We can quibble, and that’s our job, about the fact that the ROG Ally is not as user-friendly as a Nintendo Switch and that it doesn’t handle the addition of a monitor well. But all the same, this little 625 gram machine is a technological feat, allowing you to play all PC games on its 7-inch screen and transforming into a very good computer for other tasks, at a reasonable price.
A few manufacturers, including Valve, Asus and more recently Sony, have taken note of the success of the Nintendo Switch and the fact that millions of gamers are ready to indulge their passion on small screens with portable consoles. Asus, with its ROG Ally RC71L, is one of the leaders in this regard.
We therefore have in our hands a device weighing 625 grams, powered by Windows 11 and completely self-sufficient for around an hour in turbo mode with a demanding game like God of War or The Last of Us 2. Its autonomy climbs between three and four hours in more peaceful mode. You can obviously plug it in with the supplied charger capable of delivering 65 watts.
It’s also self-sufficient with its 1080p touchscreen and 120Hz refresh rate, flanked by two joysticks, the usual four X, Y, B and A buttons and a few navigation keys. The image is bright at 50 nits and the colors are vibrant. Here we are in Windows 11, which is far from being the ideal system for a portable device. Asus has therefore concocted its own simplified interface called Armor Crate SE, which occupies the entire screen when you press the button dedicated to it.
This is where we find our games library and where we have all the shortcuts to control the resolution, power, lighting, all CPU and GPU parameters, in short all the mechanics in which players PCs like to rummage around.
Let’s first take a look under the hood, where we installed an AMD Ryzen Z1 processor with 16 GB of RAM capable of reaching 5.1 GHz. The graphics are powered by an AMN Radon Graphics card on RDNA 3 architecture, with 4 GB of dedicated memory. We also have 512 GB of storage with a Micron 2400 SSD drive.
How does this stuff compare to larger computers? The statistics provided by the Geekbench 6 benchmarking platform are staggering. Sorry for the string of numbers that follows, it is essential. For the CPU, this little machine’s 8 cores scored 10,885, higher than all of our tested laptops twice as expensive, from the MSI GL66 to the MacBook Air with the M1 chip. On the graphics side, we obtain a score of 30,836, far lower than the 97,817 of our MSI GL66 with its GTX 3070 card, but still higher than the score of 18,759 of our MacBook Air M1.
Its SSD hard drive gives us an exceptional speed of 3168 Mb/s reading for large files with FlashBench, and 1874 writing speeds.
The ROG Ally RC71L is therefore a very good computer, more than sufficient for daily tasks once connected to a monitor via its USB-C socket with keyboard and mouse. Like any PC, you can add all the peripherals you want via Bluetooth, including a controller and headphones.
The experience is very satisfying on this 7-inch screen with integrated keys. The Dolby Atmos sound delivered by both speakers is quite powerful, but enthusiasts will probably prefer headphones, either wirelessly or using the ROG Ally’s 3.5mm jack.
Whether with the two big games mentioned above or the half-dozen PC games we downloaded, from Dead By Daylight to Rise of The Tomb Raider to the indie This Bed We Made, all performed well on this little machine. Sometimes you have to lower the resolution and choose medium presets rather than the most demanding, and we never exceeded 50 FPS, which is acceptable without being dazzling. No bugs and maximum quality on the other hand for streaming games, whether via Steam or, better, with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for which you have three months free with purchase.
In short, we have solved the square of the circle: having PC games usually reserved for otherwise more expensive and powerful machines, on a portable console.
The total gaming experience, with 34-inch 2K monitor, controller, and Bluetooth headset, was unsatisfactory. At first we only got a measly 17 FPS on God of War, we had to lower the resolution of our monitor to 1600 by 900 to get to a functional 38 FPS. Same results with Marvel’s Spider-Man remastered. Some AAA games like Monster Hunter Rise, Forza 5, Diablo IV, Doom Eternal can exceed 60 FPS, Asus assures us. We didn’t have them on hand. Advice abounds on the web for this sport so popular with PC gamers, tinkering with settings.
We missed the clarity of the Nintendo Switch interface. Although we can find the essentials in the simplified Armor Crate SE interface, Windows 11, with its tiny menus, is definitely not suitable for a portable console or tablet. After two weeks, we are still lost navigating the portable console, quitting a game to return to the Windows menu or finding our library.
Keep your screen straight when gaming on ROG Ally. A horizontal angle of around fifteen degrees is enough to make the image washed out.
Let’s exclude here the video gamer who has equipped himself with the ultimate equipment to satisfy his passion, with the most powerful graphics card and the fastest computer. That’s not what the ROG Ally RC71L offers. It lets you play anywhere, with satisfying quality on its 7-inch screen, flawless streaming, and plenty of graphics compromise in local mode on a larger monitor or TV.
As a bonus, the less seasoned gamer has an ultraportable gaming computer that can do good work on a daily basis. Amazing little machine.
