Asus ROG Ally X review: Top-notch hardware dragged down by Windows

If you've been following the gaming handheld market, the ROG Ally X might feel like Asus' answer to what Valve did when it released the mid-cycle Steam Deck OLED refresh late last year. In many ways, you'd be right to think it that way. However, I'd argue that Asus made a way bigger jump with ROG Ally X than Valve did with the Steam Deck OLED. Despite not receiving a processor upgrade, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip in the ROG Ally X performs considerably better than the same one in the base ROG Ally. That's on top of a slew of other improvements, including a second USB-C port and a full-length M.2 2280 PCIe4 SSD slot.

All those upgrades come at a cost — the ROG Ally X is one of the priciest handhelds on the block, starting at $800. It's also still anchored by Windows 11, which is still atrocious for handhelds compared to SteamOS. However, the truth of the matter is that the ROG Ally X has unmatched game compatibility and performance. If that's what you're after, it might be worth the money.

About this review: Asus loaned us an ROG Ally X for the purposes of this review. The company had no input in this article, and did not see its contents before publishing.

Pricing, specs, and availability

Asus just officially launched the ROG Ally X last week, and it's available for a hefty $800 starting price. However, you do get 1TB of base storage and 24GB of RAM included, so the ROG Ally X does seem like a good value on paper. You can buy it from Asus and Best Buy for now, only in black, and it could come to other retailers in the future.

It's important to note that the ROG Ally X is not an outright replacement for the other two ROG Ally models. The better way to look at the ROG Ally X is as a premium model, with the Z1 Extreme and Z1 models of the original ROG Ally still serving users at lower price points.

Design

It's everything I wanted, from the superior ergonomics to the black colorway

If there's a theme for this ROG Ally X refresh, it's that Asus really listened to user feedback. There are plenty of things to be excited about when it comes to this device, but the redesigned chassis is one of my favorites. It's thicker and heavier, and that's a good thing. While the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally are thin, that isn't always what you want from a controller. Think about other controllers you've used, like an Xbox Wireless Controller or a PlayStation controller. They're quite thick and that adds to the ergonomic experience, and the 1.45-inch thickness of the ROG Ally X at its thickest point feels more akin to a typical console controller.

There are plenty of things to be excited about when it comes to this device, but the redesigned chassis is one of my favorites.

The grips are formed in a different shape, and this helps the ROG Ally X feel better in the hand, too. You might not know that the ROG Ally grips and back buttons are designed in the shape of the ROG logo, but that's no longer the case on the ROG Ally X. The new back buttons are smaller and more centered, so they're easier to press and harder to accidentally trigger. Though it's a minor detail, I appreciate that the new handheld comes in black. The older white colorway looks fantastic when new; however, it's so much harder to keep clean.

From a hardware perspective, the ROG Ally X's joysticks are lighter and have a slightly different shape. They're not Hall effect sticks, unfortunately, but they do feature modular boards and potentiometer-based ALPS joysticks. So, they'll feel better to use, and you can always swap them out with Hall effect versions via third-party kits when they become available. The triggers are still Hall effect, the D-pad is larger, the face buttons are 3mm taller, and the triggers are wider in a list of minor — but appreciated — quality-of-life ergonomic improvements.

It's also easier to find the two USB-C ports on the ROG Ally X and the fingerprint reader/power button. On the ROG Ally, the USB-C port was squashed beside Asus' proprietary XGMobile port, and it was pretty hard to locate without looking at it. That's not a problem on the ROG Ally X. The ports are shifted to the left, are easy to find with distinct cutouts, and support Thunderbolt 4 as well as 100W power delivery. The XGMobile port is gone, but I'm not sure anyone is going to miss it.

Display

Good enough, but it's not better than the Steam Deck OLED or Lenovo Legion Go

The screen is one of the areas that Asus didn't really touch when upgrading the ROG Ally X. It's still a 1080p, IPS LCD panel that might not impress on the spec sheet but definitely feels nice to use while gaming. There are handhelds that beat it in resolution (Lenovo Legion Go), size (One XPlayer X1), panel technology (Steam Deck OLED), and refresh rate (Legion Go). However, one thing that Asus has going for it is that the ROG Ally X still supports a variable refresh rate between 48Hz and 120Hz, which adds smoothness to your gameplay.

The ROG Ally X still supports a variable refresh rate between 48Hz and 120Hz, which adds smoothness to your gameplay.

Color accuracy is still outstanding, for what it's worth. In our independent display testing, the ROG Ally X provided full coverage of the sRGB and the DCI-P3 color gamuts. That'll be great for games where you really want the colors to pop as the developers intended.

And although these figures shouldn't be changed much from the ROG Ally, the ROG Ally X has great brightness, too. I measured over 400 nits, which is more than good enough. That figure is slightly lower than Asus' rated figure of 500 nits, but this margin of difference between the rated and actual brightness numbers isn't uncommon to see.

One thing I think Asus should've improved here is the size of the display bezels on the ROG Ally X. While they aren't as jarring now that the chassis is black, they're still quite chonky. The company has its work cut out for it when it eventually does work on an ROG Ally 2, because I'd like to see an OLED panel with slimmer bezels there.

Performance

A bigger boost than you'd expect

We knew that the ROG Ally X would bring better battery life — its 80Whr battery capacity is exactly double the ROG Ally's 40Whr battery — but one of the big questions regarding this handheld was whether it'd perform noticeable better. Though it has the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip as the ROG Ally, the ROG Ally X pairs that with a bigger battery and 24GB of RAM. It also has a redesigned cooling system, and that might help this handheld pull a bit more performance out of the same processor. So, how does all this affect gaming? Put it all together, and the ROG Ally X performs surprisingly better than the ROG Ally.

I first tested the ROG Ally X with 3DMark Time Spy benchmarks, and a lot of them. Asus offers four performance modes with each ROG Ally, and changing the TDP will have various effects on performance and battery life. For the ROG Ally, there are Silent (10W), Performance (15W), Turbo (25W), and Turbo+ (30W) modes. The bigger battery in the ROG Ally X allowed Asus to boost Silent mode to 13W and Performance to 17W. I ran Time Spy at every TDP setting, and compared the results with those of the ROG Ally.

In the table above, you can see how the ROG Ally X performed in Time Spy benchmarks at various TDP settings. You'll notice that the big gaps in performance come between the Silent, Performance, and Turbo modes. The difference between Turbo (25W) and Turbo+ (30W) is pretty small, and you can only use Turbo+ when you're plugged into 65W wall power. So, I wouldn't worry too much about staying near an outlet for optimal performance. Turbo at a 25W TDP will be completely fine.

Now, let's take a look at how the ROG Ally fared in the same tests:

There are a bunch of conclusions to draw here, but the core point is this: the ROG Ally X consistently performs better than the ROG Ally. In the Silent preset, the ROG Ally X put up a Time Spy score that's nearly double that of the original ROG Ally. We don't know how much of that can be attributed to the slightly-higher TDP, the better cooling, or the extra RAM; however, the improvement is clear, whatever the cause. The ROG Ally X doesn't win by as wide of a margin at the other TDP thresholds, but it decisively beats the ROG Ally on every occasion.

In my next suite of tests, I ran PCMark 10 — a CPU-heavy office benchmark — across all the ROG Ally X's performance presets. Here are the results:

This confirms what my colleague Adam Conway noticed when he tested the original ROG Ally last year. The higher TDP modes result in better CPU performance, and the GPU-related improvements are more negligible. As such, if you're in a GPU-heavy game, you may want to tick down the TDP of your ROG Ally X. You'll only lose a bit of GPU performance, and you'll get much better battery life.

One of the ROG Ally X's strengths is being able to play whatever game you throw at it, with little tinkering required. I played Grand Theft Auto V, Fortnite, and Forza Motorsport at their default settings in Turbo mode on the ROG Ally X with absolutely no problems. I usually got a minimum of 60 FPS, but there is certainly room for more if you tweak the game's settings. I liked to run my games at the highest graphics settings possible in exchange for a lower refresh rate. The great thing is that you can always do the reverse and cut the graphical quality of a game to get refresh rates touching the 100s.

In a demanding game like Cyberpunk: 2077, we can really see the Asus ROG Ally X crush the competition. Using the Steam Deck preset at 720p, the ROG Ally X produced 99% of frames above 52.61 FPS and 99.9% of frames above 40.81 FPS.

The consistency was impressive, considering the regular ROG Ally could only produce 99% of frames above 39.71 FPS. That's a massive difference, and Asus likely achieved this not only by increasing speed of the memory but also by optimizing thermal performance with a tweaked cooling system. Asus already crushed the Lenovo Legion Go (despite having the same chip) and Steam Deck in performance with the original ROG Ally, and now it beat itself, too.

A common, perceived gripe with gaming handhelds is the notion that you need to spend a lot of time tinkering (and lowering) default settings to get games to run well. I wanted to put that notion to the test by running Fortnite and Palword at their default settings — with no adjustments.

In Fortnite, 99% of frames were above 32.42 FPS. That's playable, and you can pull more performance out of the ROG Ally X by lowering the default settings and resolution if you need it. Even more impressive is that 99.9% of frames were drawn above 28.04 FPS, meaning that you'll get an incredibly consistent performance out of the Asus ROG Ally X.

The same story goes for Palworld, where 99% of frames were above 30.85 FPS and 99.9% of frames were above 22.46 FPS. Again, you can lower settings to easily pull more performance out of this handheld. But one of my favorite parts of using the Asus ROG Ally X is that you don't have to. You can run flagship titles at their default settings and get a playable experience, and it's impressive.

Oh, and we can't forget about the battery life. Even at the highest TDP settings, I can get around three hours of battery life playing demanding games like Fortnite at high settings. That's roughly triple the real-world battery life I experienced with the ROG Ally. While playing Grand Theft Auto V online for about an hour on Turbo (25W) mode, the handheld dropped about 30% battery. I switched to Fortnite and played that for about an hour and a half (still in Turbo), and I had about 20% battery left on the ROG Ally X. The days of needing to lug a power bank alongside my ROG Ally are over as long as I'm using the ROG Ally X.

Software

Armoury Crate is improved, although I'm not sure that matters

This review sounds pretty positive, and it's true, the ROG Ally X has great hardware and even better performance. However, I can't understate how bad Windows 11 still is as a gaming handheld OS. I found that using the ROG Ally X was a bit easier since I had about a half year of using the ROG Ally under my belt. Knowing how to use the Command Center button — a shortcut that opens an overlay of quick settings, anywhere — and Armoury Crate is crucial to getting the best experience. And yet, it's still not enough.

However, I can't understate how bad Windows 11 still is as a gaming handheld OS.

The problem is that staying inside Armoury Crate all the time simply isn't possible. You'll need to use the desktop, the browser, the finicky on-screen keyboard, and third-party launchers like Steam more often than you'd like. Even in Armoury Crate, there are bugs and things lacking polish; in a few instances, I couldn't press the A button on the inbuilt controller to launch a game, and had to spam the game's cover with my finger using the touchscreen instead. It's true that Armoury Crate is improved, and I like the changes. But as long as you need to routinely use desktop mode, it's not a huge practical improvement.

Evaluating the ROG Ally X's software is a tricky thing. As much as I knock the Windows experience, it allows you to run basically any game you want. Some of my favorite games require anti-cheat software that doesn't work on the Steam Deck, and thus I'm a die-hard ROG Ally user. Yes, Windows isn't great for gaming handhelds. But you know what's worse? Not being able to play your games at all.

How it compares

Is there any reason to buy a regular ROG Ally now?

I used the ROG Ally X side-by-side with the Steam Deck LCD and the original ROG Ally. From that experience, I still think upgrading from the ROG Ally to the ROG Ally X is a tough sell. I paid $700 for my ROG Ally not even a year ago, and I can't justify paying $800 for an ROG Ally X again. When this review unit goes back to Asus, I'll be going back to my ROG Ally.

At the same time, I think it's incredibly hard to recommend the ROG Ally Z1 or ROG Ally Z1 Extreme to new buyers now that the ROG Ally X is here. The former models are cheaper, but they're simply inferior. It's not like the only improvements to the ROG Ally X are performance and battery life. The upgrades also include basic necessities like a microSD card reader that won't destroy your cards and better ergonomics. If you can, I would absolutely recommend paying more for the ROG Ally X.

Should you buy the Asus ROG Ally X?

You should buy the ROG Ally X if:

• You want top-notch performance and battery life
• You need excellent game compatibility, even with games that rely on anti-cheat software
• You value the smaller changes, like two USB-C ports and better ergonomics

You should NOT buy the ROG Ally X if:

• You own an ROG Ally
• You aren't willing to pay $800 for a PC gaming handheld
• You don't think you can live with Windows

The Asus ROG Ally X, much like the original ROG Ally, is for people who want the absolute best performance and game compatibility a PC gaming handheld has to offer. Those who want a console-like experience will still want to go with a Steam Deck, because SteamOS is still leagues ahead of Windows. However, the improved battery life, ergonomics, and hardware of the ROG Ally X makes it a much stronger Steam Deck OLED competitor. It's kind of a toss-up now, and which one is best will depend on what you're looking for.