New Asus ROG Ally specs play a numbers game with the Steam Deck

rockpapershotgun.com:

A few weeks after the Asus ROG Ally was confirmed as a real thing, we have something that was missing from its faux-April Fool’s reveal: a proper look at the handheld PC’s hardware specifications. And from the boldness of its screen to the speed of its microSD card slot, the ROG Ally is already looking set to best the Steam Deck on cold, hard specs.

What we don’t have are the ROG Ally’s pricing and release date, though word from Asus is the former will be announced on the 5th of May and the latter will get final confirmation at a launch event on the 11th. For now, let’s cast our eyes over the confirmed specs and features, before indulging in a spot of chin-stroking about what they mean for the ROG Ally and its chances of upending the Steam Deck as the portable gaming PC to beat.

It’s not hard to look at this list and pick out bits that represent a targeted one-upping of Valve’s handheld. The screen, for instance, has both a higher resolution and twice the refresh rate of the Steam Deck’s 800p, 60Hz display – and although I recorded the Deck reaching a superior 1241:1 contrast ratio and 596cd/m2 peak brightness, its 63.7% sRGB coverage was the weak link. A screen that’s both sharper and more vibrant would easily make up for minor differences in brightness and contrast. That DXC anti-reflective coating also comes as standard on the ROG Ally, as opposed to the Steam Deck, which only offers glare protection on its most expensive 512GB model.

That said, there only appears to be one ROG Ally storage option, also a 512GB SSD. But as this is a PCIe 4.0 SSD, itt should be faster than any of the PCIe 3.0 drives you’d find in a Steam Deck. The ROG Ally supports faster higher microSD card speeds, too, by virtue of its expandable