The cheaper $600 Asus ROG Ally is right here, and also you in all probability shouldn’t purchase it

When you’ve been eying an Asus ROG Ally gaming handheld however can’t fairly justify the $700 price ticket… you’ll in all probability need to carry on ready. In the present day, the corporate has begun promoting a less-expensive $600 mannequin with a lower-performance AMD Z1 chip, however early evaluations recommend the Home windows gaming handheld is just too compromised to justify the acquisition.

Backside line: Z1 efficiency is reportedly worse than the $400-and-up Steam Deck, with none important battery life profit to make up for the lack of energy.

Temporary refresher: three months in the past, Asus started delivery the ROG Ally, a Home windows gaming handheld designed to compete on worth and efficiency with Valve’s Steam Deck. It had so much going for it, together with largely better-than-Deck efficiency, a wonderful 120Hz variable refresh fee display that makes all the pieces really feel smoother, a delightfully quiet fan, and a plugged-into-the-wall 30W Turbo mode that makes its Z1 Excessive chip much more potent.

However the handheld was held again by impotent software program that doesn’t make Home windows simple to make use of handheld, iffy battery life, a bizarre efficiency hole between delivery gadgets and the unique evaluation models, and an SD card reader that tended (tends?) to burn out and remains to be below investigation.

Asus advised me in July that it will ship me the brand new $600 Z1 mannequin to check in opposition to the unique Z1 Excessive, nevertheless it by no means did. Now, I see why: Digital Developments, Retro Recreation Corps, and PC Magazine present it’s merely not an enchancment regardless of the additional cash in your pocket.

If Asus had despatched me one, I might have appeared for the silver lining of battery life — maybe AMD’s weaker chip would get extra? However Retro Recreation Corps, particularly, exhibits that battery life is just barely higher with weaker video games and could be comparable or worse with triple-A titles. When absolutely loaded, the Z1 Excessive may truly be extra environment friendly.

None of that is sufficient to make the Z1 a nasty product; as you’ll see within the video above, there’s a lot this method can play fairly effectively! And with my $700 Z1 Excessive evaluation unit, I’m anecdotally discovering it’s a a lot better Starfield machine than the Steam Deck, notably if you happen to plug it into the wall.

However if you happen to’ve solely obtained $600 to spend, it appears fairly seemingly the Z1 ain’t it. And if you happen to’ve obtained $700, I positively wouldn’t hassle with it.

(Observe: The 512GB mannequin of the Steam Deck does technically retail for greater than the 512GB ROG Ally at $650 vs. $600, however the Steam Deck additionally begins at $400, and it’s simple to swap in a brand new drive your self — only one further screw in comparison with my fan substitute video. Additionally, it’s on sale proper now.)