The most effective factor concerning the ROG Xbox Ally X is that it lastly acknowledges the reality – a reality that, regardless of continued denials by gadget after gadget, no less than partly accounts for why the little previous Steam Deck nonetheless guidelines the world of handheld PCs regardless of being slower and lower-rez than virtually every part that adopted it. You realize it, I do know it, and finally, Microsoft comprehend it: Home windows 11 simply isn’t that good as a handheld OS.
Thus, the most important improve that the ROG Xbox Ally X – and its little brother, the ROG Xbox Ally – makes is to not its {hardware}, however the software program. As an alternative of booting straight into the Home windows 11 desktop, a depressing expertise when your solely navigational instruments are thumbsticks and a touchscreen, it defaults to a much more gamepad-optimised (and particularly gaming-focused) ‘Xbox’ mode that gives fast, D-paddable entry to your alternative of launchers and the video games put in inside. Sure. Nice. Cool. Large fan. I nonetheless wouldn’t purchase one.
The truth that it prices £800 (or a crisp $1000 within the US) doesn’t assist, however then the MSI Claw 8 AI+ already proved that it may be price forking out if framerates and practicality are as much as premium requirements. The ROG Xbox Ally X generally makes the lower, although is simply as typically outpolished or outlasted by its friends, and even suffers from outright faults that undermine Asus and Microsoft’s genuinely good UX work.
Whereas these efforts centered on making the working system extra snug, the ROG Xbox Ally X nonetheless goals to please your palms. The protruding, controller-style grips are an enormous ergonomic enchancment on the meagre bumps of the unique ROG Ally and ROG Ally X, and the thumbsticks maintain the taut, grippy design of the latter. In one other occasion of feature-lifting from Xbox gamepads, the triggers comprise unbiased rumble motors for extra finely-tuned vibration suggestions once you pull them. The record of supporting video games isn’t amazingly lengthy, however this did add a pleasant little finger-frisson to hurtling about in Forza Horizon 5.
It is also not as heavy because it seems: at 715g it’s just a few dozen grams greater than the Steam Deck OLED, and lighter than the Claw 8 AI+. The Claw does have an additional inch of diagonal display property, to be honest, and the peak added by the ROG Ally X’s stick-out grips will impede on bag house, although maintain it within the default Efficiency mode when on battery energy and its cooling system isn’t wherever close to as noisy because the MSI’s.
All this obvious design proficiency, sadly, additionally serves to focus on when the ROG Xbox Ally X will get it mistaken. The D-pad, for one, is a nasty little plate of low-cost plastic, incongruous with the fantastic machining round it. And the face buttons, whereas functionally serviceable, emit an oddly pronounced percussive sound, giving the entire thing an delinquent noisiness no matter whether or not you’ve received headphones plugged in. They’re loudest on the depress, so there’s little sense that this was an intentional try at delivering aural suggestions, à la the clicky precision of Razer’s Wolverine V3 Professional controller.
Worse, on a few events, the vibration motors in my check unit – first the suitable, then the left – determined they’d relatively not work for a bit. Each malfunctions occured throughout in any other case uneventful Hole Knight: Silksong classes, when every motor immediately ceased shaking and as an alternative despatched out naught however a shrill rasping sound, which I initially mistook as coming from the audio system. This persevered throughout different video games till fixing itself on a system restart. That’s preferable to the motors breaking down completely, however nonetheless, what number of instances is that going to occur in your brand-new £800 video games machine?
The show, in the meantime, is a downgrade on the ROG Ally X’s. The Xbox-branded mannequin sticks to a 7in, 1920×1080, 120Hz LCD panel, so it’s nonetheless sharper and sooner than both Steam Deck variant. But it’s additionally barely duller than its personal predecessor, masking 94.6% of the sRGB gamut in my colourimeter exams versus the unique Ally X’s 97.1% – which means it could possibly’t reproduce fairly as many various colors. And though the distinction distinction is far of a muchness, dropping ever-so-slightly from 1311:1 to 1306:1, there’s a way more noticeable discount in peak brightness, with the ROG Xbox Ally X maxing out at 462cd/m2. That’s even much less luminous than the very first, most elementary ROG Ally, and solely about half the nits that the Steam Deck OLED can blast by your corneae in HDR video games.
None of that’s to say the display seems like an previous Nokia’s. It’s fantastic. It’s sufficiently big, sharp with out culling the battery through extreme decision, and is no less than shiny sufficient to make use of in something exterior of direct, blazing daylight. Nevertheless it’s additionally no higher, and in some methods is objectively worse, than the older, cheaper handheld it’s supposed to interchange.
Video games efficiency, no less than, reveals some progress. The ROG Xbox Ally X’s AMD Ryzen Z2 Excessive is a direct-as-you-like improve to the Ryzen APU that fueled earlier Allies, and even with a disappointing end in Cyberpunk 2077, manages to thrash each in the usual Efficiency mode.
Its relationship with different, newer excessive performers, specifically the Claw 8 AI+ and the Zotac Zone, is extra complicated. Whereas Asus’ newest comfortably wins out in Forza Horizon 5, it’s the MSI that greatest handles the extra demanding Cyberpunk. It edges forward of the ROG Xbox Ally X in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided as nicely, leaving Shadow of the Tomb Raider as merely a modest victory for the Asus x Microsoft collab.
It is nonetheless a scrap after dropping to 1280×720, with the Zone – which I’ve simply observed has dropped from £850 to £499 within the yr it’s been on sale – really beating the ROG Xbox Ally X in half these video games and successfully drawing with it in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Briefly, the ROG Xbox Ally X is aggressive with the opposite go-fast handheld PCs of its day – and is actually faster than any Steam Deck – however it’s not a very next-gen gamechanger.
“Ah,” I blatantly fabricate you asking, “however what about that Xbox mode? Its light-weight, bloat-disabling model of the OS guarantees to optimise video games efficiency like no different Home windows handheld earlier than it.” First off, all these outcomes are from Xbox mode – it’s the default, and you might want to manually change to the total desktop mode. Second, it seems that optimisation factor doesn’t pan out.
Here is one other, prolonged spherical of benchmarks, carried out in each Xbox and conventional desktop modes:
What this assortment of equivalent bars reveals – particularly when desktop mode, not Xbox mode, earns a single further body – is that the ROG Xbox Ally X’s particular interface is exactly that. An interface enchancment, and a welcome one, however not one thing that may be relied upon to make your video games run sooner.
It’s inconsistent about serving to out with battery life, too. In idea, Xbox mode’s lack of non-gaming background processes ought to avoid wasting juice, however I solely noticed this occur to a tiny diploma in Portal 2, which drank the ROG Xbox Ally X dry in 2h 55m (once more, utilizing Efficiency mode) earlier than switching to desktop mode and operating out in 2h 50m. Forza Horizon 5, a first-party Xbox joint you’d suppose would work nice right here, actually went the opposite means: it lasted 2h 45m in Xbox mode however 2h 51m in desktop mode. At greatest, that implies there’s a margin of error in battery life to the tune of some minutes, which in flip would make the Portal 2 outcome much more certified.
There’s additionally the matter of each these outcomes regressing barely from the ROG Ally X’s battery scores, which have been – beneath the identical situations of fifty% display brightness and 50% speaker quantity – 2h 59m in Portal 2 and 2h 55m in Forza. The MSI Claw 8 AI+ beats it on common too, with 3h 22m and 2h 52m respectively. And as soon as once more, if it’s longevity you need, particularly for much less demanding video games, nothing beats the Steam Deck OLED and its 5h 48m in Portal 2.
The dearth of effectivity and show enhancements do generally give the ROG Ally X an air of “Eh, ok”, which is weird, as a result of I can’t imagine it was half-arsed as a complete. The form of it, the melding of console controller options, all of the Home windows/Xbox stuff – that is all genuinely radical considering for a handheld PC, a medium that’s been vulnerable to settling into routine after that preliminary burst of post-Steam Deck innovation and pleasure.
Possibly Xbox mode doesn’t even have to act as an afterburner for video games efficiency; it’s nonetheless good to have as a substitute for bodged cursor controls or poking at tiny Explorer home windows with the touchscreen. The principle view steers you, expectedly, to Microsoft’s personal retailer and Recreation Go choices, however it graciously brings in shortcuts to lately performed video games on Steam, Epic, EA Play and so forth, all proper on the prime once you change on.
The launchers themselves are solely a few presses away too, with the Xbox button on the left aspect whipping out a helpful menu of shortcuts and settings. And I’m unsure if this counts as an OS or {hardware} enchancment, however the ROG Ally X’s model of Fast Pause and Fast Resume works much more reliably than it has on… nicely, actually each Home windows handheld I’ve used earlier than. Beforehand it was far to frequent to place your gadget to sleep mid-game, return later, and discover it’s kicked you again to the desktop – right here, pausing with the ability button is as secure as it’s on a Steam Deck.
Sadly, just like the vibration motors, even the headline-featuring OS rejig generally goes off-kilter. The gamepad-tuned interface is nice however as a rule, Xbox mode merely gained’t recognise thumbstick, D-pad, or face button inputs once you boot into it – I’ve needed to faucet the display to basically wake it up, upon which it remembers it’s purported to be responding. It can be sluggish when opening overlays, together with fundamental capabilities just like the onscreen keyboard, which I’ve repeatedly needed to prod at a number of instances earlier than it begins accepting instructions.
And, whereas non-Microsoft launchers are welcome, the ROG Ally X doesn’t actually provide an answer for navigating these as successfully because the Xbox view. Excluding Steam, which will be set to start out in its SteamOS-style Large Image mode, you’re as soon as once more the mercy of the touchscreen for apps that have been designed for a mouse and keyboard. There’s no trackpad and, no less than on its default settings, the ROG Ally X now not gives a cursor to nudge round with the suitable thumbstick, so putting in and launching video games by one thing just like the Epic Video games Retailer is as gradual and fiddly as it will be on some other Home windows moveable.
Whereas it stumbles in the suitable path, then, the ROG Ally X by no means totally lives as much as the promise of being a very tailor-made Home windows 11 handheld. I don’t need to put that completely on Xbox mode’s shortcomings, as a result of in the end the interface (and normal, sofa-splayed gameplaying expertise) is higher than that of vanilla Home windows.
However then, I don’t must. There are sufficient different causes – the underwhelming display, the middling battery life, the annoying face button noise, the value, and particularly the temperamental vibration – to present this handheld a miss. Or, on the very least, await some fixes.
