Microsoft and Asus have officially kicked off pre-orders for the eagerly-awaited ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X gaming handhelds, ahead of their October 16 release – and finally revealed how much gamers can expect to pay to take one home.
It’s largely good news for the UK and Europe, with the new hardware undercutting Lenovo’s upcoming Legion Go 2 by quite a margin. Things aren’t so clear-cut in the US, though.
The more mainstream ROG Xbox Ally will retail for $600/£500, which will make it one seriously competitive handheld. It goes directly up against Valve’s Steam Deck OLED, and isn’t that far removed from a Nintendo Switch 2.
As a reminder, the ROG Xbox Ally is packing a Ryzen Z2 A chipset, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of on-board storage. It’s only coming in white, has a smaller 60Whr battery, and does without the force feedback Impulse Triggers found on its bigger brother. You’re getting the same 7in LCD touchscreen, which supports 120Hz variable refresh rate gaming (but not HDR).
Connectivity is identical, with two USB-C ports, a 3.5mm headphone port and microSD card slot. Both machines also have a fingerprint-sensing power button and RGB illuminated rings around their analogue sticks.
The top-tier ROG Xbox Ally X, which is powered by a AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme chipset, 24GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage and an 80Whr battery, is understandably more expensive. It’ll set you back $1000/£800, which is much more of a commitment – and not far off the Legion Go 2’s $1050 asking price.
More potent hardware should mean the Ally X is able to play most games at 1080p, while the regular Ally will be more suited to 720p resolution.You also get Impulse triggers here, and a moody all-black colour scheme.
Both handhelds will be the first to officially bring Windows 11’s new gamer-friendly Xbox interface, which promises to use fewer system resources than previous efforts – and be far easier to navigate on a small touchscreen display.
I’m hoping to get my hands on one in the coming weeks for a full review. At the time of writing there was no word on official European pricing.
