ASUS ROG Ally Specs Leak, Under $700?

The Asus ROG Ally is coming soonish. Check out all the info we gathered on it!

The last time we talked about the ASUS ROG Ally, we were confused about its very questionable announcement date on April Fool's Day. What isn't foolish might be the potential price point.

ASUS is pushing this device to solve a few nitpicks users have with the Steam Deck. Aside from being a native Windows device that will play well out of the box with various anti-cheat games (though you can always install Steam OS), the ROG Ally will offer a higher resolution and refresh rate, better speakers, weigh less, a faster processor, and double the GPU performance than a Steam Deck.

ASUS' latest tweet about the ROG Ally is also signaling that the Ally could be dropping soon. In combination with ASUS' partnership with retail stores through Best Buy–  a major hurdle the Steam Deck has yet to offer in North America.

New rumors are saying the ROG Ally is nearing a price point between $650-700 USD, but keep in mind buying the external proprietary 4090 eGPU is going to set you back another $2000.

When ASUS tweeted the Ally was coming sooner than expected, the recent leaks, thanks to a shipment to India, clearly showed they weren't bluffing. VideoCardz.com managed to intercept a tweet from Twitter user @Papayatop – an Indian electronics retailer (which has since been deleted), with an advertisement that highlights the specs of the ASUS ROG Ally. The leaked specs of the ASUS ROG Ally look like they're fully ready to take on the Steam Deck as the next leader in the handheld PC gaming space.

The ASUS ROG Ally comes paired with a Ryzen 7 7840U Zen4 processor equipped with RDNA3 graphics as opposed to the Steam Deck's RDNA2 graphics.

The expected iGPU, according to the product description column, is an AMD 780M, which according to TechPowerUp, is closer in relative performance to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650. In contrast, the Steam Deck falls closer in line with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 950– over a 59% boost in performance between those two cards. This info falls in line with LinusTechTips' claim of double the performance compared to the Steam Deck.

Going further into GPU details and using an Nvidia GTX 1650 as a measurement, games like Fortnite should hit over 100FPS at 1080p on Low Settings, around 70FPS on Medium settings, and a measly 25-30 FPS on High settings (without ray-tracing on). Depending on how much VRAM is usable, even The Last of Us might be playable at a reasonable framerate with its Low and Medium specs at 1080p, but the keyword is: "might".

ASUS is also going all-out with Dolby Atmos speakers. Suppose it sounds near the quality of ASUS' ROG Zephyrus line of laptops. In that case, this portable is going to sound far better than even most consumer laptops, or at least every other competitor so far.

In addition to its powerful chip and sound, the 7-inch full-1080p HD screen with a 120Hz refresh rate will make for greater options for media playback or allow PC gamers to choose between performance or quality options.

The 16GB of memory of LPDDR5 RAM matches the Steam Deck's, so there won't be too big of a performance difference in RAM.

The most disappointing part of this leak that matches Valve's Steam Deck is the M.2-2230 PCIe NVMe SSD. Upgrading to 2TBs costs $300 at the time of writing, whereas the longer 2280 NVMe SSDs start their 4TB drives around the $200 mark on Amazon. This news should be disappointing for fellow data hoarders.

Though if this unit costs $650, that matches the cost of a 512GB Steam Deck for double the performance.

There is also the possibility that there might be two SKUs, as another image from VideoCardz.com shows a model called RC71X where all of the shipments above referred to a unit called RC71L. This might be why a price range was rumored between $650 and $700 USD, as there might be two separate units that might fall within both rumored prices.

Pros:

• Powerful Ryzen 7 7840U Zen4/RDNA3 APU
• More than double the GPU performance of a Steam Deck
• 7-inch full-HD screen with a 120Hz refresh rate
• Dolby Atmos Speakers
• 16GB of memory
• Support for AMD RSR
• 512GBs of Storage
• The rumored price is very competitive

Cons :

• $2000 4090 eGPU.
• No word on a release date yet
• The likelihood of gaming at a resolution of 1080p/120 FPS is slim
• The NVMe Storage is the same as the Steam Deck's 2230 size drive, which is still very expensive and limited in storage capacities compared to 2280 NVMe SSD Sizes
• The Ally is reliant on ASUS really supporting software as a man-in-the-middle for a better user experience since Microsoft isn't interested in optimizing Windows 11 for controllers or touchscreen devices

Overall, the leaked specs of the ASUS ROG Ally look very promising. It is a powerful gaming console with a great display and plenty of memory. The only downside is that the price and release date have not been announced yet. However, the ROG Ally is looking to be the easiest handheld gaming PC to recommend for newcomers to this highly competitive new gaming PC form factor. Just maybe wait for a discount if you plan on docking an Ally with a 4090.