ASUS has started to tease their new handheld console, but without all the crucial technical details, and of course – without saying what will be the price. I’ve seen some tweets about the performance and pricing, so I would like to share some thoughts:
- The performance – ASUS claims that this device will have “up to X2 performance” compared to the Steam deck. Considering that the SoC on this machine is a bit more advanced than the one in the steam deck – this statement should be taken with a grain of salt. X2 can be done with AMD FSR. Remember – this AMD SoC is APU, and not a CPU/GPU dedicated chips, and APU’s are always weak when it comes to GPU performance.
- The Price – $500? $600? People – in the Steam Deck scenario, Valve keeps making money on every game purchased through the Deck, Desktop etc while ASUS will probably won’t make a single cent after the consumer will purchase the device, therefor – I guess the price will be around $700-$800.
- The battery – some people thinks that this ROG Ally will have a much better battery life compared to the Deck. All I have to say is .. COME ON! You have TWO fans that keeps spinning, you have a screen which demands A LOT of battery juice. There is a reason that Valve went with such a screen and only a single fan (Valve also invested tons of time and effort to add options to limit FPS, resolution etc.) – so you can use the device many more hours in a single charge, compared to 1-2 hours on the competing devices.
All in all, I don’t see anything that much exciting on this device, when comparing it to others (from Aya Neo and others). Sure, it has a new SoC, but their competitors will have the same SoC within months, and everything (sans the external GPU – who the heck will buy it??) that ASUS implemented on this device, their competitors will either copy or re-implement themselves.
