Asus ROG Ally: launching on June 13 for $699.99, pre-orders now open

Asus introduced that its ROG Ally handheld gaming PC might be launched on June 13, and you’ll pre-order one beginning at present. It’s launching with AMD’s new Z1 Excessive processor, and a 512 GB SSD for $699.99 — solely $50 greater than Valve’s most kitted-out Steam Deck. A much less highly effective model is coming for $599.99, however Asus hasn’t shared when that mannequin might be out there.

Following the ROG Ally’s barely misguided debut on April Idiot’s Day, of all days, we’ve discovered much more about how the transportable gaming PC will stack up in opposition to the Steam Deck, in addition to different competing fashions. Is it definitely worth the value? Take a look at Chris Plante’s full assessment to search out out.

The pairing of its AMD Z1 Excessive processor and 16 GB of speedy LPDDR5 RAM appear able to working PC video games with fewer visible compromises than what we’ve turn out to be accustomed to on the Steam Deck (which itself isn’t any slouch). To not point out, its 1080p show is the next decision, and it doubles the refresh fee — as much as 120Hz — for smoother-looking gameplay.

Notably, it has a proprietary slot the place you possibly can plug in one among Asus’ succesful XG Cell exterior GPUs, which is basically a docking station that’s filled with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 and quite a few ports. With that, the graphical bottlenecks will disappear. However along with being expensive (effectively over $1,000), utilizing it comes on the expense of portability. You’ll be strapped down by wires. If you wish to be taught extra about how that works (warts and all), take a look at this video I did in 2022 over at The Verge.

All of that mentioned, there’s so much to be enthusiastic about. If you wish to pre-order the ROG Ally, we have now some data beneath that needs to be helpful.

The place can I pre-order the Asus ROG Ally?

Greatest Purchase is the only real retailer within the U.S. that’s accepting pre-orders. You’ll have the ability to pre-order the $699.99 mannequin on-line beginning at present. The Greatest Purchase itemizing is reside for the $599.99 mannequin with the AMD Ryzen Z1 processor and 512 GB of storage, however it’s not at the moment out there for pre-order. We’ll be retaining a watch out for hyperlinks at different retailers.