ASUS’ ROG Ally is launching this June and is available to pre-order for £699

ASUS’ ROG Ally is now available to pre-order in the UK for £699

ASUS’ ROG Ally has become available to pre-order, with an asking price of £699/$699. The Windows 11 powered handheld will launch on June 16th, with early models shipping with AMD’s Ryzen 1 Extreme processor. A cheaper model will be released later this year with AMD’s lower-end Ryzen ZZ1 SOC. 

With a 1080p 120Hz touch screen, a UHS-2 MicroSD slot, 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, and a 512GB SSD, the ROG Ally is a strong competitor to Valve’s Steam Deck gaming system. The system also ships with three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which includes PC Game Pass. As a Windows 11 gaming device, the ROG Ally supports all PC games natively, though it is worth noting that not all PC games are best played with a gamepad.

ASUS’ ROG Ally boasts a much stronger SOC than Valve’s Steam Deck, with the ROG Ally’s Z1 Extreme model featuring a Zen 4 based 8-core processor and RDNA 3 graphics. That said, the ROG Ally does have a much higher resolution screen than Valve’s Steam Deck, which necessitates some extra GPU power.

While ASUS’ ROG Ally handheld is an interesting product, it remains to be seen how well a Windows 11 gaming hendheld will compare to Valve’s Steam Deck in real-world use. Valve’s SteamDeck OS is designed for handheld use, whereas Windows 11 is designed for traditional PCs, and Steam Deck has a lot of interesting features that make the handheld more usable as a portable gaming PC, features that the ROG Ally may lack.

In Q3 this year, ASUS are set to launch their cheaper AMD Ryzen Z1 powered ROG Ally with a 512GB SSD. This device reportedly costs $599, $100 less than ASUS’ Z1 Extreme ROG Ally model.

Gamers in the UK can pre-order ASUS’ ROG Ally here.

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