If you spend some time with the new Asus ROG Ally, you’ll quickly realize its performance is no joke, even though the Ally was announced on April 1st. For those who may not be familiar with it yet, this is a handheld game that aims to strike a great balance between performance and portability, without compromising much on either.
Asus has been interested in entering the world of mobile gaming devices for some time now, but with this latest product, it looks like the company is ready to jump in at the deep end.
Logically, many comparisons are being drawn between ROG Ally and Valve’s Steam Deck. Ally should certainly compete with Steam Deck, but Asus claims that its mobile device has also been in development for five years. We think so too, because after playing with it for a while, we noticed that it is an impressive device that has clearly undergone many evolutions.
It will be interesting to see how far the Asus ROG Ally fares in the mobile market compared to the Steam Deck and maybe even the Nintendo Switch, which is currently the most dominant in that market. In any case, it’s nice to see more and more strong competitors for the Switch appearing now that the mobile Nintendo has had no real competition for almost an entire generation.
Asus ROG Ally: price and availability
Asus has not released much information exactly about the price and availability of the Asus ROG Ally. We know it will be officially unveiled on May 11th and according to a UK representative, it will cost less than $1,000 anyway and there will be two different models.
Moreover, it is not yet known how exactly this device will compare with its direct competitor Steam Deck in terms of price. The Valve laptop has three models: a €419 model, a €549 model, and a €679 model. Since we already know a lot about the specifications, we cannot imagine that a version for around 400 euros will appear. In terms of availability, we at least know it’s likely to come to the US and UK, but we haven’t gotten any word on other regions yet.
Asus ROG Ally: Design
| category | Specifications |
|---|---|
| price | after |
| Healer | AMD Ryzen Z1 |
| graphics | XGmobile |
| RAM | Up to 16GB LPDDR5 |
| storage | up to 512 GB PCIe SSD (Gen4) |
| an offer | 120 Hz, 500 lumens, 7 ms |
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The most amazing aspects of the Asus ROG Ally are its distinctive white color and honeycomb design. The RGB lighting around the analog sticks is also a nice addition to the housing which already looks very nice.
When you hold ROG Ally in your hands, it’s quickly apparent that this honeycomb design has a practical use. Because of this design, the device remains relatively light. So the weight of 608 grams is very impressive. The Ally is slightly less wide than the Steam Deck and is also thinner overall. However, the ROG Ally still manages to look like an excellent portable device, unlike the Steam Deck (and Switch) which is more like a game.
The fact that it’s lightweight is also a big plus, as it makes it more comfortable to hold during long sessions. On top of that, the white shell will also help reduce heat around your hands, so you’ll be less likely to get hands sweaty during long gaming sessions.
The analog sticks have a good grip and also seem to be of good quality. We also really like the location of the six triggers (the usual four on the sides on top and two on the back). It is very natural to keep your fingers on and press these triggers, even on the triggers on the back.
The display is also impressive. It’s a Full HD panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, 7ms response time and 500nits brightness that you can easily keep playing in high and low light. The sound quality is also excellent. Sounds like music and sound effects in games sound surprisingly clear.
The ventilation system is designed with the idea that a mobile device will be moved around a lot and not mostly stationary like a PC or laptop. In any case, this system does its job reasonably well, because Ally continues to run smoothly during intense gaming sessions. However, we did notice that the device can get quite hot at the top, where your fingers would normally rest.
Asus ROG ally: performance
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ROG Ally runs Windows 11 by default. That might sound risky given all the issues with this operating system, but it gives gamers more choice and flexibility in how they use the device.
Not only do you have full support for Xbox Games Pass, Steam, the EA App, and the Epic Games Store thanks to Windows on ROG Ally, but you can also easily use this portable device as a small replacement for your desktop PC. You can easily connect a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and start using the good old Windows. So you don’t have to get used to Linux first, like you do on Steam Deck (although that’s not so bad).
The Asus mobile device also uses Armory Crate CE software, which allows you to customize performance settings, button functions, and much more. Gamers’ opinions are somewhat divided on the software itself (aside from this portable), but on ROG Ally, everything works just fine.
What’s inside this device is even more interesting. The case is thinner than the one on the Steam Deck and houses a full CPU and GPU at the same time. The CPU is a Ryzen Z1 chip with Zen 4 architecture, which was specially designed for the ROG Ally by the chip manufacturer to better optimize it for a mobile device as well.
Ally also uses AMD’s RDNA3 graphics technology and this technology is even more impressive. The GPU is “XG mobile”. It is usually a very compact but powerful external GPU for computers, but here it is used as an internal GPU.
We have the game too ghost runner It could be tried, and we were given the option to play with DirectX 11 or with the beta (as the menu calls it) DirectX 12. We chose DirectX 12 and the gameplay was very smooth, with no noticeable lags. By the way, the graphics looked great. We noticed once after we died in the game and had to reload that the machine suddenly became very slow to respond until we restarted it and switched to DirectX 11. With DirectX 11, the experience really proved to be more stable.
Asus ROG Ally: Early Verdict
From what we saw and what we got to play with, they were very impressed which was a bit of a surprise. Asus has clearly put a lot of effort into developing the ROG Ally. If you can take one thing away from this hands-on, it’s that this is definitely not a cheap plastic rig, hastily put together in an effort to compete with the Steam Deck.
This is a serious attempt by Asus to change the perception of what gaming laptops are capable of.
Our main concern right now is the price. The specifications are certainly impressive, but if the price is so high we won’t know if it will reach a mass audience. Of course, you can also use this portable device as a replacement for a desktop computer, but most people will probably only use it as a portable device for gaming. Perhaps people are only willing to pay a relatively limited amount of money for such a device before it is seen as too expensive. Hopefully, Asus won’t disappoint us in this area, otherwise it could turn out to be an expensive (April 1) joke for the company.
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