It looks like the rumors surrounding a new ROG Ally handheld are true, as Asus has something in store via an announcement for later today.
VideoCardzwhich previously highlighted rumors of the new portable gaming device, reports that the next ROG Ally will appear at a leaked Computex 2024 launch schedule (including products set to launch before the June event).
Additionally, on the Asus ROG YouTube channel, there is a stream going live in eight hours (at the time of writing) titled: “The next ROG Ally is coming.”
Before you start getting excited about the looks of the ROG Ally 2, it seems unlikely that this would be a full-blown handheld sequel. Rather, it’s expected to be a refreshed version of the current ROG Ally – and since the current model is called the ROG Ally (2023), we’d expect it to be the ROG Ally (2024).
The updated ROG Ally will work with the same core components, but is expected to change things up a bit. For starters – and perhaps most importantly – the SD card reader issues have been completely resolved, and we also get some tweaks to the portable player’s design.
You can even catch a glimpse of the refreshed ROG Ally in the image on YouTube for the announcement event (see below), and Asus seems to have tamed the angular lines and gone for a more rounded chassis. As you can also see, it is offered in a black color.
The other rumor doing the rounds is that it may contain a larger battery.
Analysis: a refreshing change
We expect this to be more about fixing problems – including the notable issue of the SD card reader sadly dying (which is much less common these days, reports suggest) – than about making massive changes.
That said, the design tweaks could be a big improvement in terms of ergonomics, and longer battery life would be more than welcome too. And the black color will probably be a winner too.
As always when a new version of a piece of hardware comes out, there may be those who recently committed and purchased a ROG Ally (2023) who end up with buyer’s remorse and wishing they had waited for this new model. Especially if the improvements made are more substantial than expected (we honestly didn’t expect this innovation to deliver so much, but it looks like it will).
The stream’s blurb tells us it involves “getting hyped about new impending ROG Ally hardware,” so while an announcement is certainly coming, it could be more along the lines of a teaser than a full reveal. Only time will tell, and we won’t have to wait long to find out.