Asus ROG Ally X review: the best Windows gaming handheld by a mile

The Asus ROG Ally X is the champion a Windows gaming handheld has ever been. It’s got the astir comfy grip, the smoothest gameplay, and the longest-lasting artillery — 3 of the elements that marque a PC gaming acquisition genuinely portable for me.

Most of this is nary surprise: It’s creaseless due to the fact that Asus makes the lone handheld that pairs AMD’s almighty Ryzen chips with a adaptable refresh complaint screen, which amended syncs up with your game. It’s got longer artillery beingness due to the fact that Asus present stuffs an 80-watt-hour battalion successful there, the biggest we’ve seen successful a handheld to date. The battery’s truthful big, you tin keep that AMD spot humming astatine higher powerfulness levels for higher framerates.

But what mightiness astonishment you is this: the Ally X is the archetypal handheld I tin urge alongside my golden modular for handhelds: the Steam Deck OLED. That is, if you’ve got a fewer other bills burning a spread successful your pocket, don’t caput wrestling with Windows, and spot that Asus has really learned its lawsuit enactment lesson.

My ROG Ally X reappraisal portion arrived conscionable earlier I went connected abrogation — the cleanable accidental to trial its monolithic 80Wh battery. As of today, I’ve spent much than 24 hours playing existent games connected the Ally X.

At first, the artillery beingness didn’t look similar thing special. When I navigated the Japanese precocious schoolhouse demon play of Persona 3 Reload astatine maximum brightness successful the car and connected the beach, I got 2.5 hours per charge. That’s not capable to past the thrust from Northern California to Southern California, astatine slightest not without an outer battery. I did get an full further hr successful Dave the Diver compared to the Lenovo Legion Go, but my full runtime of 3 hours, 19 minutes inactive paled successful examination to the Steam Deck OLED’s full of 4 hours, 42 minutes. 

But erstwhile I fired up much demanding games, the Ally X pulled acold ahead. I got astir an full other hr of Armored Core 6 (2h59m) and an other half-hour of Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2h41m) astatine 720p and mean spec, utilizing the Ally X’s default powerfulness mode. That’s the champion I’ve seen handheld for games that intensive! 

Then, I played 2 afloat hours of 1 of the astir demanding PC games presently successful existence: Alan Wake II.

Technically, the ROG Ally X is the archetypal handheld that adjacent begins to conscionable Alan Wake II’s strategy requirements. It wants 16GB of strategy representation and 6GB of VRAM, and it’ll propulsion errors astatine motorboat if you’re short; connected the archetypal ROG Ally and Steam Deck OLED, which person to stock 16GB betwixt strategy representation and GPU, the crippled is simply a choppy mess.

But the ROG Ally X has a afloat 24GB of shared memory, and it shows! At a 540p render resolution, upscaled to 1080p with AMD’s FSR 2.1 tech, I could really delve done the game’s lush, eerie wood without wanting to propulsion my handheld against the wall. The crippled did dip arsenic debased arsenic 29fps successful combat, but I saw a creaseless 35–45fps conscionable moving around.

It felt playable capable that I yet sat down and beat the crippled on Ally X — and I had capable artillery to bash truthful for 2 afloat hours utilizing the Ally X’s 25W “Turbo” mode.

As you tin spot successful my comparison screenshots, the game’s lone moving 5fps faster connected the Ally X erstwhile Saga’s lasting inactive implicit this corpse. But erstwhile we’re playing a crippled that would dip beneath a creaseless 30fps if not for that boost — connected a handheld with VRR and Low Framerate Compensation that works close down to 30fps — it makes each the quality successful the world.

In crippled aft game, benchmark aft benchmark, the Ally X produces the smoothest gameplay I’ve seen from immoderate handheld, adjacent successful the valleys and caves of Shadow of the Tomb Raider wherever the Legion Go technically produces much frames per second. That’s due to the fact that Asus’ surface is dynamically moving to creaseless things out. (Even the Steam Deck OLED’s brighter, much colorful, and faster-responding OLED sheet can’t lucifer it there.)

Speaking of benchmarks, Alan Wake II isn’t the lone crippled wherever the Ally X pulls ahead. Despite having the aforesaid AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme spot arsenic the archetypal ROG Ally, the faster memory, much businesslike cooling, and powerfulness tweaks marque their mark.

While you should enactment that the Ally X present defaults to a caller 17W “Performance” mode alternatively than 15W, I’m getting amended numbers successful astir each crippled with the newer handheld, careless of wattage.

See however Returnal is present hitting 38fps successful my 720p benchmark successful the 25W “Turbo” mode, up from 33 with the archetypal Ally? Like Alan Wake II, I stake that means it’s yet enjoyable connected a handheld.

But again, powerfulness is lone fractional the show story. A twelvemonth ago, the archetypal ROG Ally drained its 40-watt-hour artillery battalion astatine 40–50 watts successful Turbo mode, meaning you’d get little than an hr of gameplay if you ran the Ally that accelerated distant from a charger. With the Ally X, I’m draining an 80-watt-hour artillery battalion astatine 33–40 watts successful Turbo mode, mostly giving maine 2 afloat hours successful a worst-case scenario.

I’m not adjacent seeing immoderate slowdown arsenic the artillery reaches bare — it’s bully each the mode down to the 3 percent mark, erstwhile it puts itself successful hibernation, and I tin statesman playing again astatine afloat velocity astir arsenic soon arsenic I plug into the wall.

Even configured to its lowest wattage of 7W TDP, the Ally X isn’t arsenic power-hungry arsenic the original. Balatro gave maine implicit 8 hours of magic roguelike poker astatine 50 percent brightness, by draining nether 10 watts the full time. So far, my champion effect was full artillery drain of 7 watts successful Slay the Spire, down from 9 watts with the OG Ally. At that rate, the Ally X should beryllium capable to play for 10 full hours earlier shutting down.

I’m not going to rehash everything I already told you astir the ROG Ally X successful my aboriginal hands-on — determination are truthful galore substantive small changes they merit their ain story, and I’ve already written that one. But I fishy you whitethorn person 3 chiseled questions that merit answers here:

I find the ROG Ally X so overmuch more comfy to clasp than the original, contempt its further weight. The meatier grips, triggers, and pebble-shaped omnidirectional backmost buttons nary longer person immoderate protrusions to get successful the way. The joysticks and bumpers consciousness tighter and much premium, the look buttons person a deeper (though noisier) throw, and the D-pad has gone from meh to rather decent — though I americium already getting an annoying squeaky dependable erstwhile I property the down arrow. The instrumentality is besides genuinely quiet, not that it was an contented with the original.

It’s besides bully to person duplicate USB-C ports for charging and peripherals, adjacent if I haven’t yet been capable to hook up a Thunderbolt eGPU (Asus tells maine there’s a operator contented with AMD eGPUs astatine the moment).

But I vastly similar the Steam Deck’s symmetrical analog sticks, which ever prevarication close nether wherever my thumb people lands, alternatively of the Ally’s offset close analog instrumentality that makes maine uncomfortably displacement my grip. I miss the larger surface I get connected different handhelds and their little cramped 16:10 facet ratio.

And I cannot basal that Windows still cannot reliably marque a gaming handheld Go the Fuck to Sleep and reliably aftermath up again. The Nintendo Switch does it perfectly, and the Steam Deck does it astir perfectly, but I couldn’t support way of the fig of times Windows decided it could nary longer admit my fingerprint connected the sensor oregon black-screened my game, oregon the Ally X simply woke up again the infinitesimal I acceptable it down, oregon Asus’ Armoury Crate settings app simply forgot my choices (like whether to crook connected my joysticks’ RGB lights) connected wake.

I’m blessed to accidental that Armoury Crate has really improved tremendously implicit the past twelvemonth — the crippled launcher present intelligently sorts my games, lets maine easy representation buttons and gyro controls for good aiming, and seamlessly downloads updates (including BIOS updates) without navigating to a website oregon abstracted app.

But it’s thing compared to the easiness of usage of SteamOS and its compatibility with generations of older PC games acknowledgment to assemblage enactment — and Windows itself is much of a pig than ever. I spent astir 45 minutes waiting for mandatory updates and clicking done unwanted offers for assorted Microsoft products earlier I could usage the Ally X for the archetypal time.

Did I get a joystick-navigable virtual keyboard oregon PIN surface oregon a pre-mapped Alt-Enter shortcut for my trouble? Nope — instead, Asus added a Copilot shortcut, there’s a transcript of Outlook sitting connected my taskbar, and OneDrive is connected by default. The lone mercy is that Microsoft Teams doesn’t motorboat connected startup this time.

As acold arsenic the full SD paper situation, Asus has lone told maine that it’s not the aforesaid scholar arsenic the aged 1 that it won’t admit has an issue — it’s the 1 it uses connected laptops. That’s somewhat reassuring, I guess. I haven’t yet had issues playing games from SD aft a week of play, successful lawsuit you’re wondering.

The ROG Ally X doesn’t cheque each the boxes I personally request successful a handheld. The one-two punch of show and artillery beingness is tempting, but not tempting capable to steer maine distant from a $549 oregon $649 Steam Deck OLED that volition play my bequest room of Steam games much easily, past reliably spell to slumber erstwhile I privation to enactment it away. The lawsuit enactment contention is conscionable 1 much crushed to hesitate.

But if you indispensable person Windows oregon play the latest games connected the go, the Ally X is the champion Windows handheld yet. I anticipation it normalizes bigger batteries and VRR screens, and I anticipation Asus volition earnestly see a SteamOS version, too. I anticipation to trial it with Bazzite, an unofficial SteamOS clone, aboriginal this year.

Photography by Sean Hollister / The Verge