Asus’ ROG Ally was the primary major-brand try to compete with Valve’s Steam Deck. It was beefy and attention-grabbing, but it surely had three main flaws: It ran Home windows on a little bit touchscreen, had unremarkable ergonomics, and its battery life was painful.
The Asus ROG (Republic of Avid gamers) Ally X, which has been introduced and is due out June 2, appears to have had its specs leaked, and so they point out a repair for at the least the battery life. Gaming website VideoCardz, beginning its leak reveal with “No extra rumors,” cites the ROG Ally X as having the identical Ryzen Z1 Excessive APU because the prior ROG Ally, in addition to the identical 7-inch 1080p VRR display screen with a 120 Hz refresh fee.
VideoCardz’ leaked picture, seemingly from Asus advertising supplies, with the ROG Ally X’s specs.
The battery and reminiscence have modified considerably, although. An 80-watt-hour battery, up from 40, by some means provides simply 70 grams of weight and about 5 mm of thickness to the sequel gadget. By rising the RAM from 16GB to 24GB and making it LPDDR5, the ROG Ally X could possibly lend extra of it to the GPU, upping efficiency considerably with out demanding a brand new chip or structure. There may be additionally a second USB-C port, with USB4 speeds, that ought to assist fairly a bit with docking, charging whereas enjoying with equipment, and, I’d guess, Linux hackery.
How does it really feel? Solely Sean Hollister at The Verge is aware of, outdoors of ASUS staff. The sequel has misplaced the weirdly sharp angles on the again, and extra of your hand matches across the again, with out the rear buttons being by chance triggered so simply. The triggers and buttons all appear to have acquired some feedback-based upgrades to sturdiness and really feel.
If Asus sticks near the $800 worth level (that was additionally leaked), it might compete with the Steam Deck OLED on options and flash, if not library and polish. However as I’ve stated earlier than, maybe considerably defensively, carry on the flashier handheld PCs.
Increasing the viability of handheld PC gaming means extra builders focusing on these techniques, in specs or simply accessibility. Extra demand for brand new forms of handhelds makes the entire discipline extra attention-grabbing and aggressive. Microsoft, which is keenly conscious of this creating market and is considering a extra cloud-based and fewer Xbox-centered gaming future, can solely make Home windows higher on handhelds as a result of the bar is fairly low proper now.
All of that offers me extra video games to play on the sofa whereas the rice is cooking, whether or not or not the gadget I am holding has extra and quicker RAM and higher USB-C ports than my gaming PC.
