Asus Rog ally, anyone have an experience?

[wonko the sane?]

I've been wanting to get a non-nintendo portable game system for a bit now. Mostly something that would make it easy to do emulation. Okay, truthfully, I've been waffling on modding my switch to do what I want because I'm probably never going to buy another nintendo title that isn't on a cartridge.

TLDR: I want a new portable computer for gaming. I narrowed my choices to a retroid pocket 6, or an asus rog ally (no, not the new one, the original.) because I won't be using it for up to date gaming, just old titles. So does any have an experience with the ally? Thoughts and considerations to share?

 

[Steevy Maximus]

Depending on your range, if you're just doing emulation, a cheap Android tablet with something like a Backbone controller grip might be a cheaper option. Walmart's 8.1" Onn tablet has an older Snapdragon chip with 6GB of RAM and that should be enough to get you into select Gamecube titles. It's gotten a lot of attention online due to some REALLY solid performance relative to its low price as well as its clean install.

 

[wonko the sane?]

I mean, I've also got a ton of classic dos games through GOG and steam anthologies which would run natively on a windows machine, and I would love to play those too without dealing with a pc emulator on an android. And all of the other things a windows machine could do as well.

Which is part of the reason I'm gravitating towards it; it's not just a gaming machine, it's also a computer, and can easily and readily be used as such. Plus it seems like the mods to the hardware (new SSD, more ram, bigger battery.) are more achievable than for a third party tablet, or even the steam deck.

 

[wonko the sane?]

So... props to costco, they delivered my ally in less than 24 hours.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Alright so I've been playing with it for a few hours now: mostly been installing updates, installing programs, and deleting bloatware. It's the xbox ally... but I stripped out the xbox game crap already. Currently putting on emudeck, and tomorrow I've got to pull the SD card out of the switch and get it into the new computer.

But it's pretty awesome so far. Still got some basic configuration to do (like making windows skip the pin screen.) but no hurry on it.