“Once more, however higher” has grow to be the maxim of post-Steam Deck transportable PCs. Or, to be extra particular, post-Steam Deck OLED ones. Now that Valve have proven it’s attainable to rapidly flip round an upgraded handheld with out enraging homeowners of the unique, Lenovo have hinted at a brand new Legion Go, MSI have revealed an improved Claw, and Asus have launched this right here ROG Ally X. A ROG Ally, once more – however higher? Sure, it’s, in nearly each means besides the pace at which it’ll plunge you into monetary destitution.
There’ll be time later to moan in regards to the £799 / $800 asking worth, I’m positive, although in equity it does pay for a heap of enhancements. Together with some that deal with the unique ROG Ally’s most acute ache factors: the battery measurement is doubled, the thumbsticks really feel extra stable and grippy, and the microSD card slot now not sits straight above an inside hotspot, thus sparing the ROG Ally X its predecessor’s embarrassing overheating points.
The APU goes unchanged – it’s the identical AMD Ryzen Z1 Excessive you get within the higher-end ROG Ally fashions – however RAM will get a lift from 16GB of LPDDR5 to 24GB of LPDDR5X, and the usual SSD capability has jumped from 512GB to 1TB. It’s a bodily larger (and quicker) drive, too, being of the identical M.2 2280 type issue that you just in all probability have in your desktop PC, slightly than the dinkier, slower 2230 drives that almost all handheld PCs use. I approve the addition of a second USB-C slot, too, changing the outdated ROG XG Cellular docking port that hardly anybody might use with a common connector that everybody can.
Whereas a few of these {hardware} tweaks may very well be blamed for the ROG Ally X’s newfound chunkiness – it’s each visibly thicker and noticeably heavier than the ROG Ally – additionally they produce a handheld that’s in the end nicer to make use of. These thumbsticks might have been pulled off a luxurious gamepad, in contrast to the plasticky originals, and the much less cramped inside – aided by the addition of a 3rd exhaust vent on the highest edge – appears to helps the ROG Ally X run cooler and quieter. The enlarged outer shell additionally permits for larger shoulder buttons, which I discovered far much less liable to trapping my bratwurst fingers on prime of the triggers. True, it’s heftier within the hand, however hardly any extra so than a Steam Deck.
The change from a 40WHr battery to an 80WHr one additionally pays dividends to battery life. As in, actually doubling it. Grand Theft Auto V might put on out a fully-charged ROG Ally in simply 1h 36m, however on the identical settings (and the default Efficiency energy profile), the ROG Ally X saved going for 3h 12m – precisely 100% extra. Forza Horizon 5 got here extraordinarily near matching the feat, with its full-to-empty uptime rising from 1h 29m to 2h 55m.
In my e book, that is the ROG Ally X’s biggest triumph, not least as a result of the Steam Deck OLED lastly has a real rival on endurance. A transportable system with out good battery life is in battle with its personal nature, and for all that speak about thumbstick texture and cooling vents, nothing makes a tool like this really feel extra handy than drastically extending its lifespan. On these grounds, the ROG Ally X is immediately extra interesting than the fast-burning authentic.
A extra stunning, although hardly much less welcome enchancment is that of precise sport efficiency. Seems that RAM improve does some critical work, with the ROG Ally X repeatedly producing framerate good points of 10% or extra over the unique (and additional widening its lower-resolution lead over the Steam Deck).
On prime of your video games lasting longer and operating higher, the ROG Ally X makes them load a bit quicker as properly. That new 1TB SSD, in addition to being extra capacious and simply to search out replacements for, beats each the Steam Deck and the primary ROG Ally on pace: it loaded a Shadow of the Tomb Raider save in 13.4s, besting the ROG Ally’s 14.6s and the Deck’s 15.9s, and its 7.7s time as well up Aperture Desk Job edged out their respective 8.1s and 10.8s occasions as well.
Even the display is best, and I don’t even recall this being an marketed enchancment. It’s nonetheless a 7in, 1920×1080, 120Hz LCD panel – that a lot is unchanged – however I measured its peak brightness at 532cd/m2, so it’s a contact extra luminous than the unique’s 501cd/m2 show. It additionally covers just a few extra colors within the RGB gamut, protecting 97.1% to the primary ROG Ally’s 93.6%, and sports activities a slightly superior distinction ratio of 1311:1 to 1239:1. The catch right here is that the Steam Deck OLED smokes each Asus fashions, with its unbeatably deep blacks and 984cd/m2 peak brightness – the latter additionally enabling HDR assist in sure video games. Nonetheless, it’s one other tick within the ROG Ally Upgrades column.
Whether or not these refinements justify the demand for seven hundred and ninety-nine of your English kilos, properly, that’s one other matter. You couldn’t anticipate Asus to make the adjustments they’ve after which knock the ROG Ally X all the way down to a pittance, however it’s a full £200 greater than the ROG Ally, the identical quantity over the Lenovo Legion Go, and £230 greater than a top-of-the-line, 1TB Steam Deck OLED. I’ve ran the numbers and might verify that these are all very, very huge ones, particularly understanding that – once more – the ROG Ally X is extra of a redesign than a generational do-over. Wanting on the adjustments individually, the one one which’s actually transformative is the battery life lengthening, and that’s a profit that the Steam Deck OLED has been offering for ages. And at the least that comes with a case.
The ROG Ally X does have the Deck household beat on sport compatibility, its Home windows 11 OS being fully devoid of the anti-cheat and launcher disharmony that SteamOS can nonetheless endure from. It allows you to freely play your Sport Cross video games too, one thing that’s solely attainable on the Steam Deck should you resort to always-online cloud streaming.
But Home windows nonetheless has issues of its personal when deployed on a handheld like this, from the final discomfort of navigating a completely desktop-styled OS with thumbsticks and a touchscreen to the repeated look of bugs. For all SteamOS’s shortcomings, it’s polished to a sheen and feels essentially better-suited to handheld use. On a number of events with the ROG Ally X, I’ve seen video games flipped into tiny home windows with out prompting, or launchers merely fail to launch something. Additionally, it’s not a bug, however I’m beginning to query the worth of the ROG Ally X’s built-in fingerprint reader when Home windows 11 nearly at all times asks for a PIN to check in.
The Steam Deck OLED’s contrasting ease of use, and extra smart pricing, thus make it the higher of those rejigged portables. Although as spenny as it’s, the ROG Ally X is at the least the best of the Home windows handhelds particularly. It’s clearly a number of steps up from the unique, and on steadiness, its battery, efficiency, and construct high quality upgrades outweigh the distinctiveness and adaptability of the Legion Go. I want to have a full-on, arms-flailing tantrum on the desk of whoever determined it ought to value the higher a part of a grand, however I assume you’ll be able to’t have all the things.
This evaluation is predicated on a retail unit supplied by Asus.
