Handheld gaming PCs are booming. Over the last year and a half, we've seen compelling devices from Valve, Ayaneo, GPD and others, and now ASUS is entering the fray with the ROG Ally. It's sleek, it's quiet and it packs a gorgeous 1080p display. And with a new Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip from AMD, it may be the Steam Deck’s most powerful rival yet. It also runs Windows 11 instead of Steam OS, so it has even better game compatibility. However, the Ally is a touch more expensive and there’s a trade-off for all that extra performance, so is it really better than the device that reinvigorated the gaming handheld category back in early 2022?
Price
At $700, the Ally appears to be way more expensive than the Steam Deck, which goes for as little as $400 (or even less during a sale). But because the Ally comes with a 512GB SSD, it’s not really fair to compare it to Valve’s $400 base model, which only has 64GB of onboard storage. I should also mention that a cheaper version of the Ally with a non-extreme version of the Z1 chip is due out sometime later this year, but that wasn’t available for review.
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