Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

No joke — Asus is releasing a Steam Deck competitor

By

Asus released a trailer for a handheld Steam Deck competitor over the weekend, but there was just one problem. The trailer dropped on April 1. That lead many to assume it was an elaborate, high-budget April Fool’s prank, but Asus has confirmed that its handheld gaming PC is real and coming soon.

ROG ALLY - ROG’s First Gaming Handheld Console

The ROG Ally is coming soon, according to Asus, and there’s even a page live on Best Buy if you want to be notified when pre-orders are up. The handheld includes AMD’s “most powerful APU yet,” according to Asus, and it looks to be running Windows 11 with a custom overlay from Asus.

Recommended Videos

In addition, the Ally supports Asus’ XG Mobile GPU, which can carry up to a laptop-grade RTX 4090. This is shown off in the announcement trailer, which certainly carries the tone that the Ally was an April Fool’s joke.

Related

It seems Asus planned for this rollout, though. On Monday morning, YouTuber Dave2D published a video comparing an early prototype model of the Ally to the Steam Deck, confirming that it’s real and that Asus has likely been working on the Ally for quite some time.

ASUS Thinks They Can Beat the Steam Deck

Dave2D confirmed some other critical specs about the device, as well. It carries a custom Zen 4 APU, the same architecture behind Ryzen 7000 processors, along with RDNA 3 graphics, which powers graphics cards like the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT. In addition, it has a 7-inch, 1080p display with a 120Hz refresh rate. All of that, and Dave2D says the Ally is smaller, lighter, and quieter than the Steam Deck.

The YouTuber didn’t get into specifics on performance, but he said the Ally is allowing games to run at much higher frame rates with higher graphics settings compared to the Steam Deck, showcasing titles like Resident Evil 4 Remake and Warhammer 40K: Darktide. 

Even more impressive, Dave2D said he couldn’t hear the fan noise while playing. In his measurements, fan noise from the Ally was around half the volume of the Steam Deck under load on the early prototype model.

There are still a lot of details we don’t know about the ROG Ally, though. Critically, we don’t know its price and release date. Rumors suggest it’s coming this year, and given the hardware inside, it will likely cost more than the Steam Deck’s $400 base price. I’ve reached out to Asus to see if the company has any more details to share at this time.

Editors’ Recommendations

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Topics
Jacob Roach
Jacob Roach
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
This Steam hack has saved me a ton of money on PC games
A person running Steam on the M4 MacBook Pro. Rocket League is up on the screen

I have a massive Steam library, and like most PC gamers I know, I'm always looking to add to it. Will I actually play the games? Maybe. Will I complete all of them? Certainly not. But I'm caught in a negative feedback loop of picking up new games constantly for pennies on the dollar, and Steam is feeding my addiction more than ever before.

How? With Steam bundles. Steam bundles aren't anything new, but I've seen a stark uptick in them over the last several months. They mostly revolve around similarly styled indie titles, offering a small discount of around 10% if you buy two or three games in bulk. That's not why I've taken advantage of Steam bundles so often over the past several months, though.
The hack

Read more
I’ve been dying for Steam Deck frame generation — so why is it so disappointing?
Ghost of Tsushima running on the Steam Deck.

This past week, my prayers were answered. I've been patiently waiting for frame generation to show up broadly on the Steam Deck. The ROG Ally and ROG Ally X have it via AMD's Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF), and Windows handhelds more broadly can use Lossless Scaling. But the Steam Deck can't use frame generation, at least not in games that don't come with native FSR 3 support -- and there aren't a ton of those that even run well on the Steam Deck.

Last week, the Decky-Framegen mod was officially released into beta on GitHub. It's basically a DLL swapper, allowing you to use FSR 3 Frame Generation in games that only support DLSS Frame Generation. If you've used Decky Loader on the Steam Deck before, the installation process is simple. You just drag the plugin to your Plugins folder on the Steam Deck -- located at /home/deck/homebrew/plugins -- switch back to game mode, and apply the plugin to any game in the list. It'll add a launch command to the games you select, and you're off to the races.

Read more
This Steam Deck accessory just put the nail in my gaming PC’s coffin
A Steam Deck connected to a TV plays Rift of the Necrodancer.

After years of putting it off, I recently accepted that my PC is in dire need of an upgrade. A graphics card swap last year slowed its march towards obsolescence, but it was clear that my outdated processor needed a boost to match. The more I researched, the more I realized that wasn’t my only problem. I was looking at a full motherboard swap, potentially setting me back $1000. That was all to maintain what’s become my least favorite way to play games. I’d much rather sit on my couch and use my Steam Deck than play on the same monitor I stare at all day for work.

While I know I’ll have to upgrade eventually, I just found another good excuse to put that off a little longer. Razer just released its own Nintendo Switch-like dock, dubbed the Handheld Dock Chroma, built for devices like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally. It’s a deceptively feature-loaded piece of plastic that has already transformed my gaming habits, putting another nail in my PC’s coffin. That comes at a cost though, both figuratively and literally, which stops this from being the one dock to rule them all.
Design and compatibility
If you’ve used a Nintendo Switch before, you should know exactly what to expect with the Handheld Dock Chroma. You place your device of choice into it, connect it to the dock via USB-C, and voila. Your portable device now outputs up to 60 frames per second at 4K on whatever screen you want, whether it’s a monitor or TV. It’s the kind of accessory that any Steam Deck owner should have.

Read more