The Asus ROG Ally was thought to be an April Fools’ Day joke – after all, it was first unveiled on 1 April – but it turns out to be a real product. Basically, it is a competitor to the Steam Deck, and it looks to be more compact too with the “fastest AMD APU yet.”

If we were to take Asus’ claim at face value, the ROG Ally may just offer better gaming performance over the Steam Deck, given that the latter is also powered by an AMD APU, Aerith. The Ally also has a higher resolution 7-inch 1920 x 1080 display with a 120Hz refresh rate, while the Steam Deck has lower resolution 60Hz panel, though it has a taller 16:10 aspect ratio.

Aside from that, the ROG Ally can also be connected to the (proprietary) ROG XG Mobile external GPU enclosure for higher fidelity gaming. It’s said to run on Windows 11 as well, so it’ll be interesting to see how this would impact the battery life of the handheld gaming console.

But there are still many aspects of the Asus ROG Ally that are still under wraps. We don’t know exactly when it will go on sale – let alone its Malaysian availability – and more importantly, its retail price has not been revealed yet either. For what it’s worth, it’s said to be priced competitively, which would certainly make the Ally a compelling handheld gaming PC.