Image: Asus
ASUS is making its own Steam Deck competitor, and it actually looks a solid upgrade.
When ASUS revealed that it was making a new handheld gaming PC on April Fools’ Day, some of us weren’t quite sure if we were meant to take the announcement seriously - until the company came out and confirmed the news on Twitter.
The new device is called the ROG Ally, named after Asus’ ROG (Republic of Gamers) gaming brand. This handheld is a straight up gaming PC positioned as a competitor to the Steam Deck, as opposed to handheld gaming consoles other companies like Razer have put out that mainly focus on streaming games. The ROG Ally will allow users to play games on it natively, running everything on Windows 11. The device will also support Xbox Game Pass.
The ROG Ally is powered by a custom-made AMD APU (accelerated processing unit), just like the Steam Deck. That isn’t where the similarities end between the two, either. According to YouTuber Dave2D, both devices have a 7-inch screen, though the ROG Ally’s screen resolution sits at 1080p compared to the Steam Deck’s 800p. The device seems like a slight upgrade to the Steam Deck on paper, with a display performance going up to 120Hz and a fan volume of 20dB on load. That’s 17 decibels lower than the Steam Deck, if we’re still drawing comparisons.
The ROG Ally can play games from all of your game libraries via Windows 11, and can also be docked Nintendo Switch-style to the ROG XG Mobile eGPU for higher-resolution gaming with better performance. If you’re playing handheld alone, it’s likely that you’ll need to fiddle with a few settings to get modern games to run well on the device.
Asus will likely reveal more information about the ROG Ally in the coming weeks, hopefully including a firm release date. The company’s reveal tweet redirects viewers to Best Buy’s website for now, where they can sign up for pre-order notifications.
