ASUS has introduced a portable gaming console ROG Ally. The novelty, which many initially perceived as an April Fool’s joke, has a very rich filling, a high-quality display and the only thing that the first reviewers complain about is a very modest battery life.
Image source: ASUS
ASUS ROG Ally is powered by AMD’s custom Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU, which combines eight Zen 4 cores up to 5.1 GHz with powerful 12-execution-unit RDNA 3 integrated graphics (768 stream processors, up to 2.7 GHz) combined. There will also be a cheaper option for a Ryzen Z1 processor with six Zen 4 cores (4.9GHz) and only four RDNA 3 blocks (2.5GHz). Both chips have a dynamic TDP of 9 to 30 watts. A system with a pair of fans is responsible for cooling.
The set-top box runs full-fledged Windows 11 Home, so you can install absolutely any PC games on it. It also supports connecting external displays as well as gamepads and other peripherals.
Regardless of the version, the console has a 7-inch IPS touch display with a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels, a frequency of 120 Hz and a brightness of up to 500 cd/m2. On the sides, ROG Ally has controls in the form of a pair of joysticks, a D-Pad, A, B, X, and Y buttons, and other function buttons. At the end there are bumpers and triggers like the Xbox controller.
In both versions, the set-top box is equipped with 16 GB of LPDDR5-6400 RAM, of which 4 GB is reserved for the graphics processor. The younger version of the ROG Ally got a 256GB solid state drive, while the older version got 512GB. Both are M.2 2230 PCIe 4.0 SSDs. There’s also a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port with DisplayPort 1.4 support, a microSD card slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a proprietary ROG XG Mobile interface. for an external video card. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 are supported. The device weighs 608 grams with dimensions of 280.44 × 111.18 × 21.22 mm.
The novelty boasts significantly higher performance than its main competitor Steam Deck, which is not surprising given the more modern and powerful hardware. For example, in Cyberpunk 2077, the new ASUS Rog Ally can deliver up to 66 FPS, while Steam Deck manages 39 FPS. We will tell you more about the performance in a separate article with reviews. In standalone mode, the ASUS console is powered by a 40Wh battery that can provide 2 hours of battery life in demanding games. Supports 65W charging.
The ASUS ROG Ally on the Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip will cost $699 in the US and €799 in Europe and will go on sale on June 13th. The younger version of the Ryzen Z1, on the other hand, costs $599 or €699 and will go on sale in the third quarter.
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