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When it comes to announcing anything on April Fools' Day, it's usually a silly prank reveal of a fake product, since nearly everyone expects such on that day. However, on very rare occasions, those almost unbelievable reveals turn out to be real. That was the case with Asus's new handheld device, which was initially believed to be an April Fools' joke, but turned out to be something that will actually be launching in the near future. Called the ROG Ally, it's designed to be a Steam Deck competitor, running Windows 11 with the ability to play Game Pass titles, and will utilize an AMD Ryzen APU. In the initial trailer, uploaded on April 1st, Asus shows the Ally using a home screen that collects games across multiple launchers--specifically Game Pass and Steam, and can apparently natively run titles like Resident Evil: Village, High on Life, Ghostrunner, Dying Light 2, and more. Notably, it also appears to support docking to Asus' ROG XG eGPU. for better performance on your TV when docked.

A Best Buy store page is available, where you can register for notifications as to when the ROG Ally can be pre-ordered. Asus also offered an early production unit of the Ally to YouTuber Dave2D, who got hands-on time with the handheld. It is claimed that the Ally will have "two times the performance of the Steam Deck", with a 1080p screen that can output 120hz. Asus has not announced the price of the ROG Ally at this time.

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[sarkwalvein]

If whatever they have for a base model goes above $650 then I am not interested.

PS: I don't believe it will be below that though.

 

[Catastrophic]

I must say I'm quite liking this arms race of companies trying to make gaming handhelds. Helps innovate a bit more beyond whatever malarkey Nintendo's been doing these days.

 

[Scarlet]

Has anyone ever used an eGPU outside of a YouTube video?

They're such a massive compromise that they're almost worthless. If you've got a portable device that can only game when it's docked then it's not really portable, at which point you might as well get a desktop or laptop.

For what it's worth, I use an eGPU regularly. Most of my devices support either Thunderbolt 3 or USB 4, so I use it as a central dock on my desk with the bonus of it boosting my GPU performance. You do lose a lot of performance when compared to using the GPU in a desktop, and I'm not going to tell you it's an economical decision, but I do think there are use cases. Especially if you already have a GPU going spare that you can pop into an enclosure.

 

[KingVamp]

Yeah, if it isn't even in the price range of the most expensive Steam Deck, then it is probably not going to be worth it for those buyers.

At a glance, no battery information either.

 

[Hayato213]

That 4x price is correct if you go after like 2TB, 32GB ram model, that usually how the price is for that specs.

 

[Ryab]

Steam Deckers using Nintendo-like arguments is so fun to watch!

"Oh, it's powerful, but what about the fun? What about the price?".

From Valve view point it doesn't matter, likely will all end up on their store, so they're good.

I mean I only buy Nintendo consoles for the exclusives. I'll probably buy a SteamDeck for other stuff if I ever care to use a handheld.

 

[NyaakoXD]

So it's not a Deck competitor. It's a Aya Neo / One Xplayer competitor.

Essentially, yeah. The Steam Deck will be just fine and still be way more popular with its cheaper price point and better support with Steam.

 

[Scarlet]

Oh wow, I only just watched the trailer itself. I'm super happy to see ASUS do more with the XG Mobile. With some luck it'll be more readily available with this instead of it being locked to buying it with a device.

Very interested to see how it performs.

 

[NyaakoXD]

I must say I'm quite liking this arms race of companies trying to make gaming handhelds. Helps innovate a bit more beyond whatever malarkey Nintendo's been doing these days.

Well, only after seeing how extremely successful the Switch has been. Not to mention the Switch was released back in March 2017, over 6 years old now. And only recent that they started taking handheld gaming seriously.

It always happens with Nintendo doing something that works and then others would try to copy that success in their own ways. And yes, while handheld PCs have been a thing before the Switch, almost no one took the whole handheld gaming PC concept seriously until after the Switch's success and eventually the Steam Deck to push it even further.

 

[ZeroFX]

not based, expensive crap.

 

[Bladexdsl]

and so it begins...

 

[SylverReZ]

and so it begins...

Oh boi, another console war. Still, the Steam Deck does it better IMO.

 

[tpax]

I love seeing "competition" in this market. I don't care about the price tbh. I'd pay 2k€ for a powerful handheld.
But as of now, I still prefer the Steam Deck because of how well SteamOS fits a handheld device. Alone the perfectly working hibernate and resume is a massive USP for me. If hibernate and resume would work as well on the Ayaneo, I'd go for that.

Also, GPD Win Mini might become a superb handheld device with it's clamshell design. If the performance is on par or above the Steam Deck, that'll be an instant buy for me.

 

[Ryab]

I love seeing "competition" in this market. I don't care about the price tbh. I'd pay 2k€ for a powerful handheld.
But as of now, I still prefer the Steam Deck because of how well SteamOS fits a handheld device. Alone the perfectly working hibernate and resume is a massive USP for me. If hibernate and resume would work as well on the Ayaneo, I'd go for that.

Also, GPD Win Mini might become a superb handheld device with it's clamshell design. If the performance is on par or above the Steam Deck, that'll be an instant buy for me.

Yeah honestly I just really like SteamOS. Steam Deck is obviously the main place for that right now, but that could change later down the line.

 

[64bitmodels]

I must say I'm quite liking this arms race of companies trying to make gaming handhelds. Helps innovate a bit more beyond whatever malarkey Nintendo's been doing these days.

no use if they're all above 500 dollars

 

[Xzi]

Oh boi, another console war. Still, the Steam Deck does it better IMO.

There won't be any real competitors to Steam Deck until another company is willing to take a loss on the hardware. ASUS has the funding necessary to do just that, but will they? I very much doubt it.

 

[eternal]

I think Valve is going to get away with slightly weak hardware for the same reasons Nintendo does: it's very well integrated and has great content.

If this thing is using Windows, it can't be that well integrated.

It's only integrated as well as the software is integrated, steamdeck os has a lot of folks enjoying it without realizing its linux based.

 

[guily6669]

The gamers biggest ally... Ally to your your bank account...

Also still doesn't beat the OnexPlayer 2 design for me cause it's like Switch, it goes from just a good performance windows tablet to a full pure gaming handheld.

But still SteamDeck was recently in promotion for like 370€ and considering I could have got one for that price, they better start making 10x it's performance soon if they want to shove me with 1000+ € and above price tags and the first thing they can already forget is not having a OLED for such crazy prices.

Also 120hz is the last thing I'd care on something to play with a controller much less a portable battery powered one like if you will even be able to compete on any online PC shooter game even if it had 10000 FPS\HZ with a controller VS mouse and Keyboard and connecting M\K to such tiny screen is like a ants game

 

[mituzora]

I like to see competition, and I think If anyone can bring it, Asus has the ability to do so.
Here is the big "However". Also, inb4 "you can install holoISO on it". SteamOS is a GOAT in this space.
I don't care how powerful the hardware is. If you don't have a polished, easy to use OS on-top of the system, this thing isn't going to fair well compared to the Steam Deck. Additionally, Valve actually contributes to the Linux kernel for the Deck specifically, and all of it's granular control with TDP, Framerate, Refersh Rate, etc. on the fly is likely going to struggle in this space. They'll likely make a proprietary suite of programs that work with the Ally, but not be heavily integrated with the OS itself, so it's going to cause more issues than gamescope does with the Steam Deck, and on Linux, unless they contribute to the Kernel, or that AMD contributes code for this new APU to the Linux kernel, that using something like HoloISO/SteamOS is going to be limited compared to what you can do with the steam deck.
This may have the Deck beat in hardware, but the open community, and SteamOS tuned to this device is going to keep the Deck on top. Plus the cost of this device alongside it's major upside (the eGPU) is going to not be worth it, when the Deck runs most things fine.

 

[Xzi]

Also 120hz is the last thing I'd care on something to play with a controller much less a portable battery powered one like if you will even be able to compete on any online PC shooter game even if it had 10000 FPS\HZ with a controller VS mouse and Keyboard and connecting M\K to such tiny screen is like a ants game

Yeah both 1080p and 120Hz are unnecessary power drains/price bumps on a portable system, and being it's almost exactly the same size as Steam Deck, there's no way they fit in a much larger battery. So you get 30-45 minutes in next-gen games, tops. I'd think something like this would make for a better mini-PC of sorts, staying mostly docked. For those that don't already have a decent gaming PC, anyway, and especially if the price lands at $1000+ as predicted.