Earlier this week, ASUS provided the official availability date for the ROG Ally, its first ever handheld gaming console, but with no official SRP. That changed recently because, unsurprisingly, someone actually leaked that alleged detail recently.
The source of the leak, by the way, was from a Best Buy product page that listed the ROG Ally with 512GB and AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme configuration. Supposedly, the handheld console will be retailing at US$699.99 (~RM3121). If this is indeed the price tag, then it certainly solidifies ASUS’ initial comment about it being “aggressively” priced against Valve’s Steam Deck. For comparison, the latter Deck’s top-specced SKU officially retails at an SRP of US$649.99 (~RM2898).
Best Buy product page leaked the price of the Asus ROG Ally. It will be priced at $699 dollars for the 16GB/512GB variant. pic.twitter.com/CbfERTkGT4
— Khumail Thakur (@wickedkhumz) April 27, 2023
The alleged US$700 price tag was also echoed by another leakster, SnoopyTech (@_snoopytech_), which again, does lend some credibility to the initial leak. On a related note, this also means that the pricing for SKUs with smaller internal storage capacities may fall within a similar ballpark, in relation to other Steam Deck SKUs of identical capacities.
To provided a quick refresher course on the ROG Ally: as mentioned, the handheld console is ASUS’ first handheld console and features a newly designed custom APU series from AMD known as the Ryzen Z1. The top-spec variant of this chip is called the Z1 Extreme and features an 8-core, 16-thread configuration and is based on the Zen 4 architecture and flanked by the chipmaker’s more recent RDNA3 Graphics compute cores. It is reportedly capable of outputting “twice the performance” of the custom APU that is found in the Steam Deck. And when set to run at 15W of power, it should provide 50% better performance than its direct rival.
https://twitter.com/_snoopytech_/status/1651354672081272834
Other specifications include a 7-inch Full HD display with a 16:9 aspect ratio and 120Hz refresh rate, 16GB LPDDR5 RAM, Dolby Atmos Surround Sound, Up to 512GB internal storage via an NVMe Gen4 SSD, and Windows 11 support.
