Long story short. I have 2 Ally’s Z1 and a Z1 Extreme. The Z1E got replaced Around July last year at Best Buy. (Due to the issues we all know about with these things). The manager didn’t see a point in sending it to ASUS for repair because they had some in stock. (Original Best Buy I purchased from wanted to send it off) I never opened it after I got it replaced. Because I just found my Z1 to meet my needs. Do they still even produce the Z1E anymore?? I’ve only seen the Ally X around but I’ve heard they still make the Z1E

(UPDATE: I didn’t post this as a (oh look I have a sealed Z1 Extreme Post 😱) 😑. It was a genuine question out of curiosity

TLDR:

I got the Extreme at launch. Played the hell out of it. mainly AAA titles at the time. Eventually ended up getting into emulation and also catching a Z1 at Best Buy for 299.99. New . I Used both Extreme and Z1 one for Emulation and one for AAA. The extreme eventually ended up melting in my hand where the SD card Slot was during a game I got it shortly after release. I replaced it August 2025 with the protection plan at a Best Buy near where I was at the time. Never opened it because I moved more into Emulation. Which the Z1 is a beast at by itself But I paid for a protection plan for the Extreme so I used it. Was only curious if they are still in production as the Ally X and Xbox Ally have came out or whatever.

I recently bought a second-hand ROG Ally Z1 Extreme. It hasn't been delivered yet, but I'm already trying to figure out how I want to set it up.

I'm a bit of a beginner when it comes to tinkering with PCs and operating systems, but I'm a fast learner, so I'm not worried about having to learn something new if it's worth it.

I'm trying to decide between:

• Sticking with the stock Windows installation
• Replacing it completely with SteamOS (or Bazzite)
• Dual booting both

A little bit about how I plan to use it:

• I don't expect to buy a huge number of games.
• I've heard people say that staying on Windows gives you access to stores like Epic Games, GOG, Xbox Game Pass, etc., and that Epic gives away free games pretty often. I'm not sure how significant those benefits actually are.
• I mainly want the best overall experience without making my life unnecessarily complicated.

For those of you who have tried one or more of these setups, what would you recommend?

If you were starting from scratch today, would you:

• Stay on Windows?
• Switch entirely to SteamOS/Bazzite?
• Dual boot both?

I'd also love to hear why you'd recommend one option over the others and whether there are any downsides that a first-time handheld owner might not think about.

Thanks in advance! Looking forward to joining the Ally community. 🙂

Hi all!

I just bought myself a Z1 extreme yesterday since I've wanted to have a gaming handheld for ages now and the switch I used to own was just not it.

After a lot of debating and consideration I landed on the Z1 since it was a really nice price!

After checking online I saw everyone recommending Bazzite for it as well, so I flashed it on and everything seemed great, runs Megabonk and MH Rise like a charm.

However a game I really wanted to play was V Rising, and for the life of me I can't get it to work.

I've tried changing the proton settings, I've tried setting it to launch in dx11 and 12, I've tried disabling the cinematic videos with the -noVideo command, I even tried turning off Prewarming shaders with the console in game.

So far it either freezes my entire console at the Prewarming stage, or it will "load" into the opening of the game and freeze then.

I'm running out of ideas here!

Any bit of help is greatly appreciated and thank you ahead of time :)

recently bought a z1e off Ebay and it randomly freezes, mostly when i tap on a search bar. I've read that this is a common problem after some of the recent driver updates, any way to rollback my driver and/or any other solutions?

Hey..I'm not sure if I can do that here. But I bought that case last yead amd never used it because the Killswitch for my Xbox Ally X was released so I ordered that and only use my Killswitch. I don't want so sell it..i will give it away for free. I live in Germany. If somebody wants that, you would only need to pay the shipping. It's just laying around here.... I know selling isn't allowed here. But i'm not selling it. I want to get rid of it. Don't want to just throw it im the trash.

Purchased this Ally from Best Buy in “good condition” it came with kill switch thumbstick grips! But upon further examination it looks like the previous owner or maybe a Best Buy employee opened up the handheld. You can see little dents In the plastic along the sides like it was pried open. I checked the specs and everything is accounted for. My question is: should I return it? Or keep it? I’m just wondering why someone would want to open it?

Finally got a Rog ally z1 extreme with a 4tb ssd for £335 what a bargain.

What is the best xg mobile to buy out of 6850m xt or 3080? Thanks for any suggestions

https://reddit.com/link/1v409z8/video/4nwmf2ylzveh1/player

Edit: Sorry video doesn't show on the home page. Have to click on post to watch video x'D. But the video is ontop. (I clicked on "post to body" by mistake and was going to reupload the video, but pressed enter first)

Heyya all,

As the video shows, Armory Crate loads up like normal, but crashes as soon as it finishes/is finishing. The Game Library page is the page it normally loads to. The UI and all shows, but the rest is green background--reminding me of the Green Screen of Gobbleteguk. And then, it finally crashes. I can't go into AC and turn off start up on boot and Start Up Apps menu in Windows settings doesn't show AC. So, I can't disable it.

This started happening after a Windows Update 2-3 weeks ago? It's not just on start up. THe app in general has been doing this even when I didn't enable start up on boot in AC. I tried:

1. Running a virus scan and came out clean
2. General troubleshooting/repair/uninstall-reinstall the app in Windows settings. Uninstalled it with Revo Uninstaller too.
3. I tried going in Regedit and changing one of number values so I could disable AC services, which led to the last troubleshoot method I tried. The options were originally greyed out, so I had to override them.
4. Going into MSCservices and disabling AC services and and it worked, but disabled onboard controller settings and AC overlay with the left arrow button. So I abandoned that.

It's been giving me the same issue. I even tried looking up this specific case or anything about AC crashing like this, but I haven't been able to find anything helpful.

Any thoughts on this? Any help would be appreciated.

P.S. For those wondering, I only decided several weeks ago to do AC on boot again, cos I was getting tired of going thru Xbox mode > AC > to a game (Zenless Zone Zero or AK: Enfield) or thru Xbox mode > Steam > to a game. Now I have Steam on Start Up, but AC loads and crashes first, cos ya X'D.

What is it about this game that the XAX runs it like straight dogshit?

I have tried all the settings, lossless scaling, all the upscaling and it looks like ass. The only thing that looks decent is with optiscaler FSR 4.1 but then the FPS is 20-35. As soon as you turn on any framegen, it goes bad to looking pixelated, especially any movement.

I tried even with the GPDwin G1 eGPU (7600m XT) and thay still didn't bring it up very much.

Is this just a horribly optimized game? Or the hardware is too weak?

I play on the og Ally X and no matter what I tried I end up getting insane lags and rubber bending even though my internet is fine. I read that it has something to do with the cpu but the game runs absolutely great on 900p fsr performance and at some point there will be insane lags.
I saw a lot of people saying it runs great. Did anyone experience my problem and was able to fix it?

I just got a ROG Ally from ebay, and im having some issues with charging. My phone charger will charge the ally very slowly, but the 65w charger isn't charging it at all. Ive tested the 65w charger on other devices and it works. Im stuck on the cloud recovery part that requires the adapter be plugged in.

I've recently purchased the Z1 extreme OG Rog, and it's been a while since I played PC games because my eyesight isn't great, I always found PC games were just hard to see so I generally stuck to consoles. Can anybody tell me is there a way of having some form of Button combination zoom on an external controller while playing on my rog or In steam big picture mode because I am finding it very hard to find an actual answer. I know on the steam deck you can just hold Steam and L1, but that combination isn't working for me when I have it connected to a TV and using my PS5 controller. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. 💪😊

Hi, I haven’t touched my ally for 2 weeks and wanted to play it yesterday. Battery was dead, plugged it into and low and behold it doesn’t want to charge. Ive tried the original power adapter and a 65w one plus charger to no avail. The only way it will start charging is if I plug it into my pc using s random usb c I have lying about. Has anyone else had this problem? Is there a solution? I am running SteamOS is that would help. Thanks!

Hearing mixed feedback on this. Some jsaux and others the 74wh battery with aluminium plate, custom backplate and other things that I’m not very confident I’d be able to do lol. I’m leaning towards the 74wh due to cost but not sure with method to do - cut the existing backplate or buy one that will naturally fit the new battery. Where would I source this also?

I have the original ally, it was never really great, first as I was too new to handheld and the insane unusable only one always library I was just not accustomed to. But the more I got used to it and was able to preload games offline before going on flights the more I liked it.

After some time I saved enough to buy a new SSD, a 2 TB Lexar SSD.

I installed it installed a clean version of windows on it and had my fun.

After some time, randomly when playing games and having it plugged into a travel charger I bought (140Watts Gan) it just rebooted black screen with a percentage and reboot.

At first I thought it was the charger… but no, even with the supplied charger it would restart.

Then I thought it was heat but even when the system is not under any load it would reboot.

Now I’m worried it’s the SSD… and I don’t want to buy a new stupid expensive SSD :(

Does anyone have an any info on what this could be?

Hi everyone!

This morning I bought an Xbox Ally X and installed SteamOS. I briefly tried it out and it's fantastic! 😄

My only question is: how can I calibrate the screen in SteamOS? I know that on Windows you could do it through Armoury Crate, is there any way to do it?

Thanks!

Hi, I haven’t touched my ally for 2 weeks and wanted to play it yesterday. Battery was dead, plugged it into and low and behold it doesn’t want to charge. Ive tried the original power adapter and a 65w one plus charger to no avail. The only way it will start charging is if I plug it into my pc using s random usb c I have lying about. Has anyone else had this problem? Is there a solution? I am running SteamOS is that would help. Thanks!

I was able to get a good deal for one with a killswitch case, screen protector, and 1tb for 400 and I was curious about some things.

How easy is steam os to use? I plan to play some windows based games like senren banka and I've heard they're playable with Proton even if they aren't listed as supported. Is this the case for a lot of games and is Proton basically just an application that runs in the background? Also how easy are the user settings to change? Should I even use steam os? I'm mainly interested in the quick wake up but I'm already very familiar with windows and I like its ease of use. Im not sure if its even worth the hassle because Ive heard windows got some updates recently to help with the wake up and the performance difference seems to be very minimal with most games.

What's a good brand to buy a battery upgrade from? Ive heard about jsaux but they're sold out. Ive also seen a lot of people have issues with the device dying early with some upgrades (at like 6%) and I'm wondering if thats a permanent thing or if its just that people didnt allow it to calibrate

Be gentle about my setup

I have some questions about the performance but havent found any videos that test the power of the base z1 version properly,mostly just testing low end games or testing the extreme version