Asus ROG Ally X review: The best Windows gaming handheld by far

Asus ROG Ally X is the best Windows gaming handheld ever made, with three elements that make your PC gaming experience truly amazing: the most comfortable grip, the smoothest gameplay, and the longest battery life. portable For me.

Most of that isn’t a surprise. It’s smooth because ASUS makes the only handheld that pairs AMD’s powerful Ryzen chips with a variable refresh rate screen, which means it’s better in sync with games. It also has great battery life because ASUS packed in an 80 watt-hour pack, the biggest in a handheld to date. And because the battery is so big, keep AMD chips run at higher power levels to achieve higher frame rates.

But what might surprise you is that the Ally X is the first handheld I can recommend alongside the gold standard of handhelds — that is, if you’ve got a little extra cash in your pocket, don’t mind wrestling with Windows, and trust that Asus has actually learned its customer support lessons.

My review unit of the ROG Ally X arrived just before I left for vacation, giving me the perfect opportunity to test out the massive 80Wh battery. To date, I’ve put just over 24 hours of real-world gaming into the Ally X.

At first the battery life didn’t seem particularly special. Persona 3 Reloaded When used at full brightness in the car or on the beach, I got 2.5 hours of use per charge, which isn’t enough for a drive from Northern California to Southern California, at least not without an external battery. Dave the Diver Compared to the Lenovo Legion Go, my total run time was 3 hours and 19 minutes, but it still pales in comparison to the Steam Deck OLED’s total run time of 4 hours and 42 minutes.

But when I booted up a more demanding game, the Ally X had a huge advantage, giving me almost an extra hour of gameplay. Armored Core 6 (2 hours 59 minutes) and an additional 30 minutes Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2 hours 41 minutes) 720p, mid-range specs, using default power mode on the Ally X. A perfect handheld for such demanding gaming!

I then played two hours of one of the most demanding PC games in existence today. Alan Wake II.

Technically, ROG Ally X is Alan Wake II System requirements: 16GB system memory required and With 6GB of VRAM, you’ll get errors on startup if you don’t have enough, and games will stutter on the original ROG Ally and Steam Deck OLED, which have to share 16GB between system memory and the GPU.

But ROG Ally X has 24GB of shared memory on board, and it shows. At a rendering resolution of 540p upscaled to 1080p with AMD’s FSR 2.1 technology, exploring the game’s lush, eerie forests didn’t make me want to throw my handheld against the wall. While the game slowed down to 29fps during combat, I got a smooth 35-45fps just running around.

I finally sat down because I felt like I had enough to play. Win the game on the Ally X — and I had enough battery to get a full two hours of use using the Ally X’s 25W “Turbo” mode.

my Comparison screenshotWhen Saga is hovering over a corpse, the game runs 5fps faster on Arai X. But when playing the game it drops below a smooth 30fps. If there hadn’t been that push A portable game console with VRR Low Frame Rate Compensation It runs up to 30fps — it makes a big difference.

Game after game, benchmark after benchmark, the Ally X delivered the smoothest gameplay of any handheld I’ve ever seen. Shadow of the Tomb Raider The Legion Go technically delivers more frames per second because the Asus’ screen works more dynamically to smooth things out (even the Steam Deck OLED’s brighter, more colorful, and more quickly responsive OLED panel can’t match it in this regard).

Speaking of benchmarks, Alan Wake II Gaming isn’t the only area where Ally X excels: despite being equipped with the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip as the original ROG Ally, it benefits from faster memory, more efficient cooling and power throttling.

It’s worth noting that the Ally X now defaults to the new 17W “Performance” mode rather than 15W, but regardless of wattage the new handheld still delivers better numbers in nearly every game.

See how Returnal At 25W in “Turbo” mode, it achieved 38 fps in the 720p benchmark, up from 33 fps on the original Ally. Alan Wake IIThis means you can finally enjoy it on your portable device.

But then again, power is only half the story. A year ago, the original ROG Ally consumed 40-50 watts from a 40-watt-hour battery pack in Turbo mode, meaning you could get less than an hour of gameplay if you ran the Ally at that speed away from a charger. With the Ally X, it consumes 33-40 watts from an 80-watt-hour battery pack in Turbo mode, but you can usually get two hours of gameplay in the worst case scenario.

There’s no sign of slowdown whatsoever when the battery is empty – it will hibernate even when it’s down to 3% and start playing again at full speed as soon as you plug it back in.

The Ally X doesn’t consume as much power as the original, even when set at the lowest wattage, 7W TDP. Baratoro I played Roguelike Poker for over 8 hours at 50% brightness and it consumed less than 10 watts the whole time, and my best result so far has been a total battery drain of 7 watts. Knock down the spiredown from 9 watts on the OG Ally. At this rate, the Ally X should be able to play for 10 hours before shutting down.

I’m not going to repeat everything I already told you about the ROG Ally X in my early hands-on. There are a lot of small changes that matter, and that would require a separate article, which I’ve already written. But I think there are three clear questions worth answering here:

• What about the revised ergonomics and other physical changes?
• Is Windows really that bad that you should opt for the poorly performing Steam Deck?
• Why would I trust Asus when they avoid questions about a defective SD card reader and have a terrible reputation for customer support?

ROG Ally X more and more It’s heavier, but easier to hold than the original. The meatier grips, triggers, and pebble-shaped omnidirectional back buttons no longer have annoying protrusions that get in the way. The joystick and bumpers feel tighter and more premium, the face buttons press deeper (but are noisier), and the D-pad has gone from “just okay” to feeling pretty good, although pressing the down arrow still makes an already annoying squeal. The fan is also really quiet, which wasn’t an issue with the original.

It’s also nice to have two USB-C ports for charging and peripherals, although I haven’t been able to connect a Thunderbolt eGPU yet (Asus says there are driver issues with the AMD eGPU at the moment).

But I much prefer the Steam Deck’s symmetrical analog sticks, which are always directly below where my thumbs naturally land, to the Ally’s offset right analog stick, which shifts my grip uncomfortably, and I miss the larger screens and less-cramped 16:10 aspect ratios I have on other handhelds.

And I have Windows still We can’t make portable game consoles reliably. Go to bed. And it boots up again reliably. The Nintendo Switch works flawlessly, and Steam Deck works near-perfectly, but I can’t count the number of times Windows would stop recognizing my fingerprint on the sensor, or my games would just go black, and the Ally X would boot up again the moment I put it down, and Asus’ Armoury Crate settings app would forget my choices on launch (like whether to turn on the joystick’s RGB lights).

The good news is that Armoury Crate has improved a lot over the past year: the game launcher now intelligently categorizes games, buttons and gyro controls can be easily mapped for precise aiming, and updates (including BIOS updates) can be seamlessly downloaded without having to go to a website or a separate app.

But SteamOS’s ease of use and compatibility with generations of old PC games is unmatched thanks to its community support, and Windows itself is more clunky than ever. I spent nearly 45 minutes waiting for mandatory updates and clicking through unnecessary offers for various Microsoft products before I was able to use Ally X for the first time.

For my trouble, would I have gotten a joystick-enabled virtual keyboard, a PIN screen, or a pre-mapped Alt+Enter shortcut? No. Instead, Asus added a Copilot shortcut, a copy of Outlook on the taskbar, and OneDrive turned on by default. The only saving grace is that Microsoft Teams doesn’t launch on boot this time around.

As for the SD card situation, Asus has simply told me that it’s not the same old reader that they’re not admitting to having issues with. It’s the reader they use in their laptops. I guess this is a bit reassuring. In case you’re wondering, after a week of play I’ve still not had any issues playing games from the SD card.

The ROG Ally X doesn’t tick all the boxes I personally look for in a handheld. Its one-two punch of performance and battery life is appealing, but not enough to scare me away from the $549 or $649 Steam Deck OLED, which would make it easier to play my old Steam game library and definitely put it to sleep when I want to put it away. The customer support controversy is just another reason to hesitate.

But if Windows is a must or you need to play the latest games on the go, the Ally X is the best Windows handheld yet. I hope bigger batteries and VRR screens become standard, and I also hope Asus seriously considers a SteamOS version, which I’m excited to test. With Budgetan unofficial SteamOS clone, is due for release later this year.

Photo: Sean Hollister/The Verge