Asus revealed the ROG Ally, a state-of-the-art handheld console, on April 1st, 2023. It is already being penned as a serious competitor to the Stream Deck, boasting a cutting-edge design and (apparently) some tasty hardware under the hood.
In an alleged leak, the Asus ROG Ally’s specs have been published online, revealing almost everything you could wish to know about the ‘next-generation handheld’ that’s shaping up to be a literal PC in the palm of your hands… Maybe.
Will the Asus ROG Ally Defeat the Steam Deck?
Valve’s Steam Deck was released in 2022, and it has done very well for itself by all accounts. It’s a capable handheld device that runs off the back of Valve’s Linux-based operating system, but straight off the bat, it’s not as attractive as the Asus ROG Ally, and if the leaked specification is to be believed, it’s not as capable as the ROG Ally, either.
In a post published on Twitter by user @hifihedgehog, who was sharing a post that was previously deleted, the specification was reportedly revealed:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen Z1 Series (spec unconfirmed)
- DISPLAY: Full 1080p HD 120Hz Display (500 nits 7ms)
- RAM: 16 GB LPDDR5 Dual Channel
- STORAGE: M.2-2230 512 GB PCIe Gen4
- WEIGHT: 608g
It was also stated that the ROG Ally will feature ‘ROG Intelligent Cooling’, a MicroSD slot, Dolby Atmos-compatible speakers, Armoury Crate SE (key remapping, overlays, profiles), and it’ll run on Windows 11, being fully compatible with Steam, Epic, Xbox Game Pass, and so on.
By comparison, the Steam Deck has a lower-resolution display capable of running at 60Hz (undocked), it uses the AMD Zen 2 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and at the most, 512 GB of storage using an NVMe SSD – with a MicroSD card slot for expansions.
So, it’s close, but on paper, the Asus ROG Ally has the edge, both in terms of hardware and in what it can actually do.
Recently, an alleged leak revealed the purported release date and pricing structure for the ROG Ally, suggesting it’ll drop in October 2023 and retail at anything from $649 to $899.
For more Insider Gaming news, check out our coverage of the insane growth of PlayStation 5 sales.
