The Asus ROG Ally Z1 has finally had a release date and price confirmed, and it’s a bit of a disappointment. The lower-powered version of the Asus portable PC that launched in June 2023 is due to start shipping on October 3, but the price isn’t as big a dip as many were hoping for: $599, just $100 cheaper than the top tier variant.
The elephant in the room is clearly the Steam Deck, which starts from $399 for the basic, 64GB version. However, you do get a lot for your money, including a 1080p display, 512GB of storage as standard, and 16GB of LPDDR5-6400 RAM. So what’s the problem? It’s the Z1 processor.
While the Z 1 Extreme is a powerful chip, the Z1’s GPU is unfortunately looking a little underpowered. While the Z1 Extreme has 12 compute units, the AMD Z1 only has access to four of those. That reduced number of CUs means the GPU only has 256 shaders, which is around half of that you’d expect from the Steam Deck’s Aerith APU — so you’re paying $200 more for much less performance. Or you can pay $100 extra and get the much more powerful Z1 Extreme in the high-end ROG Ally. It’s a bewildering pricing choice from Asus, and one we’re very much struggling to justify.
The Asus ROG Ally launched earlier this year as a very tempting competitor for the Steam Deck, albeit an expensive one. But expense aside, the Z1 Extreme-powered ROG Ally is a rather more capable beast than the Steam Deck where computing power and display are concerned, and the excitement for a more reasonably priced model was palpable. It still is, but the announcement of the price is sure to put the dampers on a lot of people’s hype for the device.
On the plus side, the rest of the device is looking solid, with the Z1’s CPU (outside of the GPU) looking a little more promising in AMD’s promotional benchmarks. It will also be coming with six months access to the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, but it might be worth waiting to see how the device fares in reviews before putting down money for one.