If you were planning to get an Asus ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X, get it before Microsoft hikes the price even more.
Xbox has a pricing problem, and that’s not changing with the company’s first officially branded handheld. Microsoft and Asus’ ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X are set to launch on Oct. 16, and after weeks and weeks of making everyone wait, we finally know how much they will cost. If you’re planning on buying one, do it at launch before Microsoft has another chance to jack up prices like it has with Xbox consoles.
Xbox Ally preorders started later Thursday, Sept. 25. The regular Xbox Ally will sell for $600. It comes at base with an AMD Ryzen Z2A processor, with specs that hint it could be equivalent to Valve’s $550 Steam Deck OLED in performance. It also packs 16GB of RAM and a 60Wh battery with a 7-inch IPS LCD display. At that price, Asus and Xbox are trying to claim some small part of the PC handheld market dominated by Valve’s handheld, even if it lacks the prettier OLED display.
The one you actually want, the Xbox Ally X, will demand $1,000 from your already-stretched wallet. The darker handheld contains an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme, the long-awaited SoC—or system on a chip—that should have better performance in games compared to handheld PCs from the last two years.
