ASUS has decided that it is going to enter the handheld gaming PC market and compete directly with Valve’s Steam Deck. The news broke via Twitter on April Fool’s Day with a video that looked too highly produced to be a joke.
Within a few days, Asus confirmed they weren’t fooling around. The ROG Ally is real and may give the Steam Deck a run for its money if the price is right, of course.
Introducing ROG’s first gaming handheld console!
Taking your PC games out of your gaming room is no longer a fantasy!
Play wherever you are, whenever you want. With the #ROGALLY, you’ll never have to stop gaming again!
Notify me 👉 https://t.co/um6nCrTSR6#ROG pic.twitter.com/jPNsgYwewA
— ROG North America (@ASUS_ROGNA) April 1, 2023
It’s real!
Stay tuned for more 👀#ROG #ROGALLY #PlayALLYourGames pic.twitter.com/UcYyUebBSZ— ROG North America (@ASUS_ROGNA) April 3, 2023
Best Buy looks to be the exclusive retail chain for the ROG Ally. Sadly, the only thing the product’s landing page currently has is a place to sign up for updates.
Technical specifications were not readily available, except for what was said during a demo by the YouTuber Dave2D. Therein he states that the ROG Ally engineering sample he was looking at had the following specs:
- “Double the performance of the Steam Deck.”
- Brand new custom AMD chip: Zen 4 RDNA 3
- Screen: 7″ 1920 x 1080 px (16:9 aspect ratio) 120Hz Optically bonded IPS LCD
- Low fan noise: 20 dB
- No trackpads
- OS: Windows 11
- Software: Customized Armory Crate
- Customizable RGB controls
- XG Mobile connector port. Supports up to RTX 4090.
- Battery size and battery life are unknown.
- Price: Unknown
For reference, here are the specs for the Steam Deck directly from Valve:
- AMD APU CPU: Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)
- GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz (up to 1.6 TFlops FP32)
- APU power: 4-15W RAM 16 GB LPDDR5 on-board RAM (5500 MT/s quad 32-bit channels)
- Storage 64 GB eMMC (PCIe Gen 2 x1) 256 GB NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4 or PCIe Gen 3 x2)
- Screen: 7″ 1280 x 800px (16:10 aspect ratio) 60Hz Optically bonded IPS LCD
- Fan noise: 37 dB
- OS: Custom
- 40Whr battery. 2 – 8 hours of gameplay
- Price: $399 – $649, depending on the storage
Remember that Dave2D was looking at a prototype unit, so many, if not all, of the specs and performance, could drastically change when the production model hits retail.
Can ASUS hope to compete with the Steam Deck? Let us know your opinions in the comments section below.
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