After many believed that ASUS was pulling an April Fool’s joke due to the unfortunate timing of its announcement, we now have confirmation that the ROG Ally, a handheld device and competitor to the Steam Deck, is absolutely real. ASUS promises to unveil more information about the hardware soon as we currently don’t know the exact price, detailed specs or launch date yet.
ASUS took to social media to confirm that the ROG Ally is real and coming in the near future. The device’s reveal trailer showed multiple games including High on Life and WRC Generations being played on the portable system. While details are still scarce, ASUS did reveal some information about the ROG Ally and what we can expect from it, including some specs that seem to outshine the Steam Deck.
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According to the company, the ROG Ally will be powered by Windows 11 and come packed with a customised Ryzen APU from AMD. ASUS claims it’s the fastest one from AMD yet.
A deep dive video from the YouTube channel Dave2D gave us the most information about the ROG Ally. According to the content creator, the ROG Ally features a 7-inch 16:9 display while the Steam Deck featured a 16:10 display. It also boasts a 1920×1080 resolution and 500 nits of brightness compared to Steam Deck’s smaller 1280×800 display with 400 nits of brightness. The ROG Ally’s screen will have a 120Hz refresh rate, a step up over Steam Deck’s 60Hz refresh rate.
The chip inside the ROG Ally utilises AMD’s Zen 4 architecture with the powerful RDNA 3 graphics tech more commonly seen in recent GPUs. Dave2D notes that there’s a fingerprint sensor along the top of the device, which Linus Tech Tips (who also got sent a prototype unit) noted could be used to seamlessly switch between multiple accounts.
Linus Tech Tips offered a few more details about the ROG Ally, namely that it isn’t much quieter than the often noisy Steam Deck, measuring about 20dB compared to Steam Deck’s 37dB on load. A dual-fan system sucks air in from the back and expels it out from the top. The SSD and joysticks also appear to be easily replaceable should anything go wrong with them.
Unfortunately, both tech YouTubers said pricing and details on the battery life were unavailable at the moment, though ASUS promises that it will be competitive (and will most likely match price points with the Steam Deck).
As for the design, the ROG Ally is slightly smaller in dimensions when compared to the Steam Deck and features dual analogue sticks, a left-mounted D-pad and four face buttons with bumpers on the back of the device. ASUS also advertised that it could be plugged into the ROG XG Mobile eGPU which the company uses for its gaming laptops that allows you to stream games to your TV.
Given the quality of the current builds, it’s possible that the ROG Ally could release sometime this year. We’ll keep you updated as soon as more information becomes available.
Source: ASUS
