Five tips to get the most out of ASUS ROG Ally

Gaming PCs are on the rise. After Steam Deck, more and more hardware manufacturers are venturing into making their own models. Despite the stiff competition, the ASUS ROG Ally remains one of the strongest and most versatile options, even six months after its release. With an AMD Ryzen Z1 processor and 1080p 120Hz display, you can play almost every PC game you can imagine with the necessary graphical splendor.

In our review at the time, we mentioned the Ally's battery life as the only major drawback. With heavy use, you may sometimes have to search for the nearest socket after less than an hour. Over the past few months, we've searched extensively for all possible ways to get the most out of the ASUS ROG Ally, and successfully. Thanks to these five simple tips, you can increase your mobile phone's battery life to three or even five hours while still enjoying your game library.

Tip 1: Use ROG Ally operating modes smartly

The ROG Ally has a built-in 40Wh battery. The operating mode then determines how many watts the mobile device uses per hour. When Ally is not connected to the power cable, you can choose from three different options. In theory, silent mode limits the wattage to 10 watts. Performance mode increases this power to 15 watts, while Turbo mode consumes up to 25 watts per hour. Turbo mode may seem tempting to use your ROG Ally hardware to its max, but a quick calculation shows you're using up the battery after less than two hours. In practice, this often happens much faster, since the ROG Ally's peak consumption in demanding games is well above 25W.

If you want to game for as long as possible without a power cable, silent mode is your best friend. Even in this mode, consumption sometimes exceeds the theoretical 10W, but you still get at least three hours of mobile gaming fun from the ROG Ally. Naturally, this comes at the expense of your laptop's performance. The following four tips are mainly aimed at continuing to show a decent frame rate with enough graphical beauty in silent mode.

Tip 2: Set the ROG Ally resolution to 720p

The ROG Ally has a 7-inch display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, providing a sharp and clear image. To save battery life, you can limit the resolution to 720p in Command Center. This way, the mobile device only has to generate half as many pixels, so in most games you still have a frame rate of between 30 and 60 fps, even in silent mode. Since the ROG Ally's display is much smaller than a traditional PC's display, you won't notice much lower resolution in practice. Save your battery and keep playing the latest games while traveling, without significantly impacting your experience: perfect!

Tip 3: Use game upscaling to 1080p on ROG Ally

Refuse to downgrade your ROG Ally? Then you can also use the upgrade. This is a technique in which lower resolution is enlarged to higher resolution. Many modern games support one or more upscaling technologies by default, so you can run a game at 720p and then upscale it to 1080p. You often have a choice between different quality modes, from premium to performance. For gamers that don't offer this themselves, ROG Ally also offers the option to activate AMD RSR (Radeon Supersolution) in the Command Center. Once you lower the resolution in a game, AMD RSR automatically delivers a sharper image.

Tip 4: Stream games instead of pinning them to your ROG Ally

The most drastic power saving measure is to stream games thus reducing the burden on ROG Ally hardware. After all, you are playing games that run on an external server that is sent to your screen over the Internet. The easiest way to do this is with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, which allows you to stream hundreds of games in the meantime. To do this, you need a stable internet connection at all times. If so, you can play modern games like Far Cry 6 or Forza Horizon 5 without any problems. While streaming, power consumption rarely gets above 8W, so you're good for five- to six-hour sessions.

If you're gaming at home on the ROG Ally, you can go one step further. PlayStation 5, Xbox Series This way, you can play games at the best possible graphics settings on your ROG Ally with minimal burden on the battery.

Tip 5: Use the power bank to game on ROG Ally for longer

Finally, you can also take the power bank with you when using the ROG Ally on location. Given the size of a gaming laptop, you'll probably put it in a backpack anyway, so you can still carry the power bank in there. You can connect any power bank via the ROG Ally's USB-C port, but we recommend choosing a model with sufficient battery capacity.

In addition, download speed is also important. Not only does a power bank with a charging speed of at least 65W ensure that you're always charging faster than you use it, but you can also activate ROG Ally's 30W Turbo mode. It's probably not the smartest move if you want to conserve battery life, but it's always good to have options.

It's also important to pay attention to the power bank's capacity, which is expressed in milliampere hours (mAh). The higher the capacity, the longer you can play without charging the power bank. We'll spare you the scientific conversion from mAh to watt-hours, but keep in mind that with a power bank of at least 15,000 mAh, you can fully charge the ROG Ally once or twice.

In addition to these five tips, you can take several measures to reduce ROG Ally's battery consumption, although the effect will be more limited. For example, you can turn off the RGB lighting around the joystick, lower the screen brightness and use the ROG Ally in Airplane mode as much as possible. By combining all the above tips, you can quickly play your favorite games for several hours longer without having to frantically search for the nearest socket. Happy mobile gaming!