Asus‘ upcoming ROG Ally is positioned to challenge the Steam Deck, but will it succeed? Here are our first impressions.
After nearly a month, we’ve finally had a chance to use Asus’ upcoming ROG Ally handheld. It packs more powerful hardware than the Steam Deck, as well as Windows 11, allowing you to play games from any storefront. But does it have the gusto to take down Valve’s value-focused handheld?
For performance chasers, there’s no doubt that the ROG Ally delivers in a way the Steam Deck cannot. But the Steam Deck still has its place for those looking for an inexpensive handheld that supports a wide range of features.It’s all a matter of price
We’re still light on critical details for the ROG Ally, but Asus promises to reveal more during the console’s launch event on May 11. The main thing we’re waiting for is the price, which is the key to beating Valve’s $400 Steam Deck.
There’s a good chance Valve will hang on to the value crown, but there’s a lot more at play for the ROG Ally. For starters, the Steam Deck can cost much more than $400. At that base price, you’re only getting 64GB of relatively slow storage. To jump up to 256GB with an NVMe SSD, you’ll need to spend $530. And for 512GB, the price is $650.
Asus says the ROG Ally comes with “up to 512GB” of storage, suggesting there could be multiple models, like the Steam Deck. Although we might not get a $400 model, it’s not out of the question that the flagship could compete with the Steam Deck. An Asus representative has confirmed that the price will be below $1,000.Some curious specs
The ROG Ally looks pretty, that’s for sure, but it’s really the underlying hardware that makes Asus’ handheld exciting. We now know that the ROG Ally is powered by AMD’s Z1 Series processors, which are custom APUs leveraging Zen 4 CPU cores and RDNA 3 GPU cores. AMD has two of these Z1 processors available, though, and they’re very different.
The Ryzen Z1 comes with six Zen 4 cores and four RDNA 3 cores for a total of up to 2.8 TFLOPS of theoretical performance. The Ryzen Z1 Extreme, by contrast, comes with eight Zen 4 cores and a massive 12 RDNA 3 cores. That enables much higher performance — up to 8.6 TFLOPs, according to AMD.
Again, Asus hasn’t revealed which of the processors the ROG Ally is using, but the company cleverly says the handheld is powered by AMD Ryzen Z1 “processors,” lending a little more credibility to the speculation that the company will release two models of the ROG Ally.
By comparison, the Steam Deck is packing much weaker hardware. Regardless of the model you choose, you’re getting four Zen 2 cores and eight RDNA 2 cores, which offer up to 1.6 TFLOPs of theoretical performance. The Steam Deck’s APU also tops out at 15 watts, while the ROG Ally can go up to 30W in its Turbo mode.
There’s a big difference between the APUs, but the Steam Deck and ROG Ally have some specs in common as well.
