TL;DR
- ASUS is making its first handheld gaming console.
- The handheld is said to run on a custom AMD chip.
- Price and availability haven’t been revealed, but a listing is up on Best Buy.
On the last day of March, ASUS teased a handheld gaming system on social media. Given the announcement’s timing, it was thought to be an early April Fool’s joke. But it turns out the console is indeed the real deal.
Today, ASUS posted on Twitter to confirm that its competitor to Valve’s Steam Deck was no April Fool’s joke. Not only is the company making its own handheld gaming PC, but preorders are also expected to go live soon. If you go on to Best Buy, you’ll even find a listing for the device.
Called the ROG ALLY, ASUS’s handheld is expected to house a custom AMD chip. According to YouTuber Dave2D — who was given an engineering sample — the ROG ALLY uses Zen 4 and RDNA 3 APU. It also reportedly has a 7-inch display like the Steam Deck, but uses a 1080p resolution screen instead. For comparison, the Steam Deck’s display offers a resolution of 1280 x 800.
In addition to a better display, ASUS claims its handheld offers double the performance of the Steam Deck. The system can also reportedly plug into ASUS’s external GPU product — the ROG XG Mobile eGPU. While it’s plugged into the ROG XG Mobile eGPU, the handheld can stream games to your TV and charge at the same time.
Finally, it appears the ROG ALLY is compatible with multiple platforms, including Windows 11 and Xbox Game Pass. And it is expected to launch globally.
This isn’t the first time the Steam Deck has faced competition. For example, there was Lenovo’s Legion Play and, more recently, Logitech’s G Cloud. However, those were both handheld cloud gaming systems, and this is a handheld gaming PC.
