Gross, glad I bought a Steam Deck instead.
So disappointing to hear all these stories about Asus pulling shady stuff, they used to be one of the best PC companies out there.
but won’t somebody think of the shareholders?? Line must go up!!
But for real though the steam deck was always going to be a better option for so many reasons
Linux!
They’re still pretty good at least here in Asia. The horror stories I hear of Asus support in the US is a might and day difference from what I experienced. Their Taiwan HQ needs to smash some sense into the US office and clean house.
Why would anyone buy this instead of a steamdeck?
Because some gamers think windows would be better for this. And maybe a little bit of gamer brand loyalty
Yeah, some folks don’t want to tinker and do like to play games with DRM that won’t work on Linux. It’s also a little more powerful than the Deck.
I love my deck so much that I broke my tinkering with computers outside of work hours rule in order to set up some Steam remote play boxes (HoloISO based) on mini PCs scattered throughout the house so I don’t have to be next to my gaming rig to play. I don’t really play anything online that has the Windows only DRM so Linux is great for me. But I get it when people have things they want to do and don’t have the time, know how, or desire to fuck with their systems.
What’s the advantage of the mini PCs over a relatively cheap Android TV with the Steam Link app or even an old Steam Link hardware?
What’s the hardware you’re using?
I have been doing local streaming from my gaming PC to devices around tbe house (using mostly Steam and Moonlight) for nearly a decade.
I just find the steam stuff maddeningly buggy (setups that worked a month ago suddenly start having some new issue, usually Steam Input or otherwise controller-related). But when things work, it’s fantastic. Especially for living room gaming with friends (or my kid)
I’ve had exactly one problem using the built in remote play with Steam, and that was a bad update that was put out just a few months ago. I’ve got a few Bee Links with the 680m iGPU (I’m not home to check the model right now) so they were a few hundred bucks apiece which is a huge con for some folks. But that also allows me to play a variety of emulated games and games that aren’t graphically intensive locally if someone is streaming from another room.
So if I have a friend with kids over, we can play BG3 couch co-op in the bedroom or garage while the kids play Mario Kart or Hollow Knight in the living room. That’s worth it for me.
However, cheap Android TV devices work for a lot of people and I’ll never knock them.
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OK, that’s true for a few places, but why is it true in the majority of casss where people are buying the ROG?
I bought it because I was able to go to Best Buy and trade in my Mac Book for a gift card and walk out with one.
It’s got better specs on paper but in practice, my Steam Deck just just about everything without issue, even new games and most games that are “unsupported” (at least as far as I’ve tried).
Some people might also like the layout better or just be fond of Asus as a company from the good old days when they were actually decent.
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Cheaper
Isn’t the Ally a lot more expensive than the Deck?
easier to use
I’d also question this, obviously everyone’s familiar with windows but the handheld experience is pretty rough when compared with SteamOS.
Walmart prices:
512 GB Ally: $399
512 GB Steam Deck: $499
To be fair, that’s the low power Ally with a pretty significant 20% off sale.
I’m not well educated on the power difference, but a quick google search shows the cheaper Ally gets about 60% the benchmarked performance of the more expensive Ally when plugged in. There’s also a significant drop when not plugged in, but less severe (only about a 20% drop in fps). Source
I suppose the real question is how does it compare to a Steam Deck at that price, and if the drop in power is worth the price difference.
iirc they’re all similar amd chips but the steam deck has the lowest performance by a small margin. But the steam deck uses less overhead with Linux.
Yeah, those two are debatable at best, but the other points sure make a lot of sense, and definitely have value. I say this as a SteamDeck user who never even considered the Ally for myself.
Because they don’t need touchpads and like an asymmetrical layout
Online gaming for certain games. Proton doesn’t work with some online DRMs.
As a Steam Deck Expensive Edition owner, I will say the Ally is atleast prettier…
Not that that would be a deciding factor for me, but some people care about that…
Because it’s better?
On paper. In practice, meh.
Own both
Ease of use - Ally Graphical capabilities - Ally Battery usage - Steam Deck (because less graphical capabilities) Gaming platforms/launcher availability - Ally Customization and layout - Steam Deck, and it ain’t even close.
I love my Ally and my wife loves my Steam Deck. But the Ally is better in all the ways above. I will say the Steam deck is easier to open up for repairs, but not by much
The Steam Deck also isn’t made by a shitty company with a shitty warranty. Which puts the Ally on the blacklist.
There’s a lot of options in this space, and more coming out. I wouldn’t even glance in the Ally’s direction right now.
They’ve been a shit company for over a decade at least.
I got a laptop for my wife back when we were in college. It developed a problem with the monitor where the screen would look all corrupt after using it for a little bit. My wife, while reciting the prayer of percussive maintenance, would whack it and the problem would go away for a while. So I figured the connection had come loose. No biggie, just reseat it or replace it. The warranty had expired, so I cracked it open to see what was wrong. I reseated the cables in it and it worked… for a bit. Then the problem came back. Eventually we got fed up and bought another one, same model, figuring it was a fluke… It developed the same issue. Come to find out, Asus cheaped out in the ribbon cable for the monitor and installed ones that were too short for the laptop. Looking online, there were a bunch of people complaining about the same thing.
Around the same time as I had gotten her the new laptop, I’d also bought an Asus ZenPad for her to read on. We’ll, that suddenly developed a screen issue too! Almost exactly the same as the laptops! My wife, ever eager to apply kinetic reinforcement, found that twisting the tablet a little bit also fixed the issue. I went online and, sure enough, Asus used cheap cables again! They would last just long enough for the warranty to expire before they’d detach.
I swore to myself I’ll never buy another Asus product as long as I live. If I ever have kids, I’ll disown them if they do too… Fuck these scammers.
I highly doubt they used those cables maliciously knowing they’d go out right when the warranty expired. It was probably a cost thing, and they later realized (too late to fix it) during production sometime that the cables were a warranty issue.
Engineers don’t do thing maliciously with their designs. They pick things based on cost, and probably even raised the cable length as a risk/concern during the design and testing phase, and were overruled by the bean counters.
It’s happened to me before.
Even in your defense, you point out that someone at the company made the explict choice to sell devices with defective cabling. At no point did he blame the engineers who designed it for that choice.
That’s a shit company that doesnt deserve anyone’s support, regardless if it was “engineers” or “bean counters” that opted to continue to sell what they knew was a defective product.
The fact that it happened over and over with multiple devices means it’s a culture issue with the company, not a one off mistake.
I’m just suggesting a probable scenario. I would be really surprised if this was malicious.
Intentionally selling a defective product without informing you customers beforehand is malicious, no matter the justification.
I’m fine not having this conversation anymore. I just gave a perspective from an engineer. No need to continue shitting on me. I’m not even defending the practice.
I haven’t shit on you at all. Re- read my comments and point out one negative thing I’e said about you or engineers.
Ive only talked about buisness ethics, and the pervasive negatives that come from misleading customers. If you feel that’s a dig on you, some self reflection might be warranted.
Tech Jesus had a video about this recently too. I’ll stay far away from Asus
I think Gamers Nexus also did a video on it recently.
Edit: I’m an idiot and I just recently started watching GN so I had no idea it was the same channel 🤷♂️
Tech Jesus is a colloqial name for Steve Burk of Gamers Nexus because of his hairstyle resembling old depictions of Jesus.
Tech Jesus = GamersNexus
All hail Steve!
I believe Steve did a video on it as well recently. Fortunately, looks like I dont own any Asus devices.
I believe also Tech Jesus did a video too. Lots of stuff going on with this.
GN too!
I forget the channel, but this guy with long dark hair and a goatee covered this issue.
Louis picked it up from Gamers Nexus, as he says in the video.
I’ve known about GN for years and with everyone talking about Tech Jesus I thought I’d have to look up a new tech reviewer. Never heard him referenced as TJ before but I can see it. Such pretty hair!
Gamers Nexus is killing it over the past few years. So many shitty companies taken down.
Tech Jesus he mentions he spoke to Louis Rossman about this in his video. So it kinda makes sense Louis would also make a video about it.
Yeah, that video made me switch out the motherboard I was planning on buying for my next build
My own experience with Asus warranty was of utter incompetence.
It was a long time ago, around 10 years or so, and I sent a newly acquired laptop for repairs because of constants BSOD. Waited a month before getting it back… Without sound. Turn out they forgot to reconnect the sound card. I sent it back for repair, waited another month (because even if they are at fault, they won’t even fast track that repair), only to get it back with a nonfunctional touchpad. I don’t use it, so I didn’t send it back a third time, because who know what would have come back damaged that time.
So their repair woes aren’t recent. When their stuff works, it works well, but pray that you won’t need to RMA it.
I had a nightmare situation a few years back with a ZenFone 6.
It bricked itself within a week, and after I sent it in I got months of radio silence, until I started calling them about it. They had no clue what the status of my repair was, there were a ton of orders for part after part, and it just kept going.
Eventually I just started pressuring anyone I could with “I need a new phone, this old one is falling apart, I can’t just keep using it for months on end as you figure your shit out” and they eventually relented, instead just giving me an entire new unit.
Last year I bought an Asus monitor with clearly advertised “on-site-warranty” (which means a courier comes to your house and just drops off a replacement in exchange for picking up the old one), it was DOA.
I thought great, “on-site-swap” should have this sorted by tomorrow. I started the RMA and the first thing they want me to do is ship my monitor to Germany at my expense. I said “fuck no”, and instead returned it to the retailer as I was still within the return window, and then just walked into another retailer with more in stock, to pick up another, which then worked.
Then, months later, some dude calls me and asks when I’ll be home for my on-site warranty swap, straight up dropping my jaw to the floor. I know I cancelled my RMA.
Lo and behold, the RMA case-number wasn’t even the same, so for some reason Asus decided, on their own, to open another RMA, WITHOUT TALKING TO ME for a monitor I TOLD THEM I WOULD BE RETURNING. Maybe someone tried to fix the fuck-up of not honouring the on-site warranty, but holy fuck if that took two months, thank god I took it into my own hands and got it fixed within 24 hours.
I love how the latest generation of gamers are finally finding out that Asus has always been, and always will be, a dogshit company.
Fucking Asus transformer pad.
Please send it back for free and we’ll check if the damage is under warranty. If not you’ll need to pay 50$>to get your device back.
FUCK. OFF. Ship it back for free if it isn’t under warranty. Or have a contract with a shop nearby that can determine if it’s under warranty.
Last time I bought anything Asus.
Actually that’s a lie. I have their routers in house which, for now, all seem to run pretty decently
I bet they are rebranded! :-D
Maybe I’ve got a broken set. The ones that were assembled properly
Yeah even in this video the guy was saying they used to be great, but after having like 3 motherboards fail prematurely and dealing with their crappy RMA process, I learned long ago that their reputation isn’t deserved. I did buy a couple of their routers which seems fine for now but I won’t be giving them more money in the future after watching this
Back in university at the turn of the millennia I was a front-line desktop support guy and the amount of Acer and Asus laptops that came in just completely falling apart was insane.
I was in college around the same time and recall doing my usual minimum research for a new system and still to this day think “acer’s crap, right?” when someone mentions it, even though the memory of why is gone.
I don’t have experience with their systems, but I had to go back to the store twice for an Acer monitor. First monitor had a dead HDMI port, second had a gap in the chassis at the top. Don’t know why I didn’t just go with a different one after the second replacement; it would end up developing a line of shadowing after about 18 months.
Acers would start with a QWERTY and after a few months would be down to Q–R-T. If you were lucky one of your USB ports hasn’t detached from the motherboard.
Sounds like a nightmare. I don’t have a lot of firsthand experience with Acer but I did peg them as low quality too somehow
The Toshiba satellite. Pure trash.
Jay stopped promoting their stuff, tech jesus just did a report on them and our fair repair guy is on it too. Fuck Asus.
I’ve been told that originally Asus was called Pegasus. But they shortened it to be listed higher in alphabetical order lists.
Guess they’re trying to 😎 bring back the Peg.
So they’ve already done the pegging, and are now just the Asus?
Pegatron, and that was the OEM motherboard branch of ASUS, which the likes of HP used for a long while. Also ASRock, which is a split off from Pega.
Link ot the actual source. No need to give someone regurgitating their content the ad impressions instead of the people doing the work.
Louis Rossman is as respectable as GN tbf
GN also asked him for advice as part of their video – they mention him a few times in it.
Louis is clickbaity as fuck though.
I personally don’t care if someone is clickbaity as long as your content is quality and his always has been.
I liked his content a while back. Now it’s just click and ragebait.
