ROG ALLY vs $600 Laptop - Which should you buy？

Hello, welcome back to a new video. So

today we'll be comparing these 2 devices,

my ROG Ally versus this cheap laptop,

which is a 14-inch kind of notebook

laptop, and it costs about $600, which is

around the price of the ROG Ally. The ROG

Ally is also about $600 nowadays. So if

you've got about $600 and you're wondering

what kind of device to get, you want a

portable gaming device that can also be

used as a fully fledged computer with

Windows 11, then you could get this kind

of notebook— lightweight, easy to use,

and not expensive, or you can get a gaming

portable handheld which can play AAA games

and also be used as a pretty powerful

Windows 11 computing device. So in today's

video, we're going to be comparing these 2

devices, see which one's better at just

doing computing stuff, and also most

importantly, which one can do gaming and

play Rainbow Six the best. So for the

specs of this laptop, we're looking at an

AMD Ryzen 7000 series, a Ryzen 5 7000

series, or more specifically, it's

actually a Ryzen 7 530U chip,

and it has AMD graphics, AMD Radeon

graphics, and it's got twin air cooling

with 16GB of RAM. And that's basically

it for this laptop. And on the other hand,

the ROG Ally has the AMD Z1 Extreme chip.

So basically it's a comparison between the

AMZ— I mean, the Z1 Extreme chip versus

the AMD Ryzen 7 530U

chip. They both have integrated graphics,

so there's no external or separate

graphics cards. The graphics are all

processed on the same chip. Okay, so here

we have the 2 devices lined up and ready

to go— the ROG Ally versus the $600

laptop. Let's find out which one is

superior. So just for confirmation, here

we can see the Ryzen 5 7530U is the

CPU chip that we have in this laptop. And

as for a comparison between the batteries,

the battery on the laptop has about 3

hours 15 minutes when it's on a balanced

mode, whereas on battery efficiency mode

has about 6 hours on the battery, and then

on turbo performance mode has about 1

hour. So it's on par with the ROG Ally for

battery life. The ROG Ally also, when on

turbo mode, only has about a 1-hour

battery life. Okay, so we have Rainbow Six

loaded up onto the laptop without any

problems, and as you can see, the nice big

14-inch screen is way bigger than the ROG

Ally's little piddly 7-inch screen. So if

you want screens, then the laptop is the

one to go for. Very nice to be able to see

this. And for the settings, I'm going to

set everything to low, and you can see in

the bottom right corner we have AMD

graphics, and the maximum memory storage

of the graphics card is about 400

megabytes, which is not very good. And

we're already way above the 400 megabytes,

we're around 3,000 megabytes. So for the

first test, we're going to actually set

the graphics to ultra, see how it handles

at max settings. And we're also going to

set the display resolution to the max

resolution that the display can handle,

which I think is 1080p. Okay, so we've

loaded into the game. You can see the top

left corner, I have an FPS indicator

tracker, and we're currently getting about

45 FPS, which is not bad considering this

is on ultra settings. And this is just

like— and it's just like a cheap notebook

that's not really made for gaming. It's

more for work, emails, watching YouTube,

productivity kind of stuff. But yeah, the

game is working on ultra mode and we're

getting an average of 40 FPS. But the

thing is, when I played the game, it

didn't really feel very snappy. It felt

kind of delayed, like there was a 1 or 2

second delay from when I press the

buttons. It just didn't really feel very

responsive. You can see it's dipping down

as low to the high 30 FPS, and I couldn't

really play the game very comfortably. It

just felt a bit janky. So I played a few

rounds on ultra and it wasn't unplayable.

I mean, you could play it, but it just

felt kind of weird. Also, the screen— I

don't know if it shows up on the camera—

there was like kind of screen tearing

going on, which wasn't very fun to look

at. So yeah, the graphics look good, but

the game didn't really play super smoothly

even though it's saying it's got like

40-50 FPS, which you'd think would be

pretty smooth. It just didn't really feel

smooth, didn't feel responsive or snappy,

and it really affected my gameplay. So I

went back into the settings and I put

everything down to low. We're now going to

try everything at the lowest you can go.

You can see the graphic loadout on the

bottom right is now about 800 megabytes

out of the 400 available, which is still

double what we have available, but that's

the lowest we can go. We also put the

display resolution down to the lowest

resolution, which is about 1024x768,

which is going to look really crap, but

come on, the game should be able to play

pretty smoothly at this point. We're going

to apply those settings and make sure

everything is set down to the lowest that

it can go. I think that's it really.

There's not really anything else we can

set down too low. Make sure it's in

fullscreen because you get better

performance on fullscreen mode. And then

we're going to do some benchmark tests.

So the benchmark test is just going to

give us an example of how the computer is

going to handle the current graphics at

the current settings. And look at that,

we've got like 150 FPS, 200 FPS.

That is pretty incredible. Look at that.

180 FPS, 200. So at these settings, the

game should play super smooth.

So I jumped into a game with low settings.

Look at the FPS at the top left, that is

insane, 170 FPS. And I can safely say that

the gameplay was super smooth, super

responsive, instant actions when you press

the buttons, instantly performs the

action. I'm just like messing around with

the guns here to feel the gameplay. And

yeah, it feels great, feels amazing.

Couldn't really ask for more. This is what

I want when I play Rainbow Rainbow Six. I

want it to be super snappy, super fast.

Obviously it doesn't really look very

good. Maybe on the camera you can't really

tell the difference, but with my own eyes

the game looked awful. It was really

horrible, very low resolution, very low

texture, graphic fidelity was terrible,

the screen tearing was less noticeable,

and it just looks rubbish, like

PlayStation 3 graphics almost. But the

game is playable if you want to get like a

notebook or a cheap laptop, play Rainbow

Six when you're on the go. You're gonna

have to put the graphics down to low,

maybe medium will be fine as well. I'd say

medium is the maximum you'll be able to

crank it up to, but it is playable, which

is quite impressive. I know this is an old

game, but the game still looks pretty

good, and it's, um, yeah, it's quite

demanding on graphics if you want to play

at ultra. I don't think this machine will

be able to play on ultra. Now, part 2 of

the test, we can now play Rainbow Six on

the ROG Ally, and oh my God, the

difference is huge. First of all, look at

the bottom right, we've got a maximum

graphics loadout memory capacity of like

4,000 megabytes, which is 10 times more

than what the laptop had. So we're going

to crank everything to ultra and very

high. And even with everything at ultra,

we're still below our maximum memory

storage of the graphics card, like 3,900

megabytes. Display resolution is going to

be 920 by 1080p. We're going to jump into

a game quickly and see how it plays

compared to the Lapoo Topo. And jumping

into a game straight away, this is insane.

The difference is absolutely night and

day. Look at the FPS, we got like 70 high

70s, early 80s, 80 FPS whilst playing

on ultra mode, whereas the laptop could

barely handle 40. So on ultra, it feels

really smooth as well, super snappy. I'm

not feeling any kind of delay. The screen

looks amazing. The ROG Ally screen is

really good, really punchy. The details

look really sharp on it. It looks so much

better than the laptop, even though the

laptop has a bigger display, which is

nice. It just isn't anywhere near as close

as the quality of the display on the ROG

Ally. The ROG Ally's display is really

good for an LCD the panel. Obviously it's

not OLED, so it's not going to be like

super punchy and vivid, but it's really

sharp and looks great. It's just kind of

small, does strain your eyes a little bit.

And the game just feels really good. Look

at the detail on the gun and the

reflection and stuff like that. Looks

great, so much better than the laptop. So

do some gameplay, and after I did some

gameplay, yeah, there's just no

competition. The ROG Ally for gaming is so

much better than that 14-inch notebook

laptop. Now that was really bad. I should

have— I don't know why, but the game kind

of stuttered there, and I aimed and I

tried to pull off a shot, but it

stuttered, and then I died first. So that

was a bit annoying. I would say in

conclusion, the ROG Ally wins. It's

faster, it's smaller, it's more portable,

the gaming is so much better, and for the

same price point, you get a much more

powerful device. I don't really know why

you'd buy the laptop over this unless you

just want a laptop for work and you like

the big screen, you want a built-in

keyboard and everything. You can bring an

external keyboard. I'm playing this with

an external keyboard and mouse, by the

way. And you could also plug in an

external OLED portable monitor to turn

this into a laptop experience, but then,

you know, you've got a lot more things to

carry. It's going to be a lot bulkier to

put it all into your backpack than a nice

sleek notebook. So yeah, if you're looking

for a device, you've only got about $600

to spend, you're thinking about a laptop

or an ROG Ally, I would definitely

recommend the ROG Ally.