Those of you who have been thinking about purchasing the Asus ROG Ally gaming handheld and have been waiting for the price to drop, take note: this has happened.
The ROG Ally is sold by Asus itself and Best Buy in the US, and while prices for the two versions on the Asus store haven’t changed – the ROG Ally Z1 remains $600, and the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme $700 – at Best Buy, both models have dropped in price.
However, the standard Z1 version has been reduced by $200, so it can now be had for $400 (as we write this), while the Z1 Extreme handheld has a $100 discount, meaning it’s $600.
So the result is that the base version of the Asus ROG Ally is $200 cheaper instead of $100, and given the performance difference between AMD’s Ryzen Z1 and Z1 Extreme APUs, that makes a lot more sense. (Note that, apart from the chip, the specifications of these models are the same).
Analysis: Z1 is (finally) a viable alternative at this price
When the Z1 variant of the Asus ROG Ally surfaced in September – it was launched much later than the Z1 Extreme – there was disappointment that the product was priced so close to its faster sibling.
The problem is that the Z1 Extreme offers much better performance in games (with two more CPU cores and much more integrated graphics power), and honestly, paying $100 more for that is an absolute no-brainer.
A price difference of at least $200, and now that you can get the base Z1 handheld for a much cheaper $400 at Best Buy, means it’s a real alternative.
Why did this happen? Well, the most likely push is the arrival of the Lenovo Legion Go, a rival Windows-powered handheld with some clear advantages, or the new Steam Deck OLED (with its enticing new screen and improved battery life).
Is this $200 price cut for the Asus ROG Ally Z1 temporary, mind you? It looks like this, as it hasn’t been applied to the Asus store itself yet – unless that step is about to happen.
We’ll see, but outside the US we don’t witness this bigger price reduction. However, in the UK, the Asus store has knocked £100 off both models at the time of writing, but there’s no additional discount for the vanilla Z1 model. Watch this space, we guess, but we have a feeling the $200 discount in the US might not last that long…
Through VideoCardz