The Asus ROG Ally runs Home windows, eats battery, and wishes time to prepare dinner

Geralt of Rivia appeared good, moved easily, and responded swiftly to instructions. There was only one drawback: He was continually sucker-punching the villagers of White Orchard. Time and again, he raised his fists in opposition to tavern keepers, children operating on the street, and detachments of Nilfgaardian troopers. That final one begat a brutal demise. Typically, proper after taking an unprovoked swing, the digicam would furiously spin round my white-haired avatar, making me really feel like I, too, had caught one within the head.

I performed the most recent model of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on Asus’ new ROG Ally handheld gaming PC ($700, out there June 13, preorders begin in the present day) as a private benchmark. Having accomplished the sport 3 times beforehand (Xbox/PC/Swap, Yennefer/Triss/neither), I used to be seeking to spot variations on this rising platform. Asus’ new gadget can run The Witcher 3—and Murderer’s Creed: Odyssey, Forza Horizon 5, and Hitman 3—extra powerfully than the Steam Deck or nearly every other “moveable” gadget round, minus questionably moveable gaming laptops. The gadget runs Home windows, so it has fewer recreation compatibility points than Valve’s Steam Deck (nonetheless admirably far that system has superior). What would make The Witcher or every other playthrough totally different on the Ally, a Swap-sized gadget that boasts 7–13 occasions the energy of that platform? “Random violence” wasn’t the reply I anticipated, so I dug in.

My first thought was that the thumb sticks could possibly be the issue, as they appear to have larger useless zones and really feel much less sturdy than those on the Steam Deck. Or perhaps it was pre-release video {hardware} reacting to a recreation recognized for uneven efficiency. I up to date every part I might, recalibrated the sticks, and double-checked my in-game settings. I performed the identical construct of the sport on a Steam Deck with Home windows loaded, in the identical location, however could not recreate the issue.

Finally, I figured it out: It was the touchscreen. The Ally’s proper stick is simply too shallow, and it is too near the suitable facet of a display screen with small bezels. Every time my thumb glanced too shut, the overly delicate touchscreen picked it up as a left click on. The default left-click mouse motion in The Witcher 3 is an assault. Like some malevolent specter of Polish folklore, the Ally had made Geralt’s world richer, nevertheless it whispered violent ideas to him at any time when the Thumb Moon solid its shadow over the 1080p sea.

You may, in fact, disable a touchscreen in Home windows 11 by a sequence of tiny-target Gadget Supervisor faucets on the Ally’s 7-inch display screen. Somebody might even make a batch script or tiny executable that allows or disables the touchscreen on the fly. Or Asus might add a touchscreen toggle to the Command Middle, which pops out roughly 95 % of the time that you just click on its left-side button, or it might permit me to set that up within the Ally’s complicated per-game profile system.

However when I’ve time to commit to concerned, graphically intensive video games, the very last thing I need to do is repair up a Home windows set up—and an awkwardly scaled one at that. I discover it simpler to put in, launch, and configure video games on Valve’s Steam Deck, a handheld PC rooted in Arch Linux, than on the Ally’s mixture of Home windows 11 and Asus’ personal Armoury Crate software program. I legitimately forgot my Steam Deck had a touchscreen till I ran Home windows 11 on it for side-by-side comparisons. Asus has much more work to do earlier than its gadget reaches that form of game-focused movement.

While you’re inside a recreation, the Ally performs higher than almost any gadget its measurement—you may see that within the benchmarks. However every part else about my expertise with the Ally makes it laborious to suggest as a $700 gadget you should buy from Asus this month. If you wish to get 39 frames per second in Cyberpunk 2077 as a substitute of 33 with the identical settings on the Steam Deck or eke out some ray tracing at simply over 30 frames per second, the Ally can do this. The identical goes for those who’re determined to play Home windows-only, cheat-detecting PC video games like Future 2 in your sofa (and you have determined in opposition to high-end streaming).

However most individuals ought to most likely wait till Asus, like Valve earlier than it, will get quite a lot of suggestions and hopefully improves its software program. Not that some {hardware} fixes could not assist, too.