Key Highlights:
- The ROG Ally (2023) offers greater value for money when compared to the ROG Xbox Ally models.
- The original ROG Ally offers similar performance at nearly half the price.
- It has a few disadvantages, but these can be easily fixed.
The ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X handhelds went on sale quite recently, managing to sell out in a few hours since their launch. However, at $600 and $1000 each (approximately), it’s a tough pill to swallow for most gamers – especially when we take into account the competition on hand.
The original, 2023 ROG Ally can be found for nearly half the price it retailed at initially (while not taking open box/refurbished units into consideration), making it a much more appealing pick for the majority of buyers.
The differences between the handhelds are shockingly few, and Xbox’s latest hardware might have its sales cannibalized by existing ASUS products.
The Original (2023) ROG Ally Offers Far Greater Value at Nearly Half the Price
Despite having been released nearly 2 years ago, the original, 2023 ROG Ally still remains quite a capable machine on its own, being able to run almost all new AAA titles with relative ease.
This is largely thanks to the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU powering the handheld, which was perhaps a little too good. After all, its successor, the Ryzen Z2 Extreme barely holds an advantage over it, and is more of a generational refinement than a straight up upgrade.
Even better, the ROG Ally can be purchased for less than $500 new, and probably even cheaper if we take into account open box offerings. This places it at nearly half the price of the ROG Xbox Ally X, and $100 less than the ROG Xbox Ally, which features a far worse chipset to go along with it.
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Other features are mostly untouched and unchanged between these models, as all three support the same, 7-inch IPS display with 120 Hz and VRR support. Even the speakers are mostly the same, as is the general control scheme and software overlay.
The original Ally does have a far smaller battery, and less refined controls – but these shouldn’t break your purchase decision in the slightest. If anything though, it does beg the question of why one would buy the ROG Xbox Allys over the existing ROG Ally variants, when they can be procured at a cheaper price, and are set to receive the same user interface tweaks over the course of time.
The (2023) ROG Ally Isn’t Perfect either, and Has a Few Issues of Its Own
The 2023 ROG Ally is not a perfect machine. While the performance of the handheld is no doubt superb, its battery life is quite disappointing, given that it barely lasts over an hour during intense gameplay scenarios.
Compare this to the ROG Ally X and ROG Xbox Ally X, which have roughly 2-3 times the battery life.
Furthermore, the handheld has always been marred in controversy, largely thanks to ASUS’s quality assurance (or lack thereof) checks. The malfunctioning SD Card reader for example, was a very real issue plaguing the first generation of these handhelds.
There’s also the fact that the current iteration of Windows/Armoury Crate on the ROG Ally is half baked, and far inferior to the likes of SteamOS, which offers a more console like experience out of the box.
However, these issues can mostly be mitigated. The Windows ‘problem’ can be fixed by dual booting the device with a SteamOS-like distribution (such as Bazzite), and a relatively simple (and cheap!) battery replacement can offer double the battery life, effectively ridding the handheld of its most painful disadvantage.
Taking all of this into consideration, the original ROG Ally remains as the best value for money handheld on the current market, assuming that you are comfortable with getting your hands a bit dirty.
