ROG Xbox Ally X

I’d had my eye on a ROG Ally for a while. My Steam Deck has been my primary portable gaming device, but it’s starting to feel a bit long in the tooth. Knowing that a price increase on ROG Allys is a very real possibility, I decided to bite the bullet and pick one up.

I went with the Xbox Ally X because it’s the most powerful of the ROG devices. I know there are portable devices with better specs, but they are more expensive and less-known quantities. I’ve now spent a few days with the device, and I have thoughts.

First of all, the ergonomics. This is, to me, the most comfortable gaming handheld out there. I love the grips, finish, and general size and weight. It just feels nice in my hands.YMMV of course.

But the biggest YMMV is obviously your tolerance for a handheld gaming PC. Just because there is some Xbox branding doesn’t mean this is as intuitive as a Series X. Far from it. This is a Windows 11 device, with with all its quirks and annoyances magnified by the form factor. Think of your experience using Win11. Now imagine navigating that on a small touchscreen. The only thing I’ve *had* to use Windows for so far has been power / sleep settings, but even that brief experience wasn’t terribly pleasant. It’s at least relatively easy to jump in and out of!

While this is the case of most modern computers / gaming devices, I don’t think I’ve ever spent as long setting things up than I did with the Ally. Hardware updates. Windows updates. Armoury Crate updates. Launcher updates. Game updates. It took me about half a day to download, update, and tweak the device to the point I was actually able to play some games. As a primarily PC gamer I was used to this struggle, but I was still surprised by how unintuitive it was at times. This device is not for everyone!

Thankfully, when I finally got the system to a good place, it delivered. I’ve used some relatively powerful handhelds (Steam Deck OLED, Switch 2), but the ROG Xbox Ally X still managed to blow me away.

Seeing Gears of War: Reloaded and Forza Horizon 5 running at 60fps at mid to high settings was wild. It’s not an OLED screen, but definitely one of the nicest LCDs I’ve ever seen. It’s a PC, so you have to tweak settings to balance fidelity, frame rate, and battery life, but some games have optimized recommendations, which is nice.

As far as navigating to the games, the only launchers I’ve tested are the Xbox app and Steam. If you’re familiar with the Xbox app on PC and Steam Big Picture mode, you know what to expect here. I had zero issues launching games from either.

A nice recent addition to the Xbox app has been the ability to launch installed games from other launchers from it. Steam has been able to do this forever (“add a non-Steam game”), but with the Xbox app being the defacto hub of the device, this is a handy function.

While it was a pain to set up, and will likely continue to be occasionally annoying, the ROG Xbox Ally X is a phenomenal device. Performance-wise, it’s everything I could want from a handheld, and I find it incredibly comfortable to hold. It took a week of tweaking and acclimating, but I’m now loving it; this will likely be my primary portable gaming device for years to come.