- Kyle Chua
Asus Unveils ROG Ally Handheld Gaming System
Updated: Dec 19, 2023
There's a new handheld gaming system that's challenging Valve's popular Steam Deck.
Asus on Friday, 12 May finally pulled the wrappings back on the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Ally, a new Windows 11 handheld gaming system. The Ally is powered by AMD's Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor, featuring 8 cores and 16 threads, built on the Zen 4 architecture and designed specifically for high-performance, portable systems.
The Taiwanese hardware maker touts that the processor allows the Ally to rival the performance and graphics of consoles, delivering Full HD (FHD) gaming on the go. It's kept cool by a proprietary thermal solution that uses a dual-fan system with ultrathin heatsink fins and high-friction heat pipes. The Ally also boasts 16 GB of LPDDR5 6400 MHz memory, 512 GB of PCIe Gen 4 storage, a UHS-II microSD card slot and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity.
For its display, the handheld system sports a 120Hz FHD touchscreen panel with AMD FreeSync Premium technology that maintains a smooth image with no tearing or stuttering. The panel has a maximum brightness of 500 nits, which should help when the device is being used outdoors or under sunlight. The touchscreen functionalities also act seamlessly to allow navigation of Windows 11 outside of gaming.
The Ally also features an optional charging dock, where gamers can connect the handheld system to when they want to play games on a TV and charge at the same time, similar to the Nintendo Switch. When the Ally is docked, additional players can join the game for co-op or competitive action as long as they have extra controllers.
Alternatively, the Ally can be paired with an XG Mobile external GPU sporting up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU to turn it into a true powerhouse for a living room or a mouse-and-keyboard gaming setup. The added graphics power can enable the handheld to handle AAA games at 4K resolution with ray-tracing and DLSS 3.
Asus further notes that the Ally can play existing games from gamers' libraries as it fully supports platforms like Steam, the EA App, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, the Epic Games Store, GOG Galaxy 2.0 and Android apps, among others. Every purchase of the handheld system even comes bundled with a free three-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate code, allowing gamers to access Microsoft's library of over 100 games.
Details about local availability, configurations and pricing, have yet to be announced. But those interested can already register via ROG's store page for the Ally, and receive notifications on the latest news about the new system.
Asus has finally unveiled finally the ROG Ally, a new Windows 11 handheld gaming system.
The Ally is powered by AMD's Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor, featuring 8 cores and 16 threads, built on the Zen 4 architecture and designed specifically for high-performance, portable systems.
It also boasts 16 GB of LPDDR5 6400 MHz memory, 512 GB of PCIe Gen 4 storage, a UHS-II microSD card slot and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity.
Details about local availability, configurations, and pricing, however, have yet to be announced.