ASUS finally broke its silence on the pricing of the ROG Ally, the company’s first handheld and portable gaming console. The console will retail at a starting price of US$599 (~RM2670) for the SKU fitted with the AMD Ryzen Z1 SoC, while the model fitted with the Ryzen Z1 Extreme retails for US$699 (~RM3116).
Interestingly, the ROG Ally model that ASUS is pushing out, aggressively even, is the one with the Z1 Extreme APU, and understandably so. To that end, preorders for this SKU begin today, while the actual sales day for the console is set for 13 June. Meanwhile, the Ally with the watered-down Z1 will only start being available during the third quarter of this year, with no specific date stated. To sweeten the deal further, ASUS is also bundling three months of free access to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass with every purchase of the ROG Ally.
As a quick primer on the rest of the specs of the ROG Ally, the console sports a 7-inch 16:9 display with a maximum resolution of Full HD. Moreover, it also has a higher-than-average refresh rate of 120Hz, along with a peak brightness of 500 nits.
To keep the ROG Ally cool, ASUS has installed its own dual-fan cooling solution, officially known as ROG Intelligent Cooling, that pulls in air directly from the back and expels instantly through the top of the console. On the outside, the handheld console employs the Xbox controller layout but also comes fitted with two additional back buttons in the rear, one on each side. Keeping it powered is a 40Whr battery.
Lastly, the ROG Ally is fitted with ASUS’ proprietary XG Mobile port, allowing it to be connected or docked directly with an XG Mobile eGPU. To that end, the brand is offering consumers a choice of the eGPU running on either a Radeon RX 6850M or an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile GPU.
At the time of writing, ASUS did not provide us with the local pricing of the ROG Ally.
(Source: ASUS via YouTube)
