The Asus ROG Ally was just announced as a rival to the Steam Deck. So what are the specs and how much does it cost?
Valve's Steam Deck was a big hit and whoever is looking for a handheld PC is getting exactly that. Obviously, competitors were watching and started to develop their own little portable PCs. Asus just announced their ROG Ally, so let's see if it can compete with the Steam Deck.
Asus ROG Ally Specs
Since the ROG Ally was announced on April 1, many people thought it was an April Fool's prank, but it turned out to actually be true.
Now more official details have been revealed! Finally!
ASUS ROG Ally is launching May 11th for "under $1000."- 50% faster than Steam Deck at same power draw (15w)- 2x faster at full power (30w)- Up to 8x faster than Nintendo Switch- 1080p 120hz OLED- Running AMD's new Z1 and Z1 Extreme chips (8 TF max)https://t.co/V19vHvB6cu pic.twitter.com/Zho2vqe5p8
— Okami Games (@Okami13_) April 25, 2023
Previously, we already had some leaks regarding the ASUS Rog Ally, but some things have changed since then, as seen in the tweet above.
The ROG Ally has a 7-inch, 1920x1080 resolution IPS LCD display with 120 Hz. This already is better than the Steam Deck at 1280x800 and 60 Hz. It furthermore is rumored that the ROG Ally will have a custom, high-powered AMD processor called Ryzen Z1 and will be quieter than the Steam Deck as well.
Apart from that, it will come with an upgradable M.2 SSD port and an expansion drive in form of a microSD card reader. It supposedly can also be docked and linked up with Asus' ROG XG external GPU device, which would multiply its gaming power, but also make it not portable anymore.
It will also come with Windows 11 and thus be compatible with a lot more games than the Steam Deck, which runs Steam OS and makes installing non-Steam games a chore.
- If you only want to play Steam games anyways, you can check out the Steam Deck on Amazon .
Here is a comparison of the ROG Ally and the Steam Deck :
| ASUS ROG Ally | Steam Deck | |
| CPU | Ryzen Z1 Series
3.3 GHz | Aerith-APU
3.5 GHz |
| GPU | RDNA 3 12 CUs | RDNA 2 8 CUs |
| RAM | 16 GB LPDDR5 | 16 GB LPDDR5-5500 |
| Display | 7" IPS LCD display | 7" IPS LCD display |
| Resolution | 1920x1080 | 1280x800 |
| Refresh Rate | 120Hz | 60Hz |
| Storage | 512 GB SSD (PCIe 4) | 64 GB eMMC 256 GB SSD 512 GB SSD |
| Size | 280 × 113 × 39 mm | 298 × 117 × 51 mm |
| Weight | 608 g | 669 g |
| Operating System | Windows 11 | Windows 11 Steam OS 3.0 |
Asus ROG Ally Price
So the specs suggest that the ROG Ally is better than the Steam Deck, but what about the price? We also have no official confirmation here yet, but on Reddit a user claimed that they got hands-on with the ROG Ally and know the pricing.
According to him, Asus skipped some features to keep the price reasonable and competitive with the Steam Deck. Apparently there will be two versions with different storage capacity:
- 512 GB for $649
- 1 TB for $899
If these numbers are to be trusted, the 512 GB version would cost the same as the 512 GB Steam Deck version.
Asus ROG Ally Release Date
We don't have an official release date yet, but leakers claim that the Asus ROG Ally will be launched in October 2023. If you want to get notified when it is available, you can enter your email at Bestbuy.
If all the leaks turn out to be true, the ROG Ally would be a real competitor for the Steam Deck. Valve's handheld already boasts great specs and runs a ton of great games, but another handheld PC with an even more user-friendly OS would be great.