I haven’t put down the Asus ROG Ally X in the past two days

The ROG Ally has been a staple among the best handheld gaming PCs since it launched. Even among a string of competition, Asus’ handheld has been the only true competitor to the space that’s been dominated by the Steam Deck. The ROG Ally X is Asus trying to take the crown. I’ve had the updated handheld — which Asus says sits somewhere between a refresh and a new generation — for a few days, and the improvements are already clear.

It may look the same, but the ROG Ally X is quite the update. It has better specs, better ergonomics, better battery life, and better controls. Asus knows it, too. It’s asking $800 for the ROG Ally X as opposed to the $700 it asked for the original model, despite both devices sporting the same chip. Thankfully, there’s enough here to justify the premium.

About this review

This is a review-in-progress. I’ve had the ROG Ally X for a total of two days at the time of writing, and although I’ve barely put the handheld down in that time, I haven’t been able to fully put it through its paces yet. I’ve scored this review based on my time with the device, and although I don’t expect that score to change, it’s possible.

For that reason, I’m withholding any sort of award that Digital Trends gives to products we recommend, but the ROG Ally X may get one once I revisit this review in a few days.

In addition, the original ROG Ally had a faulty microSD card slot that Asus says was fixed with a software update. You can read more about that in our Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme review. I haven’t been able to test the microSD card slot on the ROG Ally X yet.

Familiar but different

The ROG Ally X looks the same as the original model, short of its new black colorway, and I’d forgive you for thinking it’s identical. The outer shell hasn’t been touched much, but just about everything else has.

It’s shocking how much more comfortable the device is to hold, and I found myself getting carried away for hours-long gaming sessions. Everything is upgraded.

In your hands, Asus ditched the sharp, angular corners on the original Ally for a rounded design that’s a bit more comfortable in the palms. By far the biggest boost for comfort are the new rear buttons, however. Asus massively cut them down.

They’re probably a fourth of the size of the original, and they’re pushed more toward the center. You can still easily reach the rear buttons with your fingers, but I was happy to ignore them while holding the handheld. They never so much as grazed my knuckle.

Although the outside of the Ally X looks the same, it isn’t. There’s a minor 4.5mm bump, which makes the grips on the side just a little bit larger. They’re still not as large as the Steam Deck, but it’s an improvement over the original design. Rather than clamping the device between my palms, as I had to do on the original Ally, I can hold onto it with my fingers.

There’s a big upgrade to comfort, but an even more significant upgrade when you look at the buttons. The face buttons haven’t been touched, but everything else has. The joysticks are rated for twice as much durability as the original, and they’re a touch stiffer.

The original joysticks felt too loose. The D-pad is significantly better, with a matte finish and better control over diagonal inputs. The best upgrade here are definitely the trigger and shoulder buttons, though.

On the original design, the trigger and shoulder buttons were in a straight line — you would often press one when you meant to press the other. Now, the triggers are a bit deeper than the shoulder buttons, and they have a more significant curve.

Surprisingly, I was able to comfortably play Halo: The Master Chief Collection, which I exclusively play on keyboard and mouse. The shoulder buttons are a big upgrade, too. They’re clicky, similar to an Xbox controller, and far from the mushy shoulder buttons on the original Ally.

The feel in the hands here is exactly what you’d expect out of an updated version of the original Ally. Asus trimmed the parts that were bad, enhanced the parts that were good, and arrived on a design that feels more than the sum of its parts. Asus is definitely the closest to the Steam Deck in terms of comfort now, even with competitors like the MSI Claw.

What’s different?

That’s the design dealt with, but there are a ton of changes under the hood of the ROG Ally X. Specs-wise, Asus is packing 24GB of LPDDR5 memory now and a 1TB SSD. That’s also an M.2 2280 SSD — the same size as most PC and laptop SSDs — so upgrades are much easier and cheaper. You can pack up to an 8TB SSD in this thing, which is an awful lot of games you can take on the go.

Elsewhere, Asus ditched its proprietary XG Mobile connector in favor of a USB4 port that supports external GPUs, which lives alongside the USB-C port you use for charging. Asus also crammed in a massive 80WHr battery — double the battery size of the original model. The ROG Ally X now has the biggest battery out of the mainstream handhelds, surpassing the Lenovo Legion Go‘s 49.20-watt-hour battery and the Steam Deck OLED’s 50Wh battery by a significant margin.

Those are the major changes internally, but Asus kept a lot of things the same — for better and worse. For better, you still get the excellent stereo speakers that showed up on the original Ally, along with a power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello.

The screen is the same as well, with a 7-inch size, 1080p resolution, and 120Hz refresh rate. It’s lost some luster in the face of the Steam Deck OLED, but the display still looks wonderful.

There’s one major point of concern, though — the microSD card slot. It’s in the exact same position. If you recall, the original Ally had an issue where the microSD card could fry itself due to excess heat. Asus apparently fixed the problem with a BIOS update, but it’s shocking that the Ally X didn’t move the card’s location.

The internals have been completely redesigned, so surely Asus could have moved the slot to somewhere else. Hopefully, it doesn’t continue to be an issue, but I haven’t been able to test it thoroughly yet.

The chip at the heart of the ROG Ally X is the same as well. Asus stuck with the Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip, and unlike the original Ally, it won’t offer the Ally X with the base Ryzen Z1 — that’s probably for the best, as you can read in our Asus ROG Ally Ryzen Z1 review. The ROG Ally X isn’t significantly faster than the original, but it has an unexpected boost to performance.

By the numbers

The ROG Ally X is very interesting due to its 24GB of memory. The original model included 16GB. Although you don’t typically expect a performance increase from more memory, it’s important to remember that the ROG Ally X uses a system-on-a-chip (SoC). The memory is shared between the graphics and processor. With 24GB, you can allocate 8GB to the GPU while maintaining a full 16GB for the system, and that impacts performance.

At 1080p with the default Performance mode, you can see what that impact looks like. There are some games, such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Dying Light 2, where there’s basically no increase in performance.

In games that can use the extra memory, such as Horizon Zero Dawn and Returnal, there’s a massive uplift. I wouldn’t buy the ROG Ally X for increased performance — it just doesn’t apply in every game. In the games it does, however, it makes a world of difference.

One of the criticism of the original Ally was how it compared to the Steam Deck down at 720p, and the ROG Ally X doesn’t change that story much. A game like Horizon Zero Dawn once against appreciates the extra memory on the Ally X, but the Steam Deck is still offering similar performance at its native resolution, despite sporting a much weaker chip.

Outside of the extra memory, there’s one unsung change with the ROG Ally X when it comes to performance. Asus tweaked the power modes. You still get 25 watts in Turbo mode, which goes up to 30W if you’re plugged into a wall. The Performance profile now draws 17W instead of 15W, and the Silent mode is at 13W instead of 9W.

The tweaks to power are smart here. Now, Performance mode feels much closer to Turbo instead of a completely lower class, and Silent mode is actually usable. As with the original, you’re free to set a manual power profile and tweak the power between 9W and 30W, but the default profiles feel much better tuned out of the box.

Battery life is the big question

Asus talked up the battery life of the ROG Ally X, and for good reason. This is the biggest battery we’ve seen on a gaming handheld. Given that I’ve only had a few days with the ROG Ally X, battery life is one area I haven’t had a chance to test extensively. I’m gathering numbers now, but for this review-in-progress, I need to rely on some personal anecdotes.

First, benchmarking. For every handheld I’ve tested except the Steam Deck OLED, I haven’t been able to complete a full suite of benchmarks on a single charge. I was able to with the ROG Ally X, and while still having 35% battery remaining. That is even more impressive than the Steam Deck OLED considering I was swapping through power modes and running games in the most demanding form possible. From that alone, I can say there’s an improvement in battery life.

For real gameplay, I was able to play Halo: The Master Chief Collection — Halo 2 Anniversary with the updated graphics, in particular — in the default performance mode for an hour while only dropping to 70% battery. That’s great. Similarly, I played the System Shock remake for about an hour and a half at 1080p with an uncapped frame rate, and I only dropped to 65% battery. The original ROG Ally would be on its last leg in that time frame.

The ROG Ally X clearly lasts longer than the original, and it lasts long enough that I’m comfortable taking it on a plane with me. There are two things I plan to look at in the coming days. First, I want to see how it long it can last under the smallest load possible. I plan on playing Gravity Circuit — my current 2D platformer of choice — in the Silent mode to see how much Windows itself is taking up. Then, I want to push the device as hard as possible, going to Turbo mode and playing Cyberpunk 2077 for as long as it can hold out.

On the original Ally, you were looking at from an hour to an hour and a half in a demanding game, and up to four hours in a light game. Here, I expect six hours at most, and around two and a half to three hours under an intense load. Don’t hold me to those numbers quite yet, though.

A new software system

The ROG Ally X introduces a new face to Armoury Crate SE — the software Asus runs on top of Windows 11. It’s a clear improvement over the previous version of Armoury Crate, and an update that will roll out to the original ROG Ally as well. This feels more like a proper handheld than ever, but Asus still has some bugs to work through.

Starting with the good, Armoury Crate SE 1.5 launches instantly. There’s a startup video now, similar to the Steam Deck, and you barely get a peek of the Windows desktop after logging into the device. With the responsive startup and fingerprint reader, it almost feels like you’re using the tailored experience the Steam Deck has. Even getting close is a feat considering how troublesome the software is on a device like the Lenovo Legion Go.

Inside, there are a lot of improvements to functionality. You can turn on features like AMD’s Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) from the overlay, customize how your library appears, and even change your startup movie. Like before, you get per-game button assignments, but instead of automatically creating a new profile for every game, Asus lets you choose between the default game mode or desktop mode profile. You can also share bindings online — though, when I’m writing this review, there aren’t any bindings available for obvious reasons.

It’s a huge improvement, but Asus seems to have introduced a few bugs in the new update, mostly related to the overlay. It needs work. Like the original Ally, there’s a dedicated button to pull up the overlay while you’re in a game, which allows you to access a customizable list of quick settings. I consistently ran into an issue where the overlay wouldn’t recognize the controller, though. If I moved too quickly, my inputs would register in the game I was playing instead of in the overlay. And when transitioning back into a game, the controller would sometimes defocus from the game window, leading to deaths in System Shock and Halo: The Master Chief Collection. 

My workaround up to this point has been twofold. First, I’ve avoided the overlay. I never had an issue with my controls defocusing if I never messed with the overlay. Second, if I needed to open the overlay, I’d wait about five seconds after opening and closing to touch any controls. Asus is doing some work to ensure that your inputs are applying in the right spot, but the transition between game and overlay is a bit slow.

There’s also an issue with AFMF. One of the updates I was most excited about was the promise of being able to turn on AMD’s frame generation directly from Armoury Crate — previously, you would need to manually go through AMD Software on the desktop. Just one little problem — it doesn’t always work. I couldn’t get AFMF to turn on through Armoury Crate most of the time, regardless of if I was in a game or not. It still works through AMD Software, but I hope Asus addresses this issue in short order.

I’ve only had a few days with the ROG Ally X, and I’m not comfortable flat-out recommending it right now. Here’s what I can tell you for sure.

It’s a clear improvement over the original. Battery life is better, some games see a performance uplift, and the ergonomics are massively improved. It’s also a lot more expensive. The Ally X is coming in at $800, while at the time of writing, you can pick up the original ROG Ally with a Z1 Extreme for $550 on sale. The Ally X is better, but I’m not sure that it’s $250 better.

Then, there’s the Steam Deck OLED to deal with, of course. Asus wins with compatibility, and the Ally X is much closer to the true handheld experience than the original model was. But the quirks of Windows still remain, and the Steam Deck OLED provides a much more seamless experience for $200 less. And, as you can see from my benchmarks, the Steam Deck OLED isn’t far behind at its native resolution despite sporting a weaker chip on paper.

I’d see where pricing ends up. The ROG Ally X would be a slam dunk if it arrived at $700 or even $750. At $800, it’s quite a bit more expensive than the competition. That extra money is buying you some clear advantages, including M.2 2280 support, a massive battery, and some clear performance improvements in certain games. This isn’t a next-gen handheld, though, so keep your expectations in check if you plan on dropping $800.