Asus ROG Ally X

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Among the first wave of Steam Deck alternatives to reach mobile gamers, Asus' ROG Ally handheld console was a standout. The ROG Ally X ($799.99) follows that original with a bevy of improvements ranging from a redesigned chassis and larger, longer-lasting battery to more (and faster) memory and twice as much storage. It costs $100 more than the original, but the enhancements are worth it, making the Ally X your best bet in the growing crop of Windows-based handheld gaming options. It's not a must-buy if you own the original Ally, and the Steam Deck remains the non-Windows champ, but we prefer the Asus to the MSI Claw or Lenovo Legion Go. You can get greater power from a sub-$1,000 gaming laptop, but the handheld form factor makes the ROG Ally X a standout and an Editors' Choice winner for Windows gaming handhelds.

Design: Your Ally's Back in Black

Asus now offers three Ally models priced at $100 increments: the lower-power ROG Ally Z1 ($599.99), the original ROG Ally (our review unit was $699.99), and now the ROG Ally X. While some of the Ally X's key internals remain the same, the exterior is anything but, with a black chassis as opposed to the white case of the original. I personally liked the white—it stood out from the pack and looked a bit slicker—but black may have wider appeal or at least blend in more closely with the Lenovo Legion Go and MSI Claw.

Another big design change is the size. At 1.49 pounds, the Ally X is 11.5% heavier than the original, mostly due to the larger battery. Objectively, that's not a big difference, and the device has hardly gotten too big or heavy to hold. That said, though most users may disagree, I prefer the feel of the original.

The screen is unchanged, a 7-inch, 1,920-by-1,080-pixel touch panel with a 120Hz refresh rate that feels roomy enough for a device of this type. The MSI's screen is the same size and resolution, while the Legion Go has a larger (8.8-inch) and sharper (2,560-by-1,600) panel.

The new unit's weight seems more distributed toward the bottom, so I end up wanting to support it with my pinkies in a long gaming session, which gets tiring (it seems our hand model in the photo above shared that inclination). The handles are a bit more ergonomic and chunkier to fill your hands, which helps, but I enjoyed the slimmer Nintendo Switch-like feel of the original Ally. That device was notably more compact than the Steam Deck, while the ROG Ally X comes closer (though still smaller). It'd be a bit easier to accept the new size if it was for the sake of a more powerful processor that raised the performance ceiling, but less so for smaller changes.

Input & Connectivity Improvements

The new color and size are the most obvious changes, but there are quite a few other alterations considering this is more of a refinement than a generational leap for the Ally. Asus has repositioned the face buttons and control sticks, putting them (in theory) in more comfortable and natural places for your thumbs.

Even comparing the original and the Ally X side by side, the new locations aren't especially obvious, but the left stick seems a touch lower, and the right stick feels like a bit less of a reach. It feels a bit easier to move my thumb quickly between the right stick and face buttons, too.

The buttons and sticks themselves have been tweaked as well. The face buttons feel a little more substantial, while the directional pad was fully revamped for more precision. The previous pad was smaller and left no space for a solid diagonal press, so the new one definitely feels better. The sticks have a bit more tension, which also adds a little precision and feels more satisfying than the comparatively loose sticks of the original.

The port arrangement is also new, so the handheld's top edge looks different. Most notably, the proprietary eGPU port of the original has been removed entirely. The USB Type-C charging port that was paired with it in a groove has been moved to the left and joined by another USB-C port alongside it. A second port adds versatility, and realistically, the USB-C connector will likely see much more use than the discrete eGPU link (and can still work with some USB-C eGPUs).

The headphone jack and microSD card slot have also slid over to the right end of the row as part of this new arrangement. Additionally, there's a new vent in the center for more cooling.

Software: Open the Customization Crate

Before diving into the hardware, we'll touch on Asus' built-in software. Part of our reasoning for preferring the Ally over alternatives is its superior Armoury Crate software. While not perfect, it makes customizing your handheld experience and tweaking settings relatively easy.

Each manufacturer takes a different approach. Valve's streamlined SteamOS skin makes managing your library and launching games a breeze, but the same can't always be said for Windows handhelds. Navigating Windows with control sticks and a touch screen can be clunky, and Asus' solution (including a dedicated button to launch Armoury Crate anytime) lets you change performance mode, monitor performance, change control styles, and more with considerable ease.

Given that Windows is not made with these devices in mind, none of these software overlays is going to be the most elegant solution, but Asus best bridges the gap. You can read more about Armoury Crate in our original Ally review, though it's been smoothed a bit for the Ally X, further improving usability.

The Components: No New CPU, But Key Memory & Storage Upgrades

The ROG Ally X may sport more external changes than you expected, yet the biggest improvements are on the inside. As mentioned, the Ally X does not carry a new chip for superior processing and graphics performance, but there's still plenty to be excited about. One of the most requested improvements to the Ally was improved battery life—hardly a surprise for any gaming handheld. Asus answered by doubling the Ally X's battery capacity to 80WHr, which should obviously boost the run time (see our testing section below for exact results).

Giving the unchanged Z1 Extreme chip another leg up, the Ally X has 24GB of memory instead of the 16GB of the original, and the RAM is faster, at 7,500MHz. Again, the performance section below will show what this means in practice. Similarly, Asus told us that users found the Ally's 512GB solid-state drive cramped. That's not surprising—we tell all but the most budget-conscious gaming-laptop shoppers to splurge on at least a 1TB SSD given the sizes of modern game installations, and Ally owners often swap out its drive for a larger one. So Asus has gone ahead and made that improvement, fitting the Ally X with a 1TB Type-2280 M.2 SSD.

While you're probably less likely to be playing massive AAA games on a handheld like the Ally X, individual game installations can still take up anywhere from 50GB to 150GB each. If you have several such games (especially if you keep coming back to them instead of uninstalling titles after you beat them), you won't have much room on a 512GB drive to add new games, so 1TB of storage is very welcome.

Testing the Asus ROG Ally X: Capable Performance, Superior Battery Life

To see how the hardware improvements translate to hands-on performance, we put the ROG Ally X through our latest suite of benchmark tests. Since we recently updated our regimen to more modern tests for a better measure of how PCs can handle the workloads and games of today, we don't have direct numbers to compare the new handheld to the first Ally (nor the Legion Go and Claw). Instead, we're pitting it against the following laptops to see what kind of performance drop-off the move to the handheld form factor brings...

This group mostly consists of entry-level gaming laptops with fast processors and lower-tier discrete GPUs, which (at least on paper) you'd expect to beat the downsized Ally X. The Acer Swift 14 adds context as a compact non-gaming system with AMD Radeon graphics.

Below, you’ll find explanations of each test and the results. We're aware the Ally X is not intended for general PC productivity use, but as a Windows machine (and with an academic interest) we put it through our standard tests nonetheless. Given that we revamped our tests lately, we also have a few missing data points here and there—please pardon our dust as our new processes settle. Also note that we set the Armoury Crate power profile to its Turbo preset to get the Asus' best performance.

Productivity & Content Creation Tests

Our first group of tests represents workloads such as content creation, office productivity, and raw CPU speeds. UL's PCMark 10 is our go-to overall productivity and storage test, simulating popular office apps and everyday operations. Three other tests are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: We time the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 as it converts a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution, and run Maxon's Cinebench 2024 to render a complex scene and Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 to simulate apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning.

Especially considering the form factor disadvantage, the Ally X performed well when put among these full-size laptops. No, it’s not a workstation, but you’d actually be hard-pressed to pick it out from the field if you were only looking at the results here, and it even posted the best result in the Handbrake and Photoshop tests. While we're certain 99% of users will use it only for games, its snappy overall speed will make installing games, moving files, navigating the desktop, and launching software less of a headache.

Graphics & Gaming Tests

We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quartet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K) use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. Steel Nomad's regular and Light subtests focus on APIs more commonly used for game development, like Metal and DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. We also turn to 3DMark's Solar Bay to measure ray tracing performance in a synthetic environment. This benchmark works with native APIs, subjecting 3D scenes to increasingly intense ray-traced workloads at 1440p.

Our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at the system’s full HD (1080p or 1200p native) resolution—represent competitive shooter, open-world, and simulation games, respectively. If the screen is capable of a higher resolution, we rerun the tests at the QHD equivalent of 1440p or 1600p. Each game runs at two sets of graphics settings per resolution for up to four runs total on each game.

We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Minimum graphics preset—aimed at maximizing frame rates to test display refresh rates—and again at the Extreme preset. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs fully, so we run it on the Ultra graphics preset and again at the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 represents our DLSS effectiveness (or FSR on AMD systems) test, demonstrating a GPU’s capacity for frame-boosting upscaling technologies.

While it’s not too surprising that graphics power is more limited than processing prowess in a small machine, the Ally X’s results here are nonetheless less impressive than the previous batch, trailing the full-size laptops by a much wider margin. You can really see where the power ceiling of a discrete laptop GPU differs from the single-chip Ally X.

That said, let's look at what the Ally X can do. The F1 2024 results surprised me the most; I would have hoped it would reach at least comfortably above 30fps with FSR active, even on the highest visual settings. You’ll likely want to dial back the details for a smooth driving experience. The Call of Duty results are solid, not that you’ll ideally play much competitive multiplayer on this device, but you might if it’s your only gaming system.

Cyberpunk is one of the most demanding games out there, and since we tested on the highest ray-tracing and non-ray-tracing settings, it’s not a shock that the Ally X couldn't keep up. In an effort to be more practical for how this device will be used, I reran the test on the game's Steam Deck visual preset, a combination of settings the developers picked to run smoothly on handheld devices. This was a wholly different experience, managing a far more playable and great-looking 45fps.

Additionally, while I confess we don't have 1:1 comparisons to the original Ally due to switching our testing suite, I didn’t want to leave you hanging entirely, so I tried F1 2021 and Rainbow Six Siege from our previous benchmark regimen. In F1 2021 with the Ultra High preset, the Ally X scored 27fps to its predecessor's 19fps. In Rainbow Six Siege, the older Ally was actually quicker—122fps to 117fps at the Low preset and 189fps to 73fps at the Ultra. While there are variables such as drivers and game updates separating the two, we can at least conclude that Ally X isn't faster across the board.

Battery Test

We test each system's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We ensure the battery is fully charged, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off before the test.

On this rundown test, the Ally X posted a much longer result than I anticipated—I’m genuinely impressed with the 17-hour result. If you want to use this machine to watch a video or movie, or just use it as a PC off the charger, it will run for many hours, which makes it more useful by default. Additionally, the battery test is one of the benchmarks we left unchanged when updating our suite, so we can definitely say the new handheld tops the original Ally’s 8 hours and 37 minutes.

I also wanted to try a gaming rather than video playback scenario, so I set Cyberpunk 2077 to the Steam Deck visual setting, switched the Armoury Crate software to Performance rather than Turbo mode, and let the game run. The Ally X lasted for 2 hours and 40 minutes with a combination of standing at intersections in the open world while letting cars and pedestrians walk by, and manually driving and walking around the city myself. The original Ally lasted about half as long in a similar scenario.

This is one of the most draining games you can run on a battery; less visually dense and simulation-heavy games will no doubt run longer. That’s not that long in the grand scheme of things, but gaming laptops don't generally last much longer when playing games off the charger, and realistically, nearly 3 hours of an uninterrupted open-world RPG is a pretty solid single-sitting gaming session.

Verdict: Your Best Ally, Now Buffed

The ROG Ally X may not convince most current Ally owners to upgrade, especially not on a performance basis, but it has some objectively sweet improvements. A redesigned chassis with several ergonomic and feedback improvements, superior connectivity, and much longer battery life make a difference. Even though I may prefer the slightly slimmer design of the original, the added cost seems worth the concessions and price difference. The best Steam Deck alternative just got better.