Way too expensive or justifiable? Prices of the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally handhelds announced

Some time ago, Microsoft announced that it would be launching its own handheld consoles on the market in collaboration with Asus. These are the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally and the more powerful variant, the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X. The prices have now also been announced and they are definitely in a higher class.

The ROG Ally is offered at a price of 599 US dollars, while the X version costs almost twice as much at 999 US dollars. But what causes this significant surcharge?

The basic version is equipped with an AMD Ryzen Z2 A processor, which is based on the Zen5 architecture and offers an integrated RDNA 2 graphics unit. The chip has 4 cores and 8 threads, while the GPU works with 8 cores and a clock frequency of up to 1800 MHz. The processor runs with a base clock of 2.8 GHz and reaches a maximum of 3.8 GHz. This is complemented by 16 GB LPDDR5 RAM with a speed of 6400 MHz and a 512 GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, which offers enough storage space for several games. The screen is 7 inches in size, has a resolution of 1920×1080, supports up to 120 FPS and the 60 Wh battery should provide several hours of battery life. With Windows 11 as the operating system, you can not only play Xbox games, but also games from other gaming platforms such as Steam or Epic Games. The number of games is therefore huge.

The ROG Ally X option significantly increases the equipment. Instead of the Z2 A, an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor with 8 cores and 16 threads is used here. The base clock is 3.3 GHz and the chip reaches up to 5.5 GHz in boost mode. The integrated GPU is based on the RDNA 3.5 architecture, has 16 cores and clocks at up to 2900 MHz. The RAM increases to 24 GB LPDDR5X with a speed of up to 8000 MHz and the battery is also larger at 80 Wh. There is also 1 TB of SSD memory available for game installations, which is an advantage as many modern titles are well over 100 GB in size.

Although the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X has a better configuration than the basic version, only practical use will show whether it really justifies the price difference of 400 dollars. Both models are already available for pre-order and will be officially released on October 16, 2025.

Source: ASUS