I took a punt on the Ally, and its exceeded expectations in some respects but also frustrating.
For gaming on the go it works well, a 65w Anker 537 despite throwing errors in the OS about not being able to power at full, seems OK. Armory crate shows 25w on turbo, but comparing live data, it hits exactly the same (boost momentarily to 43+ watts) then settles to 30w.
I’ve got back into Destiny 2, as I downloaded a bunch of older games I don’t play on my main rig to have some vareity on the move. Plus I figured older games have a better chance of running on it.
On battery turbo kills the battery, they say it has a 40wh battery, but no way, on turbo (25w) its entirely possible to kill it in under an hour.
I mostly use ‘performance’ 15w mode for battery longevity. With a 24000mah anker battery pack. I got 3hrs 58 on the anker to flat, then another 1hr 50 on the built battery with 25% remaining - plenty for a good gaming sesh on the go or the average plane journey.
I don’t get TDP though, when you first plug a power source in, it ramps up to 52w? Temps are OK. Mostly hovers between 40-50 for a while, but then seems to go back to 30w. If I unplug power source and plug back in, it ramps up again. Is this a very short term boost that it simply cannot sustain?
The other weird thing is that the difference between 15w and 25w mode is very small in some games and scenes. We’re talking say 45fps in a busy area, destiny 2, mostly high settings 1080p, hit 25w, maybe 3 frames more? 30w, gets 60fps but mostly between 50-60.
I think for 1080, 4gb is just doable, but ideally it needs at least 6. Only option is to allocate in 4gb increments and you are robbing peter to pay paul, so I leave it at 4.
Docked its not great. Works Ok to whizz around with a keyboard and mouse to set it up, and as a portable pc. But as a docked gaming PC its a bit crap. I docked it in the front room, tried to run gears on 4k, high, weirdly, upscaled 200% works smooth on the Ally screen, but output to a screen its weird, its almost like you are streaming it at 30 fps, when realtime monitor shows 60, also external controller support and controlling the ally theough the dock the other side of the room is a pita. I coupdn’t get sound working properly out of the dock either to the TV - it just kept glitching and cutting out.
Stupidly, my xbox one x I just got rid of would run gears @ 4k smooth, and it looked stunning. The Ally in theory is more powerful, but it was a poor experience.
Other games like Witcher 4, that a 1660 mobile GPU can run nice, can be run on the ally, but at 45 or so fps in 30w turbo. Performance mode is a no go really unless you want to really sacrifice quality.
HZD I thought it would run well being an older ps4 game. But it struggles. On high it chugs at 1080 at about 30 frames. To get a smooth experience it has to be 720 on high, then you can hit 50-60. I would have thought it would have done better here.
Access speed from the SD slot is OK, I’m only using a 150 read speed card, but its reliable and pretty acceptable.
I’m hoping they manage to get some more out of it in future bios updates, I heard they already acrewed performance from 317 to 319 bios because of battery life complaints? Not sure I want to mess around rolling back, but I think there is more power under the hood than they are letting us use.
Interesting to see where this goes, its definitly a premium price when you could get a basic gaming laptop for £700 that would outperform it, but, I have to stop and remind myself that I habe a fully fledged, windows 11, mobile gaming PC that can even run things like Witcher 3, Destiny 2 etc on the go, in such a small package, when only a few years ago this was only possible on large static gaming eigs, consoles or beasty laptops…