ROG Ally – a competitor to Steam Deck from ASUS
When on April 1 the gaming division of ASUS – Republic of Gamers (ROG) – made an unexpected announcement about the ROG Ally portable game console, we could not understand for a while whether it was a joke or not. Given the lack of a launch date, detailed specifications and price, the announcement really felt like an April Fool’s joke.
However, after waiting a few days, ASUS still confirmed that the ROG Ally is a real device, although there are still very few details about it. According to ASUS, the device is powered by AMD’s custom Ryzen APU with AMD Zen 4 architecture and powerful RDNA 3 graphics used in the latest GPUs. However, unlike the Steam Deck, the ASUS console comes with Windows 11.
Popular YouTube channels Dave2D and Linus Tech Tips confirmed that the ROG Ally is smaller, lighter and thinner than Valve’s Steam Deck: it weighs 608 grams and measures 280x113x39mm, while the Steam Deck weighs 669 grams and measures 298x117x50.5mm.
ROG Ally also features a 7-inch display with a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, a 16:9 aspect ratio, brightness of 500 nits and a refresh rate of 120 Hz, which is better than the Steam Deck with the same diagonal, but a resolution of 1280×800 pixels, brightness of 400 nits and with a refresh rate of 60 Hz.
In addition, ROG Ally has a standard set of two analog sticks, a D-pad on the left and four front-facing ABXY keys, two triggers on the back panel, and additional buttons around the screen for accessing menus and settings. ROG Ally’s design is expected to allow users to easily replace joysticks and SSD storage.
The console features a fingerprint sensor that can be used to switch between multiple accounts and a cooling system with two fans. As Dave2D pointed out in his video, the ROG Ally is much quieter under load than the Steam Deck. The ASUS console emits 20 dB, while the Valve – 37 dB.
Although a more powerful processor should provide ROG Ally with a good level of performance, there is still no information about the console’s battery and its level of battery life. In addition, the optimization of Windows 11 for a portable gaming device remains in question.
ASUS has not yet announced the price of the ROG Ally, but they say that the price will be competitive.