ROG Xbox Ally X Review: High-quality, very high price

When Xbox announced in June that it’s been working on handheld gaming PCs with Asus, I got really excited. Mixing the familiar infrastructure of Xbox with Asus’ tried-and-true Republic of Gamers (ROG) PC hardware? There’s a lot of potential there, especially as Microsoft has been teasing its broader ambitions for handheld gaming PCs. And in both of the times I got to preview the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X, I’ve been quite positive.

But now that we know exact pricing and I’ve gotten to play around with a launch Xbox Ally X unit, I find it rather difficult to review. On the one hand, it is indeed a well-made device with many appealing features, as I’d hoped. But on the other hand, its $1,300 Canadian price tag is just prohibitively high, making it tough to recommend to most people. All I can really do, then, is dig into why I like this handheld and let you form your own conclusion.

Specs

Before I get any further, though, here are the ROG Xbox Ally X’s specs so you know what, exactly, you’re getting for the hefty cost:

• Display: 7-inch FHD, 120Hz refresh rate IPS panel
• Processor: AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme
• Memory: 24GB
• Storage: 1TB
• Dimensions: 290.8mm x 121.5mm x 50.7mm
• Weight: 715g (1.58lbs)
• Operating System: Windows 11
• Battery: 80Wh
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6E (2 x 2) + Bluetooth 5.4
• Ports: 1x USB4 Type-C, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, 1x UHS-II microSD card reader, 1x 3.5mm combo audio jack

To put all of this into context, the base Xbox Ally costs $799 and sports a lower-end AMD Ryzen Z2 A processor, 16GB of memory, 512GB of storage and a 60Wh battery, among other specs. But suffice it to say, the Ally X and Ally handhelds are being positioned similarly to Xbox’s Series X and S consoles in terms of their differences in specs, pricing and even respective black and white colour schemes. (It’s also $200 more than the standard ROG Ally X.)

MobileSyrup editor-in-chief Jon Lamont has a full review of the Xbox Ally if you want to learn more about that, while I’ll talk about my experiences with the Ally X here. (For what it’s worth, in my own limited experience, I’ve found a noticeable technical leap from the Ally to Ally X, but of course, you should expect that given the $500 price difference.

X-ceptional form factor

Where I’m most coming from with the Ally X, though, is through the lens of someone who almost exclusively plays on consoles, outside of the occasional Steam Deck usage. And what I can say is that the Ally X does a wonderful job in offering both console-quality games and a number of other improvements over the Steam Deck.

First and foremost, the Ally X might just be the most comfortable modern gaming handheld that I’ve used. While slightly heavier than the 640g (1.41lb) OG Steam Deck that I have, the Ally X’s controller-like curved bottom grips make it fit oh-so snugly in your hands, especially over prolonged gaming sessions. For context, the bulk of my recent eight-hour flight to Barcelona was spent playing Hades II on my Nintendo Switch 2 and I found my hands cramping a bit at times. The same can be said for the Steam Deck when I’ve used it on lengthy flights. But holding the Ally X for hours at a time, I didn’t find any such discomfort. It’s honestly made it hard to go back to other handhelds.

On top of that, I love the feeling of the Ally X’s shell itself. Admittedly, I’m rather particular about the feeling of certain materials on devices. There are some that are rough to touch, such as the Steam Deck, creating an almost nails-on-a-chalkboard gritty sensation that can have me cringing. But the Ally X’s coating is wonderfully smooth, especially thanks to the cute little “Xbox” and “ROG” alternating letter patterns that circle the face buttons. And the 80Wh battery, which is double that of the original ROG Ally, means your gaming sessions can last longer.

Since I largely tested the more graphically intensive games, I got about three to four hours of playtime on a single charge, as Asus promised. If you play less demanding games, including such indies as Hollow Knight: Silksong, you can extend that life by up to four hours. (And honestly, between the likes of Silksong, Hades II and Blue Prince, there’s plenty of great indies from this year alone.)

Games, games and more games

But of course, the biggest selling point of the ROG Ally devices is their Xbox integration. In that regard, I’m pretty pleased with the results, even if there have been some growing pains as a console user. First off, I was almost immediately greeted with a “Your Xbox account is different from your Microsoft Store account” message during the setup process. Maddeningly, this meant that I couldn’t just use the Xbox account I’ve had for God knows how long that contains about a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. After reading multiple Reddit threads proposing various – and increasingly complicated – solutions, I thankfully stumbled across a YouTube video that provided a much simpler fix.

To be clear, it’s ridiculous that this is still an issue even years after those qualms were first posted on Reddit. Perhaps the only real “benefit” as a customer of a tech giant like Microsoft owning so many different properties is that you should, in theory, be able to use a single account across all of them, much like how my single Apple ID can be used across my iPhone, MacBook, Apple Watch and Apple TV+ account.

But with that out of the way, I was able to start downloading games, many of which I already have on my Series X console. That’s perhaps the best part of the Ally X: its vast library. First, any of the 1,000-plus Xbox Play Anywhere titles (those that you buy once to access on Xbox and PC) are supported here, and that includes all of Xbox’s first-party catalogue, like Halo, Gears, Call of Duty and Doom, as well as a good handful of those from third-party companies. Of course, this also includes Xbox Game Pass titles. Sure, it’s not every Xbox game like some, myself included, may have naively thought at first, but it’s undeniably a well-rounded lineup.

More importantly, though, you’re able to access third-party storefronts like Steam, the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Store. Having this shopping flexibility supported natively from the get-go is absolutely magnificent. It means that many of the games I have from my time gaming on Xbox and the Steam Deck remain playable to me now. This, in turn, makes the Ally X’s significant price tag (a little bit) more palatable. Conveniently, all of the games will be displayed together on the Xbox dashboard as well, with little logos to indicate whether they’re from Xbox, Game Pass, Steam or the like. In a sense, it feels like a culmination of the platform-agnostic messaging that Xbox has been touting for some time now, and I’m really happy to see it.

Solid performance on the whole

It’s also great to see the games themselves in such top form. Understandably, my 2022 launch model Steam Deck has been showing its age a little bit, especially when I was playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on it earlier this year. Therefore, I definitely welcome the Ally X’s beefier specs, which have resulted in some incredibly smooth experiences that I wouldn’t have expected.

For instance, the incredibly cinematic Indiana Jones and the Great Circle played beautifully at 1080p/60fps. (That said, attempts to play around with the configurations made it look a bit worse, so there was definitely a lot of experimenting involved there.) On the flip side, Forza Horizon 5 immediately asks you if you want to use optimized settings, resulting in it being even more of a stunner as the sheen of the Mexican sun reflected off my blazing-fast Corvette. I was also able to ratchet up the frame rate to 120fps with no hiccups, although I’ll confess that I don’t find this very noticeable, especially compared to the leap from 30fps t0 60fps.

But perhaps my favourite game to play on the Xbox Ally X is Doom: The Dark Ages. I missed it earlier this year due to it coming out between a lot of travelling and my corresponding Expedition 33 catch-up time, so it’s been a joy to try it out properly on the Ally X. Besides feeding into the always-amusing age-old “Can it run Doom?” memes, I loved getting to do this because it’s such a great game for a handheld. Having that satisfying gameplay loop of strafe-shoot-block-punch on the go is just immaculate, and I could have it run at 120fps (which is definitely more pronounced in such a fast-paced shooter) without hiccups.

Likewise, I was able to play the Black Ops 7 beta with high fidelity and performance. It legitimately felt just as smooth as its predecessor did on Series X last year. And because of the Xbox integrations, you can use the Ally X’s mic to chat with other players just as you would on console. There was only a single instance of the game crashing, but given that this is an online game — and a beta, no less — that could just as easily be attributed to the servers rather than the handheld.

Some other games that I tested that worked really well were Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (a nearly flawless 1080p/60fps), Gears of War: Reloaded (1080p and nearly 100fps across campaign and multiplayer) Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II (noticeably not as pretty as it was on consoles but still solid), The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Remastered (completely issue-free at consistently around 60fps, but rarely going past that) and 2019’s Resident Evil 2 (crisp 1080p/60+ fps.)

All the while, the Xbox Ally devices feature what Microsoft is calling the “Handheld Compatibility Program.” Similar to Valve’s “Verified” label on Steam Deck, the Ally and Ally X will display “Handheld Optimized” or “Mostly Compatible” badges beside games in your library. The former means it’s ready to go with all of the settings for input, text and resolution and more, while the latter means some minor configurations might need to be made for an optimal experience. This should make the overall process smoother for users.

That said, at least in this early review period, I did have trouble even launching some games. Having recently beaten Obsidian’s Avowed (which is, for my money, criminally underrated), I wanted to see how it would fare on the Xbox Ally X. However, I kept getting a fatal error, and unlike when I game on console, there’s no corresponding code I can look up to tell me why. It’s frustrating to not be given any indication why I can’t play a certain game, especially when it’s literally an Xbox Game Studios title. Similarly, Doom: The Dark Ages kept giving me an error message about not being connected to the internet. (My hotel Wi-Fi was spotty.) This is despite the fact that this is a wholly single-player experience that you’re supposed to be able to play offline.

To be fair, the optimization issues are par for the course for PC, and figuring out the right configuration for your device is certainly a key part of that experience. Nonetheless, this is a good reminder to anyone coming from Xbox consoles that this is still literally a Windows PC infrastructure under the hood, and it operates as such in practice. What I do find more annoying, though, is that the dedicated Xbox button doesn’t always work as intended. Quite a few times I’d press it to bring up a bunch of customizable widgets for Asus’ Armoury Crate, Settings, the Home page and more, only for it to not respond to the analog stick or D-pad. This meant I had to switch to using the touch screen in some instances, but not always. It’s a not a huge issue by any means, but it’s a bit tedious, and hopefully, it’s just because this is pre-release software.

Closing (conflicted) thoughts

But despite loving nearly everything about the ROG Xbox Ally X, I still can’t wrap my head around the price tag. It’s just obscenely high. While you could certainly argue it more or less fits the specs, I just feel that we’re losing the plot here. When the Steam Deck first came out, it hit the perfect sweet spot of around $500. If you wanted better specs, including a larger storage capacity or an OLED screen, you could pay more, but for the average person, the base model gives you an all-around excellent experience. Sure, it’s not the most powerful device, but that also made it the perfect entry point for people like me who didn’t (at least at the time) have a gaming PC. But in the years since, handheld gaming PCs have continued to boast beefier specs and, accordingly, steeper costs, forgetting what made these devices appealing in the first place. This leaves us now with the Xbox Ally X and its eye-wateringly high price tag. (A steep cost that doesn’t even give you an OLED screen, no less.)

At $1,300, I have to question who this is actually for. Those who care that much about higher-end specs on the go should surely invest in a gaming laptop. In that regard, there are countless choices from the Asus ROG line and beyond. That way, you get a premium portable gaming experience as well as everything else a laptop can do, versus the gaming-only functionality of the Xbox Ally X. Sure, the more compact form factor of the Xbox Ally X is genuinely wonderful, but that’s really the only real thing it has going for it over a regular gaming PC. Meanwhile, the high price tag makes other expensive gaming devices feel comparatively more reasonable, like the $630 Nintendo Switch 2.

If you’re a hardcore gamer who travels often and has quite a bit of extra cash to throw out, I could definitely say the Xbox Ally X is a genuinely worthwhile product. But for the many who are understandably more price-conscious, you’d probably be better off going with a Steam Deck or Switch 2.

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The ROG Xbox Ally X is available for pre-order from the Asus Store and Best Buy ahead of an October 17 launch.

It’s also worth mentioning that Asus sells a $149 product called the Bulwark Dock, which lets you plug in a variety of devices, including the Xbox Ally X, to monitors, TVs and other peripherals. With 7-in-1 connectivity, you can plug in laptops, phones and other handhelds. It’s also got a stand for your device and an anti-slip rubber base. I tried it with the Ally X and it worked well, if not entirely suited for my personal setup. (I don’t yet have a proper desk and primarily use an already full entertainment stand.) Really, it’s a pretty solid investment if you’re someone who games with any portable device, even if you don’t end up going with the Ally X.