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.