This evening, ASUS will hold an online presentation where it will unveil the next generation of handheld gaming PCs, the ROG Ally. It has already been a year since the debut of the first generation, which enjoyed great success in the market, being highly appreciated by those who want a portable Windows “console”. ROG Ally is not only one of the best-performing such consoles on the market, but also one of the most affordable in terms of what it offers. Already, ASUS has started to give some hints about the next generation.
ROG Ally 2 could make improvements based on fan feedback
Over the past few days, ASUS ROG’s social media accounts have been quite active, preparing fans for today’s launch. For example, a contest on the company’s social media accounts includes a black ROG Ally console hidden in an image, something that doesn’t exist on the market yet. The two ROG Ally models released last year, the one with AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor and the one with “standard” Z1 processor, are identical on the outside, with a white casing.
Incidentally, its main competitors, the Steam Deck, Legion Go and MSI’s Claw, all come with a black case, with the Ally being the only white model coming from a major manufacturer. ASUS must have listened to the criticism of the original model and concluded that a black model could stay “clean” longer, while the white one shows dirt immediately.
On ASUS websites, the ROG Ally Z1 and Z1 Extreme models have been renamed ROG Ally (2023), thus suggesting that the new model will most likely be called ROG Ally (2024).
Already one of the best-performing portable consoles on the market, we don’t expect to see much performance improvement from the second-generation ROG Ally. Moreover, no new hardware has appeared that allows significantly better performance. The improvements expected by the fans would be at the level of the software experience, but also the autonomy, which is now among the weakest in this category.
ASUS has already confirmed that it will release a new update of Armory Crate, the default interface on ROG Ally, which will change both visually and functionally all aspects of the software experience. The truth is that what ASUS shipped last year seemed more like an unfinished beta that was constantly improved along the way through software and firmware updates. The good news is that the new software that will definitely ship on the new Ally , will also come on last year’s generation.
The event will take place on the Republic of Gamers YouTube channel, today, May 9, starting at 22:00 Romanian time.
