Deal | Asus ROG Ally with Ryzen Z1 Extreme matches Black Friday price in new deal with free travel case and Game Pass Ultimate for a month
The Asus ROG Ally launched shortly after the Valve Steam Deck opened the floodgates for handheld gaming, and it stood out as a faster, albeit more expensive alternative to the Linux-powered Steam Deck for Windows gamers. Thanks to a new Best Buy deal, though, the Asus ROG Ally has been discounted to just $499.99 at Best Buy, beating both the $749.99 Lenovo Legion Go and the $549 Steam Deck OLED. It also matches its own previous Amazon Black Friday deal of $499.99. Best Buy also sweetens the deal by throwing in a free official Asus ROG Ally Travel Case and a free month of Xbox Game Pass.
Asus ROG Ally features and highlights
We reviewed the Asus ROG Ally when it launched, and the performance and power efficiency of the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme impressed us, with the 7-inch gaming handheld managing to play complex, demanding 3D games, like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 at reasonably high frame rates, despite the somewhat underpowered iGPU.
The CPU also hangs with similarly equipped gaming laptops, and the inclusion of Asus's XG Mobile port makes it a prime candidate for a hybrid setup with a docking station at a desk. We tested it with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 in an Asus XG Mobile and found it to be a solid performer, running away from many 4090-powered gaming laptops at higher game resolutions.
The display was also a strong point, with the 120 Hz, 7-inch, 1080p IPS LCD delivering sharp visuals, decent colours, and low response times. AMD FreeSync is a particularly welcome feature, as well, since you're bound to be running games at slightly lower frame rates sometimes, so having the ability to avoid tearing is a must-have.
While 40 Wh battery on the original Asus ROG Ally is somewhat limited, coming in at just under an hour of AAA gameplay on battery, there are battery upgrades available on Amazon (curr. $49.99) that expand the battery capacity to as much as 74 Wh.
Disclaimer: Notebookcheck is not responsible for price changes carried out by retailers. The discounted price or deal mentioned in this item was available at the time of writing and may be subject to time restrictions and/or limited unit availability.
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