Grab the Asus ROG Ally w/ Z1 Extreme processor for just £539 after a 10% Very discount
The cheapest we've ever seen this model by £60.
The Asus ROG Ally has dropped in price in response to the release of the Steam Deck OLED, and now a 10% off code at Very makes this handheld gaming PC even better value. You can now get the top-spec ROG Ally with the Z1 Extreme chipset and 512GB of PCIe 4.0 storage for just £539 with code VTQ8C, a brilliant price that puts it in direct competition with the 512GB Steam Deck OLED.
The ROG Ally is the best Windows-based Steam Deck competitor thus far, I think it's fair to say, thanks to its excellent performance, higher-res and higher refresh rate display and relatively mature Armoury Crate launcher. You miss out on the deeper features and swishy interface of SteamOS on the Steam Deck, but in exchange installing non-Steam games becomes much easier, as you're running them natively rather than through a translation layer. This is particularly key for software that comes with anti-cheat middleware, as this often doesn't work in an emulated environment.
Here's what I said last time about the ROG Ally, when it was first discounted to £599:
Elsewhere, the ROG Ally is generally better equipped than the Steam Deck. As well as having a higher-spec screen, its AMD Z1 Extreme processor is marginally faster than the Aerith and Sephiroth processors in the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED respectively (our testing showed between equal performance and ~40 percent higher average frame-rates depending on the game at roughly equal resolutions). The Ally also benefits from being paired with faster DDR5 memory and also faster PCIe 4.0 2230-sized NVMe SSDs. This iteration of the Ally comes with a 512GB NVMe SSD, but upgrading to a larger 1TB or even 2TB model is easy and relatively inexpensive.
Overall, a great gaming handheld and well worth considering at this reduced price - though the Steam Deck OLED is another outstanding option with a lower-res but better-contrast display and an improved interface.