ASUS Rog Ally: leak suggests highly competitive price
ASUS unveiled its upcoming Rog Ally Windows-based gaming handheld device in early April 2023. The company did not reveal much about the device at the time, but it did provide select YouTube publishers with an opportunity to test the device.
The YouTube publishers were not allowed to reveal all information that they could obtain from their hands-on experience with the device, but it was clear immediately that ASUS' handheld would offer superior hardware compared to Valve's dominating Steam Deck device.
Price and availability were two unknowns at the time. Valve's Steam Deck is available in several versions. The cheapest starts at $399, the top of the line model is available for $649. While the least expensive device may have an attractive price, it does come with just 64 gigabytes of eMMC storage, which makes it unattractive for most gaming related tasks.
ASUS confirmed today that it is launching its Rog Ally device on May 11. The company did not reveal the price of the device and some hardware specifications are not confirmed officially yet.
Twitter user SnoopyTech posted the missing pieces of information today on the social messaging site. ASUS did not confirm these and the information should be taken with a grain of salt because of that.
According to the leak, the top of the line ASUS Rog Ally handheld will have a retail price of $699.99. It is powered by an AMD Z1 Extreme chip, 16 gigabytes of LPDDR5 RAM, an AMD Radeon Navi3 graphics adapter, and features 512 gigabytes of NMVe M.2 storage space. It supports Dolby Atmos Surround Sound and has a 7" full HD 120Hz display.
The Rog Ally runs on Windows 11, which means that users may install game stores and standalone games on the device. It will also have access to Xbox Game Pass, GeForce Now, and even Android games.
The leak suggests that gamers can play games in co-op mode using Xbox Controllers, and connect the device to TVs to play on the big screen. Options to connect the device to ASUS' Rog XG Mobile Dock, to support keyboards, mice and monitors, are also supported.
The specs, if true, would give it a massive advantage of Valve's top of the line Steam Deck device. ASUS will release the Rog Ally in different versions, but the specs and pricing is unknown at this point. It should be clear that the price of these models will be lower than the $699.99 of the top model. It could very well be $50 more than what Valve is charging for its other Steam Deck versions.
Closing Words
ASUS Rog Ally could be a serious competitor to Valve's Steam Deck and other Windows-based gaming handhelds, which are mostly produced by China-based companies. The ability to connect the device to TVs, play co-op games, and connect it to a dock for mouse, keyboard and computer monitor access, are all major selling points.
Now You: are you tempted to buy a Rog Ally handheld when it comes out?
Biggest flaw of the switch / steamdeck / whatever this is =
the screen is between the hands, not above. This is just not a nice way to play games for long periods of time, especially when you’re not using the screen, but joystick/button things on the sides.
is the Nintendo DS really the only product that nailed this? Maybe my perspective is ruined after playing on a DS – anyone else have any thoughts on this?
I thinkt that it’s really too expensive.
Is the left thumb stick comfortable to use compared to the right thumb stick?
this is a nice piece of information, hoping the battery life on this will be decent but the weight indicates the battery life won’t be good?