Asus ROG Ally 2 will arrive much sooner than we thought

Last year Asus released ROG Ally, the first gaming laptop in console format. The goal was obviously to compete with Steam Deck in an ever-growing market. At the moment, it seems too early to talk about Asus ROG Ally 2, but the Asian company thinks differently. New hardware may arrive sooner than we thought.

In an interview with CurrentArnold Su, Vice President of Gaming, Asus India, hinted that Asus ROG Ally 2 will appear this year. On the other hand, he said that the product will be focused on improving the functionality of video games, rather than improving Windows:

“Most likely, we will release a second-generation console this year. We will continue to support Windows features, but will focus more on games,” he said.

Of course, his statements greatly surprised the gaming laptop enthusiast community. While it’s not unreasonable to think that Asus ROG Ally 2 is already in development, what’s strange is that they’re aiming to release it in 2024.

Because? This is due not only to the proximity to the hardware of its predecessor, but also to the fact that Steam Deck, the main competitor of Asus ROG Ally, will not soon receive a second generation. Last September, Valve announced that it had no plans to release Steam Deck 2 in the near future. At best, we’ll have to wait at least a couple of years to see it on the market.

Valve also explained their reasons: they are not going to launch Steam Deck 2 until they see an opportunity to introduce new features that are truly different from the previous product. Therefore, they limited themselves to presenting the first review of their console, which is distinguished by the presence of an OLED screen and greater autonomy.

It seems then that Asus plans to follow a completely different philosophy. Although the manager did not talk about the features or new features that we can expect from the Asus ROG Ally 2, from his words we feel that there may not be many new features in the hardware, but there will be some in the software. At the end of the day, it’s true that the current laptop still has some room for improvement in terms of gaming capabilities.

Despite the above, Asus ROG Ally 2 has room to improve its hardware. Firstly, this is the processor. AMD, which makes the Z1 Xtreme chip present in the current model, plans to release Strix Point in 2024. It is the APU (CPU+GPU) that can become the starting point for the development of new processors for gaming laptops.

Likewise, we assume that Asus was considering using an OLED screen in the ROG Ally 2. This technology represents a huge leap over the LCD display. This has been more than demonstrated on Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch.

We’ll have to pay close attention to Asus’ plans for the ROG Ally 2. Be careful, because if it does see the light of day this year, it could cause a domino effect for the rest of the manufacturers it competes with.