ASUS is keeping the hype up for its upcoming ROG Ally handheld console, and now it has confirmed the worldwide release and teased that it could come sooner than anyone expected, which is pretty impressive. Announced on April 1st, the ASUS ROG Ally has impressive specifications, running on yet to be detailed AMD 4 nm custom APU based on Zen 4 CPU and RDNA 3 GPU architecture.

The ASUS ROG Ally measures at 280 x 133 x 39 mm and weighs 608 grams, making it shorter, narrower, thinner, and lighter than its competitor, Valve's Steam Deck. It has a 7-inch display with 1920x1080 resolution, 120 Hz refresh rate, 5 ms response time, and 500 nits of brightness. According to earlier hands-on previews of the prototype from Dave2D and LinusTechTips, ASUS did a great job with the dual-fan cooling solution, making it very quite. It will also have a dedicated PCIE Gen 3 x8 XG connector, which allows it to connect to the recently launched XG Mobile GPU, an external RTX 4090 GPU which retails at $1999.99 in the US. Linus also noted that the ROG Ally will offer 50 percent higher performance at 15 W and twice the performance at 35 W, compared to the Steam Deck. As noted, ASUS has now confirmed that the ROG Ally will launch worldwide, and that it might be sooner that we expect, linking to Best Buy for those that live in North America.

As it turned out that ASUS ROG Ally handheld console is not actually an April Fools' Day prank, more details have started to appear about this Steam Deck competitor, and these first details look pretty promising. According to the Dave2D video, showing the prototype unit in full details, the ASUS ROG Ally will indeed be based on a 4 nm custom AMD APU, featuring Zen 4 CPU and RDNA3 iGPU, so we are most likely looking at a custom AMD Phoenix APU.

The video had a few nice pictures of the pre-production PCB as well as the cooling setup as well as details on the screen, and some performance of the ASUS ROG Ally. The ROG Ally measures at 280 x 133 x 39 mm and weighing 608 grams. This makes it shorter, narrower, thinner, as well as lighter, compared to the Steam Deck. It also comes with 7-inch display, but this time around, it is a 500 nits, 1920x1080 resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio, display with a 120 Hz refresh rate and 5 ms response time, which makes it much better compared to the Steam Deck.

Update: LinusTechTips is the second one to get access to ASUS ROG Ally prototype and has provided a bit more details on specifications, performance, and other things about the upcoming handheld console.

Last weekend ASUS ROG started to tease a handheld gaming system, called the Ally. On April 1 the company uploaded an expensive looking trailer, that bordered on being a total spoof in the latter half. People were quick to dismiss the announcement as an April Fool's Day prank, but since then the company has continued to post preview material and has even highlighted a Best Buy interest page. The ROG Ally has been confirmed to be an entirely real bit of gaming hardware that runs via Windows 11. AMD has been revealed as collaborating with ASUS on a custom Ryzen APU for the handheld system, which is advertised as the "fastest AMD APU yet" in the reveal trailer. Exact specifications for this chipset have not been listed, so expect those details as part of a future announcement.

ASUS ROG looks to be pitching the Ally as potential alternative to the Steam Deck, but it is too early to speculate about its exact method of operation (always online, local vs. cloud, etc.). Games journalists and gaming communities have also compared the Ally to the AYANEO 2 and GPD WIN 4. ASUS has informed various web influencers that it is promising "competitive pricing" for the upcoming handheld gaming system. The ROG Ally features a Full HD display and a dual fan cooling system tuned to operate quietly via the ROG Intelligent System. A new version of Armoury Crate offers the user access to various games library sources (including Xbox Games Pass) and custom-mapping of control inputs. Extra graphical grunt can be provided by the external and proprietary ROG XG Mobile eGPU platform.