My experience with the ASUS ROG Ally Z1 Extreme | 269

I finally collided with the ROG Ally....so how has it been? https://www.geektherapyradio.com/

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Welcome to Geek Therapy Radio. You'vegot your Mental Cure creator Johnny Hamburger.
Sorry I stuttering a little bit.It's kind of chilly out here. I
am in Lynchburg, Virginia, recordingon the spot out on the patio of
my mother and father in laws,and as you can hear, there is
a street behind me. It's nota particularly busy street, except for when

(00:30):
you start recording something and then ofcourse cars start coming down the street.
It's cold, it's rainy. Itis towards the end of the year as
of recording here, so that's justthe weather here in Central Virginia. North
Central Virginia is where Lynchburg, Virginiais, and I'm happy to be recording
the show out here, and Ireally really wanted to record one this week.

(00:55):
I can't record inside because all ofthe nieces and nephews are over in.
My son is upstairs taking a nap, so it's kind of nap time
around here, and I thought i'dtry to squeeze into show. On a
technical note, I am recording thisstraight into my sixteen inch M one MacBook
Pro. What's the processor. It'san M one Pro processor, not the

(01:15):
M one Max processor, but theM one pro processor, and I'm recording
into the main microphone that is underneaththe left speaker grill. So anybody who
has a MacBook Air, MacBook Proof any generation that I know of,
the main condenser microphone is under theleft speaker grill. I know that MacBook

(01:36):
pros and MacBooks and MacBook Airs haveseveral microphones around the chassis of the laptop,
but the main microphone. If youwanted to record audio in the best
quality possible, the main microphone isunder the left speaker grill, and that's
where I am talking into. I'mmaybe five or six inches away from the

(01:57):
grill here, and it should soundpretty nice. I really want to record
the show this week because there's somethingI've been meaning to talk about a little
bit of gear that I bought withinthe past couple weeks as of recording that
I wanted to kind of give mythoughts on after owning it for a couple
of weeks. That is the rogAlly, the Z one Extreme addition,

(02:22):
not the less powerful Z one Edition, but I have the rog Allies.
People people keep calling it the rogAlly, and it's one of those things
like Asis A Seuss how you wantto pronounce things the rog ally, I
say rog ally because ROG stands fora Republic of Gamers. It's a Seus's

(02:43):
line of gamery, things like Razorthis and that and alien ware and whatever.
So a SEUs has their line ofgamer gear called ROG Republic of Gamers.
A matter of fact, I stillhave my fourteen inch Zephyrs G four
team, my ROG Zephyrs G fourteenwith the RTX thirty sixty inside. The

(03:06):
new G fourteens go all the wayup to an RTX forty ninety, like
one hundred and twenty five watt RTXforty ninety, which is just insane and
I'm so tempted. But they areridiculously expensive for the forty ninety version of
it. Of course. Yeah,I'm not looking to spend three grand a
laptop. I just bought a ballerlaptop with an RTX forty eighty in it,

(03:29):
a seventeen inch laptop, which hasgotten better by the way, as
I'm distracted and going down these tangents. My oh god, I always blank
on the name of it. It'smy seventeen inch gigabyte Aorus seventeen h That's
right. I almost had to hitpause and remember the name of it,
My Gigabyte Aorus seventeen h. Ifyou listen to past podcast, you've heard

(03:53):
me complaining a little bit about someof the some of the usability of it.
All. The hardware is amazing,the coolings of amazing, the screen's
amazing, but some of the littleergonomics of it just kind of made me
scratch my head, like why wouldn'tyou include, you know, an SD
card reader for instance. Why inthe backlight keyboard, which is otherwise an

(04:14):
amazing keyboard, and the RGB looksamazing, why would you not have the
function keys backlit? It's insane.Oh, you want to turn up the
volume or turn down the volume that'snot back lit. You can't see if
you're in the dark. You haveto bring out a flashlight to see,
which, oh is F eight andF nine? That's what the volume up
and down is. I guess bythis point I've kind of memorized it,
but still it's one of those designdecisions of the Gigabyte A or seventeen h

(04:36):
otherwise awesome laptop, Like why wouldyou design the back of keyboard and then
not backlight the function keys. It'sutterly ridiculous. But anyways, I do
have the rog Ally, the Zone Extreme Edition, and I do want
to give my thoughts on that.I know that this first segment I can

(04:59):
talk about. This first segment,there's something else I wanted to talk about.
I want to talk about Jack,my very stupid cat, and I
thought I'd spend the first segment talkingabout Jack, but I'll save that for
a later segment. I want tojust dive right into the rog Ally that
I bought a few weeks ago.It wasn't on a whim, but I
had this kind of I knew Iwas on a collision course with the rog

(05:24):
Ally. It came out as ofrecording, you know, six or seven
months ago. It was a competitorto the Steam Deck, a competitor to
the Lenovo Legion that I think hascome out after the rog Ally. So
the gaming PC handheld space has beenheating up, and the first kind of

(05:45):
real actual competition to the Steam Deckwas the rog Ally. And you may
be wondering, those of you whoare more kind of tuned into this handheld
gaming PC industry, well, whatabout the one X player and what about
the all these different ones? Thoseare very expensive those are around eleven hundred
and twelve hundred dollars. The rogAlly at launch was seven hundred dollars.

(06:06):
Now it's down to like six hundreddollars for the Z one Extreme Edition and
four hundred dollars for the Z oneEdition. The price is competitive to the
steam Deck, so the really someof the only competition to the steam Deck.
For a while there it was SteamDeck and the rog Ally in terms
of price. The rog Ally zE one Extreme launched at like seven hundred

(06:30):
dollars. It was one hundred orso dollars more expensive than even the most
expensive steam Deck, but it wasstill comparatively priced, and the rog Ally
is much more powerful than the steamDeck. The steam Deck. What has
going forward is that the steam Deckis it's made by Valve, and it
runs perfectly on Steam os, andit's just optimized. Games are optimized.

(06:54):
Developers optimize games to run on theSteam Deck, which is technically lower end
hardware than the rog Ally. Butit's when a game's optimized to run perfectly
on a set, on a givenset of hardware, it was a more
It was a better for a lotof people, was a better prospect.
There's a better purchase prospect to knowthat you'd have a Steam deck with all

(07:15):
the support in the world from Valve. It's a very fleshed out, well
thought out piece of hardware. Nowit's got an o lead screen and the
games are optimized to run on it. Whereas the rog Ally was it still
is in my opinion, for morefor tinkerers, people who are okay with
having Windows ten Home or Windows elevenpro, any version of Windows they want

(07:38):
on this gaming handteld. And that'swhat I wanted, and that's one reason
why Knew was on a collision coursewith it. I want to keep talking
about the rog Ally and my experiencewith it. Coming up the next segment,
and you're listening to geek Therapy Radiorecording from Lynchburg, Virginia into my
MacBook Pro today. So more geekTherapy Radio coming up. You've got your
mental curator, Johnny Hemburger will beright back in just a moment. Welcome

(08:03):
back to geek Therapy Radio. You'vegot your mental curator, Johnny Hamburger.
Geek Therapy Radio dot com. Ihave redesigned the website just to keep it
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on a podcast, the very firstthing people should have access to when they
visit the website for a radio showor podcast is the podcasts. Are is

(08:28):
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Therapy Radio dot com, you justsee a playlist of the most in order.
It depends on how you set theorder of it, but by default
it's from newest to oldest, soyou'll see, you know, half dozen
or so of the latest show isright there, ready to go, ready

(08:48):
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downloading. Maybe other podcasts may nothave that feature or disable that feature.
But if you go to geek thereRadio dot com, and not only can
you listen just stream the latest podcasts, but you can hit the download button
download it as an MP three orwhatever straight to your hard drive that you

(09:11):
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Basically, if you don't pre downloadyou know, podcasts through your podcast
app. If you go to geekTheraperioda dot com. You can just download
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(09:35):
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Just geek Therapy Radio, geek TherapyRadio podcast. Type in one of those

(09:56):
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want to be looking for. Althoughat this point, humble brag, if
you type in geek therapy or geektherapy rat or rad or whatever I,
at this point I should come upranked one, you know, one or
two at least on se O andSearch engine optimization. So just if you're

(10:18):
curious, if you're driving around listeningto the radio, type in geek Therapy
Radio into your into Google or DuckDuck Go or whatever you want to use.
And and that's that's the plugs.So I was talking about the r
O g Ally. I have ownedthe rog ally for a few weeks,
and I knew I was on acollision course with it. As a geek.

(10:39):
I I actually had been perusing theSteam deck because you for a while
I have been checked. As ofrecording, I don't know what the status
is currently on this on refurbished Steamdecks, but I thought, hey,
you know, three hundred bucks,I could get a refurbished Steam deck and
upgrade the m DOT two SSD inthere and be off to the races and
whatever for not, you know,not not a whole ton of money compared

(11:01):
to like a twelve hundred dollars gaminghandheld. That was just out of the
question. But I was watching therog ally. I was waiting for the
growing pains to kind of ease alittle bit. Owners were complaining of the
SD card reader getting so hot thatit would damage the micro SD card.
I have not experienced that, bythe way, that phenomenon with the SD

(11:24):
card readers really heating up your microSD cards in your SD No one's using
an SD card. You use anSD card with a micro SD card converter
in it, unless you're a photographerand you're using air videographer and you're using
those massive SD cards whatever. Mostpeople use micro SD and that phenomenon of

(11:46):
the micro SD card reader becoming veryhot was not isolated to the rog ally.
It's just when you have the smallerthe form factor of whatever device you're
using, naturally, heat is anissue. So when you're trying to disperse
all the heat from the processor andthe APU running the graphics and the processing,

(12:07):
the general processing, and you've gota micro SD card reader and this
and that very fast m DOT twoNVMe solid state drive in there, heat's
an issue, and the micro SDcard reader getting hot again was not isolated
to the rog ally. Any devicewith the micro SD card reader can get
very warm, if not burning tothe touch. It gets hot in laptops

(12:31):
that I have, It gets hotin GPD products that I have. Micro
SD cards are very fast nowadays.UHS two and even UHS one like micro
SD cards can read and write atover one hundred megabytes per second now and
anytime you're talking about those kind ofblistering read and write speeds, you're talking

(12:52):
about heat. You're talking about currentbeing supplied to the solid state storage,
and that heat is going to needto be dissipated somehow. You know,
you have an m DOT two NVMeSSD s now that well for a while
that need heat sinks. Some ofthem you have fans built into it.
If you're building a rig and you'regetting an NVMe SSD that can now read

(13:18):
up to twelve gigabytes read and writeper second, which is crazy, like
gen Forge En five whatever. Uh, solid state drives, they need heat
sinks. Your storage now, yoursolid state storage now needs heat sinks.
So it's not uncommon for micro sdsto get hot, for nvm ssd s

(13:39):
to get hot. It's just athing now. So ROG was having a
particularly a particular problem with the withthe micro SD slot getting kind of so
hot that it would damage the readeror damage the actual you know, micro
SD you have in there. Ihaven't experienced any damage. It does get
hot. And again, any anymicro SD card reader that I've used in
the curve generation is they get hot. So ROG seems to have come out

(14:05):
with you know, firmware patches andthings since released to address that issue.
I have certainly not encountered the issueto where it's been damaging to any of
the micro SD cards I've used,So that's been sussed out. The user
interface but apparently like the day beforeor day after I bought mine, they
issued a patch, a new firmwareupdate, new software update that made the

(14:28):
you know, made the crate.Armory crate is kind of a Seus's front
end for loading games and adjusting systemparameters like fan speed and how much you're
you're setting the TDP of the chipsset and all that. So Armory crate
got a lot better. Apparently.I'd never tried the old armory crate.
I have used Armory a version ofarmory crate on my laptop on my Zephyrs

(14:54):
G fourteen, and it was goodfor adjusting how much wattage I wanted to
send to the processor, how muchwattage I wanted to send to the GPU,
and you know that's where you setyour profiles for like efficiency or performance
or turbo or gaming or content creationwhatever. You do all that through armory
crate and it works well. I'venever really had a problem with armory crate

(15:18):
being too buggy for me using iton the ACESG fourteen, and I haven't
on the rog Ally, I hadn'tused the old version of armory crate that
people were kind of complaining about.That was always the thing that's was one
of the reasons why I was onthe fence about the rog ally is the
consensus up until when I bought WhenI bought mine was that, yeah,

(15:43):
it's really powerful gaming handteld. Butthere's just some kind of software bugs and
it's not as as fleshed out aseasy to use as Sorry, I'm waiting
for these cars to go by.It's not as easy to use as the
Steam Deck, the Steam that hadbeen out for a while before that has
all the support from Steam. It'sa really buttery, smooth experience. Games

(16:04):
are optimized for it from Steam itself. And the rgy ally was more of
a it's way more. It's more. It is more powerful, but it
was more of a tinker, andit's like, hey, if you're comfortable
using you know, Windows eleven ona touch screen, then you'll should be
fine with Ally because it's going toboot into Windows then you're gonna have to

(16:26):
tap Steam unless you have Steam openonline, you know, on boot with
what's it this car pulling up?I think BJ just pulled up. Uh,
I'm recording the show actively during afamily reunion. Uh So, anyways,
the RG it just it got betterit was more for tinkerers because it

(16:48):
was a true Windows gaming hand held, and that's that's how I used it,
and that didn't scare me away fromit. It's like that, Yeah,
that's kind of what I want.I want to be able to manipulate
anything to my heart's desire. I'mone of those crazy people person that has
no interest in installing steam Os onany of my devices because I want.
One of the reasons I got therog ally, and this is getting into
the kind of the user experience ofit all, is that I wanted something

(17:12):
that I could be I could besitting on the couch gaming and then need
to do something for work and thenjust bring the same device upstairs and plug
one USB or Thunderbolt four cable intoit and boom, it's attacked. It's
attached to all my peripherals, it'sattached all my external hard drives, it's
attached to my external monitors, andI can do actual, real work with

(17:36):
it. And that it has performedthat function in spades. I can see
we're coming up to the end ofthe segment here. I want to get
a third segment as the longest segment, so I'll kind of dive into the
user experience and the person purchasing experienceof it all. When we come back
to geek Therapy Radio, I'm talkingabout the rog ally in my experience with
it. Uh yeah. Enjoy thebreak and we'll be right back. Welcome

(18:06):
back to geek Therapy Radio. You'vegot your mental curator. I can hear
behind me Uncle BJ has rolled upon this rainy, cool day, so
I might get a word from him. Although he looks like he's on the
cell phone. You don't want tohear from Uncle BJ. If he gets
off the phone in time, we'llsee he's walking, he's eyeballing me.

(18:26):
We'll see if I get him onthe show, he's certainly not obligated.
So I'm gonna jump right back intoOh yeah. By the way, you're
listening to geek Therapy Radio and yourmental curator, Johnny Hemburger. Geek Therapy
Radio dot com for more information,or geek Therapy Radio on all the social
media Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,TikTok. Even though I gotta do more
tiktoks, I always say that everyshow, I'm like, I gotta do
more tiktoks. But Geek Therapy Radio, as I everywhere. So I was

(18:49):
talking about the rog ally, andnow I'm going to use this third segment
at least to talk about the userexperience, and I will start with why
I bought it. In the pastcouple of segments, you've heard me mention
that I've been on a collision coursewith the rog ally for since its release.
But the main obstacle, the mainreason why I never pulled the trigger

(19:12):
on it wasn't because of any sortof user experienced bugs they were trying to
work out with it, or theSD card reader getting too hot. It
wasn't any of that. It wasthat was seven hundred dollars. It was
that it was expensive. I mean, it was like mid range between the
cheapest and most expensive X eighty sixgaming handheld. So on the more expensive

(19:33):
side you had things like the oneX pro Player Pro or whatever from these
various kind of niche manufacturers, andthose devices were eleven hundred dollars, twelve
hundred dollars. You could spend upto like fifteen hundred dollars on these gaming
handhelds, and that certainly wasn't happening. That it wasn't worth it. In
my mind. I'm just not justno, I've got enough for fifteen hundred
bucks. I mean, you canbuy a baller gaming laptop for fifteen hundred

(20:00):
dollars. You can get a gaminglaptop with an RTX forty seventy at least
for fifteen hundred dollars, certainly evenless than that. Actually, so I
certainly wasn't in the market for that. Seven hundred dollars at launch for the
rog ally was still way too expensive. That's just way too expensive for what
would amount to a toy in mymind, because I still had a couple

(20:22):
of GPD products. I've got theGPD Win Max two with the sixty eight
hundred U processor in that, andit's been working great, and it's like,
I've got so I've got these,I've got I've got a hybrid handheld
like that. GPD Win Max twois a laptop. Basically, it's a
ten point two inch laptop that doeshave built in Xbox style controls. But

(20:45):
I didn't have a dedicated just xeighty six Windows gaming PC handheld yet.
I had the Logitech g Cloud,which I still have, still love the
g Cloud. The g Cloud ishonestly flabbergastingly good. It's just slightly too
expensive at three hundred bucks. Usuallyit's three hundred fifty bucks. Sometimes it
comes down to three hundred dollars.It's way too expensive. My advice is

(21:08):
what other in terms of the ofthe Logitech g Cloud I've heard others mentioned
this. Retro Gamecreps, who hasan awesome YouTube channel and I got to
get him on the show, hopefullymentioned this about the Logitech g Cloud that
there, you know, as goodas it is, there's no way that
any any tech YouTube or anybody,any tech reviewer could could recommend the g

(21:34):
cloud at three hundred dollars. Thatit's a it's a fantastic gaming android handheld,
absolutely superb, the best, thebest you've ever felt like. It's
It's ridiculous how slept on the gcloud is. But the reason why it's
slept on is because it's slightly tooexpensive. Two hundred and fifty dollars would
be a better price. Point twohundred dollars would be absolutely perfect. The

(21:57):
reason why it's kind of slept andpeople can't recommend it for three hundred dollars,
certainly not three hundred and fifty dollars, is that for three hundred fifty
dollars. You can get a friggingSteam deck, and the hardware in the
g Cloud is a little older.It's a Snapdragon like seven to twenty G
or whatever. It's dated hardware.It's super efficient. The battery life lasts

(22:19):
for days. It seems like itjust doesn't die. The battery life is
insane, and it can run everythingup to a lot of PS two titles.
I like to play Granturismo four onthe Logitech g Cloud, but still
for three hundred dollars, it's justtoo expensive to recommend to others. So
the way to go if you're interestedin a g Cloud, this is what

(22:41):
Retro Game Course said and what Itotally agree with, is go on eBay.
If you want a g Cloud fora round two hundred bucks, which
is a perfect price point for ag cloud, go on eBay and there
are no buyers. Remorse. Ibought the g Cloud kind of on a
whim on Amazon because it was threehundred bucks and it was like, oh,
hey, just do a couple monthlypayments of fifty or whatever. It's
like, you know what, Okay, I'll go to a shot. No

(23:02):
remorse. My son uses it allthe time. It's a godsend. It
is just an amazing Android gaming device. It's almost perfect. Other than the
hardware is slightly slightly outdated technically,but it's still great for running retro arch
and gaming up to PS two titles. But anyways, back to the rog
ally, I was on a collisioncourse with it. And what sealed the

(23:27):
deal was that one day I said, do you know what, I'm going
to start cruising around best Buy andwhatnot and see what the open box scene
is for a Z one Extreme becauseI know the price had come down.
The Z one Extreme had come downfrom seven hundred dollars to six hundred dollars,
which is awesome. And I said, okay, if it's six hundred

(23:49):
dollars now brand new, what isthe open box? And I was able
to get one open box for likefour hundred and eighty, which was only
eighty bucks. It's more expensive thanthe within a brand new Z one model
that is way less powerful. Icannot recommend the Z one model to anybody
for even four hundred dollars. It'sjust not When you can bet for one

(24:11):
hundred extra dollars you can get theZ one Extreme model, which is infinitely
more powerful like Night and Day incomparablymore powerful. You're gonna have a much
better experience with an rog ally zone Extreme for one hundred extra dollars versus
rg ally z one and saving onehundred dollars to have a terrible gaming experience.
It's it's a no brainer. Sowhen the rg ally came down to

(24:34):
six hundred dollars brand new, andI started cruising around the open box items
at best Buy, and I sawan rg ally z one Extreme for four
hundred and eighty dollars. Yeah,I picked one up, and I saved
the receipt because I was like,you know what, I might not like
this thing. This thing I don'tI don't know how this might fit in
with my kind of current ecosystem ofelectronics and computers and everything. To save

(25:00):
the receipt, I got a decentlittle bonus at work. I had a
lot of points on my credit card, a lot of cash back rewards.
So I was like, you knowwhat, I'll pull the trigger on this
and I'll save the receipt. Iday one, I was like, I
can crumple up this receipt and throwit away. I didn't because you know,
could have some sort of issue.But day one using is like,
this thing is awesome. This thing. Day one I didn't have any buyers

(25:23):
remorse with it, And the moretime I spent with it, the more
I did some upgrades. I upgradedthe ENVME to a two terabyte twenty two
thirty ENVME, and I might evenupgrade to a four terabyte twenty two eighty.
By the way, are all yourog ally owners or people who are
interested in the rg ally, Youmight read that it only accepts a twenty

(25:45):
two to thirty sized ENVME, whichyou can get up to two terabytes,
which is honestly plenty, but youcan also go up to eight terrorbytes because
there is an adapter. The engineersof the rog ally left enough space in
there that you can use an ladapter to adapt from the twenty two thirty
to a full twenty two eighty,like perfectly, so you can get If

(26:07):
you wanted to be just insane anddumb, I'll just say and get an
eight terabyte NVMe twenty two eighty NVMSSDfor your ally. You could totally do
that. You could totally spend outon what like eight terabyte nvm SSD is
probably gosh four or five hundred bucksat least, if not more than that
is starting to rain here as youcan hear, we're doing some ASMR geek

(26:30):
therapy radio here in Lynchburg, Virginia. But anyways, RG Ali, you
can certainly do you can. Youcan use an adapter. It's like twelve
bucks on Amazon to adapt the twentytwo thirty to accept twenty two eighty n
V MESSD in there. I staywith the twenty two thirty. It's a
two terabyte twenty two thirty and Icompletely wiped. I did a fresh install

(26:56):
of Windows eleven Pro RG Ali withWindows eleven Home. I just I got
rid of the twenty two thirty SSDthat came in there, and I put
in a fresh two terabyte twenty twothirty and did a fresh install of Windows
eleven Pro, which was a verystraightforward process. Rog the ally has like

(27:18):
a cloud based restoration. You goin the bias in the bios and you
can you can restore Windows eleven Homethrough the bios. It's a nightmare.
It's a freaking nightmare to even attemptit, Like I couldn't do it,
and I just reading all over readit and around the internet. Apparently it's
just it's super duper wonky, it'ssuper duper broken, and just don't do

(27:41):
it. So I popped in thetwo terabyte twenty two thirty, did a
fresh install of Windows eleven Home,got a CD key from Oh Gosh,
Where's the Place at eta Prime recommendsWindows eleven Pro license for twenty two dollars.
I think after the little promo codediscount fresh install Windows eleven downloaded all
of the rog software from Asus itself, the Armory create everything. It runs

(28:07):
a freaking dream and just using itto game and play my game right now,
and it's a perfect for the RGally is a teardown Any teardown players
out there, Oh, Teardown's awesome, and it runs so good on the
rog Ally runs great on Steam Deckalso, as it happens, but I've

(28:30):
been using it to game, andI've been using it to do real work.
We're at the end of the thirdsegment here. I'm going to tell
you in the four segment what it'slike to use day to day as both
a gaming system and an actual workstationfor doing real work, because it excels
at both. There's slight limitations tothe workstation, but I'll get into that.

(28:51):
In the four segment, You're listeningto Geek Therapy Radio. I'm your
mental curator, Johnny Hamburger. Don'tgo anywhere. Welcome back to geek Therapy
Radio. You've got your mental curator, Johnny Hamburger. I think my son

(29:11):
might be awake now. I'm recordingthis in Lynchburg, Virginia at the moment.
It is very cold and very rainy, and I am relegated out to
the patio, the screened in patio, so I'm dry, but I am
cold. I'm bundled up. It'sin the forties right now, which is
you know some of you listening allforties. Forties is chilly. I don't

(29:33):
care where you're from. Like fortiesdoes not sit outside record a podcast weather
because it's rainy. It's a rainyforty. It's not a sunny out in
the sun of forty. It's arainy forty degrees. Anyways, I'm enjoying
it. Maybe you'll hear the raindrops around me as I'm recording this kind
of ASMR style as it's turning outto be an episode of Geek Therapy Radio,

(29:55):
recording straight into my m one MacBookPro just the built in microphone.
The built in like the good.The best built in microphone in the entire
MacBook Pro is underneath the left speakergrill, whether you're using a MacBook Air,
MacBook Pro, whatever, the goodthe good microphone is. The good

(30:15):
main microphone is behind underneath the leftspeaker grill, so it should sound pretty
good. As I'm recording here,I've been talking about the rog Ally that
I purchased an rg ally Z oneExtreme model from Best Buy open box four
hundred and eighty dollars, which iswhy the price came down enough for me
to justify giving it a shot.And I've been telling you that I in

(30:37):
the previous segments that I did aclean install of Windows eleven Pro to a
fresh two terabyte twenty two thirty ENVMESSDand it has been running an absolute dream
for handheld gaming. It's very powerful, it's the it's a The Z one
Extreme is a Some of you mightbe wondering this because I certainly did.

(30:59):
What's the difference between a Z oneExtreme and a normal seventy eight forty U
an AMD riz in seventy eight fortyU. And there's really not the only
difference that I can even determine.I think there's one. I'm not sure.
I think there's an instruction set thatalmost nobody uses in their CPU that

(31:22):
is disabled on the Extreme or enabledon the Extreme versus the seventy eight forty
U, where it's enabled or disabled. It's vice versa whatever. No one
nobody listening to this is probably evergoing to use that instruction set. I
can't remember what the instruction set is. It's not AVX five twelve because ABX
five twelve absolutely freaking works on theZ one Extreme and the seventy eight forty
U. It's amazing. That enablesthings like PS three emulation to be much

(31:48):
faster and all that kind of stuff. So it definitely has AAVX five twelve
instruction set across seventy A forty Uand the Z one Extreme, but they're
effectively the same processor. The Zone Extreme I think can be tdped a
little bit lower, like it's slightlymore efficient. It's slightly fewer watts to
slightly more watts. Like it's it'snot much, it can be. The

(32:12):
TDP is slightly more efficient on aZ one Extreme, hence the Extreme.
So it's like I'm willing to wagerthat it's all the same die. It's
it's a binning issue to where they'reprinting out the seventy eight forties, they're
pumping out seventy eight forties, andthey the seventy eight forties that can clock
a little bit, that can thatcan operate at a slightly lower TDP just

(32:35):
therefore are slightly more efficient. Theycall them. They batched those as the
Z one Extremes, but the seventyeight forty U and the Z one Extreme
are effectively the same trip. It'sjust the Z one Extreme is slightly more
efficient, which makes it a betteroption for going into smaller devices like Windows
gaming handhelds, so user experience.One of the justifications for buying it a

(32:57):
was the price had to come down, which it did and I got open
Box four un and eighty dollars.Like I mentioned, also, I had
to be able to use this thing. This thing had to integrate into my
work and play flow and not benot just become a door stop. It
had to be useful, had tobe functional to justify the purchase. And
on the gaming front, handover fist, it is awesome as a handelm gaming

(33:22):
device. It's an eight inch teneightyp screen, one hundred and twenty hertz
refresh rate. It's insane. Itlooks really good. It's not o lead,
but it looks absolutely freaking fan fantastic. The screen, the buttons,
the layout, the D pad,the triggers, the L three or four
triggers whatever on the back of theof the panel, of the back of

(33:45):
the device are awesome. The feelof it, the ergonomics, the buttons,
perfection. The only thing that feelssimilar or better is a Logitech g
Cloud, And seriously, that's oneof the reasons why the Logitech g Cloud
is so amazing is that themics andthe controllers and the feel is the best
I've ever felt, and most reviewershave ever felt ever in a gaming device,

(34:07):
but a lot. But the rgAlly feels just as good, if
not maybe slightly. The reason whythe rg all I might feel slightly I
don't want to use the word worsethan the G Cloud, is that the
g Cloud weighs nothing. The rgAlly also is extremely lightweight. But if

(34:28):
you're if you were holding the theG Cloud and the rg Ally, the
rg ally is light, but theG Cloud is lighter, so the G
Cloud kind of wins in ergonomics andfeels maybe a tiny bit, but the
but the ally is perfect, It'sperfect. It's you're you're nitpicking over two
perfect devices as far as ergonomics andthe controls are in the control feel,

(34:54):
they're two perfect devices, and you'reyou just basically nitpick. So the rg
ally, as far as ergonomics andthe gaming experience and the buttons and everything
is perfect. It's as good asit can possibly be. It's it's just
exceptional in my opinion and in manyother's opinion that the game the feel of
the rg ally is perfect. AndI was worried about that because rg uh

(35:20):
a Seus's brand of gaming products.They like to have like make things look
kind of like sharp and angular andwhatever. So I was worried, is
the rg ally going to sacrifice comfortfor for the looks of it all?
Is it just? Is it goingto try to have that stupid gamer look
but then be super uncomfortable and havejagged edges to hold? And that's not
the case. Matter of fact,the aesthetic of the rg ally is quite

(35:44):
nice. I mean to look atit's not so extremely gamery. It's just
it's nice. I'm one of thoseweird people also who completely disables the r
the RGB lighting underneath the thumbsticks.I don't care. I'm maybe it's just
because I'm four years old. Idon't care. And if I do have
the lights on underneath the thumb sticksI have, it's just set to red.

(36:06):
Not pulsing through rainbow colors, notalra SYNCD to other devices, not
cycling and pumping and going with thebeat of music, any crazy disco effect
going. It's just if I dohave the light RGB going on my rg
ally under the thumb sticks, it'sjust red because my color scheme, my
favorite color scheme is red and black. So of course, if I'm gonna

(36:27):
have an RGB light on a solidcolor, it's gonna be red. Also
helps at night to keep your eyeskind of trained for the dark. But
anyways, using it as a gamingdevice, like I said, Great Street
Fighter six runs awesome on it.Rocket League pooh, no a problem with
Rocket League. You can set theTDP up to thirty five watts. It'll

(36:49):
burst up to like over fifty wattsat times. It has no problem running
esports at all. I play SniperElite on there. It's everything I throw
at it. There might be somegames maybe go down to medium settings as
opposed to ultra, but visually it'sexceptional. If things run buttery smooth sixty
frames a second, one hundred andtwenty frames a second even for e sports

(37:12):
titles Rocket League a round twente hundredtwenty frames a second all day long if
you're pumping all those watts into theAPU. But I do Rocket League around
ten watts sixty frames a second highestsettings ultra rendering all that it's at ten
ADP. It's awesome. So thegaming experience is absolutely phenomenal on rg ally
Microsoft Flight Simulator twenty twenty. Kindof difficult to play on an eight inch

(37:36):
screen just or seven inch screen,just because what is it eight or seven
inches? RG ali screen is seveninches? I holpe, I didn't.
I think I said seven inches earlierand not eight inches, But it's a
seven inch screen on the rg allyand it just Flight Simulator twenty twenty looks
great on it. But on aseven inch screen, you know you're trying
to work controls in the cockpit anddifferent things, and it's a little bit

(37:58):
small. The workstation side, Iedit four K video on it. Not
super hardcore edits. But it canabsolutely edit four K video even with just
sixteen gigabytes of RAM. I wasediting a four K project at twenty four
frames a second. Absolutely usable,Absolutely usable when I plugged it into my
Thunderbolt three doc and was blowing itup to a bigger screen and everything.

(38:21):
If I can edit video and editpodcasts and do everything I need to do
workstation wise, and then unplug itand sit on the couch and game win
or Winter Chicken Dinner, and that'swhat the rog ally is. It is
just phenomenal. No buyer's remorse.It is great. You are worthy of
love, You are worthy of givinglove, and you are worthy of receiving
love, and you are worthy ofyour own self respect. Thank you so

(38:45):
much for listening to Geek Therapy Radio. I appreciate it. Tell your friends
if you like the show, subscribeyou if you haven't already, and I'll
talk to you next time. Takecare,