Asus warranty déjà vu for broken ROG Ally thumb stick — YouTuber catches Asus attempting to dodge repair request over "tiny" mark

It hasn't even been a year since Asus was in hot water for refusing to honour its warranty when broken firmware caused AMD Ryzen CPUs to self-destruct. Now, according to a recent video and investigation by Gamers Nexus (embedded below), Asus customers seem to be facing similar problems, with Asus frequently refusing warranty service, demanding payment for repairs that should be carried out under warranty, or outright blaming users for damage they didn't cause.

Gamers Nexus sent its Asus ROG Ally handheld gaming PC in for warranty repair of a broken left thumb stick, expecting Asus to simply replace the thumb stick or faulty component under warranty and call it a day. Instead, the YouTube channel received a reply from Asus stating that the broken components were due to “customer-induced damage,” followed by another, more detailed email that demanded Gamers Nexus pay $191.47 to repair the LCD panel and top case because of a small mark created when Gamers Nexus took the ROG Ally apart for a video.

Critically, the LCD panel and top case were not why GN sent its ROG Ally in for repairs in the first place, and Asus completely neglected to even diagnose the broken thumb stick in its response to GN.

Gamers Nexus's Steve Burke, talking about the RMA experience with Asus, says that “it feels like an intentional attempt, or a policy, to mislead the customers into a position where they'll pay for a service they don't need.”

Throughout the communications, Asus repeatedly reiterated that if GN didn't pay the requisite out-of-warranty repair fee within five business days, the ROG Ally would be returned unrepaired and potentially in a disassembled state. The emails containing this information were all sent from no-reply email addresses, giving consumers yet another hoop to jump through to get in touch with Asus to get their hardware fixed.

Eventually, Gamers Nexus was able to get Asus to replace just the broken thumb stick and ignore the small blemish on the top case, although it took significant effort on GN's part. This is where Burke takes issue with the warranty process as it stands — not all consumers are dogged enough to stick it out and insist that Asus repair the part that is actually broken and rightfully qualifies for warranty repair. Additionally, small blemishes like that could theoretically occur in day-to-day use of a handheld device, like the Ally, which is meant to be carried around.

Asus's insistence that a small ding like that voids the warranty calls into question how useful the warranty actually is in the first place, since it could simply be void for little to no reason.

While Gamers Nexus tells of a single instance of Asus giving a customer the run-around for a warranty repair, the YouTube production team who have made a name for themselves for conducting thorough investigative journalism, claim to have “several hundreds” of emails from viewers telling similar stories involving everything from graphics cards to motherboards.

As an alternative to the Asus ROG Ally, check out the Lenovo Legion Go (curr. $699.99 from Lenovo US)