Valve issued an open challenge to everyone when it released the Steam Deck. A little over a year later, ASUS has responded to the call in earnest.

The ASUS ROG Ally is the tech company's attempt at usurping the throne that Steam Deck made for itself in the absence of properly supported handheld gaming devices that isn't made by Nintendo. But, while the Steam Deck was critically praised at launch, it wasn't without its flaws. Case in point, it was hard to get your hands on the Steam Deck a year ago and it was only until recently that Valve had managed to solve its supply issues.

Now, Valve has to worry about a legitimate contender in the ASUS ROG Ally.

After being teased and revealed on April Fool's Day this year, ASUS pushed through with the announcement of the ASUS ROG Ally as promised with critics getting a chance to let us know what they thought of the latest handheld gaming console to hit the market.

Surprisingly enough, this contender has a good shot at dethroning the Steam Deck.

Here's a round-up of the notable reviews of the ASUS ROG Ally:

• Trusted Reviews - 4/5
• Tech Advisor - 4/5
• Expert Reviews - 4/5
• PCMag - 4/5
• Toms Guide - 3.5/5
• Dexerto - 3/5
• Tom's Hardware - 3/5
• The Verge - 5/10

The Verge's Sean Hollister is arguably the most critical of all the ones who published their thoughts on the ASUS ROG Ally and the author makes several good points.

In the review, Hollister described the supposed Steam Deck killer as a "big step forward for Windows handhelds" before he warned those interested of a few caveats, including the battery life and how the Windows operating system "hamstrings the handheld experience."

But, overall, the ASUS ROG Ally earned the trust of most of the critics. Not to mention, most of its issues have more to do with things that can eventually be mixed.

Now, the only question is, how long do audiences have to wait for the ASUS ROG Ally to launch?

After the initial announcement, ASUS confirmed that the most expensive configuration, and the first to launch, will have a sticker price of $700 on June 13. A scaled-down version, which boasts a 6-core/12-thread AMD Ryzen Z1 CPU, will sell for $600 sometime in Q3 later this year.

Of the two, the more expensive variant is definitely the more interesting buy, but who knows?

With battery life and optimization being the only real drawbacks of the ASUS ROG Ally, at least per the critics, we're curious to find out how the budget handheld gaming console will do when it comes out next month.