turning back
on. Thank you Linus for the screwdriver. His screwdriver and my orange Linus knife can be
found over at LTTstore.com. If you can spot the one thing I forgot to plug in,
you'll get an extra internet point for the day. Besides that though,
everything looks like it's working great. Thanks a ton for watching. And I'll see you around.