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 machine after machine, a minimum of 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 little thing that adopted it. it, I do know it, and finally, Microsoft understand 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 a substitute 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. Huge 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 typically makes the reduce, although is simply as usually 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 targeted on making the working system extra snug, the ROG Xbox Ally X nonetheless goals to please your arms. The protruding, controller-style grips are an unlimited 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 include impartial rumble motors for extra finely-tuned vibration suggestions whenever you pull them. The checklist 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 appears: 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 truthful, and the peak added by the ROG Ally X’s stick-out grips will impede on bag area, 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 spotlight 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 effective 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 take a look at unit – first the proper, then the left – determined they’d slightly not work for a bit. Each malfunctions occured throughout in any other case uneventful Hole Knight: Silksong classes, when every motor all of the sudden 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 endured 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 quicker than both Steam Deck variant. But it’s additionally barely duller than its personal predecessor, protecting 94.6% of the sRGB gamut in my colourimeter assessments versus the unique Ally X’s 97.1% – that means it might probably’t reproduce fairly as many alternative 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 via your corneae in HDR video games.
None of that’s to say the display appears like an previous Nokia’s. It’s effective. It’s sufficiently big, sharp with out culling the battery through extreme decision, and is a minimum of brilliant sufficient to make use of in something outdoors of direct, blazing daylight. But it surely’s additionally no higher, and in some methods is objectively worse, than the older, cheaper handheld it’s supposed to exchange.
Video games efficiency, a minimum of, exhibits 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, particularly 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 definitely faster than any Steam Deck – but it surely’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 want to manually swap to the total desktop mode. Second, it seems that optimisation factor doesn’t pan out.
This is one other, prolonged spherical of benchmarks, carried out in each Xbox and conventional desktop modes:
What this assortment of similar bars exhibits – particularly when desktop mode, not Xbox mode, earns a single additional 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 quicker.
It’s inconsistent about serving to out with battery life, too. In concept, 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 working out in 2h 50m. Forza Horizon 5, a first-party Xbox joint you’d suppose would work nice right here, in reality went the opposite method: it lasted 2h 45m in Xbox mode however 2h 51m in desktop mode. At greatest, that means there’s a margin of error in battery life to the tune of some minutes, which in flip would make the Portal 2 consequence 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 – underneath the identical circumstances 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 shortage of effectivity and show enhancements do typically give the ROG Ally X an air of “Eh, adequate”, which is weird, as a result of I can’t consider it was half-arsed as an entire. The form of it, the melding of console controller options, all of the Home windows/Xbox stuff – that is all genuinely radical pondering for a handheld PC, a medium that’s been liable to settling into routine after that preliminary burst of post-Steam Deck innovation and pleasure.
Perhaps Xbox mode doesn’t even have to act as an afterburner for video games efficiency; it’s nonetheless good to have as an alternative choice to bodged cursor controls or poking at tiny Explorer home windows with the touchscreen. The primary view steers you, expectedly, to Microsoft’s personal retailer and Sport Cross choices, but it surely graciously brings in shortcuts to lately performed video games on Steam, Epic, EA Play and so forth, all proper on the high whenever you swap on.
The launchers themselves are solely a few presses away too, with the Xbox button on the left aspect whipping out a useful menu of shortcuts and settings. And I’m undecided 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 widespread to place your machine to sleep mid-game, return later, and discover it’s kicked you again to the desktop – right here, pausing with the facility button is as protected as it’s on a Steam Deck.
Sadly, just like the vibration motors, even the headline-featuring OS rejig typically goes off-kilter. The gamepad-tuned interface is nice however most of the time, Xbox mode merely received’t recognise thumbstick, D-pad, or face button inputs whenever you boot into it – I’ve needed to faucet the display to primarily wake it up, upon which it remembers it’s imagined to be responding. It will also be sluggish when opening overlays, together with primary 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. Apart from Steam, which might be set to begin in its SteamOS-style Huge 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, a minimum of on its default settings, the ROG Ally X not supplies a cursor to nudge round with the proper thumbstick, so putting in and launching video games via one thing just like the Epic Video games Retailer is as gradual and fiddly as it will be on some other Home windows transportable.
Whereas it stumbles in the proper route, 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 finally the interface (and basic, sofa-splayed gameplaying expertise) is higher than that of vanilla Home windows.
However then, I don’t should. 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 offer this handheld a miss. Or, on the very least, anticipate some fixes.
