Asus ROG Ally Receives New Firmware Update Ahead of Market Launch, Performance and Battery Life Now Improved

The ROG Ally, Asus’s response to Valve’a Steam Deck, was revealed two months ago, as the reviewers also got to go hands-on with the handheld. While the ROG Ally may have a lot of pluses, the device has recently received software upgrades that made the handheld perform better than it earlier was under specific circumstances like low wattage. Asus’s global marketing director Galip Fu has also detailed on the same, and about the improvement of the battery life.

Asus ROG Ally performance and FPS improves even at lower wattages

Global Marketing Director of Asus, Galip Fu has acknowledged to The Verge, that Asus has introduced a number of changes to the software. YouTuber Dave2D tested the handheld after the latest firmware update, and confirms an increase in performance of about 10 to 20%.

Dave2D compared the FPS performance of the ROG Ally, against the Steam Deck at low powers of 9W. Dave2D illustrated by how much the ROG Ally was underperforming in comparison to the Steam Deck, back when Asus had first sent out review units in May. The latest firmware update, makes an improvement from that, with the FPS output now almost, if not entirely at par with that of the Steam Deck. It additionally make’s the ROG Ally’s FPS even better and much higher than the Steam Deck at Performance Mode (15W) and Turbo Mode (25W).

Commenting on the new firmware update, and the performance levels that ROG Ally had earlier managed to achieve, Fu acknowledged and appreciated the Steam Deck. He said that they “Where the Steam Deck did a really good job was optimizing the overall power consumption in super, super low wattage, even below 9W, below 7W,”. The ROG Ally on the other hand, somehow ended up focusing on the performance at 15W and 30W, “at the expense of optimizing power consumption at lower wattages.”.

ROG Ally low battery life issue solved

The ROG Ally’s low battery life too has been a problem consistently pointed out by reviewers. IGN wrote in its review of the ROG Ally, “You’ll need to keep your expectations in check when it comes to battery life on the ROG Ally, as it’s not going to blow your socks off.” Fu has now addressed this issue pointed out by the reviewers, saying they need to “focus on the critical items that we need to fix.”

According to the report, Fu guaranteed a 10 to 20 percent improvement in the battery life, than what was seen in the review units from May. The new firmware updates helps deal with the issue of ROG Ally’s low battery life with changes like the turning off of the AMD Z1 Extreme processor’s 8 cores during gameplay.

The release date of the ROG Ally in the Indian market has not yet been revealed, but is rumoured to happen sometime in June. However, the handheld is already available for pre-orders at Rs 71499 for the Base model, and Rs 79999 for the Extreme model.