Exact Asus ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X release date hinted at by new leak

Previous leaks revealed the pre-order dates for the ROG Xbox Ally X and ROG Xbox Ally. It stated one could reserve either handheld sometime between August 20 and 25, right around when the consoles will be shown off to the general public at Gamescom. Dealabs has now disclosed when they will actually hit shelves for everyone to purchase.

The ROG Xbox Ally X and ROG Xbox Ally will be purchasable on October 16- nearly two months after their initial reveal. That date only applies to the European market, but the global release date should ideally be the same. A two-month delay after announcement and launch is a long wait, especially when Ryzen Z2 Extreme-powered products, such as the MSI Claw A8 BZ2EM, are already out and about.

Another leak hinted that the ROG Xbox Ally X will start at $899 and the ROG Xbox Ally at $599. The former gets you 24 GB of LPDDR5X RAM/1 TB storage, and the latter 16 GB/512 GB. MSI's website does not list any alternate variants, meaning you'll be stuck with limited high-speed storage unless you commit to a full SSD swap. Or you could throw in a SD card via the UHS-II microSD card reader and use that for older titles that don't need ultra-fast read/write speeds.

RAM/storage notwithstanding, the real difference between the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally lie in their SoCs. The Ryzen Z2 A powering the latter is a somewhat aged chip with a Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 iGPU, which will definitely not be able to keep up with the superior Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5 parts found on the former's Ryzen Z2 Extreme. Overall, the regular ROG Xbox Ally is shaping up to be a raw deal compared to its better-specced counterpart, especially at 1080p.