Another leak: The Asus ROG Ally will start at $600 with AMD Z1 and 256GB SSD

Another leak: The Asus ROG Ally will start at $600 with AMD Z1 and 256GB SSD

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

Just two days after a substantial leak pegged the price of Asus’ Steam Deck competitor at $699.99 with a Z1 Extreme chip and 512GB of storage, one of the same reliable leakers, SnoopyTech, now says the entry-level model with a vanilla Z1 processor and a 256GB SSD will cost $599.99.

ASUS ROG Ally 7" AMD Z1 (not Extreme) = $599.99
16 GB LPDDR5, 256 GB NVMe M.2 SSD https://t.co/X6hAE6ZtLF pic.twitter.com/ueKYpeMzus

— SnoopyTech (@_snoopytech_) April 28, 2023

If true, that means both configurations are within spitting distance of Valve’s comparative pricing, where a 256GB Steam Deck costs $530 and a 512GB Steam Deck costs $650, respectively. But Valve also sells a $399 Steam Deck that comes with 64GB of eMMC storage, which enthusiasts often open to replace that SSD.

The original ROG Ally leak came from Best Buy, and it might make sense that Best Buy is the source of this one too — the new pricing is similarly in dollars and cents, and Asus only has one stateside retail partner for the handheld. SnoopyTech has seen my DMs and isn’t replying to them, though, so I can’t say for sure.

This will likely be the least expensive configuration of the ROG Ally, though it’s possible Asus could follow Valve’s lead and put out an eMMC model.

You can read what the likely performance difference will be between a Z1 and Z1 Extreme in this story, at least based on AMD’s chosen results. Here’s our ROG Ally preview. Other manufacturers will sell handhelds with a similar chip called the Ryzen 7840U, which AMD warns is not power tuned for handheld use.