Asus ROG Xbox Ally X Review: A Powerful Gaming Handheld That Shines Beyond Its Xbox Branding

The highly anticipated Asus ROG Xbox Ally X has arrived, heralding what many hoped would be a new era for Windows gaming handhelds, largely thanks to Microsoft’s promised Xbox app enhancements. However, while this new $1,000 device is undoubtedly a great handheld worthy of consideration, it doesn’t quite revolutionize the Windows experience in the way some expected. Instead, it serves as another reminder of the usability challenges Windows alternatives face against the Valve Steam Deck. Despite its somewhat underwhelming console-like Xbox integration, the Xbox Ally X truly shines due to its exceptional AMD processor, making it a powerful contender in the handheld gaming market. It offers fantastic gaming performance, solid battery life, comfortable grip design, and a great overall design. However, the Windows interface remains frustrating for handheld use, the price is high, and the Xbox app additions are disappointing.

Technical Specifications

Design

The Xbox Ally X boasts a distinctive and intriguing grip design that sets it apart. While sharing many similarities with the existing ROG Ally X in terms of face buttons, d-pad, and thumbstick layout (complete with RGB lighting), the key differentiator is the addition of the Xbox button on the front-left of the screen. This isn’t a revolutionary overhaul; you won’t find detachable controllers, a slide-out keyboard, a kickstand, or touchpads. It largely maintains the classic Windows handheld form factor, save for those unique grips.

These grips, however, prove to be a significant improvement. This is arguably the most comfortable gaming handheld available, with its enhanced depth and fullness fitting remarkably naturally in the hand, akin to premium PC controller designs. The distinctive split section at the bottom, which gives the impression of a controller torn in half and reunited by a screen, allows for a truly ergonomic hold, enabling comfortable one-handed use. This is further aided by a crosshatching pattern that improves grip.

Beyond the grips, the ergonomics largely align with other handhelds. At 715g, it’s slightly heavier than a Steam Deck but considerably lighter than the Legion Go’s 854g. The 7-inch screen is well-proportioned within the control layout, though the somewhat wide bezels suggest there might have been room for an even larger display within the chassis.

Display and Sound

The device features a 7-inch LCD panel with a 1080p (1,920 x 1,080) resolution, capable of a refresh rate up to 120Hz. It also incorporates variable refresh rate (VRR) with Freesync, allowing for lower refresh rates to conserve battery life while eliminating screen tearing and stutter. These specifications indicate a screen optimized for gaming, providing the necessary speed and performance flexibility for both fast-paced action and slower, battery-friendly titles, all while maintaining good image quality and a fluid refresh rate.

However, the raw image quality is competent but not exceptional. While offering decent viewing angles for an LCD and producing natural, reasonably saturated colors, it lacks the deep black levels of OLED panels found in devices like the Steam Deck OLED. Consequently, it doesn’t quite match the contrast and vibrancy of OLED screens. Although its response time is technically slower than OLEDs, this difference is negligible for a handheld gaming device.

Furthermore, this screen does not support HDR and covers 100% of the sRGB color space and 75% of the AdobeRGB color space, resulting in slightly less vivid colors compared to top-tier gaming monitors. In contrast, the Xbox Ally X truly excels in the audio department. Its stereo, forward-firing speakers deliver impressive volume – often more than needed – and retain a good amount of depth, preventing them from sounding shrill or tinny. The headphone jack also provides clean, clear audio, free from any noticeable background hiss or hum.

Operating System and Xbox app

A major point of anticipation for the Xbox Ally X was Microsoft’s promise of a revitalized Xbox app experience, designed to transform the usability of Windows gaming handhelds. Regrettably, while the new app introduces some useful features, it falls far short of providing a complete solution to the inherent frustrations of navigating Windows with a d-pad and touchscreen.

Upon booting the Xbox Ally X, the Xbox app launches, serving as a central hub for installed games, Xbox profiles, Game Pass, Cloud gaming, and the Microsoft game store. The installed games section thoughtfully integrates titles from other launchers like Steam and Epic, allowing direct launch. Yet, the app’s utility as a single control point for device navigation and settings ends there.

Essentially, the app is a re-skinned version of the existing Windows Xbox app. While this explains its limited integration, Microsoft missed a significant opportunity to incorporate fundamental Windows controls such as screen brightness, volume, power mode settings, and more directly into the app. This oversight is particularly glaring considering how beneficial such integration would be for handhelds and other controller-driven Windows machines. The efficacy of a console-like interface for managing device functions has already been demonstrated by other platforms, making Microsoft’s omission even more perplexing.

The app’s main home screen prominently displays recently played games (regrettably, only as icons without titles) and heavily promotes new games and Game Pass subscriptions. Similarly, the Game Pass section focuses more on promoting the service rather than highlighting already installed games. The Library section, however, offers a clean and sensible interface for all installed games, while the cloud gaming and store sections function as expected portals for discovering new titles.

In the Friends section, users can chat with Xbox contacts, view online statuses, and communicate via voice, voice-to-text, or the on-screen keyboard.

With minimal device management within the Xbox app itself, these functions are relegated to the Xbox/Asus overlay, which is accessed by pressing either the Xbox button or the adjacent Asus Command Center button. Pressing the Xbox button leads to the overlay’s home section, where you can launch one of your three most recently played games or open a game launcher. Tapping left brings you to the main Asus Command Center, the central hub for all device settings.

Here, you can adjust brightness and volume, power down the device, switch between power modes, set the FPS Limiter, enable AMD RSR, and change resolutions. The power modes – Silent (13W), Performance (17W), and Turbo (25W on battery, 35W when plugged in) – directly impact battery life and performance. We explore these effects in the performance section of this review.

To the right of the overlay’s home section lies a settings tab, which redundantly duplicates volume, brightness, power, and network controls already present in the Command Center. Additional tabs include Xbox Social, Audio, screen capture, system monitoring, Xbox Achievements, an AI CoPilot tab, and a Widget Store.

The entire system feels overly complex and disjointed, with peculiar redundancies like three different locations to adjust system volume. While having these functions readily accessible is beneficial, the implementation lacks a holistic design approach, giving the impression of a rushed product.

Adding to the frustration, a recent firmware update on the review unit caused the Xbox button to erroneously load Steam’s Big Picture mode, rendering d-pad navigation within the overlay non-functional. Accessing device functions then required using the ROG Command Center button. Although likely a temporary bug, it underscored the clunky user experience.

Crucially, neither the Xbox app nor the overlay successfully addresses the fundamental flaw of Windows as a touchscreen/d-pad navigation interface. Microsoft urgently needs to develop a unified interface that seamlessly integrates core Windows functions into a mobile-friendly design, featuring a clean app drawer and a simplified settings menu. The current approach, which haphazardly combines touch and mouse interfaces, has degraded the desktop Windows experience and remains severely inadequate for touchscreen devices, a lesson Microsoft seemingly failed to learn from the shortcomings of Windows 8 over a decade ago.

Performance

Fortunately, despite the Xbox Ally X’s sleek Xbox experience falling short of expectations, its raw performance and gaming capabilities are outstanding. Once games are launched, particularly via a well-integrated platform, the controls function flawlessly. The new AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor at the heart of this machine delivers significantly higher frame rates compared to earlier generation handhelds. While devices like the Ayaneo 3 and AOKZOE A1X may boast similar GPU power, the Ally X’s performance numbers remain highly impressive.

In Cyberpunk 2077, utilizing the highest 35W power mode (when plugged in) at 1080p with medium detail settings and FSR upscaling set to ‘Quality’, the Xbox Ally X provided a perfectly playable experience. An average of 43fps with a 1% low of 33fps might feel a bit choppy with a mouse and keyboard, but for controller input, it proved entirely satisfactory. Bumping FSR upscaling to ‘Balanced’ mode (starting from a lower initial render resolution) boosted performance to a 49fps average.

Switching to the lower-power 17W mode on battery, performance decreased by approximately 25%, with the average using ‘Balanced’ upscaling dropping to 37fps. This is still just about playable, but for more intense combat, a few tweaks to settings (such as dropping to low overall quality) might be desired for a smoother experience. When running at the same resolution as the Steam Deck with ‘Balanced’ upscaling, the device achieved an impressive 52fps average.

Remarkably, the Xbox Ally X can even manage Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing enabled at 1080p. Using the low ray tracing quality preset and FSR set to ‘Balanced’, it delivered 29fps in 35W power mode. While not the ideal way to experience the game, the option is there for those who prioritize visual fidelity.

For another demanding title, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which features always-on ray tracing, the Xbox Ally X performed exceptionally well even without upscaling. At the low-quality preset, the game averaged 33fps in 35W mode. This dropped to 29fps in 17W mode, which is still acceptable for a slower-paced game. For a smoother frame rate, enabling FSR upscaling on ‘Quality’ yielded a 42fps average in 35W mode (37fps at 17W), while ‘Balanced’ upscaling pushed it to 46fps average at 35W (39fps at 17W). Throughout these tests, even at lower quality settings, the game looked fantastic on the device’s screen.

Beyond modern AAA titles, older 3D games like 2011’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine ran effortlessly, often exceeding 100fps in 17W mode. Impressively, this handheld maintains excellent thermal and acoustic performance. Even in its powerful 35W mode, fan noise measured only 38dB at 10cm during Cyberpunk 2077, dropping to a mere 33dB in 17W mode. The device itself remained only slightly warm to the touch.

Battery Life

Equipped with a substantial 80Wh battery, the Xbox Ally X delivers robust battery life for a gaming handheld. In PCMark 10’s demanding gaming battery life benchmark, the device lasted just under two hours in its top 25W power mode. However, switching to the 17W mode significantly extended this to three hours. It’s worth noting that these tests were conducted without an FPS Limiter, which would further reduce the GPU workload. While more comprehensive tests are pending, general use of the device indicated four to six hours of gaming on less demanding titles, aligning with the performance of comparable handhelds.

Price

The Asus ROG Xbox Ally X is priced at $999 / £799, positioning it as a premium, albeit expensive, purchase. While it costs significantly more than the Steam Deck OLED and many first-generation handhelds, it is notably more competitively priced than other devices featuring similar second-generation chips, such as the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme. The UK pricing, in particular, stands out as highly competitive, matching that of the existing ROG Ally X. In contrast, rivals like the AOKZOE A1X often retail upwards of $1,300, making the Xbox Ally X a strong value proposition in its performance tier.

Alternatives

AOKZOE A1X

Currently a top contender among Windows gaming handhelds in terms of raw performance and screen quality, the AOKZOE A1X also features a powerful second-generation AMD processor similar to the Xbox Ally X. However, it comes with a considerably higher price tag and offers shorter battery life.

Asus ROG Ally X

Even with its older generation processor, the original ROG Ally X remains an excellent handheld option. It shares most features with the Xbox Ally X, differing primarily in its less powerful processor. Currently, its price is not significantly lower than the Xbox Ally X. If Asus reduces its price to around $600-$700, it would become an ideal mid-range choice.

Steam Deck OLED

The Steam Deck’s interface continues to be unparalleled in terms of user-friendliness. With the Steam Deck OLED priced at roughly half the cost of the Xbox Ally X, it stands as the superior overall gaming handheld. Despite its 800p screen and an older processor, it still offers an unbeatable experience for many users.

Verdict

The ambitious hope that an Xbox-branded Windows device would finally deliver a polished, streamlined gaming handheld interface has not fully materialized with the Xbox Ally X. Despite its Xbox-related additions feeling somewhat superficial, this device nonetheless stands as the premier Windows handheld on the market today.

Much of its success stems from the formidable power of its AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor, which provides a significantly improved gaming performance compared to the Steam Deck and other first-generation handhelds. Additionally, the unique, controller-style grips on the Xbox Ally X are a notable and welcome ergonomic enhancement.

Crucially, while it remains a premium and expensive gaming handheld, its price point is far more competitive than other devices offering similar high-performance capabilities. For anyone seeking the best Windows handheld experience currently available, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X is the definitive choice.