I haven't stopped using the Asus ROG Ally X in the past few days, and I already have a lot of thoughts about Asus' updated handheld.
Asus ROG Ally X MSRP $800.00 Score Details “The Asus ROG Ally X improves on nearly every aspect of the original.” Pros Cons The ROG Ally has been a staple among the best handheld gaming PCs since it launched. Even among a string of competition, Asus ’ handheld has been the only true competitor to the space that’s been dominated by the Steam Deck. The ROG Ally X is Asus trying to take the crown.
In addition, the original ROG Ally had a faulty microSD card slot that Asus says was fixed with a software update. You can read more about that in our Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme review. I haven’t been able to test the microSD card slot on the ROG Ally X yet. They’re probably a fourth of the size of the original, and they’re pushed more toward the center. You can still easily reach the rear buttons with your fingers, but I was happy to ignore them while holding the handheld. They never so much as grazed my knuckle.
On the original design, the trigger and shoulder buttons were in a straight line — you would often press one when you meant to press the other. Now, the triggers are a bit deeper than the shoulder buttons, and they have a more significant curve. Elsewhere, Asus ditched its proprietary XG Mobile connector in favor of a USB4 port that supports external GPUs, which lives alongside the USB-C port you use for charging. Asus also crammed in a massive 80WHr battery — double the battery size of the original model. The ROG Ally X now has the biggest battery out of the mainstream handhelds, surpassing the Lenovo Legion Go‘s 49.20-watt-hour battery and the Steam Deck OLED’s 50Wh battery by a significant margin.
The internals have been completely redesigned, so surely Asus could have moved the slot to somewhere else. Hopefully, it doesn’t continue to be an issue, but I haven’t been able to test it thoroughly yet. In games that can use the extra memory, such as Horizon Zero Dawn and Returnal, there’s a massive uplift. I wouldn’t buy the ROG Ally X for increased performance — it just doesn’t apply in every game. In the games it does, however, it makes a world of difference.
Battery life is the big question Asus talked up the battery life of the ROG Ally X, and for good reason. This is the biggest battery we’ve seen on a gaming handheld. Given that I’ve only had a few days with the ROG Ally X, battery life is one area I haven’t had a chance to test extensively. I’m gathering numbers now, but for this review-in-progress, I need to rely on some personal anecdotes.
On the original Ally, you were looking at from an hour to an hour and a half in a demanding game, and up to four hours in a light game. Here, I expect six hours at most, and around two and a half to three hours under an intense load. Don’t hold me to those numbers quite yet, though. It’s a huge improvement, but Asus seems to have introduced a few bugs in the new update, mostly related to the overlay. It needs work. Like the original Ally, there’s a dedicated button to pull up the overlay while you’re in a game, which allows you to access a customizable list of quick settings. I consistently ran into an issue where the overlay wouldn’t recognize the controller, though. If I moved too quickly, my inputs would register in the game I was playing instead of in the overlay.
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