Microsoft and Asus open Xbox Ally preorders — the X costs $999

Today, Microsoft and Asus are officially opening preorders for the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X astatine $599 and $999 respectively successful the US. They’re $799 CAD and $1299 CAD successful Canada, €599 and €899 successful Europe, £499 and £799 successful the UK, and $799 AUD and $1599 AUD successful Australia. They some vessel October 16th.

(In the United States, the Xbox Ally X volition beryllium exclusive to Best Buy, the Asus Shop, and Microsoft; the Xbox Ally is going wider astatine Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Microsoft, the Asus Shop, and Ant Online.)

There’s a fewer antithetic ways to look astatine those prices. If you’re utilized to console pricing, Microsoft’s archetypal Xbox handhelds are not cheap! Even the vanilla achromatic Xbox Ally costs $150 much than a Switch 2, which was itself criticized for price, and it costs $100 much than a acold much almighty Xbox Series X did astatine motorboat successful the US, Microsoft’s caller Xbox terms hike notwithstanding. In Europe and the UK, the weaker of the 2 Allys costs the aforesaid arsenic an Xbox Series X.

But you can’t play that Xbox successful a rider seat. And if you’re a PC gamer, oregon privation to be, things look a spot rosier. These “Xbox” handhelds volition beryllium the archetypal with a caller physique of Windows that hides the desktop and Explorer shell, frees up gobs of representation for your games, and (hopefully) lets you navigate solely by controller.

Handhelds person unluckily been getting pricier and pricier anyhow, to the constituent flagship ones present outgo arsenic overmuch arsenic gaming laptops. At $999, the Xbox Ally X mightiness comparison good to the $999 MSI Claw 8 AI Plus oregon the $1,349 Lenovo Legion Go 2 that offers the aforesaid AMD Z2 Extreme spot you’ll find present — peculiarly due to the fact that my colleagues and I hold the caller Allys person 1 of the astir comfy designs we’ve held. (In summary: Prongs rock.)

Just cognize you’re getting a wildcard if you opt for the $599 Ally, arsenic it contains a never-before-seen Ryzen Z2 A processor that’s overmuch much similar the spot successful the Steam Deck. Instead of 8 Zen 5 CPU cores and 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores designed to tally betwixt 15 and 35 watt TDP, you’re getting 4 Zen 2 CPU cores and 8 RDNA 2 GPU cores designed to tally betwixt 6 and 20 watts for little show gaming.

We’re readying to person reviews of the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X successful the coming weeks.

Microsoft says they’ll beryllium disposable successful Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam — and volition additionally travel to Brazil China, India, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Philippines and Switzerland.