Asus’ next ROG Ally will be the ROG Ally X

The Asus ROG Ally was nan first existent Steam Deck challenger; while I’d reason it fell a small short, it legitimately improved nan authorities of affordable Windows handheld gaming pinch its plugged-in capacity boosts and soft adaptable refresh complaint screen. Now, Asus is opening to uncover its successor: nan ROG Ally X.

Don’t telephone it an Ally 2: erstwhile it ships successful nan 2nd half of nan year, nan Windows-based Ally X will person nan aforesaid AMD Z1 Extreme chipset and nan aforesaid 48–120Hz VRR screen. It’s not rather for illustration the Steam Deck OLED, wherever Valve sewage AMD to revise its spot for amended artillery life and stableness and added a larger, brighter, gorgeous caller OLED sheet pinch improved consequence clip and slimmer bezels.

But nan recently black-colored handheld will person a important artillery life improvement, Asus SVP Shawn Yen tells The Verge — because Asus will cram a substantially larger artillery battalion into nan Ally X’s revised shell. “We’re not looking astatine 30 to 40 percent much capacity,” he tells me. “We’re looking astatine measurement much than that.”

Asus won’t talk circumstantial specs today. Instead, Yen asks maine really overmuch artillery life I’d realistically for illustration from a revised handheld. I opportunity I’d want to double nan worst-case artillery life to 3 hours since I’m presently seeing possibly 1.5 hours successful games. “It won’t disappoint your worst-case scenario,” he tells me.

Yen says artillery life has been nan azygous biggest petition since launch; Asus has seen really nan organization sometimes straps elephantine outer batteries to their handhelds, moreover though nan Ally theoretically had room inside for a larger artillery pack.

“When we launched [the original Ally], we didn’t person specified a clear knowing that nan artillery mightiness beryllium thing group desire much than a lighter-weight device,” he admits.

Battery isn’t nan only alteration Asus is talking astir today; nan Ally X is astir addressing galore of nan community’s apical priorities for really to revise nan original. “We deliberation astir artillery and storage, graphics and memory, ports... our extremity is to fresh arsenic galore of those arsenic imaginable into a instrumentality for illustration this,” says Asus elder merchandise head Gabriel Meng.

Again, nary specs today, but Asus says nan Ally X should now person much than its existent 16GB of RAM truthful that you tin allocate tons of it to nan GPU without impacting nan remainder of nan system. It should person a longer M.2 2280 SSD slot, truthful buyers tin much easy find and acquisition larger SSD upgrades than nan existent M.2 2230 allows.

The Ally X should besides beryllium moreover much repairable, pinch redesigned joystick modules that are much interchangeable — and upgradable, I imagine, if Gulikit steps up? While I didn’t get to spot it for myself, Asus says nan handheld will beryllium somewhat heavier owed to nan larger battery, pinch revised grips, and flimsy tuning to things for illustration nan D-Pad, joysticks, and triggers.

Above: a video showing nan wrong of nan original ROG Ally.

And, while Asus still won’t admit that nan Ally’s SD paper scholar ever had immoderate fault, tells maine it’s nan aforesaid nonstop SD paper scholar it uses successful its laptops, and says it doesn’t judge immoderate issues really had to do pinch overheating, nan Ally X will person a rearranged motherboard layout that sounds for illustration it’ll move it distant from nan system’s vents. “We don’t want group to deliberation that’s what we had to do,” Meng says of moving nan SD reader. “We had to move things astir nan committee to make them fit.”

Asus says nan Ally X’s improvements will travel astatine a cost; dissimilar nan Steam Deck OLED, which mostly replaced Valve’s LCD exemplary astatine nan aforesaid value points, nan Ally X will commencement astatine a higher value than nan original. The original 2023 ROG Ally will besides proceed to instrumentality astir and whitethorn spot discounts.

As acold arsenic a ROG Ally 2 goes, Asus agrees that it has a similar accuracy to Valve: it wants to build a existent successor erstwhile it tin connection a important capacity boost, not conscionable an incremental one.

And while Asus doesn’t scheme to waste an aftermarket artillery upgrade for original Ally buyers it has a large package update coming for those buyers arsenic well: Armory Crate SE 1.5 is not only a very caller overgarment of overgarment and navigation improvements, it’ll yet fto players stock their fastener mappings for various games pinch different Ally owners.

Asus tells maine it still believes successful Windows. While Meng says, “We are very open-minded to looking astatine different solutions,” and that nan institution does person conversations pinch Valve, Asus says it has philosophical and logistical reasons to instrumentality pinch Microsoft’s OS, including a desire to person nan “inclusiveness of each different crippled platforms” alternatively of relying connected Steam. I’ll show you astir immoderate of nan logistical reasons successful a early story.