Welcome to Geek Therapy Radio. You've got your Mental Cure creator Johnny Hamburger.
Sorry I stuttering a little bit. It's kind of chilly out here. I
am in Lynchburg, Virginia, recording on 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 not a particularly busy street, except for when
you start recording something and then of course cars start coming down the street.
It's cold, it's rainy. It is towards the end of the year as
of recording here, so that's just the weather here in Central Virginia. North
Central Virginia is where Lynchburg, Virginia is, and I'm happy to be recording
the show out here, and I really really wanted to record one this week.
I can't record inside because all of the 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'd try to squeeze into show. On a
technical note, I am recording this straight into my sixteen inch M one MacBook
Pro. What's the processor. It's an M one Pro processor, not the
M one Max processor, but the M one pro processor, and I'm recording
into the main microphone that is underneath the left speaker grill. So anybody who
has a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro of any generation that I know of,
the main condenser microphone is under the left speaker grill. I know that MacBook
pros and MacBooks and MacBook Airs have several microphones around the chassis of the laptop,
but the main microphone. If you wanted to record audio in the best
quality possible, the main microphone is under the left speaker grill, and that's
where I am talking into. I'm maybe five or six inches away from the
grill here, and it should sound pretty nice. I really want to record
the show this week because there's something I've been meaning to talk about a little
bit of gear that I bought within the past couple weeks as of recording that
I wanted to kind of give my thoughts on after owning it for a couple
of weeks. That is the rog Ally, the Z one Extreme addition,
not the less powerful Z one Edition, but I have the rog Allies.
People people keep calling it the rog Ally, and it's one of those things
like Asis A Seuss how you want to pronounce things the rog ally, I
say rog ally because ROG stands for a Republic of Gamers. It's a Seus's
line of gamery, things like Razor this and that and alien ware and whatever.
So a SEUs has their line of gamer gear called ROG Republic of Gamers.
A matter of fact, I still have my fourteen inch Zephyrs G four
team, my ROG Zephyrs G fourteen with the RTX thirty sixty inside. The
new G fourteens go all the way up to an RTX forty ninety, like
one hundred and twenty five watt RTX forty ninety, which is just insane and
I'm so tempted. But they are ridiculously 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 baller laptop with an RTX forty eighty in it,
a seventeen inch laptop, which has gotten 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's my seventeen inch gigabyte Aorus seventeen h That's
right. I almost had to hit pause and remember the name of it,
My Gigabyte Aorus seventeen h. If you listen to past podcast, you've heard
me complaining a little bit about some of the some of the usability of it.
All. The hardware is amazing, the coolings of amazing, the screen's
amazing, but some of the little ergonomics of it just kind of made me
scratch my head, like why wouldn't you include, you know, an SD
card reader for instance. Why in the backlight keyboard, which is otherwise an
amazing keyboard, and the RGB looks amazing, 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's not back lit. You can't see if
you're in the dark. You have to bring out a flashlight to see,
which, oh is F eight and F nine? That's what the volume up
and down is. I guess by this point I've kind of memorized it,
but still it's one of those design decisions of the Gigabyte A or seventeen h
otherwise awesome laptop, Like why would you design the back of keyboard and then
not backlight the function keys. It's utterly ridiculous. But anyways, I do
have the rog Ally, the Z one Extreme Edition, and I do want
to give my thoughts on that. I know that this first segment I can
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 talking about Jack, but I'll save that for
a later segment. I want to just 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 I was on a collision course with the rog
Ally. It came out as of recording, you know, six or seven
months ago. It was a competitor to the Steam Deck, a competitor to
the Lenovo Legion that I think has come out after the rog Ally. So
the gaming PC handheld space has been heating up, and the first kind of
real actual competition to the Steam Deck was the rog Ally. And you may
be wondering, those of you who are more kind of tuned into this handheld
gaming PC industry, well, what about the one X player and what about
the all these different ones? Those are very expensive those are around eleven hundred
and twelve hundred dollars. The rog Ally at launch was seven hundred dollars.
Now it's down to like six hundred dollars for the Z one Extreme Edition and
four hundred dollars for the Z one Edition. The price is competitive to the
steam Deck, so the really some of the only competition to the steam Deck.
For a while there it was Steam Deck and the rog Ally in terms
of price. The rog Ally z E one Extreme launched at like seven hundred
dollars. It was one hundred or so dollars more expensive than even the most
expensive steam Deck, but it was still comparatively priced, and the rog Ally
is much more powerful than the steam Deck. The steam Deck. What has
going forward is that the steam Deck is it's made by Valve, and it
runs perfectly on Steam os, and it's just optimized. Games are optimized.
Developers optimize games to run on the Steam Deck, which is technically lower end
hardware than the rog Ally. But it's when a game's optimized to run perfectly
on a set, on a given set of hardware, it was a more
It was a better for a lot of people, was a better prospect.
There's a better purchase prospect to know that you'd have a Steam deck with all
the support in the world from Valve. It's a very fleshed out, well
thought out piece of hardware. Now it'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 more for tinkerers, people who are okay with
having Windows ten Home or Windows eleven pro, any version of Windows they want
on this gaming handteld. And that's what I wanted, and that's one reason
why Knew was on a collision course with it. I want to keep talking
about the rog Ally and my experience with it. Coming up the next segment,
and you're listening to geek Therapy Radio recording from Lynchburg, Virginia into my
MacBook Pro today. So more geek Therapy Radio coming up. You've got your
mental curator, Johnny Hemburger will be right back in just a moment. Welcome
back to geek Therapy Radio. You've got your mental curator, Johnny Hamburger.
Geek Therapy Radio dot com. I have redesigned the website just to keep it
simpler. When you go to geek Therapy Radio dot com. The very first
thing you see are the podcasts. I figure if this is a radio show
on a podcast, the very first thing people should have access to when they
visit the website for a radio show or podcast is the podcasts. Are is
the audio for the podcast website you're visiting. So if you go to geek
Therapy Radio dot com, you just see a playlist of the most in order.
It depends on how you set the order of it, but by default
it's from newest to oldest, so you'll see, you know, half dozen
or so of the latest show is right there, ready to go, ready
to play, which, by the way, on the website, I enable
downloading. Maybe other podcasts may not have that feature or disable that feature.
But if you go to geek there Radio 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 or whatever straight to your hard drive that you
can then load into your phone or load into UH if you're still using an
iPod or whatever you're you're listening device. Is if you want to listen offline.
Basically, if you don't pre download you know, podcasts through your podcast
app. If you go to geek Theraperioda dot com. You can just download
the physical files of each podcast to listen offline whenever you want. So anyways,
that's a plug geek Therapy Radio dot com and also all the social media
geek Therapy Radio podcast wherever you search it. Put in into Google, it'll
come up, Put it into Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spreaker.
You can ask your smart device to play the geek Therapy Radio podcast.
Just geek Therapy Radio, geek Therapy Radio podcast. Type in one of those
things and you'll see me red white and black color scheme as always what you
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you type in geek therapy or geek therapy rat or rad or whatever I,
at this point I should come up ranked one, you know, one or
two at least on se O and Search engine optimization. So just if you're
curious, if you're driving around listening to the radio, type in geek Therapy
Radio into your into Google or Duck Duck 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 owned the rog ally for a few weeks,
and I knew I was on a collision course with it. As a geek.
I I actually had been perusing the Steam deck because you for a while
I have been checked. As of recording, I don't know what the status
is currently on this on refurbished Steam decks, but I thought, hey,
you know, three hundred bucks, I could get a refurbished Steam deck and
upgrade the m DOT two SSD in there and be off to the races and
whatever for not, you know, not not a whole ton of money compared
to like a twelve hundred dollars gaming handheld. That was just out of the
question. But I was watching the rog ally. I was waiting for the
growing pains to kind of ease a little bit. Owners were complaining of the
SD card reader getting so hot that it would damage the micro SD card.
I have not experienced that, by the way, that phenomenon with the SD
card readers really heating up your micro SD cards in your SD No one's using
an SD card. You use an SD card with a micro SD card converter
in it, unless you're a photographer and you're using air videographer and you're using
those massive SD cards whatever. Most people use micro SD and that phenomenon of
the micro SD card reader becoming very hot was not isolated to the rog ally.
It's just when you have the smaller the form factor of whatever device you're
using, naturally, heat is an issue. So when you're trying to disperse
all the heat from the processor and the APU running the graphics and the processing,
the general processing, and you've got a micro SD card reader and this
and that very fast m DOT two NVMe solid state drive in there, heat's
an issue, and the micro SD card reader getting hot again was not isolated
to the rog ally. Any device with the micro SD card reader can get
very warm, if not burning to the touch. It gets hot in laptops
that I have, It gets hot in 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 at over one hundred megabytes per second now and
anytime you're talking about those kind of blistering read and write speeds, you're talking
about heat. You're talking about current being supplied to the solid state storage,
and that heat is going to need to be dissipated somehow. You know,
you have an m DOT two NVMe SSD s now that well for a while
that need heat sinks. Some of them you have fans built into it.
If you're building a rig and you're getting an NVMe SSD that can now read
up to twelve gigabytes read and write per second, which is crazy, like
gen Forge En five whatever. Uh, solid state drives, they need heat
sinks. Your storage now, your solid state storage now needs heat sinks.
So it's not uncommon for micro sds to get hot, for nvm ssd s
to get hot. It's just a thing now. So ROG was having a
particularly a particular problem with the with the micro SD slot getting kind of so
hot that it would damage the reader or damage the actual you know, micro
SD you have in there. I haven't experienced any damage. It does get
hot. And again, any any micro SD card reader that I've used in
the curve generation is they get hot. So ROG seems to have come out
with you know, firmware patches and things since released to address that issue.
I have certainly not encountered the issue to 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 before or day after I bought mine, they
issued a patch, a new firmware update, new software update that made the
you know, made the crate. Armory crate is kind of a Seus's front
end for loading games and adjusting system parameters like fan speed and how much you're
you're setting the TDP of the chips set 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 of armory crate on my laptop on my Zephyrs
G fourteen, and it was good for adjusting how much wattage I wanted to
send to the processor, how much wattage I wanted to send to the GPU,
and you know that's where you set your profiles for like efficiency or performance
or turbo or gaming or content creation whatever. You do all that through armory
crate and it works well. I've never really had a problem with armory crate
being too buggy for me using it on the ACESG fourteen, and I haven't
on the rog Ally, I hadn't used 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 on the fence about the rog ally is the
consensus up until when I bought When I bought mine was that, yeah,
it's really powerful gaming handteld. But there's just some kind of software bugs and
it's not as as fleshed out as easy 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 had been out for a while before that has
all the support from Steam. It's a really buttery, smooth experience. Games
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, and it's like, hey, if you're comfortable
using you know, Windows eleven on a touch screen, then you'll should be
fine with Ally because it's going to boot into Windows then you're gonna have to
tap Steam unless you have Steam open online, 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 a family reunion. Uh So, anyways,
the RG it just it got better it was more for tinkerers because it
was a true Windows gaming hand held, and that's that's how I used it,
and that didn't scare me away from it. 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'm one of those crazy people person that has
no interest in installing steam Os on any of my devices because I want.
One of the reasons I got the rog ally, and this is getting into
the kind of the user experience of it all, is that I wanted something
that I could be I could be sitting on the couch gaming and then need
to do something for work and then just bring the same device upstairs and plug
one USB or Thunderbolt four cable into it and boom, it's attacked. It's
attached to all my peripherals, it's attached all my external hard drives, it's
attached to my external monitors, and I can do actual, real work with
it. And that it has performed that function in spades. I can see
we're coming up to the end of the 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 experience of it all. When we come back
to geek Therapy Radio, I'm talking about the rog ally in my experience with
it. Uh yeah. Enjoy the break and we'll be right back. Welcome
back to geek Therapy Radio. You've got your mental curator. I can hear
behind me Uncle BJ has rolled up on 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 to hear from Uncle BJ. If he gets
off the phone in time, we'll see he's walking, he's eyeballing me.
We'll see if I get him on the show, he's certainly not obligated.
So I'm gonna jump right back into Oh yeah. By the way, you're
listening to geek Therapy Radio and your mental 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 every show, I'm like, I gotta do
more tiktoks. But Geek Therapy Radio, as I everywhere. So I was
talking about the rog ally, and now I'm going to use this third segment
at least to talk about the user experience, and I will start with why
I bought it. In the past couple of segments, you've heard me mention
that I've been on a collision course with the rog ally for since its release.
But the main obstacle, the main reason why I never pulled the trigger
on it wasn't because of any sort of user experienced bugs they were trying to
work out with it, or the SD card reader getting too hot. It
wasn't any of that. It was that 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 six gaming handheld. So on the more expensive
side you had things like the one X pro Player Pro or whatever from these
various kind of niche manufacturers, and those devices were eleven hundred dollars, twelve
hundred dollars. You could spend up to 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 just no, I've got enough for fifteen hundred
bucks. I mean, you can buy a baller gaming laptop for fifteen hundred
dollars. You can get a gaming laptop with an RTX forty seventy at least
for fifteen hundred dollars, certainly even less 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 my mind, because I still had a couple
of GPD products. I've got the GPD Win Max two with the sixty eight
hundred U processor in that, and it'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 two is a laptop. Basically, it's a
ten point two inch laptop that does have built in Xbox style controls. But
I didn't have a dedicated just x eighty six Windows gaming PC handheld yet.
I had the Logitech g Cloud, which I still have, still love the
g Cloud. The g Cloud is honestly flabbergastingly good. It's just slightly too
expensive at three hundred bucks. Usually it's three hundred fifty bucks. Sometimes it
comes down to three hundred dollars. It's way too expensive. My advice is
what other in terms of the of the Logitech g Cloud I've heard others mentioned
this. Retro Gamecreps, who has an awesome YouTube channel and I got to
get him on the show, hopefully mentioned this about the Logitech g Cloud that
there, you know, as good as it is, there's no way that
any any tech YouTube or anybody, any tech reviewer could could recommend the g
cloud at three hundred dollars. That it's a it's a fantastic gaming android handheld,
absolutely superb, the best, the best you've ever felt like. It's
It's ridiculous how slept on the g cloud is. But the reason why it's
slept on is because it's slightly too expensive. Two hundred and fifty dollars would
be a better price. Point two hundred dollars would be absolutely perfect. The
reason why it's kind of slept and people 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 frigging Steam 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
for days. It seems like it just doesn't die. The battery life is
insane, and it can run everything up to a lot of PS two titles.
I like to play Granturismo four on the Logitech g Cloud, but still
for three hundred dollars, it's just too expensive to recommend to others. So
the way to go if you're interested in a g Cloud, this is what
Retro Game Course said and what I totally agree with, is go on eBay.
If you want a g Cloud for a round two hundred bucks, which
is a perfect price point for a g cloud, go on eBay and there
are no buyers. Remorse. I bought the g Cloud kind of on a
whim on Amazon because it was three hundred bucks and it was like, oh,
hey, just do a couple monthly payments of fifty or whatever. It's
like, you know what, Okay, I'll go to a shot. No
remorse. My son uses it all the 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 collision course with it. And what sealed the
deal was that one day I said, do you know what, I'm going
to start cruising around best Buy and whatnot and see what the open box scene
is for a Z one Extreme because I know the price had come down.
The Z one Extreme had come down from seven hundred dollars to six hundred dollars,
which is awesome. And I said, okay, if it's six hundred
dollars now brand new, what is the open box? And I was able
to get one open box for like four hundred and eighty, which was only
eighty bucks. It's more expensive than the within a brand new Z one model
that is way less powerful. I cannot recommend the Z one model to anybody
for even four hundred dollars. It's just not When you can bet for one
hundred extra dollars you can get the Z one Extreme model, which is infinitely
more powerful like Night and Day incomparably more powerful. You're gonna have a much
better experience with an rog ally z one Extreme for one hundred extra dollars versus
rg ally z one and saving one hundred dollars to have a terrible gaming experience.
It's it's a no brainer. So when the rg ally came down to
six hundred dollars brand new, and I started cruising around the open box items
at best Buy, and I saw an 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't I don't know how this might fit in
with my kind of current ecosystem of electronics and computers and everything. To save
the receipt, I got a decent little bonus at work. I had a
lot of points on my credit card, a lot of cash back rewards.
So I was like, you know what, I'll pull the trigger on this
and I'll save the receipt. I day one, I was like, I
can crumple up this receipt and throw it 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
remorse with it, And the more time I spent with it, the more
I did some upgrades. I upgraded the ENVME to a two terabyte twenty two
thirty ENVME, and I might even upgrade to a four terabyte twenty two eighty.
By the way, are all you rog ally owners or people who are
interested in the rg ally, You might read that it only accepts a twenty
two to thirty sized ENVME, which you can get up to two terabytes,
which is honestly plenty, but you can also go up to eight terrorbytes because
there is an adapter. The engineers of the rog ally left enough space in
there that you can use an l adapter to adapt from the twenty two thirty
to a full twenty two eighty, like perfectly, so you can get If
you wanted to be just insane and dumb, I'll just say and get an
eight terabyte NVMe twenty two eighty NVMSSD for your ally. You could totally do
that. You could totally spend out on what like eight terabyte nvm SSD is
probably gosh four or five hundred bucks at least, if not more than that
is starting to rain here as you can hear, we're doing some ASMR geek
therapy radio here in Lynchburg, Virginia. But anyways, RG Ali, you
can certainly do you can. You can use an adapter. It's like twelve
bucks on Amazon to adapt the twenty two thirty to accept twenty two eighty n
V MESSD in there. I stay with the twenty two thirty. It's a
two terabyte twenty two thirty and I completely wiped. I did a fresh install
of Windows eleven Pro RG Ali with Windows eleven Home. I just I got
rid of the twenty two thirty SSD that came in there, and I put
in a fresh two terabyte twenty two thirty and did a fresh install of Windows
eleven Pro, which was a very straightforward process. Rog the ally has like
a cloud based restoration. You go in the bias in the bios and you
can you can restore Windows eleven Home through the bios. It's a nightmare.
It's a freaking nightmare to even attempt it, Like I couldn't do it,
and I just reading all over read it and around the internet. Apparently it's
just it's super duper wonky, it's super duper broken, and just don't do
it. So I popped in the two 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 recommends Windows eleven Pro license for twenty two dollars.
I think after the little promo code discount fresh install Windows eleven downloaded all
of the rog software from Asus itself, the Armory create everything. It runs
a freaking dream and just using it to game and play my game right now,
and it's a perfect for the RG ally 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 Deck also, as it happens, but I've
been using it to game, and I've been using it to do real work.
We're at the end of the third segment here. I'm going to tell
you in the four segment what it's like to use day to day as both
a gaming system and an actual workstation for doing real work, because it excels
at both. There's slight limitations to the workstation, but I'll get into that.
In the four segment, You're listening to Geek Therapy Radio. I'm your
mental curator, Johnny Hamburger. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to geek Therapy
Radio. You've got your mental curator, Johnny Hamburger. I think my son
might be awake now. I'm recording this 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's in the forties right now, which is
you know some of you listening all forties. Forties is chilly. I don't
care where you're from. Like forties does not sit outside record a podcast weather
because it's rainy. It's a rainy forty. It's not a sunny out in
the sun of forty. It's a rainy forty degrees. Anyways, I'm enjoying
it. Maybe you'll hear the rain drops around me as I'm recording this kind
of ASMR style as it's turning out to be an episode of Geek Therapy Radio,
recording straight into my m one MacBook Pro 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 speaker grill, whether you're using a MacBook Air,
MacBook Pro, whatever, the good the good microphone is. The good
main microphone is behind underneath the left speaker 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 one Extreme model from Best Buy open box four
hundred and eighty dollars, which is why the price came down enough for me
to justify giving it a shot. And I've been telling you that I in
the previous segments that I did a clean install of Windows eleven Pro to a
fresh two terabyte twenty two thirty ENVMESSD and 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 might be wondering this because I certainly did.
What's the difference between a Z one Extreme and a normal seventy eight forty U
an AMD riz in seventy eight forty U. 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 that almost nobody uses in their CPU that
is disabled on the Extreme or enabled on 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 ever going 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 the Z one Extreme and the seventy eight forty
U. It's amazing. That enables things like PS three emulation to be much
faster and all that kind of stuff. So it definitely has AAVX five twelve
instruction set across seventy A forty U and the Z one Extreme, but they're
effectively the same processor. The Z one Extreme I think can be tdped a
little bit lower, like it's slightly more efficient. It's slightly fewer watts to
slightly more watts. Like it's it's not much, it can be. The
TDP is slightly more efficient on a Z one Extreme, hence the Extreme.
So it's like I'm willing to wager that it's all the same die. It's
it's a binning issue to where they're printing out the seventy eight forties, they're
pumping out seventy eight forties, and they the seventy eight forties that can clock
a little bit, that can that can operate at a slightly lower TDP just
therefore are slightly more efficient. They call them. They batched those as the
Z one Extremes, but the seventy eight forty U and the Z one Extreme
are effectively the same trip. It's just the Z one Extreme is slightly more
efficient, which makes it a better option for going into smaller devices like Windows
gaming handhelds, so user experience. One of the justifications for buying it a
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 be not just become a door stop. It
had to be useful, had to be functional to justify the purchase. And
on the gaming front, handover fist, it is awesome as a handelm gaming
device. It's an eight inch ten eightyp screen, one hundred and twenty hertz
refresh rate. It's insane. It looks 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 the of the panel, of the back of
the device are awesome. The feel of it, the ergonomics, the buttons,
perfection. The only thing that feels similar or better is a Logitech g
Cloud, And seriously, that's one of the reasons why the Logitech g Cloud
is so amazing is that themics and the controllers and the feel is the best
I've ever felt, and most reviewers have ever felt ever in a gaming device,
but a lot. But the rg Ally feels just as good, if
not maybe slightly. The reason why the rg all I might feel slightly I
don't want to use the word worse than the G Cloud, is that the
g Cloud weighs nothing. The rg Ally also is extremely lightweight. But if
you're if you were holding the the G Cloud and the rg Ally, the
rg ally is light, but the G Cloud is lighter, so the G
Cloud kind of wins in ergonomics and feels maybe a tiny bit, but the
but the ally is perfect, It's perfect. It's you're you're nitpicking over two
perfect devices as far as ergonomics and the controls are in the control feel,
they're two perfect devices, and you're you just basically nitpick. So the rg
ally, as far as ergonomics and the gaming experience and the buttons and everything
is perfect. It's as good as it can possibly be. It's it's just
exceptional in my opinion and in many other's opinion that the game the feel of
the rg ally is perfect. And I was worried about that because rg uh
a Seus's brand of gaming products. They like to have like make things look
kind of like sharp and angular and whatever. So I was worried, is
the rg ally going to sacrifice comfort for for the looks of it all?
Is it just? Is it going to try to have that stupid gamer look
but then be super uncomfortable and have jagged edges to hold? And that's not
the case. Matter of fact, the aesthetic of the rg ally is quite
nice. I mean to look at it's not so extremely gamery. It's just
it's nice. I'm one of those weird 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. I don't care. And if I do have
the lights on underneath the thumb sticks I have, it's just set to red.
Not pulsing through rainbow colors, not alra SYNCD to other devices, not
cycling and pumping and going with the beat of music, any crazy disco effect
going. It's just if I do have the light RGB going on my rg
ally under the thumb sticks, it's just red because my color scheme, my
favorite color scheme is red and black. So of course, if I'm gonna
have an RGB light on a solid color, it's gonna be red. Also
helps at night to keep your eyes kind of trained for the dark. But
anyways, using it as a gaming device, like I said, Great Street
Fighter six runs awesome on it. Rocket League pooh, no a problem with
Rocket League. You can set the TDP up to thirty five watts. It'll
burst up to like over fifty watts at times. It has no problem running
esports at all. I play Sniper Elite on there. It's everything I throw
at it. There might be some games maybe go down to medium settings as
opposed to ultra, but visually it's exceptional. If things run buttery smooth sixty
frames a second, one hundred and twenty frames a second even for e sports
titles Rocket League a round twente hundred twenty frames a second all day long if
you're pumping all those watts into the APU. But I do Rocket League around
ten watts sixty frames a second highest settings ultra rendering all that it's at ten
ADP. It's awesome. So the gaming experience is absolutely phenomenal on rg ally
Microsoft Flight Simulator twenty twenty. Kind of difficult to play on an eight inch
screen just or seven inch screen, just because what is it eight or seven
inches? RG ali screen is seven inches? I holpe, I didn't.
I think I said seven inches earlier and not eight inches, But it's a
seven inch screen on the rg ally and it just Flight Simulator twenty twenty looks
great on it. But on a seven inch screen, you know you're trying
to work controls in the cockpit and different things, and it's a little bit
small. The workstation side, I edit four K video on it. Not
super hardcore edits. But it can absolutely edit four K video even with just
sixteen gigabytes of RAM. I was editing 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 it up to a bigger screen and everything.
If I can edit video and edit podcasts and do everything I need to do
workstation wise, and then unplug it and sit on the couch and game win
or Winter Chicken Dinner, and that's what the rog ally is. It is
just phenomenal. No buyer's remorse. It is great. You are worthy of
love, You are worthy of giving love, and you are worthy of receiving
love, and you are worthy of your own self respect. Thank you so
much for listening to Geek Therapy Radio. I appreciate it. Tell your friends
if you like the show, subscribe you if you haven't already, and I'll
talk to you next time. Take care,