THIS is the ASUS ROG Ally, the best $700 handheld gaming console,
and this is a $700 gaming laptop, but which is better?
These are the 7 biggest differences between them!
First up is portability, and obviously the Ally is better here, it’s just so much smaller and lighter
compared to the smallest gaming laptops. Even its power brick is tiny! The Ally is just much easier
to take with you on the go, and it’s way easier to pull out on a bus, train or plane than a laptop!
Using the Ally in handheld mode feels much more comfortable, especially if you want to
lie down in bed or sit on the couch. A laptop sitting on your legs gets uncomfortable fast,
especially as that often blocks the air vents underneath, making the laptop hotter.
That leads us into the second difference - heat. The Ally only felt a little warm
after gaming on it for an hour, I never found it uncomfortable. Gaming laptops on the other hand,
well, it varies. Most of them don’t actually feel too bad on the keyboard deck if you’re just using
them at a desk, but like I said, if you block the bottom vents by putting it on your legs or bed,
it’s going to heat up. The best solution to keep the gaming laptop cool is to run it on
a desk with a stand or cooling pad, but those are additional costs and the Ally is just more comfy.
There’s also just less fan noise coming from the Ally while gaming, here, have a listen.
Gaming laptops tend to run hotter because they usually perform better, more power equals
more heat, it’s a tradeoff, bringing us to the third important difference, gaming performance.
Both the Ally and gaming laptop run Windows 11,
so it’s pretty straightforward to compare the same games.
The Ally was very close to my $700 gaming laptop with RTX 2050 graphics in Cyberpunk 2077,
and a little ahead of a cheaper GTX 1650 gaming laptop, while the more expensive
RTX 3050 laptop had a bigger lead. Testing was done with FSR 2.1 upscaling enabled,
a useful feature the Ally can use to boost FPS in supported games.
Just before the next game test, although this laptop is $700 right now,
you can definitely find a better model if there’s a good sale,
like this RTX 3050 laptop for $600 that we’ve got listed on our gaminglaptop.deals website.
But deals change daily, so check the link below to get the best deal on your next gaming laptop!
Interestingly in Fortnite, the cheaper 2050 was slightly ahead of the 3050 laptop, probably
because my specific model has a higher GPU power limit. Regardless, the Ally was still running well
at close to 90 FPS on medium settings, and was 16% faster than a cheaper, but bigger GTX 1650 laptop.
Many games like this also have Nvidia’s DLSS support, so it is possible for the
RTX laptops to get a further FPS boost by turning this on. Unfortunately this game
does not have AMD’s version, FSR, so it cannot be used to boost FPS on the Ally.
And you’ll be watching those games on the screen,
which is the fourth thing we need to compare. Although the Ally is more portable,
it’s got a smaller 7 inch screen. Some people say size doesn’t matter, but most gaming laptops at
this price point are bigger at 15 inches, and I just found that much nicer to play games on.
That said, the quality of the screen really varies depending on the laptop.
$700 gaming laptop screens usually have washed out colors and aren’t very bright
with a slower response time, which was the case here, as these are all areas
where the Ally was doing better compared to my laptop, despite its smaller screen.
Basically the Ally screen will look better compared to most gaming laptop screens at
this price. The Ally also has a touch screen, something that no gaming laptop at this price
point offers, which leads us nicely to the fifth difference - the controls.
With a gaming laptop, by default you’re limited to the keyboard and touchpad,
while the Ally already has a controller built in with A B X Y buttons, a D-pad,
left and right triggers, and analog sticks. Now a keyboard with WASD definitely has its
advantages in the PC world, but let’s be real, no one is gaming on a touchpad,
so if you want a mouse that’s going to be an extra cost. You can use a controller
with the laptop, but again, that’s another cost that’s already built into the Ally.
You can also connect a keyboard and mouse to the Ally if you want, Bluetooth is easiest,
but there’s a time and a place for everything. Could you use your Ally
for more than just gaming, like take it to school or work instead of a laptop? Sure,
but a laptop is probably easier, as it’s got those built in.
The Sixth biggest difference is battery life, and performance while running
on battery power - which are kind of important things for portable devices.
Again laptops are larger, so there’s more room for a bigger battery, but the Ally is
doing well considering its smaller 40Wh battery. The Ally lasted for an hour and 5 minutes while
running The Witcher 3 at 1080p medium settings 30 FPS, which was actually better compared to some
laptops with larger batteries with a similar price tag. AMD laptops with bigger batteries
could almost last twice as long, but the Ally was still doing quite well outside of gaming
like when just streaming a video, again very impressive considering that smaller battery size.
The Ally’s CPU performance is also impressive when running on battery power,
especially compared to my other $700 laptop. I’ve also included results from some other
laptop processors that you can find around this price point. AMD’s Ryzen processors
generally do quite well here, but as the Ally’s new Z1 Extreme chip is 4nm,
it’s super power efficient and beats any other 8 core AMD gaming laptop I’ve tested so far.
Some of these laptops can perform better in multicore once we connect the charger,
but the Ally is still significantly ahead when it comes to single core performance,
which is important in games. The main takeaway is the Ally does not lose too much performance
when we unplug its charger, but most laptops do.
I mean the fact that the Ally’s processor performs closely to AMD’s desktop Ryzen 7
5700X is kind of crazy considering it’s a small handheld device. And that that
desktop processor requires much more power to run. This is desktop PC level performance,
and we can actually use the Ally to replace a PC completely!
So let’s cover that in our next big difference, upgrade options. With the Ally, apart from the
MicroSD card slot, pretty much all you can upgrade inside is the included 512GB SSD. That’s limited
to the shorter 2230 size, which right now maxes out at 2TB. My gaming laptop on the
other hand can fit two longer 2280 sized drives, which could technically max out at 8TB each,
though right now just one drive costs more than the whole laptop! Most gaming laptops also let
you upgrade the RAM and the Wi-Fi, both of which are soldered on the Ally and cannot be changed,
but that said, some gaming laptops may also solder those components, it really varies by machine.
My gaming laptop only has one memory stick installed, which is very common at this
price point. Adding in another stick would definitely help it perform better in games,
but of course that costs more money, it doesn’t come for free.
What sets the Ally apart is ASUS’s XG Mobile. This is more than just a dock, as it’s got a much more
powerful laptop GPU inside. Mine has Nvidia’s RTX 4090 mobile GPU, which turns the Ally into
a 4K gaming beast, and lets you use Nvidia’s latest features like DLSS and frame generation.
With the XG Mobile attached, you can basically dock the Ally and use it like a desktop PC. It
gives you more connectivity too, like an ethernet port for a more stable connection, HDMI and
DisplayPort for hooking up a monitor or TV, and USB ports for connecting a keyboard and mouse.
Now my $700 laptop actually has Thunderbolt, so I could use an external GPU dock to get
more ports as well as add in a desktop graphics card, but every time I’ve compared the XG Mobile
with Thunderbolt, it’s not even close. ASUS’s XG Mobile solution is way more stable and performs
better in my experience, as Thunderbolt just has less bandwidth between the GPU and CPU.
Thunderbolt is also usually much less common with cheaper gaming laptops, I was honestly surprised
when I found out that mine had it, so in most cases using an eGPU won’t be an upgrade option.
The Ally and XG Mobile combination is seriously crazy, check this video
next to see how it compares against gaming laptops and desktop graphics
cards - the results are going to shock you, so I’ll see you in that one next!