I had a harsh opinion of the original Asus ROG Ally. Maybe I’m being a bit too harsh, since many of the issues I had with this game are inherent to the very concept of a Windows-based handheld gaming console. So when I got my hands on the new ROG Ally X, I tried to be a little more open-minded. It was not difficult, since the new model is significantly improved. But some hurdles are insurmountable.
The ROG Ally X looks almost identical to its predecessor, except for the new black paint. There are subtle differences, such as a rounded grip that’s easier to hold, ABXY buttons that are a little higher, and an 8-way D-pad that handles diagonal movements a little better. However, if you haven’t looked closely, you’d be forgiven for thinking that not much has changed.
But under the hood, ASUS has made some significant improvements. The most notable thing is that the battery size has doubled. The original ROG Ally has a 40 Wh battery, which is about the same as the original Steam Deck. On the other hand, ROG Ally X somehow has a large capacity battery of 80Wh. This is larger than the battery in Asus’ Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop, which I liked for its long battery life. Despite this significant increase, Ally X only weighs about 70 grams.
Asus has also beefed up the storage capacity, with a 1TB SSD instead of 512GB, as well as 8GB of DDR5 RAM. The company also replaced Asus’ external GPU-only XG Mobile port with a USB4 port that reaches speeds of up to 40 Gbps, making it ideal for connecting to external docking stations. However, specs alone cannot tell the whole story.
Photo: Eric Ravenscraft
An insurmountable wall of windows
Windows is not designed to run on handhelds. It’s a simple and unavoidable truth. Microsoft expects users to utilize an operating system with a mouse and keyboard, or at least a large touch screen. Trying to interact with the OS using a controller is always frustrating. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to escape the basic problem of trying to manipulate what’s on the screen.
One notable example of this is the Xbox app. Asus has made some solid progress with its Armory Crate SE app, which aims to be a bridge between all the other game libraries on your system. Armory Crate will start at startup. There is a dedicated button next to the right control stick that can be opened when needed. There are also shortcuts to apps like Steam (which launches in controller-friendly Big Picture mode) and Xbox, giving you access to any games you own.
