ASUS has revealed the local, Australian price and release date for the ROG Ally and it’s actually a fair comparison to the incredibly-competitive US price announced last week.
The 512GB/Z1 Extreme version of the ASUS Rog Ally is releasing in Australia alongside other regions on June 13th for $1299 AUD, which is roughly a $250 markup in comparison to the US price. Factoring in import costs and tax it’s not all that bad of an outcome. It’s available to pre-order now, exclusively through JB Hi-Fi. You can grab it from the link below:
The 256GB Z1 base model will launch locally in the second half of 2023 for a yet-to-be-determined price, though we’d expect it to be closer to $1000 AUD.
Given the Steam Deck is still not officially available through local channels in Australia, the ROG Ally is in a pretty unique position to appeal to Aussies who want a powerful, portable gaming handheld and don’t want to go the grey import route or pay around $2k for a competing AYANEO 2.
Just like AYANEO devices, the ASUS ROG Ally will run Windows 11 out of the box which means you’ll be able to run games from the likes of Steam, Epic, Xbox Game Pass, EA Play, Ubisoft Connect and more, with three months of Xbox Game Pass included in the box.
As far as specs go, the display is a 7″ 1080p 120HZ touch display, so on specs alone, it’s better than anything we’ve seen in a handheld of this calibre. It also has a custom AMD Ryzen Z1 Zen 4 RDNA 3 GPU meaning it should offer a hefty performance boost on both the AYANEO 2 and Steam Deck which use RDNA 2 architecture. It’ll have a 512GB SSD for storage and quick booting of games. ASUS also called out the weight of the device at 608G which is a decent 50 grams lighter than both the Steam Deck and AYANEO 2.
Other inputs include a finger print detection power button and mappable back triggers. As far as the OS goes, it’ll run Windows 11 but ASUS has created a special version of its software called Armoury Crate SE that will provide a launcher for your games, as well as the ability to easily customise your console.
