We’ve been pushing the ROG Ally as a potential Steam Deck killer for the past few days: based on what we know about its official spec sheet, the ROG Ally simply dominates the Steam Deck across practically every category. Of course, there are some questions that are left unanswered, and ASUS finally revealed the biggest question about the ROG Ally, which is its price.
As confirmed during its global launch today (May 11), ASUS reveals that the ROG Ally will have an official price of $700, or roughly less than Php 40k. Aside from the killer price reveal, ASUS also revealed that preorders for the ROG Ally are now open at Best Buy and that official sales will begin on June 13.
For $700, you are getting the ROG Ally outfitted with a Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor and 512GB internal storage, matching the price of the 512GB Steam Deck in the Philippines. However, you are getting better value with the ROG Ally: aside from a significantly more powerful processor, you also get a 120hz Full HD display and Windows 11 out of the box, giving you a wider set of games to install compared to the Steam Deck’s proprietary OS.
Another reason why the ROG Ally is superior to the Steam Deck (and practically every other gaming handheld in the market) is its support for ROG’s XG mobile GPU, which can push its performance further should you plan to hook it up to a large TV and need additional GPU power–the XG Mobile supports up to an RTX 4090, so imagine the amount of power the Ally can handle.
Of course, even if the ROG Ally is better than the Steam Deck on paper, we will be taking it for a spin for our full review and see if a Windows 11-based gaming handheld is the way to go–and if ASUS nailed it right on its debut offering.
To make its $700 official SRP even more enticing, ASUS will bundle 3 months of XBox Game Pass Ultimate with the ROG Ally, which shows that the brand also wants to showcase its first gaming handheld for cloud gaming as well.
While the pricing is already a good start for ASUS, there are reports that a more affordable variant–one that uses a regular Ryzen Z1 processor and comes with 256GB storage–will be made available in Q3 2023 for $600(~Php 33.5k).
