Asus ROG Ally X review: peak handheld performance

Asus’ third variation of its Ally handheld, the ROG Ally X, is finally here, and our testing shows it’s a genuinely impressive, and powerful, portable gaming PC despite not actually improving upon the AMD Z1 Extreme APU from the original. Instead, upgrades are made to the RAM, the battery capacity, and the overall design and efficiency of the cooling system.

The Asus ROG Ally X is easily one of the best handheld gaming PCs, replacing the Ally Z1 Extreme as the strongest alternative to the Steam Deck OLED. That being said, the Windows operating system is still a huge weakness for the portable, and it throws up challenges that left me frustrated with the unrealized potential of this otherwise very impressive hardware.

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Specs

Design

Many aspects of the ROG Ally X’s design are carried over from the original model, such as the asymmetrical thumbsticks, Xbox-style face buttons, and four function buttons which include a dedicated Asus quick menu and Armory Crate buttons. One upgrade is a new eight-direction d-pad as opposed to the four-direction option on the OG Ally.

On top of the handheld, there are now two USB-C ports, with the left one supporting Thunderbolt 4, so you can charge and connect other devices at the same time. Also along the top are the volume controls, the power button/fingerprint sensor, a 3.5mm jack port, and a microSD card slot. This slot no longer sits over a heat vent, meaning the risk of your storage cards melting has been eliminated.

Elsewhere, the grips of the Ally X are far more pronounced compared to the original model, allowing for a far more comfortable and natural grip. These changes do lead to a weight increase of 70g over the Ally, while the shell also gets ever so slightly thicker, but maintains the same width and height. This change wasn’t meaningfully noticeable to me, but the extra weight is a 10% increase so you might feel it a little on longer gaming sessions.

Operating System

The ROG Ally X uses Windows 11 as its operating system, and it’s the biggest blocker to this handheld being a true competitor to the Steam Deck. Where Valve’s handheld excels is the ease with which you can download, boot, and play most games. No such simplicity can be found on the Ally X.

With the Ally X, Asus tries to make this process simple with its Armory Crate interface, bringing together your Steam, GOG, Xbox, and Ubisoft libraries into one central location so you can boot them easily and get your games downloaded. However, the process is full of jank, including how if you’re too eager to boot Steam via Armory Crate, it will accidentally boot the regular version of Steam instead of doing it in Big Picture mode. Also, the GOG launcher appears to have no controller navigation, meaning it’s awkward to navigate and find what you want to play. Despite this, it’s a huge win for the Ally X to have instant access to multiple libraries without having to worry about desktop modes or dual booting operating systems.

When using the quick menu to access features from Armory Crate when in a game, it can really mess up the controller inputs. At times I would bring the menu up but would still be controlling the game, having to close and re-open the menu multiple times to get it to work properly. Other times, when closing the menu after making changes, the game would no longer register the controller inputs and instead change to mouse and keyboard input, leading to a full game restart being needed, which is far from ideal.

There is also no alternative to Proton, the compatibility tool that takes games and makes them run better on the Steam Deck (and Linux in general). The absence of such a tool means finding the best in-game settings is a significant task, and I spent far too long benchmarking games at three different resolutions to find which worked best. Some games, like Cyberpunk 2077, have a Steam Deck setting baked in, but this is of little use to the Ally X given the power differential and native resolution differences.

Outside of gaming, the Windows OS is useful for general browsing or video playback if that’s what you want to do with the Ally X, but in my opinion, Windows is and continues to be the biggest weakness of any gaming handheld it’s featured on.

Display and Sound

One of the biggest demands from Ally fans prior to the reveal of the X was an OLED display. Unfortunately, Asus didn’t deliver on this, instead bringing over the exact same 7-inch, 120Hz LCD display from the Ally.

That being said, the quality of displays is a lot closer than I thought it would be. The Ally X’s 1080p, 120Hz display crams in a lot more detail in comparison to the 800p, 90Hz Steam Deck OLED one, and this somewhat offsets the difference in color quality. Plus, the Ally’s screen includes a variable refresh rate (VRR), which can make for smoother-looking gameplay. All in all, I would actually give the overall advantage to the Ally X when comparing the two, and that’s a big feather in Asus’ cap.

Asus also benefits from its GameVisual technology, which allows you to pick from a range of profiles based on the type of game you’re playing to enhance the Ally X’s display quality. On top of profiles for game types, like racing or FPS, there is also an eyecare mode and a profile set up specifically to enhance video playback if you want to use your Ally X to watch movies.

The speakers on the Asus ROG Ally X are fantastic, reaching an 81.3dB high and 71dB average when recorded from 20cm away while playing Cyberpunk 2077. The sound quality, even at full volume, is crystal clear, with distinguishable lows where bassy tones dominate, and higher tones, like sharp breaking in vehicles, are distinct and don’t wash out into becoming squeaky. This means you don’t have to worry about needing a headset to get the best audio experience from the handheld.

By comparison, the Steam Deck OLED only reached highs of 67.7 dB with an average of 58.4dB under the same conditions, but the general quality levels were similar, so it’s not a case of the Steam Deck being worse on audio, but it’s just not reaching the same peak volume.

Storage

The Asus ROG Ally X only comes in a 1TB SSD model. This capacity can be expanded via microSD card, just like the original Ally, but what’s different with the X is that you can now use up to a 2280 M.2 SSDs instead of being restricted to the much smaller 2230 standard. That means just about any SSD in our best gaming SSD guide would fit, though only the slower options would be sensible for a portable device like this, as the faster ones run hot and consume a lot of power.

As previously mentioned, the microSD card slot has been adjusted to remove the risk of overheating and melting cards. Thanks to the multiple USB-C ports, it’s also possible to expand your storage by using a dock, without impacting your ability to effectively charge the Ally X.

Performance

The Asus ROG Ally X is, without doubt, a far more powerful device than the likes of the Steam Deck, and this shows in the gaming benchmarks that I’ve run so far. Testing Cyberpunk 2077, F1 24, and Callisto Protocol, it’s clear that the Ally X is a handheld that can hold its own.

This increased performance is largely down to the 24GB LPDDR5-7500 RAM, a considerable 8GB and 900MHz increase over the base Ally handheld. Up to 8GB of this memory can be assigned to the Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU as VRAM for graphical processing via the Armory Crate settings menu. This is the setting I also used for testing.

All benchmark tests were run at 720p, 900p, and 1080p across the low, medium, and high graphical presets. Each game was also tested at each of the four TDP settings that the ROG Ally X has to offer. It is possible to create custom TDP profiles, but this testing was best left to the four gaming presets.

The biggest takeaway from these benchmarks for me is that the 900p resolution is the sweet spot for the Ally X, with the best balance of performance and visual fidelity. It’s nice to be able to push 1080p in indie titles that aren’t graphically taxing, but the compromises needed to achieve a high level of detail in triple-A games always aren’t worth the marginally improved visuals on this 7-inch display.

The reality with any handheld gaming PC is certain games won’t be able to push beyond a stable 30fps, and Callisto Protocol was a good example of this. While the game couldn’t crack anywhere near 60fps across any resolution or graphical preset, I would much rather lock the Ally X to 30fps and play the game with smoother performance and decent visuals than chase a higher number and suffer performance dips as a result.

During testing, one particular issue with the ROG Ally X is its ability to respond to TDP changes. Whenever I would switch between settings, there was a substantial delay in the Ally X moving to the new setting. I initially wondered whether the delay was just in the real-time monitor reporting the lower TDP, but after running some benchmarks, it became clear that the real-time monitor was accurate and it was, at times, taking up to ten minutes for the Ally X to change the TDP level.

One way the Windows OS works in the ROG Ally X’s favor is with game compatibility. While the aforementioned Proton tool does more than just make games work better on Linux, there’s simply no need for such a tool on the Ally X. Every game works well with Windows, meaning the only potential barrier preventing a game from working properly is whether it has controller support and runs fast enough to play properly. Even if controller support isn’t present, you can connect a mouse and keyboard to the Ally X quite easily and use a dock, or the included stand, to prop your handheld up while you play.

Battery Life

The Asus ROG Ally X’s battery life is much improved over the original model, and the 80Wh battery is currently the largest available in a handheld gaming PC. The exact length of life depends entirely on the TDP settings you use and the actions you’re taking with the Ally X.

At the 25W TDP setting, playing a fairly light game like Hades 2, you can expect around two hours and 45 minutes of gameplay at 1080p, with the thumbstick LEDs turned off. This extends up to five hours when playing at 720p and using the 13W setting while also keeping the thumbstick LEDs off. More demanding games will drain the battery quickly leading to far too many varying results to accurately capture. The power draw of a game can be found in the real-time monitor if you’re curious about which games are the most power-hungry.

When testing the casual battery life of the ROG Ally X, using it only for browsing and video playback, the battery life extended to just over eight hours on the 13W TDP setting. This can be further extended to close to ten hours by selecting the Windows TDP setting, although this can only be found hidden away in the Armory Crate settings menu.

Unlike the Steam Deck, there’s no way to display the expected play time remaining in the battery life, which is a shame, but you can still track the battery life as a percentage using the basic setting within the real-time monitor.

The charge time of the battery depends on whether you’re sitting the Ally X down and leaving it to charge or plan to play it while it charges. You can still game at the 13W and 17W settings while charging, but this delays a full charge being achieved. Asus kindly sent along a ROG 140W charger which will get the Ally X up to a full battery in an hour thanks to its new 100W max charging speed, but the pre-packed 65W charger still does the job from flat to fully charged in just under two hours.

All in all, the 80Wh battery is a massive improvement over the original model, and the likes of the Steam Deck, which can reach up to six and a half hours playtime when testing Hades 2, but the Steam Deck’s max TDP is 15W, and it’s native resolution is far lower, making the Ally X’s battery all the more impressive.

Price

The Asus ROG Ally X retails for $799 (£799) and is available from Best Buy and Asus’ website. In the box, you get the Ally X console, a charging adaptor, a cardboard stand, and your instruction/warranty manuals. There is no case or other accessories included with the handheld.

I reached out to Asus to clarify the situation with cases and it came back letting me know specific Ally X cases would be available soon, but until then, the Ally X will fit into any officially licensed ROG Ally cases for the time being.

Asus reduced the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme model to $649.99 to create better value for its now mid-range console. The standard Z1 model can be found for $399.99, but I wouldn’t recommend this given the considerable power missing from its APU.

Alternatives

Steam Deck OLED

If you really don’t want to have to think about whether a game will work properly, and already have a decent library of games within Steam, it’s hard to argue against the Steam Deck OLED as the go-to handheld gaming PC for most players, especially when it’s $549.99 MSRP is so much more appealing.

Verdict

The Asus ROG Ally X is a powerful handheld gaming PC, taking an already established APU in the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme and offering it additional support in the form of faster, and higher capacity RAM. Design tweaks also make the Ally X fit and feel better in hand, but the use of the Windows operating system means everything else stands upon weak foundations.

Asus’ Armory Crate software helps ease this pain somewhat but doesn’t go far enough to simplify the core gaming function, making the ROG Ally X hard to recommend if your absolute primary focus is just portable gaming.