The release of the Valve Steam Deck portable console set a new trend in the mobile gaming market - powerful portable PCs with a Nintendo Switch-style design that can run Cyberpunk 2077, God Of War, Alan Wake 2, BG3 and other popular games on PC. Looking at the success of Steam Deck, Asus decided not to delay the response and in 2023 introduced the Asus ROG Ally line of portable consoles. The key difference from the Steam Deck is the Full HD display and full-fledged Windows 11 instead of specialized Linux-based shells.

At the launch, Asus presented several variations of ROG Ally with 16 GB of RAM and different amounts of built-in storage (256 and 512 GB), as well as different modifications of the Ryzen Z1 and Z1 Extreme processor. The powerful Ryzen Z1 Extreme is a close relative of the 8-core Ryzen 7 7840U Phoenix with integrated Radeon 780M graphics, which roughly matches the performance level of the mobile GeForce GTX 1650 Ti. According to the manufacturer, the console with the Z1 Extreme chip will be able to play games with a frame rate of 50 to 60 frames per second.


A more affordable modification of the console with a 6-core Ryzen Z1 chip is more focused on console 30 frames per second, and its FPS indicator depends much more on the optimization of a particular game and the selected graphics settings. A must-have for the younger version is the built-in AMD FSR 3 resolution scaling system and the Fluid Motion Frames frame generator, with the help of which the owner of the console can achieve smoother and smoother gameplay. If this doesn't help, you can always lower the resolution to 720p.

Otherwise, all versions of ROG Ally are identical. The screen uses a fairly bright and juicy touch matrix with Full HD resolution, a refresh rate of 120 Hz, a maximum brightness of around 500 nits and Gorilla Glass Victus protective glass. A pair of fans and an evaporation chamber are used to cool the iron. To expand the memory, you can use regular microSD cards. As with the Steam Deck, a docking station allows users to connect a monitor, mouse and keyboard to the console, turning it into a mobile PC. Finally, Asus emphasizes that the owner of the console will be able to safely use any stores and services based on Windows 11, be it Steam, Game Pass or Epic Games Store, and a fingerprint scanner is used for authentication.