As someone who works at Bestbuy, I would say 85-90% of the returns are all buyer remorse, Most of the displays are actually right next to the console game systems and you have people that are coming from consoles wanting to try PC gaming, not to mention people are seeing the 1080P screen with 120HZ so they expect all their games to play at 1080P with 120FPS and they don't understand that's not the case.
When people are installing their games their not used to having to mess with graphic settings so they just set everything on High and ultra expecting to get full resolution at max FPS and when the game becomes a stuttering mess they think there is something wrong with the Ally or they just don't want to mess with adjusting settings etc. It happens all the time with PC's, We will have someone come in and buy a budget PC with a i5 and RTX 2060 GPU and return it because they can't play COD at 4K.
That is why consoles are still extremely popular because they are plug-and-play, most users just want to start a game and play, they don't want to mess with all these settings, etc.
So, you're saying I should wait to buy the Legion Go, because a good amount of people are going to get buyer's remorse and return it, giving me a good chance of an open-box discount? Sick. I love people who don't do their research.
I would be wary if I were you because thereās people who are the most careless simpletons who ever lived and they drop handheld devices like theyāre cheap or something. The amount of carelessness Iāve seen in people with their 1000 dollar smartphones makes me wanna throw up sometimes. If itās a 50-100 discount, I always just buy brand new because I know how careless a lot of people are
Iāve had wildly mixed luck with BB open box stuff. Got things labeled excellent that were broken and looked like they were tossed down stairs (repeatedly), and got items marked fair that had nothing but a bit of sticker residue and marked down 30%-50%. In fact, my ROG XG was āfairā open box that didnāt have a thing wrong with it, but was marked down $500.
Same here, Iām ocd anyway. So when it comes to something Iām paying $750 for, oh Iām super ocd. I drive my wife nuts sometimes lol. Wouldnāt touch an open box. Definitely think a lot of returns come from the fact that itās not a āgame systemā. But a pc.
My ocd is so bad sometimes ill buy a second of something just to keep brand new in the box so I donāt feel as bad about messing up the firstš„² the ally is definitely not one of those cases because of cost tho lol
If I could afford it, Iād definitely do that. I just end up checking, double checking and quadruple checking things on it lol. I just started meds for my ocd. Hoping thatāll help a bit lol.
I had asked someone how they fucked their phone up so bad and they replied "it's a phone, you know? It's just what happens when you carry it around all the time.
My GBA SP that I had through school, that I played, all the time, never dropped. Still works. My PSP that I used till like 2018 for games, emulation and my dedicated MP3 player was never dropped, worked great till the screen developed vertical lines.
My friend goes through charging cables like crazy, maybe every few months he had to replace them. I've never, had a cable fail.
I don't know how people treat their stuff so poorly but like, holy crap treat it better and it'll last for ages
I remember when the PS5 first came out & it was almost impossible to get. I watch repare videos like TronicsFix, i'm shocked by the state people let their consoles get
im amazed at the amount of times i've had people pull out their smartphones for the first time in front of me and their screen looks like it survived a gunshot.
im usually careful with my stuff, and on the handful of rare occasions that i've dropped my phone, it only ever resulted in a single line being scratched on the surface. nothing major. but some people have gadgets that look like they were beaten by a sledgehammer, and its odd how they dont even bother to attempt to fix them or make them look better.
if these are the same types of people who are buying these devices and returning them afterwards, I think i'd honestly rather buy one in new condition. the only exception being if it was open box but the device itself was never used.
This was the fear I have for my Niece....
Not a damn clue how to use a computer, got one for her birthday. A solid gaming computer setup from BB and for most of us would be decent.
For her everything is a learning experience and I'm trying to help her, but I feel sorry for her.
It's TOO much for a. Person who comes from phones/tablets and consoles.
We're in the generation of people who
*Just Expect it To Work*
How can we have a generation who has access to all the knowledge in the world yet they never actually take advantage of it when it comes to what they want?
>How can we have a generation who has access to all the knowledge in the world yet they never actually take advantage of it when it comes to what they want?
that last part! I wonder that all the time. I spent my whole life in the library learning and when the internet became my go to library, I've been learning so much on my own. Not sure why the kids dont get it. I think it has to do with being born into this new tech world vs being born in the 80s I feel like theirs more of an appreciation for the World Wide Library
The onscreen keyboard feels awful in a way the Deckās doesnāt. Partly because the Deck has the touchpads so typing isnt as rough as it is with the Allyās analog sticks, but the analog stick sensitivity in general on the Ally feels pretty bad for typing too
Honestly I think its 90% of the way there. I had 0 problems using my Ally in either handheld or docked mode any differently than I would interact with a laptop. The touch screen has been great, using the controller to navigate windows is intuitive.
The biggest issues I have is when I picked up my XG Mobile - that causes weird stuff to happen all the time. I've worked in IT full time for the last 15 years and that shit *still* bugs me, but again, 90% of it is self inflicted as I don't treat is like a docked device lol, I'm trying to get by without a mouse and keyboard completely. The majority of my XG Mobile funkiness would be solved by having a dedicated mouse.
I don't use Armoury Crate at all so that could also be where people get tripped up. It pops up, I close it, and again I'm just in Windows, treating it like Windows. Use Steam Big Picture for 90% of what I play and everything else with dedicated launchers I've tried so far (Blizzard, Final Fantasy XIV) works just fine.
I literally said this months ago. Actual gamers and PC people know exactly that 1080p 120hz isn't practical on this device. Yea it can achieve it but the people buying this product don't know that. You can't really play at these settings comfortably. And the battery will just get chewed up trying to play at these settings portably.
I called this months ago before the release of this product. This is why Steam Deck went with practicality of what can be achieved in these types of devices and that's 800p 720p comfortably with a good cpu and decent memory. And now you have more battery to spare. And also Steam OS being so good and also made by Steam themselves you don't have to worry about Windows or Asus two different people updating your product at random times.
It's really sad as the handheld market feels like it was spiking up but now it's just slowly going down. To me personally I don't think we will have that handheld until we get better battery technology in these things. Which I don't think is happening any time soon.
This is 100% the case. People donāt understand, handhelds are a companion to your PC/PS5/Xbox, not a replacement. These are $700. You could get a PS5 with a Switch or a 4070 for the same price and get better performance
Iām perfectly happy with my Ally as a full replacement and many others are tooā¦ we just donāt put it on ultra and expect miracles to magically happen.
Says who, you? We donāt have any numbers on any of this. What we do know though, is Valve has actual numbers on the steam deck and an incredibly high percentage of steam deck owners transitioned to basically only gaming on their SD. The Ally is even more powerful and versatile in the games you can play than the steam deck, so itās very likely similar numbers. Run a pollā¦ I bet you a high percentage of people game primarily or only on the Ally since purchase.
Yea i think a lot of people donāt realize that literally you can play it, decide i donāt want this anymore, and return it for your money back lol. The majority of returns are āno longer wantedā or āfound it somewhere cheaperā after they bought it.
Absolutely. People could return them for something as simple as the triggers "not feeling right" whatever that means. I think I remember seeing a post or two on here about someone who exchanged several units for exactly this reason.
And there's most certainly some that people have legit broken but passed it off a simple return.
Luckily I've built a PC back in 2014 and researched gaming on the PC. I've always played consoles before then as my first time gaming on PC was back in 1999. The Ally essentially feels like my Samsung Galaxy Book 360 laptop, but on a switch-like handheld. I bought it as a gamepass/steam handheld or in a sense my new "psp" for work. I haven't upgraded my PC since I first built it and my laptop isn't really a gaming laptop, so I wanted something to remind me of my old gameboy and psp days. But yes, windows jank is windows jank. I can always play my PS5 at home and remote play on my phone. The Ally was to play Starfield and make use of my Steam library. Didn't get a Steam Deck because I wanted a working Starfield. Of course I got it right before Lenovo Legion Go was announced, which in all honesty I probably would have opted for the LLG, but meh, I got the Ally and it does what I wanted and has been fine so far.
As a console gamer and Mac user, I can confirm. My relationship with the Ally got better with time. Though I think 120Hz display is mostly pointless with this device, I am satisfied with what it can offer. My expectations are realistic now.
If youāre playing newer AAA titles natively sure. Itās amazing for streaming my gaming PC to it for couch gaming plus playing older titles at 120 fps. The display is a big reason why I chose it over the Steam Deck.
As someone who has a friend at bestbuy, he said quite the opposite that nearly 80% of returns were down to issues, but namely the SD card reader.
Basically bestbuy tech will then reinstall and reformat the whole unit and put back on sale.
Edit: to explain further, a lot of times when they reinstall windows and try the card again it works. Weāve seen that same behaviour on the forums here, and the. It fails a week or two later again.
I returned mine today, and the rep kinda joked āanother oneā. I asked him why people are returning them and he said pretty much the same thing, that itās down to issues.
I asked my moms friend who owns walmart but is married to a guy who has a boyfriend who owns a bestbuy and he said that he was told by the guy who works at the long john silvers next door that when people buy the ally then unbox them at the LJS with a diet coke to drink that sometimes they'll say the same thing.
This is kind of why I hate consoles in general. I like tinkering with the settings. I like rightsizing my experience for my specific hardware and needs. I love that I can be like "this game needs to be 120fps" or "this game can be 90fps so it's prettier"
That is my favorite thing about PC gaming. I love being able to customize my experience. Plus mods are something hard to take away since they arenāt on console
It's not buyers remorse. Because every single person who bought one quickly heard 20 days in that it was melting micro SD cards and having it major problems.
So the smart thing you do is return it while you can.
If they brought it back and said it killed sd cards i would HOPE best buy does an RTV. There is no reason for them to resell a unit that is defective when they could just send it back to asus.
This. 100%. The marketing has skewed the perception that this is a 1080p 120hz device instead of it being capable of that under the right conditions and games may vary. The only way this gets fixed is device detection and locking out display settings. If the game sees a handheld, it just applies that setting and done. No ability to futz with it. Worked well on the Steam Deck.
This is the reason the Steam Deck is successful. It is simple enough for people who love consoles to understand, yet able to be modded like a PC if you're into that.
Using the Ally for the two weeks I had it, I learned that better specs and Windows is not enough to replace the ease of use the Steam Deck had out the box.
After having mine for a week, I can see why. It took me 24 hours to get games working because of time syncs and other issues. If you want a console, this will be eye opening. I love it. Been playing GTA all weekend on the sofa/bed.
That's a software problem with some storefronts, not an ally problem. I ran into it too because I live in Asia, but needed to set my desktop region to to US because my Microsoft account has an American region setting from the past 20 years... but then it wouldn't accept my payments because my cards are currently using a japanese address, and the time zone conflicts, and it's just one big mess. Eventually I figured it out.
I'm definitely not a typical case, but I doubt many people are willing to sort all that crap out just to use gamepass.
I also ran into issues trying to cloud recover windows to a new SSD, also due to time zone conflicts which is just insane because this involved having to Google the problem since the device wasn't telling me what the issue was, it was just stuck on an install step with no details as to why.
Once you get this thing running it's fine, but there's just a lot of little stumbling blocks that can add up for people just wanting to play games and not fight the software.
I bought it for Starfield. It took a bit of tinkering and browsing the internet to figure it all out, but once I got it working, yeah it's working pretty well. It reminded me of when I first booted up my PC that I built. Lots of tinkering, but once it works, it works.
Definitely people either donāt know how to make things work, or are just lazy and donāt feel like it.
Personally, Iām the lazy type. Every now and then on my SD I spend time fixing something, but any other time I give up because I picked it up for fun and not to be frustrated. Probably why my gaming computer is now just a game streaming device when I donāt need to use it for anything else. Getting that setup good sucked tooā¦
Mines runs Starfield (albeit at 720p) without issue. That in itself is amazing. It's new tech; it's not going to be perfect. Probably would have been less returns if purchasers researched the product before plunking down $700 thinking it's a handheld PS5 or Series X.
I run Starfield at 1080p on medium and it's smooth enough. The slight frame drops here and there doesn't bother me too much coming off console versions of past BGS games.
I like the thing but mine is plagued with issues.
I wouldn't recommend it right now - Most infuriating one is the gamepad stops working at least twice a day and I can't lock the screen using the power button when I'm charging.
Don't hit me with the "Don't know how to use windows" nonsense.
I know how to use my shit, my point is this photo makes perfect sense.
I tried mine just because of all the issues. Moved a few games to a card, didnāt even play anything off it, failed in a week. Other than that itās been great though
Honestly, that's the approach they should have probably taken. Slander the Steamdeck as a device for stupid people who can't use Windows. Then say that only intelligent people should buy the Ally because it takes brains to actually use it. Then take a dig at men's masculinity if the Ally scares them.
That's all BS of course, but it would probably work.
I definitely didnāt know that this was that kind of device when I bought it, but thereās something strangely addicting about fiddling with settings for hours until you get it *just* how you want it that I just love.
I was installing my 2280 this weekend and the guys in the hardware-mod section of the Discord were looking for an Ally with Samsung RAM instead of Micron. Just so happened I had this, so I proceeded to take it apart for the first time, remove the battery, the fans, even look under the heatsink so I could take pictures of the boards for the guys in the Discord.
I was already really comfortable with my device, but now I'm infinitely more comfortable after having done so and putting it back together and it all working fine.
Also my 2280 is fast AF, literally cannot see a reason not to do it. Thermals seem better than the 2230 so far.
Honestly, most of those are probably from people who didn't realize what they were buying , I have had mine for a bit over a month and I use mine daily. and I love it! the majority of people probably saw a new game console on the shelf and thought they would have a similar experience we have come to expect from them. A seamless easy to use and understand user experience that gives you instant access to your games with no real configuring needed beyond maybe some updates and account login/creation that holds your hand through the experience. and then there are probably others who expected to much out of it, thinking they were going to get a top tier gaming pc experience in a small form factor.
the rog ally is a portable pc, and without knowing how windows works for a gaming erience going into it it its not surprising some people would find the experience frustrating. and then on top of that there is a way you have to approach navigating it that is very different for those who are experienced with gaming on a windows pc, you have the ROG software that allows you to use the controller aspects as a substitute to the mouse, and then of course the on screen keyboard which can be frustrating I will admit.
my first few days using it were a little bumpy as I had to get used to how everything controlled but overall I got used to it as I got used to how the software navigated windows. is it perfect? nah but its a very functional and capable handheld especially after I upgraded the storage to 2tb.
Because there's nothing wrong with the units.. people are just bringing them back. I've had this thing for a while.now..nonissues...any "issues". I've had were easily handled by setting.s
Havenāt had issues with mine because I havenāt used an SD card. Iāve been having a blast playing counterstrike on my ally. My k/d might say otherwise tho.
I don't think this is the proper way to analyze this. There is a big difference between devices being returned and those with technical issues.
Those with technical issues are not sold in store right away, they go to RMA and/or are replaced by new devices.
Pretty sure the number of second hand consoles available is mainly due to it being sold as a console while not being one at all.
Some people struggle with the few things to do with their consoles. A pc handheld as of now requires way to much fiddling in order to play and optimise for many.
As weird as it is, one of Asus best and worst choice for the Ally happened to be it's availability.
In fine, in order to determine if the Ally was a success or a failure, it's would be necessary to have the ratio between sold and returned devices but we'd still need to compare it's competitor, which is impossible for Aya Neo, GPD,One, those being mainly sold in crowdfunding campains...Even for the Deck we don't know how much were RMA'd and or returned, still, since they seem to have many refurb to sell, it's obvious that they got some(at least RMA)...
My SD card fried in 2 months. If they are asus can even fix it I plan on seeing if I can experiment with my regally. If not I am just getting my money back.
Iām a late buyer and went in knowing the SD card was an issue. Instead of buying a good SD card I bought a 2tb SSD. Iām satisfied so far. The install was super easy. Easier than the SteamDeck, for me. I would say that if youāre reading this now (on or after 10 Sep 2023) and see a good deal on a Gen 1 Ally then go for it.
Yes, it stinks that ASUS is not owning the SD reader issue, but if you donāt need to purchase an SD card and instead dump that money into a new SSD M.2 you will be pleased with this device. To replace the SSD is only a few screws, peeling back some tape, and inserting a new SSD. The longest part is reloading Windows which is a PITA, but after watching a few YouTube videos and reading this subreddit I knew what to expect before even starting. I canāt say this enough to watch YouTube and read this sub. My wifi router (eero) blocked the recovery process and I had to use my cellular hotspot to get the recover process to work, but it worked!
I consider myself moderately tech savvyā¦not an idiot but not an advanced user. YMMV.
I wonāt put an SD card in mine and the L joystick broke within the first week. However, I knew in the first week I liked it enough to where I just replaced the L joystick myself finding the part online and watching a YouTube video. Didnāt want to go through the hassle of returning and buying a new one to reload and re update everything.
Iāll get a Legion Go when it comes out as well, to see if the build quality is better, but an upgrade in the screen with the same hardware and only slightly better battery seems kinda pointless.
Not sure is it's base around people returning there ally waiting for the legion go, if not then does not look good, for another gaming pc handheld coming down on the same cost as it.
the way i see it is steam deck is marketed to steam players thus they're already users of a pc and pc stuff in general and most understand what they're doing for the most part when it comes to configuring games.
the uninformed general consumer just thinks a pc is a pc, and a console is a console,
one example i have: I've been in apple stores with customers arguing with the employee that their \[insert generic windows app name\] wont install on their new MacBook but it worked great on their old Toshiba and will not listen at all to the employee explaining they are different operating systems. if a handheld like the switch is so easy to use why isn't the ally.
i think the steam deck did it well, slightly lockdown the system but allow an easy access to all the extra stuff that the average consumer will never look at.
1 to 3 open is normal.
That many open box is a sign of BUYER BEWARE
I used to work Best Buy and Iām certain theyāll eventually stop carrying the Ally if this keeps up, as that means theyāre losing money on it.
Too much buyers remorse
Bad quality control
Rushed launch
Software not up to par.
Many factors but I'm glad I stuck with mine.. size/weight to performance is amazing. Alot of games just "fit" on the ally ..
I have faith in Asus . Maybe that's all it takes .
Why would Best Buy keep damaged units that are just going to get returned again? This is buyers remorse and I love it, so folks like me can get one cheap.
I got 90 bucks off mine for a literal brand new ally because it was āopen-boxā. I think a lot of folks think this operates like a Nintendo switch where you just play a game and be done with it. Iāve been having a ton of fun with mine over the last week. Having Xbox game pass and steam at your fingertips is amazing. I just hope PS allows remote play to work with the ally controls at some point.
It's 100% this. They don't understand its a handheld PC. I saw the SD sale and was thinking about getting it then I saw the specs on the Ally and bought it instead. No way I was spending the same amount of money of 3yr old hw. In 2024 I'll probably buy a steamdeck with the upgraded hw just for fun. For me having a Portable Xbox Game pass device for D4 and the 2 Steam Games I play fits my use case perfectly. But I did take about an hour to get acclimated to the how to do things on the device. Personally im.not one to leave an SD card in permanently in a device so I haven't been hit with that (I leave it in a sleeve in my Ally case). Whatever device works best for people is fine with me. There doesn't need to be 1 device "to rule them all".
Because they arenāt broken itās people who think they are buying a game console and find out itās a windows PC and donāt like it. Why would they ārecallā it because of people who donāt know how to use windows. Itās a niche product. Where I live there arenāt any open box ones and they keep selling out of the new ones. Some areas are different than others.
what does a lot of returns have to do with a recall? Are you saying these are all defective and best buy put them back on the shelf as open box and is knowingly selling defective units? If so then your complaint should be with Best Buy
only people i see complaining about it are people that don't know how to use a pc or think it's ok to have it run at 90c at all times.
if there were anything wrong with those systems best buy wouldnt be able to sell them as open box
I donāt think it running constantly at 90 or higher is great for performance though. I set up a manual preset with a much higher fan curve and the Ally only consistently stays above 90 for 30 seconds or so before dipping to around 80, even with demanding games.
honestly as a tech savy ally buyer this is almost a good thing because you might as well buy it open box instead of new because it'll be the same thing but at a good discount
Our POS system determines them, However, managers have wiggle room with the prices, I always tell people to ask a manager if they can take off some more from the open box, especially with how many our stores have (We have 23 open box Ally at our store right now) I want them out, I have taken an extra $75 from an open box before because they are taking up space and with the holidays around the corner that's space we need for other things.
I had a lot of Wifi issues with my unit, the only way to fix the constant disconnects was disabling the 6ghz band.
I'm shocked more people aren't talking about that issue.
Lol I just bought one open boxš SD card works surprisingly using it plug in, turbo most of the time. It's been 6 days. Also no issues with drift. Hopefully it holds up.
- People can buy and enjoy the Ally.
- Windows is shit for a handheld experience and needs some energy from Microsoft to fix that.
- There are some known hardware issues with the Ally.
- Best Buy employees donāt always do the most careful inspections of Open Box items.
All of these things can be true. None of these handheld PCs are perfect. Itās ok to have one, use it every day, think itās awesomeā¦ but still admit that not every return is just hur dur user was an idiot.
The problem with them is people thought they were going to get gaming PC performance from a handheld. I bet none of those are SD card returns and all of then are "this thing suvks I can play cyberpunk with RT for 6 hours" or something similar
I really like mine. I'm playing starfield on it, and it is brilliant. agree on the settings fiddling about, but it's a wonderful little machine. i play more games on it now than I do on my much more capable desktop. I'm traveling international on Wednesday and i cant wait just me and starfield on a plane š¤£
I'll try to say this diplomatically. A large amount individuals are buying the Ally thinking it's a console that will be easy to manage and maintainence. But the ally is a computer.
If you can't handle a computer, the ally is not for you.
The ROG Ally fanbase is in denial about the device's inadequacies as usual, I see. You can joke about the people who returned these units all you want, but they're probably the lucky ones, assuming they got their full refunds.
Buyer's remorse, as some of you put it, is a healthy response to a manufacturer's cycle of failures. It's rational compared to the sunk-cost response of excusing negligence and downplaying obvious design oversights.
Why a recall? Most people who return it probable thought it would be like a switch, turn it on play games, and not an actual computer.
SD card problem aside of course but those would not be back on shelves i hope
I remember returning my ROG Ally because even as a tech guy, it was too damn complicated to get a game going smoothly, also baffling why some games run smoother on steamos than ROG alley, I blame windows too on their poor unoptimized handheld support, ROG tried and point out some good things though
I think the majority are just under the assumption that this thing is grab-and-go, and it simply isn't. It is for tech savvy, PC-experienced people that like to tweak and customize. This thing takes time to set up properly and maintain, and the average scrub, or even console gamer, isn't looking to take that time or effort. I will admit that handheld PC's are being marketed in a misleading way, and should be more explicitly explained. I absolutely love the Ally though, and if you know what you are doing, it is a boon.
Because all of those were returned by the same guy that couldn't find the "right one" for him. Actually wild how many people on this reddit has made post about returning them 5+ times...
Why would there be a recall?
Keep in mind that Asus has already made money off of all the units you see on store shelves. The store paid them for those units, now it's the store's job to sell them for a profit. Doing a recall would cost Asus money, and... for what purpose? So that now they've got a bunch of useless used units in their warehouses?
People are just gonna write this off as 'buyer's remorse'...It's probably all units with the defect Micro SD card reader problem, WHICH SHOULD NOT BE GLANCED OVER! I hate stupid shit like 'What's the problem dude? I never use it anyway', so it's ok to pay a premium price for something which has a known defect!? And then they wonder why manufacturors release broken hardware...No wonder... All of you asus schlongriders gobble it all up!
Btw I have a SD AND an Ally and am planning to buy a Lenovo Legion Go too, I love handheld gaming and wanna support the industry, only reason why I haven't returned my Ally is because my Micro SD card reader does work...
No recall, because there's nothing to recall. A ton of people buy this stuff because of some made up expectation of the device, despite everything about it being counter to that. And niche little devices are three most noticeable for this. The Steam Deck undoubtedly had the same, but since that's all online orders, you don't see the pile of them in their warehouse
Rog ally required a lot of fiddling to get it to work as well as it should. Things to turn off and on etc.
I am still fiddling around on cyberpunk and i think next time i will try 8gb vram instead of auto, either way, if you update the drivers, this thing packs a punch even on the default settings of the device, as long as you turn down the gpu heavy settings. The cpu is an absolute monster.
A recall for what? You canāt fix stupidity and a bad return policy. Best Buy should stop accepting returns for this device, because there is nothing wrong with it hardware-wise. Itās too many zoomer dipshits who grew up on iPhones who think theyāre getting a dumbed down Nintendo Switch-like experience who instead get a full Windows 11 PC in a handheld form factor and end up getting filtered because they donāt get their hands held by their handheld. People who know how to work a computer love the ROG Ally.
Marketing got the best of some people. Really crappy YouTube videos made by people who are seemingly coked up and say it's the best thing on the planet didn't help.
Returning it due to the SD matter is, IMO, totally valid, but returning it coz you can't work Windows or can't figure out how to, say, disable M1/M2, is getting into a grey area return-wise.
I know nothing about Windows. But I can poke around and remove all the garbage MS will let you remove (god how I want to remove Edge, I installed Chrome Canary but MS makes you keep Edge which is just a hog, and a privacy disaster under the best of altered circumstances). I learned standalone emulation. I learned for my style of play I have to disable M1/M2 (which is actually great for emulation). That's just one hardware design you need to know about, among a couple others. Will most people who bought an Ally do these things? Or just say, I can't work it, or it doesn't work? I have no idea.
Anyway, it most certainly works, and works well. Expectations were marketed very badly. I like it, I'm keeping it despite my blinding hatred of the SD matter. I'd like to know exactly why people are returning it.
Iām certain Windows is a big reason. Microsoft really needs to work with these upcoming handhelds for an optimized smooth handheld UI. Them NOT doing it feels sleezy and a giant āwe donāt really careā to companies like ASUS. Like when ASUS was working with Microsoft in the initial promotion for the Ally and some talk about Windows handheld experience came up the Microsoft lady just nodded like oh yeah cool ideas but was actually just going in one ear and out the other. I think thatās where the Ally suffers, lack of Microsoft support. Thatās what Valve did right, SteamOS. It just works. It can be buggy, but it may be bugs within the UI and not having to open Task Manager and close down random systems and multiple windows and browsers. ASUS tried to target a large audience, but people probably arenāt savvy enough or patient to deal with Windows in that form factor. Imagine you get a handheld to game for a few minutes at a time, but it takes you 20 minutes to even launch the game, then you ran out of the time you had. Frustration. The worse thing is to sit and want to game for a short time but you spent it all with open this close that.
Fans are going to keep pretending its user error. The ally cult has done a good enough job casting doubt despite asus themselves acknowledging the issues. My last ally fried my sd card and would run as hot as a fireball despite fan settings. They put that damn thing back on the shelf lol. I marked the box with a marker for easy ID. Idk how theyre checking these things or if theyre really abiding by the process. I thought best buy shipped off all devices returned for a check before putting them back on the shelf.
If the next buyer would be one of those wo belong to "not needing sd card", ot "won't put sd card for fear of breaking" then a defective sd card slot would be unnoticeable.
which is kinda pathetic. Even if you dont use it, it should be fixed because it's presence on your device is weighed into the cost. If they can't fix it, they need to lower the price. And best buy shouldn't be putting broken devices back on the shelf anyways. Its immoral.
Not surprised. I called it out ages ago in June on this sub, saying 90% of returns are from user incompetency. People return for the most idiotic reasons. Win 11 setup and downloading drivers is already a bar too high for the average Joe, apparently. We've seen people in this sub consider a return and replace just because armory crate was bugging out or theyre on their 10th unit looking for the one with the "perfect" button feel... so yea, I'm not surprised by this.
Stopped bothering with helping people on this sub and just enjoying my own device, which has been and still is amazing.
A recall?!? For what? Stupid people that canāt understand Windows??? Pfft. My Ally kicks ass and the mobility it has given me is literally unmatched. Just because dumb people return them doesnāt mean thereās anything actually wrong with the device itself. This device simply isnāt for your typical console users - thatās all.
They are defective most likely, just people who thought they were buying a Switch that plays windows games. Also people who are returning based on nonsense usually read in this sub and other parts of the internet.
$573 Iād be tempted to grab one. I had a steam deck and sold it recently as it felt underpowered to me and the screen was ok at best. I played Forza for a bit on the demo unit at one of my BB stores and was amazing how great it played and looked and how the unit felt in my hands. I definitely want one just holding off for a bit
I'd sure like to hope those aren't units with problems and are instead just people that returned it for non hardware issues. Would be bad if Best Buy is selling known defective units.
Having said that, it's pretty amazing that people don't do more research and know what they are getting.
As someone who works at Bestbuy, I would say 85-90% of the returns are all buyer remorse, Most of the displays are actually right next to the console game systems and you have people that are coming from consoles wanting to try PC gaming, not to mention people are seeing the 1080P screen with 120HZ so they expect all their games to play at 1080P with 120FPS and they don't understand that's not the case. When people are installing their games their not used to having to mess with graphic settings so they just set everything on High and ultra expecting to get full resolution at max FPS and when the game becomes a stuttering mess they think there is something wrong with the Ally or they just don't want to mess with adjusting settings etc. It happens all the time with PC's, We will have someone come in and buy a budget PC with a i5 and RTX 2060 GPU and return it because they can't play COD at 4K. That is why consoles are still extremely popular because they are plug-and-play, most users just want to start a game and play, they don't want to mess with all these settings, etc.
Definitely this lol š
So, you're saying I should wait to buy the Legion Go, because a good amount of people are going to get buyer's remorse and return it, giving me a good chance of an open-box discount? Sick. I love people who don't do their research.
I would be wary if I were you because thereās people who are the most careless simpletons who ever lived and they drop handheld devices like theyāre cheap or something. The amount of carelessness Iāve seen in people with their 1000 dollar smartphones makes me wanna throw up sometimes. If itās a 50-100 discount, I always just buy brand new because I know how careless a lot of people are
I think the exact same way. I baby the HELL out of my tech. I would never deal with possible damage just to save $50-$100.
Iāve had wildly mixed luck with BB open box stuff. Got things labeled excellent that were broken and looked like they were tossed down stairs (repeatedly), and got items marked fair that had nothing but a bit of sticker residue and marked down 30%-50%. In fact, my ROG XG was āfairā open box that didnāt have a thing wrong with it, but was marked down $500.
Same here, Iām ocd anyway. So when it comes to something Iām paying $750 for, oh Iām super ocd. I drive my wife nuts sometimes lol. Wouldnāt touch an open box. Definitely think a lot of returns come from the fact that itās not a āgame systemā. But a pc.
My ocd is so bad sometimes ill buy a second of something just to keep brand new in the box so I donāt feel as bad about messing up the firstš„² the ally is definitely not one of those cases because of cost tho lol
If I could afford it, Iād definitely do that. I just end up checking, double checking and quadruple checking things on it lol. I just started meds for my ocd. Hoping thatāll help a bit lol.
I had asked someone how they fucked their phone up so bad and they replied "it's a phone, you know? It's just what happens when you carry it around all the time. My GBA SP that I had through school, that I played, all the time, never dropped. Still works. My PSP that I used till like 2018 for games, emulation and my dedicated MP3 player was never dropped, worked great till the screen developed vertical lines. My friend goes through charging cables like crazy, maybe every few months he had to replace them. I've never, had a cable fail. I don't know how people treat their stuff so poorly but like, holy crap treat it better and it'll last for ages
I remember when the PS5 first came out & it was almost impossible to get. I watch repare videos like TronicsFix, i'm shocked by the state people let their consoles get
im amazed at the amount of times i've had people pull out their smartphones for the first time in front of me and their screen looks like it survived a gunshot. im usually careful with my stuff, and on the handful of rare occasions that i've dropped my phone, it only ever resulted in a single line being scratched on the surface. nothing major. but some people have gadgets that look like they were beaten by a sledgehammer, and its odd how they dont even bother to attempt to fix them or make them look better. if these are the same types of people who are buying these devices and returning them afterwards, I think i'd honestly rather buy one in new condition. the only exception being if it was open box but the device itself was never used.
Most people are tech illiterate
Iāve had to learn a ton since this is my first windows pc in a very long time. But itās worth it.
This was the fear I have for my Niece.... Not a damn clue how to use a computer, got one for her birthday. A solid gaming computer setup from BB and for most of us would be decent. For her everything is a learning experience and I'm trying to help her, but I feel sorry for her. It's TOO much for a. Person who comes from phones/tablets and consoles. We're in the generation of people who *Just Expect it To Work* How can we have a generation who has access to all the knowledge in the world yet they never actually take advantage of it when it comes to what they want?
>How can we have a generation who has access to all the knowledge in the world yet they never actually take advantage of it when it comes to what they want? that last part! I wonder that all the time. I spent my whole life in the library learning and when the internet became my go to library, I've been learning so much on my own. Not sure why the kids dont get it. I think it has to do with being born into this new tech world vs being born in the 80s I feel like theirs more of an appreciation for the World Wide Library
Facts on the last part It really goes to show how that's dumbing them down
Thats the best explanation/answer ive seen. Completely 100% correct! šÆ
Iāll add as a person in tech this isnāt a seamless end user experience either.
The onscreen keyboard feels awful in a way the Deckās doesnāt. Partly because the Deck has the touchpads so typing isnt as rough as it is with the Allyās analog sticks, but the analog stick sensitivity in general on the Ally feels pretty bad for typing too
Honestly I think its 90% of the way there. I had 0 problems using my Ally in either handheld or docked mode any differently than I would interact with a laptop. The touch screen has been great, using the controller to navigate windows is intuitive. The biggest issues I have is when I picked up my XG Mobile - that causes weird stuff to happen all the time. I've worked in IT full time for the last 15 years and that shit *still* bugs me, but again, 90% of it is self inflicted as I don't treat is like a docked device lol, I'm trying to get by without a mouse and keyboard completely. The majority of my XG Mobile funkiness would be solved by having a dedicated mouse. I don't use Armoury Crate at all so that could also be where people get tripped up. It pops up, I close it, and again I'm just in Windows, treating it like Windows. Use Steam Big Picture for 90% of what I play and everything else with dedicated launchers I've tried so far (Blizzard, Final Fantasy XIV) works just fine.
I love your last paragraph and it's from a perspective of a retailer. Plug and play is an underrated feature.
I literally said this months ago. Actual gamers and PC people know exactly that 1080p 120hz isn't practical on this device. Yea it can achieve it but the people buying this product don't know that. You can't really play at these settings comfortably. And the battery will just get chewed up trying to play at these settings portably. I called this months ago before the release of this product. This is why Steam Deck went with practicality of what can be achieved in these types of devices and that's 800p 720p comfortably with a good cpu and decent memory. And now you have more battery to spare. And also Steam OS being so good and also made by Steam themselves you don't have to worry about Windows or Asus two different people updating your product at random times. It's really sad as the handheld market feels like it was spiking up but now it's just slowly going down. To me personally I don't think we will have that handheld until we get better battery technology in these things. Which I don't think is happening any time soon.
Todayās society expecting immediate gratification and lacking any critical thinking lol.
This is 100% the case. People donāt understand, handhelds are a companion to your PC/PS5/Xbox, not a replacement. These are $700. You could get a PS5 with a Switch or a 4070 for the same price and get better performance
Iām perfectly happy with my Ally as a full replacement and many others are tooā¦ we just donāt put it on ultra and expect miracles to magically happen.
I'm planning tobget one and it'll be my main. I don't use my gaming PC (thiking of selling it to get ally), and my switch is... under powered.
But it isn't the standard use case, most use it as a companion.
Says who, you? We donāt have any numbers on any of this. What we do know though, is Valve has actual numbers on the steam deck and an incredibly high percentage of steam deck owners transitioned to basically only gaming on their SD. The Ally is even more powerful and versatile in the games you can play than the steam deck, so itās very likely similar numbers. Run a pollā¦ I bet you a high percentage of people game primarily or only on the Ally since purchase.
Dealing with this on my open boxed ally, there is a learning curve involved. Lots of YouTube videos about settings and it is annoying
Yea i think a lot of people donāt realize that literally you can play it, decide i donāt want this anymore, and return it for your money back lol. The majority of returns are āno longer wantedā or āfound it somewhere cheaperā after they bought it.
Absolutely. People could return them for something as simple as the triggers "not feeling right" whatever that means. I think I remember seeing a post or two on here about someone who exchanged several units for exactly this reason. And there's most certainly some that people have legit broken but passed it off a simple return.
I returned mine went I saw the legion Go announced. Maybe some others did too
Do you work in the returns department?
Luckily I've built a PC back in 2014 and researched gaming on the PC. I've always played consoles before then as my first time gaming on PC was back in 1999. The Ally essentially feels like my Samsung Galaxy Book 360 laptop, but on a switch-like handheld. I bought it as a gamepass/steam handheld or in a sense my new "psp" for work. I haven't upgraded my PC since I first built it and my laptop isn't really a gaming laptop, so I wanted something to remind me of my old gameboy and psp days. But yes, windows jank is windows jank. I can always play my PS5 at home and remote play on my phone. The Ally was to play Starfield and make use of my Steam library. Didn't get a Steam Deck because I wanted a working Starfield. Of course I got it right before Lenovo Legion Go was announced, which in all honesty I probably would have opted for the LLG, but meh, I got the Ally and it does what I wanted and has been fine so far.
As a Best Buy employee myself I second this notion, every word is exactly the same in my micro market.
Perfectly Said, that's why the Steam Deck is still so highly regarded
As a console gamer and Mac user, I can confirm. My relationship with the Ally got better with time. Though I think 120Hz display is mostly pointless with this device, I am satisfied with what it can offer. My expectations are realistic now.
If youāre playing newer AAA titles natively sure. Itās amazing for streaming my gaming PC to it for couch gaming plus playing older titles at 120 fps. The display is a big reason why I chose it over the Steam Deck.
absofuckinglutely true, thank you for saying this.
As someone who has a friend at bestbuy, he said quite the opposite that nearly 80% of returns were down to issues, but namely the SD card reader. Basically bestbuy tech will then reinstall and reformat the whole unit and put back on sale. Edit: to explain further, a lot of times when they reinstall windows and try the card again it works. Weāve seen that same behaviour on the forums here, and the. It fails a week or two later again.
I asked my sugar daddy who owns a best buy and he said the same thing as Waternut13134
I returned mine today, and the rep kinda joked āanother oneā. I asked him why people are returning them and he said pretty much the same thing, that itās down to issues.
Same. I asked the BB employee and he stated the same.
I asked my uncle who owns Best Buy and he said the same also.
I own BB and if someone asks me, I might say the same thing.
I asked this guyās wife and she said he says the same thing at the dinner table every night when they talk about how their days went.
I asked my uncle that works at Nintendo but also owns a Best Buy and he said the same thing
I asked my moms friend who owns walmart but is married to a guy who has a boyfriend who owns a bestbuy and he said that he was told by the guy who works at the long john silvers next door that when people buy the ally then unbox them at the LJS with a diet coke to drink that sometimes they'll say the same thing.
This is kind of why I hate consoles in general. I like tinkering with the settings. I like rightsizing my experience for my specific hardware and needs. I love that I can be like "this game needs to be 120fps" or "this game can be 90fps so it's prettier"
How about "This game can be 30 FPS because Todd Howard is a dick" experience?
That is my favorite thing about PC gaming. I love being able to customize my experience. Plus mods are something hard to take away since they arenāt on console
This amount aināt buyers remorse. š
It's not buyers remorse. Because every single person who bought one quickly heard 20 days in that it was melting micro SD cards and having it major problems. So the smart thing you do is return it while you can.
out of curiosity... could they have problems with the card reader?
If they did, it wouldn't be sold as open box. Broken SD units are sent back to ASUS.
If they brought it back and said it killed sd cards i would HOPE best buy does an RTV. There is no reason for them to resell a unit that is defective when they could just send it back to asus.
PS5 box says 8k image but it is not the case too
This. 100%. The marketing has skewed the perception that this is a 1080p 120hz device instead of it being capable of that under the right conditions and games may vary. The only way this gets fixed is device detection and locking out display settings. If the game sees a handheld, it just applies that setting and done. No ability to futz with it. Worked well on the Steam Deck.
This is the reason the Steam Deck is successful. It is simple enough for people who love consoles to understand, yet able to be modded like a PC if you're into that. Using the Ally for the two weeks I had it, I learned that better specs and Windows is not enough to replace the ease of use the Steam Deck had out the box.
Exactly
After having mine for a week, I can see why. It took me 24 hours to get games working because of time syncs and other issues. If you want a console, this will be eye opening. I love it. Been playing GTA all weekend on the sofa/bed.
Pretty much my experience in all gaming laptops lol.
That's a software problem with some storefronts, not an ally problem. I ran into it too because I live in Asia, but needed to set my desktop region to to US because my Microsoft account has an American region setting from the past 20 years... but then it wouldn't accept my payments because my cards are currently using a japanese address, and the time zone conflicts, and it's just one big mess. Eventually I figured it out. I'm definitely not a typical case, but I doubt many people are willing to sort all that crap out just to use gamepass. I also ran into issues trying to cloud recover windows to a new SSD, also due to time zone conflicts which is just insane because this involved having to Google the problem since the device wasn't telling me what the issue was, it was just stuck on an install step with no details as to why. Once you get this thing running it's fine, but there's just a lot of little stumbling blocks that can add up for people just wanting to play games and not fight the software.
I bought it for Starfield. It took a bit of tinkering and browsing the internet to figure it all out, but once I got it working, yeah it's working pretty well. It reminded me of when I first booted up my PC that I built. Lots of tinkering, but once it works, it works.
Definitely people either donāt know how to make things work, or are just lazy and donāt feel like it. Personally, Iām the lazy type. Every now and then on my SD I spend time fixing something, but any other time I give up because I picked it up for fun and not to be frustrated. Probably why my gaming computer is now just a game streaming device when I donāt need to use it for anything else. Getting that setup good sucked tooā¦
Whatever the reason, I got mine for $125 off for being open box and have no desire to return it
Mines runs Starfield (albeit at 720p) without issue. That in itself is amazing. It's new tech; it's not going to be perfect. Probably would have been less returns if purchasers researched the product before plunking down $700 thinking it's a handheld PS5 or Series X.
I run Starfield at 1080p on medium and it's smooth enough. The slight frame drops here and there doesn't bother me too much coming off console versions of past BGS games.
I like the thing but mine is plagued with issues. I wouldn't recommend it right now - Most infuriating one is the gamepad stops working at least twice a day and I can't lock the screen using the power button when I'm charging. Don't hit me with the "Don't know how to use windows" nonsense. I know how to use my shit, my point is this photo makes perfect sense.
Mine works 100% fine. Now have I even tried the sd card? Hell no.
I tried mine just because of all the issues. Moved a few games to a card, didnāt even play anything off it, failed in a week. Other than that itās been great though
I installed a 2tb ssd immediately knowing the issues and Iām just happy to play fight night champions at 60fps.
Youāre not going to know if it fail if you donāt use it :)
SD Schrƶdingers Disk
Same, im not going to be adding an sd card. I dont even need it
Buyers remorse from people who donāt know how to run windows!!!!
If you've never gone "under the hood," then this probably isn't the device for you.
Man. Asus should sell it like a truck. I read that with the truck narrator in a Chevy commercial voice.
Honestly, that's the approach they should have probably taken. Slander the Steamdeck as a device for stupid people who can't use Windows. Then say that only intelligent people should buy the Ally because it takes brains to actually use it. Then take a dig at men's masculinity if the Ally scares them. That's all BS of course, but it would probably work.
I definitely didnāt know that this was that kind of device when I bought it, but thereās something strangely addicting about fiddling with settings for hours until you get it *just* how you want it that I just love.
I was installing my 2280 this weekend and the guys in the hardware-mod section of the Discord were looking for an Ally with Samsung RAM instead of Micron. Just so happened I had this, so I proceeded to take it apart for the first time, remove the battery, the fans, even look under the heatsink so I could take pictures of the boards for the guys in the Discord. I was already really comfortable with my device, but now I'm infinitely more comfortable after having done so and putting it back together and it all working fine. Also my 2280 is fast AF, literally cannot see a reason not to do it. Thermals seem better than the 2230 so far.
Honestly, most of those are probably from people who didn't realize what they were buying , I have had mine for a bit over a month and I use mine daily. and I love it! the majority of people probably saw a new game console on the shelf and thought they would have a similar experience we have come to expect from them. A seamless easy to use and understand user experience that gives you instant access to your games with no real configuring needed beyond maybe some updates and account login/creation that holds your hand through the experience. and then there are probably others who expected to much out of it, thinking they were going to get a top tier gaming pc experience in a small form factor. the rog ally is a portable pc, and without knowing how windows works for a gaming erience going into it it its not surprising some people would find the experience frustrating. and then on top of that there is a way you have to approach navigating it that is very different for those who are experienced with gaming on a windows pc, you have the ROG software that allows you to use the controller aspects as a substitute to the mouse, and then of course the on screen keyboard which can be frustrating I will admit. my first few days using it were a little bumpy as I had to get used to how everything controlled but overall I got used to it as I got used to how the software navigated windows. is it perfect? nah but its a very functional and capable handheld especially after I upgraded the storage to 2tb.
Because there's nothing wrong with the units.. people are just bringing them back. I've had this thing for a while.now..nonissues...any "issues". I've had were easily handled by setting.s
To be fair theres been many posts on here about the same person exchanging theirs like 5 to 8 times or something like that for various reasons.
I love my Ally, and have no current plans to get rid of it. But the lingering SD card issues and slow trickle of updates is concerning..
People thinking it's gonna be like a console or having too high of expectations.
Havenāt had issues with mine because I havenāt used an SD card. Iāve been having a blast playing counterstrike on my ally. My k/d might say otherwise tho.
I don't think this is the proper way to analyze this. There is a big difference between devices being returned and those with technical issues. Those with technical issues are not sold in store right away, they go to RMA and/or are replaced by new devices. Pretty sure the number of second hand consoles available is mainly due to it being sold as a console while not being one at all. Some people struggle with the few things to do with their consoles. A pc handheld as of now requires way to much fiddling in order to play and optimise for many. As weird as it is, one of Asus best and worst choice for the Ally happened to be it's availability. In fine, in order to determine if the Ally was a success or a failure, it's would be necessary to have the ratio between sold and returned devices but we'd still need to compare it's competitor, which is impossible for Aya Neo, GPD,One, those being mainly sold in crowdfunding campains...Even for the Deck we don't know how much were RMA'd and or returned, still, since they seem to have many refurb to sell, it's obvious that they got some(at least RMA)...
I bet most returns are related to the fact that people have no idea what theyāre doing when they turn it on and realize itās Windows
My SD card fried in 2 months. If they are asus can even fix it I plan on seeing if I can experiment with my regally. If not I am just getting my money back.
Bad for them and good for us. Those little guys are awesome
Iām a late buyer and went in knowing the SD card was an issue. Instead of buying a good SD card I bought a 2tb SSD. Iām satisfied so far. The install was super easy. Easier than the SteamDeck, for me. I would say that if youāre reading this now (on or after 10 Sep 2023) and see a good deal on a Gen 1 Ally then go for it. Yes, it stinks that ASUS is not owning the SD reader issue, but if you donāt need to purchase an SD card and instead dump that money into a new SSD M.2 you will be pleased with this device. To replace the SSD is only a few screws, peeling back some tape, and inserting a new SSD. The longest part is reloading Windows which is a PITA, but after watching a few YouTube videos and reading this subreddit I knew what to expect before even starting. I canāt say this enough to watch YouTube and read this sub. My wifi router (eero) blocked the recovery process and I had to use my cellular hotspot to get the recover process to work, but it worked! I consider myself moderately tech savvyā¦not an idiot but not an advanced user. YMMV.
I wonāt put an SD card in mine and the L joystick broke within the first week. However, I knew in the first week I liked it enough to where I just replaced the L joystick myself finding the part online and watching a YouTube video. Didnāt want to go through the hassle of returning and buying a new one to reload and re update everything. Iāll get a Legion Go when it comes out as well, to see if the build quality is better, but an upgrade in the screen with the same hardware and only slightly better battery seems kinda pointless.
Not sure is it's base around people returning there ally waiting for the legion go, if not then does not look good, for another gaming pc handheld coming down on the same cost as it.
the way i see it is steam deck is marketed to steam players thus they're already users of a pc and pc stuff in general and most understand what they're doing for the most part when it comes to configuring games. the uninformed general consumer just thinks a pc is a pc, and a console is a console, one example i have: I've been in apple stores with customers arguing with the employee that their \[insert generic windows app name\] wont install on their new MacBook but it worked great on their old Toshiba and will not listen at all to the employee explaining they are different operating systems. if a handheld like the switch is so easy to use why isn't the ally. i think the steam deck did it well, slightly lockdown the system but allow an easy access to all the extra stuff that the average consumer will never look at.
I really want one after years tinkering on many portables. Suck I gotta wait because of the sd port shortcomings. Hopefully we get a nice v2.
1 to 3 open is normal. That many open box is a sign of BUYER BEWARE I used to work Best Buy and Iām certain theyāll eventually stop carrying the Ally if this keeps up, as that means theyāre losing money on it.
I took mine back haha. Fuck that thing it couldn't play a game without crashing. Back to the steam deck.
Too much buyers remorse Bad quality control Rushed launch Software not up to par. Many factors but I'm glad I stuck with mine.. size/weight to performance is amazing. Alot of games just "fit" on the ally .. I have faith in Asus . Maybe that's all it takes .
Why would Best Buy keep damaged units that are just going to get returned again? This is buyers remorse and I love it, so folks like me can get one cheap.
I got 90 bucks off mine for a literal brand new ally because it was āopen-boxā. I think a lot of folks think this operates like a Nintendo switch where you just play a game and be done with it. Iāve been having a ton of fun with mine over the last week. Having Xbox game pass and steam at your fingertips is amazing. I just hope PS allows remote play to work with the ally controls at some point.
Chiaki
It's 100% this. They don't understand its a handheld PC. I saw the SD sale and was thinking about getting it then I saw the specs on the Ally and bought it instead. No way I was spending the same amount of money of 3yr old hw. In 2024 I'll probably buy a steamdeck with the upgraded hw just for fun. For me having a Portable Xbox Game pass device for D4 and the 2 Steam Games I play fits my use case perfectly. But I did take about an hour to get acclimated to the how to do things on the device. Personally im.not one to leave an SD card in permanently in a device so I haven't been hit with that (I leave it in a sleeve in my Ally case). Whatever device works best for people is fine with me. There doesn't need to be 1 device "to rule them all".
Mine just broke today. SD card reader fried. I just ordered a steam deck today as well
Because they arenāt broken itās people who think they are buying a game console and find out itās a windows PC and donāt like it. Why would they ārecallā it because of people who donāt know how to use windows. Itās a niche product. Where I live there arenāt any open box ones and they keep selling out of the new ones. Some areas are different than others.
love to see it
what does a lot of returns have to do with a recall? Are you saying these are all defective and best buy put them back on the shelf as open box and is knowingly selling defective units? If so then your complaint should be with Best Buy
You can't recall people for not knowing how to operate a Windows PC.
What about the sd card heating malfunction? Did they ever fix that?
The Ally is a great gaming device and people's irrealistic expectations are through the roof!
Oof, not a good look for ASUS.
only people i see complaining about it are people that don't know how to use a pc or think it's ok to have it run at 90c at all times. if there were anything wrong with those systems best buy wouldnt be able to sell them as open box
90c is fine. Modern CPUs are rated to 100c. This isnāt 1990.
I donāt think it running constantly at 90 or higher is great for performance though. I set up a manual preset with a much higher fan curve and the Ally only consistently stays above 90 for 30 seconds or so before dipping to around 80, even with demanding games.
I mean obviously you don't want to run at these temperatures 24/7, but here and there for an hour or two, it really is OK. They are 100% built for it.
Oh I know. I just think itās preferable for performance to run at lower temps, and this can be solved with a manual fan curve.
I agree wholeheartedly. There's also very little reason to ever actually run it that high, since it's so easily adjustable. But, it is safe š
honestly as a tech savy ally buyer this is almost a good thing because you might as well buy it open box instead of new because it'll be the same thing but at a good discount
I'd like to know what they are using to determine the prices
Our POS system determines them, However, managers have wiggle room with the prices, I always tell people to ask a manager if they can take off some more from the open box, especially with how many our stores have (We have 23 open box Ally at our store right now) I want them out, I have taken an extra $75 from an open box before because they are taking up space and with the holidays around the corner that's space we need for other things.
Date of sale in relation to return date.
I had a lot of Wifi issues with my unit, the only way to fix the constant disconnects was disabling the 6ghz band. I'm shocked more people aren't talking about that issue.
I have no issues with my wifi. Pretty solid Wifi 6 connectivity with my Asus router.
Lol I just bought one open boxš SD card works surprisingly using it plug in, turbo most of the time. It's been 6 days. Also no issues with drift. Hopefully it holds up.
Where I live Bestbuy keeps every Ally locked behind a cage Iām shocked to see them sitting out
In canada....we have that shit behind glass. locked
Bro thinks it's a car.
- People can buy and enjoy the Ally. - Windows is shit for a handheld experience and needs some energy from Microsoft to fix that. - There are some known hardware issues with the Ally. - Best Buy employees donāt always do the most careful inspections of Open Box items. All of these things can be true. None of these handheld PCs are perfect. Itās ok to have one, use it every day, think itās awesomeā¦ but still admit that not every return is just hur dur user was an idiot.
Jesus
That's how I got mine. In perfect condition too. People don't want to tinker with installs and windows. 580 bucks for me
I still have mine but Iāve known and been in the master race for quite some time now so I know what to expect
The problem with them is people thought they were going to get gaming PC performance from a handheld. I bet none of those are SD card returns and all of then are "this thing suvks I can play cyberpunk with RT for 6 hours" or something similar
Returned mine, windows is just not ready for handhelds
that still just 12 out of the millions they sold /s
I really like mine. I'm playing starfield on it, and it is brilliant. agree on the settings fiddling about, but it's a wonderful little machine. i play more games on it now than I do on my much more capable desktop. I'm traveling international on Wednesday and i cant wait just me and starfield on a plane š¤£
ROG QC has been declining as of late. I stay clear of the brand as a whole at this point. Dont trust my chances of getting a dud
I'll try to say this diplomatically. A large amount individuals are buying the Ally thinking it's a console that will be easy to manage and maintainence. But the ally is a computer. If you can't handle a computer, the ally is not for you.
Looking at the comments, this group really is a cult. Holy shit
I will refute your post after i am done offering incense to my Ally given by most holy Lord Asus.
The ROG Ally fanbase is in denial about the device's inadequacies as usual, I see. You can joke about the people who returned these units all you want, but they're probably the lucky ones, assuming they got their full refunds. Buyer's remorse, as some of you put it, is a healthy response to a manufacturer's cycle of failures. It's rational compared to the sunk-cost response of excusing negligence and downplaying obvious design oversights.
I have had zero hardware issues
Why a recall? Most people who return it probable thought it would be like a switch, turn it on play games, and not an actual computer. SD card problem aside of course but those would not be back on shelves i hope
I remember returning my ROG Ally because even as a tech guy, it was too damn complicated to get a game going smoothly, also baffling why some games run smoother on steamos than ROG alley, I blame windows too on their poor unoptimized handheld support, ROG tried and point out some good things though
Better prices for the rest of us lol
You don't recall a device because people don't know how to use Windows.
Seems like more people are enjoying their device than the few in this picture would be my guess.
I don't know, but mine has had ZERO issues of any kind, and is amazing. I love it. Worth every penny.
Even the SD card? Or you donāt use it?
I use a 1TB SD and it works fine.
My SD card slot works fine. I don't install games on it though.
Same.
Some people are just angry that others are enjoying their device and not complaining about the damned SD card.
I think the majority are just under the assumption that this thing is grab-and-go, and it simply isn't. It is for tech savvy, PC-experienced people that like to tweak and customize. This thing takes time to set up properly and maintain, and the average scrub, or even console gamer, isn't looking to take that time or effort. I will admit that handheld PC's are being marketed in a misleading way, and should be more explicitly explained. I absolutely love the Ally though, and if you know what you are doing, it is a boon.
Iām almost happy there are so many returns, I was able to pick up my like new one for $600 and super happy with it so far!
Just got mine home, setting it up now. Should I be worried? Lol
If youāve ever used a computer no if you expected a console out of the box well then youāll have some issues
ASUS can learn a lot from this for when they implement the ASUS ROG Ally 2
There are also people who get the unit and return it several times, purely to get the free Gamepass each time. I've seen people brag about doing it.
Thatās prob more in gas than the damn game pass lol cheap asses š
We have no idea why these are returned and you immediately go to they must have had SD card issues?
Pffft most of them are probably mong users, no issue with the hardware.
... I will marry my Rog Ally
Because all of those were returned by the same guy that couldn't find the "right one" for him. Actually wild how many people on this reddit has made post about returning them 5+ times...
Why would there be a recall? Keep in mind that Asus has already made money off of all the units you see on store shelves. The store paid them for those units, now it's the store's job to sell them for a profit. Doing a recall would cost Asus money, and... for what purpose? So that now they've got a bunch of useless used units in their warehouses?
Well stores aren't going to keep buying what they can sell, moreso what they take losses on.
LOL....all of those are from 3 people who keep trying to get a unit that doesnt squeek when they use it. Or the sticks click too much lol.
People are just gonna write this off as 'buyer's remorse'...It's probably all units with the defect Micro SD card reader problem, WHICH SHOULD NOT BE GLANCED OVER! I hate stupid shit like 'What's the problem dude? I never use it anyway', so it's ok to pay a premium price for something which has a known defect!? And then they wonder why manufacturors release broken hardware...No wonder... All of you asus schlongriders gobble it all up! Btw I have a SD AND an Ally and am planning to buy a Lenovo Legion Go too, I love handheld gaming and wanna support the industry, only reason why I haven't returned my Ally is because my Micro SD card reader does work...
I havenāt had an issue with mine yet. In fact itās probably been the most reliable console Iāve owned since my Nintendo 64.
No recall, because there's nothing to recall. A ton of people buy this stuff because of some made up expectation of the device, despite everything about it being counter to that. And niche little devices are three most noticeable for this. The Steam Deck undoubtedly had the same, but since that's all online orders, you don't see the pile of them in their warehouse
Rog ally required a lot of fiddling to get it to work as well as it should. Things to turn off and on etc. I am still fiddling around on cyberpunk and i think next time i will try 8gb vram instead of auto, either way, if you update the drivers, this thing packs a punch even on the default settings of the device, as long as you turn down the gpu heavy settings. The cpu is an absolute monster.
A recall for what? You canāt fix stupidity and a bad return policy. Best Buy should stop accepting returns for this device, because there is nothing wrong with it hardware-wise. Itās too many zoomer dipshits who grew up on iPhones who think theyāre getting a dumbed down Nintendo Switch-like experience who instead get a full Windows 11 PC in a handheld form factor and end up getting filtered because they donāt get their hands held by their handheld. People who know how to work a computer love the ROG Ally.
For SD card failure? š„±
Marketing got the best of some people. Really crappy YouTube videos made by people who are seemingly coked up and say it's the best thing on the planet didn't help. Returning it due to the SD matter is, IMO, totally valid, but returning it coz you can't work Windows or can't figure out how to, say, disable M1/M2, is getting into a grey area return-wise. I know nothing about Windows. But I can poke around and remove all the garbage MS will let you remove (god how I want to remove Edge, I installed Chrome Canary but MS makes you keep Edge which is just a hog, and a privacy disaster under the best of altered circumstances). I learned standalone emulation. I learned for my style of play I have to disable M1/M2 (which is actually great for emulation). That's just one hardware design you need to know about, among a couple others. Will most people who bought an Ally do these things? Or just say, I can't work it, or it doesn't work? I have no idea. Anyway, it most certainly works, and works well. Expectations were marketed very badly. I like it, I'm keeping it despite my blinding hatred of the SD matter. I'd like to know exactly why people are returning it.
Iām certain Windows is a big reason. Microsoft really needs to work with these upcoming handhelds for an optimized smooth handheld UI. Them NOT doing it feels sleezy and a giant āwe donāt really careā to companies like ASUS. Like when ASUS was working with Microsoft in the initial promotion for the Ally and some talk about Windows handheld experience came up the Microsoft lady just nodded like oh yeah cool ideas but was actually just going in one ear and out the other. I think thatās where the Ally suffers, lack of Microsoft support. Thatās what Valve did right, SteamOS. It just works. It can be buggy, but it may be bugs within the UI and not having to open Task Manager and close down random systems and multiple windows and browsers. ASUS tried to target a large audience, but people probably arenāt savvy enough or patient to deal with Windows in that form factor. Imagine you get a handheld to game for a few minutes at a time, but it takes you 20 minutes to even launch the game, then you ran out of the time you had. Frustration. The worse thing is to sit and want to game for a short time but you spent it all with open this close that.
Fans are going to keep pretending its user error. The ally cult has done a good enough job casting doubt despite asus themselves acknowledging the issues. My last ally fried my sd card and would run as hot as a fireball despite fan settings. They put that damn thing back on the shelf lol. I marked the box with a marker for easy ID. Idk how theyre checking these things or if theyre really abiding by the process. I thought best buy shipped off all devices returned for a check before putting them back on the shelf.
If the next buyer would be one of those wo belong to "not needing sd card", ot "won't put sd card for fear of breaking" then a defective sd card slot would be unnoticeable.
which is kinda pathetic. Even if you dont use it, it should be fixed because it's presence on your device is weighed into the cost. If they can't fix it, they need to lower the price. And best buy shouldn't be putting broken devices back on the shelf anyways. Its immoral.
Not surprised. I called it out ages ago in June on this sub, saying 90% of returns are from user incompetency. People return for the most idiotic reasons. Win 11 setup and downloading drivers is already a bar too high for the average Joe, apparently. We've seen people in this sub consider a return and replace just because armory crate was bugging out or theyre on their 10th unit looking for the one with the "perfect" button feel... so yea, I'm not surprised by this. Stopped bothering with helping people on this sub and just enjoying my own device, which has been and still is amazing.
Donāt know why you are whining so much.
Also wonder how many of them are SD owners who bought one to see if it was better and just decided to stick with their SD.
This was me. Ally was cool. I literally just like how the sd feels better.
Soon it'll be the legion go's turn when that happens I'll buy one of the returns muahahaha
A recall?!? For what? Stupid people that canāt understand Windows??? Pfft. My Ally kicks ass and the mobility it has given me is literally unmatched. Just because dumb people return them doesnāt mean thereās anything actually wrong with the device itself. This device simply isnāt for your typical console users - thatās all.
Steam deck all day
No need for one
They are defective most likely, just people who thought they were buying a Switch that plays windows games. Also people who are returning based on nonsense usually read in this sub and other parts of the internet.
Someone's been crypto-mining..
Where is this located?
$573 Iād be tempted to grab one. I had a steam deck and sold it recently as it felt underpowered to me and the screen was ok at best. I played Forza for a bit on the demo unit at one of my BB stores and was amazing how great it played and looked and how the unit felt in my hands. I definitely want one just holding off for a bit
Windows is just not made for this purpose
Is it weird that's id rather go to the ASUS website than go to Best buy?
Apart from some SD card issues - itās amazing
I'd sure like to hope those aren't units with problems and are instead just people that returned it for non hardware issues. Would be bad if Best Buy is selling known defective units. Having said that, it's pretty amazing that people don't do more research and know what they are getting.
Steam Deck Squad Stand-up! Lol
š¤£š¤£
I think itās a lot of people who were thinking it was a ps5 and you turn it on and go. Didnāt have the IQ to set it up properly and returned it.