Asus’ all-new handheld ROG Ally is now available at Best Buy starting at $699. That makes him one of the most competitive game consoles in terms of price, aside from the Steam Deck. ROG Ally is powered by AMD’s latest Z1 extreme gaming SoC to run PC games, including Windows 11.
Best Buy is the only vendor selling the ROG Ally, but we believe other vendors will eventually sell the new gaming device as well. The SKU Best Buy sells is his RC71L, which is high-end with AMD’s Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC, 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, and 512GB of internal storage. A lower-end SKU with the same specs is expected to arrive later, but AMD’s lower-end Ryzen Z1 (non-extreme) will feature 2 fewer cores and 4 RDNA3 GPU compute units (8 cores and 12 CUs in extreme (compare with ).
Ally is a serious handheld gaming PC designed to let users play PC games on the couch or on the go. With his aggressive ROG-themed white finish, on the front he has two joysticks, a D-pad and an XABY key, with additional triggers on the top and back of the device. Ally weighs 1.34 lbs and has a 40 WHr battery with a power adapter capable of charging up to 65 W.
In our review, we loved the features of the console and gave it 3.5 stars. We highlighted the use of Windows 11 and the extremely strong performance with frame rates that outperform the Steam Deck in most situations. The main complaints we had were that the software didn’t match the experience provided by Steam’s custom-developed SteamOS Linux operating system, and its underwhelming battery life characteristics.
Still, with a price tag of $699 for the higher-end model, we conclude that Ally is a strong contender in the handheld PC space. It has superior specs compared to the top Steam Deck trim priced at just $50 less than Ally, and can play any Windows game out of the box, not just games that support SteamOS. increase.
