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

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

Most of this is nary surprise: It’s soft because Asus makes nan only handheld that pairs AMD’s powerful Ryzen chips pinch a adaptable refresh complaint screen, which amended syncs up pinch your game. It’s sewage longer artillery life because Asus now stuffs an 80-watt-hour battalion successful there, nan 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: nan Ally X is nan first handheld I tin urge alongside my golden modular for handhelds: the Steam Deck OLED. That is, if you’ve sewage a fewer other bills burning a spread successful your pocket, don’t mind wrestling pinch Windows, and spot that Asus has really learned its customer support lesson.

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

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

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

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

Technically, nan ROG Ally X is nan first handheld that moreover originates to meet 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 nan original ROG Ally and Steam Deck OLED, which person to stock 16GB betwixt strategy representation and GPU, nan crippled is simply a choppy mess.

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

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

As you tin spot successful my comparison screenshots, nan game’s only moving 5fps faster connected nan Ally X erstwhile Saga’s opinionated still complete this corpse. But erstwhile we’re playing a crippled that would dip beneath a soft 30fps if not for that boost — connected a handheld pinch VRR and Low Framerate Compensation that useful correct down to 30fps — it makes each nan quality successful nan world.

In crippled aft game, benchmark aft benchmark, nan Ally X produces nan smoothest gameplay I’ve seen from immoderate handheld, moreover successful nan valleys and caves of Shadow of nan Tomb Raider wherever nan Legion Go technically produces much frames per second. That’s because Asus’ surface is dynamically moving to soft things out. (Even nan 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 nan only crippled wherever nan Ally X pulls ahead. Despite having nan aforesaid AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme spot arsenic nan original ROG Ally, nan faster memory, much businesslike cooling, and powerfulness tweaks make their mark.

While you should statement that nan Ally X now defaults to a caller 17W “Performance” mode alternatively than 15W, I’m getting amended numbers successful almost each crippled pinch nan newer handheld, sloppy of wattage.

See really Returnal is now hitting 38fps successful my 720p benchmark successful nan 25W “Turbo” mode, up from 33 pinch nan original Ally? Like Alan Wake II, I stake that intends it’s yet enjoyable connected a handheld.

But again, powerfulness is only half nan capacity story. A twelvemonth ago, nan original 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 nan Ally that accelerated distant from a charger. With nan 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 moreover seeing immoderate slowdown arsenic nan artillery reaches quiet — it’s bully each nan measurement down to nan 3 percent mark, erstwhile it puts itself successful hibernation, and I tin statesman playing again astatine afloat velocity almost arsenic soon arsenic I plug into nan wall.

Even configured to its lowest wattage of 7W TDP, nan Ally X isn’t arsenic power-hungry arsenic nan original. Balatro gave maine complete 8 hours of magic roguelike poker astatine 50 percent brightness, by draining nether 10 watts nan full time. So far, my champion consequence was full artillery drain of 7 watts successful Slay nan Spire, down from 9 watts pinch nan OG Ally. At that rate, nan 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 nan ROG Ally X successful my early hands-on — location 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 chopped questions that merit answers here:

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

It’s besides bully to person copy USB-C ports for charging and peripherals, moreover if I haven’t yet been capable to hook up a Thunderbolt eGPU (Asus tells maine there’s a driver rumor pinch AMD eGPUs astatine nan moment).

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

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

I’m happy to opportunity that Armoury Crate has really improved tremendously complete nan past twelvemonth — nan crippled launcher now 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 aliases abstracted app.

But it’s thing compared to nan easiness of usage of SteamOS and its compatibility pinch generations of older PC games acknowledgment to organization support — 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 various Microsoft products earlier I could usage nan Ally X for nan first time.

Did I get a joystick-navigable virtual keyboard aliases PIN surface aliases 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 only mercy is that Microsoft Teams doesn’t motorboat connected startup this time.

As acold arsenic nan full SD paper situation, Asus has only told maine that it’s not nan aforesaid scholar arsenic nan aged 1 that it won’t admit has an issue — it’s nan 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 nan boxes I personally request successful a handheld. The one-two punch of capacity and artillery life is tempting, but not tempting capable to steer maine distant from a $549 aliases $649 Steam Deck OLED that will play my bequest room of Steam games much easily, past reliably spell to slumber erstwhile I want to put it away. The customer support contention is conscionable 1 much logic to hesitate.

But if you must person Windows aliases play nan latest games connected nan go, nan Ally X is nan champion Windows handheld yet. I dream it normalizes bigger batteries and VRR screens, and I dream Asus will earnestly see a SteamOS version, too. I dream to trial it with Bazzite, an unofficial SteamOS clone, later this year.

Photography by Sean Hollister / The Verge