What is Asus hiding?

Two weeks ago, I told you how Asus has officially extended its warranty on the ROG Ally gaming handheld’s SD card reader to two full years in the United States, presumably to give you more time to get it fixed. But Asus refuses to confirm to The Verge that it’s actually identified a fix for the issue. If you ship your Ally back to Asus, there’s no guarantee the problem won’t reappear.

Early on, some ROG Ally buyers discovered the SD card readers had a tendency to fail and possibly damage your SD cards in the process. One law firm, CSK&D, even threatened to pursue a class-action lawsuit on behalf of owners, though I haven’t yet found record of an actual suit being filed, and its class-action website has since been removed.

Last July, Asus confirmed the SD card reader issue and suggested it might be due to a temperature problem, writing that “under certain thermal stress conditions the SD card reader may malfunction.” It released an update that increased the speeds of the gadget’s fans to compensate, but that doesn’t seem to have solved the problem.

Nine months later, the company’s new warranty announcement seems to confirm the worst — Asus is now even offering to reimburse you for damaged SD cards if you return them alongside a ROG Ally that needs service.

But on the r/ROGAlly subreddit, a moderator pointed out that there’s no guarantee of a fix, writing that “we still advise against using an SD card” because “devices returned from RMA as recently as this month still have the issue.” And the offer’s only good in the United States.

Anecdotally, I’m definitely seeing some alleged owners on Reddit and Discord say that Asus came through for them with fixed SD card readers, and some say Asus customer support confirmed there was some sort of fix.

But if that’s true, why wouldn’t Asus confirm that to me? When I asked whether there was a fix, and what percentage of ROG Ally systems have this issue, the company completely dodged my questions.

Here’s an email conversation I had with Asus rep Anthony Spence:

1) Has Asus actually found a hardware fix for the faulty SD card readers? If someone RMAs their Ally to Asus this way, will they get an SD card reader that no longer fails?

Our commitment is to assist all customers effectively. If any user suspects they’re encountering issues with their products, we encourage them to reach out and make use of our RMA process as needed. They can expect us to provide a suitable resolution.

2) What percentage of ROG Ally systems have this issue?

We cannot comment on this at this time.

3) Assuming there is no hardware fix yet, why has the warranty only been extended by one year? 

Apologies Sean, but we cannot comment on assumptions.

4) What does Asus plan to do for customers in territories outside the US? Will we see warranty extensions and SD card reimbursement elsewhere?

Service policies vary from region to region and are subject to local laws and regulations. While I cannot provide you a blanket statement that encompasses all global operations, you can rest assured that our focus is quality and our objective is to effectively answer our users concerns, regardless of location.

After I explained to Asus that it hadn’t answered the questions, it considered that for two days — then replied that “we won’t further comment beyond what has been stated and is contained in the statement.”

The SD card reader isn’t a must-have for the ROG Ally. You can fit a decent number of games in its internal storage, and it has one of the easiest handheld SSDs to replace with a larger one.

The Ally has improved in many other small ways since last year: while my biggest original complaints remain, the company’s Armory Crate SE software is snappier and more reliable than it was at launch. It just got a hotly anticipated framerate boosting AMD driver feature, too.