Although the AMD Ryzen Z2 series is reportedly coming soon, it could take a while for major manufacturers to offer new gaming handhelds featuring the new APUs. Of course, Chinese manufacturers have already started to announce Strix Point options, but compared to the last-gen devices, they are quite pricey.
On that note, the Asus ROG Ally with Ryzen Z1 Extreme has just dropped to its record-low price. Ahead of Black Friday, the gaming handheld has been slashed to $499.99 on Best Buy, a generous $150 discount from the regular price tag.
Asus did release a mid-gen refresh, the ROG Ally X, and one of the most notable differences is the amount of RAM. However, even with 16 GB of RAM, the Z1 Extreme non-X Ally did very well in our review. Coming with the Radeon 780M iGPU, the gaming handheld held its ground strong in gaming tests.
Of course, you will get better gaming performance out of the recently announced Strix Point handhelds. However, the price-to-performance ratio, at least for the early units, isn't as good as the last-gen options, especially when they are on sale.
Beyond gaming performance, the ROG Ally has a great IPS display that supports VRR and is a native landscape panel. We also liked the build quality and the overall design. However, not everything is great about this gaming handheld. The battery runtime, for example, isn't quite dependable when you're on-the-go. It's typically around 1.5 hours.
Another thing that's worth noting is that the Asus ROG Ally has only one USB port, which limits expandability. You can learn more about the gaming handheld from our review video attached below.
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Source(s)
Best Buy (linked above)