The Asus ROG Ally X: The Birth of a New Generation of Handheld Consoles.
Asus ROG Ally X has become the first serious rival to Steam Deck becoming a new reference point for Windows gaming handhelds. This device provides an amazing gaming experience due to its comfortable design, fluid gameplay, and long battery life, which makes this device a perfect choice for gamers who are into portable PC gaming.
The ergonomics of the Asus ROG Ally X are something that stands out when it comes to playing games because they are easy to hold. The performance of the handheld is top-notch due to the incorporation of AMD’s Ryzen chips alongside a variable refresh rate screen. This combination is ideal in graphics making sure that the game runs in harmony, hence the visuals are clear. Moreover, the Asus ROG Ally X has an 80-watt-hour battery, which is the biggest battery a handheld device could offer, so you can play as much as you want without having to worry about the battery.
This is rather surprising considering the Asus ROG Ally X is smack dab with the Steam Deck OLED which is considered the throne of handheld gaming. If you do not mind dealing with Windows and if you have faith in Asus’ enhanced customer service then the ROG Ally X can be a good choice.
I got the Asus ROG Ally X for review shortly before my vacation so the 80Wh battery was really put to the test. Looking at the battery life, the tablet did not show any exceptional performance in the first 24 hours or more of gameplay. In the game Persona 3 Reload, at the maximum brightness, I got 2. 5 hours per charge.
This was not sufficient for a complete trip from Northern California all the way down to Southern California with just the internal battery. On the other hand, in Dave the Diver, I got an hour more battery life than the Lenovo Legion Go giving me a total of 3 hours and 19 minutes. Even so, this was lower than the Steam Deck OLED’s 4 hours and 42 minutes, though the Asus ROG Ally X excelled in more intensive titles.
It gave precisely 59 minutes more in Armored Core 6 and as much as half an hour more in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, in the default power mode at 720p and medium specifications. This performance cannot be compared to other such intensive games that can be played on a handheld device.
In my comparison tests the Asus ROG Ally X provided the most fluid gaming experience. Even though there was only a 5fps increase when the character was idle, the incorporation of VRR and LLC was quite noticeable, especially in keeping the frame rate at 30fps.
Even in extreme conditions of the valleys and caves of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the Asus screen provided cleaner gameplay than the brighter and faster OLED panel of the Steam Deck OLED.
Of the benchmarks this little accessory is great for, the Asus ROG Ally X does not stop at Alan Wake II. Even though both the new and old ROG Ally models have the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip, there are improvements in memory speed, cooling, and power management. The Ally X now uses a 17-watt “Performance” mode instead of 15-watt, which in principle offers higher performance in almost all the games, no matter the power. For example, in the 25W “Turbo” mode with the 720p benchmark test, Returnal ran at a frame rate of 38fps compared to the 33fps with the original Ally.
The overall power efficiency is another strength of the Asus ROG Ally X; a year ago, the original ROG Ally had a 40Wh battery capacity and the battery would drain very quickly in Turbo mode. The Ally X, on the other hand, uses an 80 Wh battery capacity at 33-40 Wh to give the users up to two hours of playtime even in the worst-case scenarios.
Strangely, it does not slow down at all and operates at its best until the battery is left with three percent only, after which it powers off but is quick to come back to full power as soon as the charging is done.
This is somewhat more efficient than the original ROG Ally despite having a lower TDP at 7 watts. I was able to play for more than eight hours the game Balatro, a magic roguelike poker game, consuming less than 10 watts. The best I got was 7 watts of battery usage in a game of Slay the Spire, which is down from 9 watts with the original ally, that means you could play for up to 10 hours before having to recharge.
While the Asus ROG Ally X offers impressive features, you might have three specific questions: While the Asus ROG Ally X offers impressive features, you might have three specific questions:
- How have the new changes that have been made to the work environment for the revised ergonomics and physical layout?
The Asus ROG Ally X is easier to hold than the original even though it is slightly heavier than the original. It has thicker grips, triggers, and pebble-shaped omnidirectional back buttons; there are no bumps at all. The joysticks and bumpers feel much tighter and more high-end, the face buttons have a deeper click but are noisier, and the D-pad has been improved, though there is a squeaky noise when pressing the down arrow. The fan is absolutely silent which is something that couldn’t be said about the original model.
- Can Windows be so awful that you would rather use Steam Deck with worse performance?
Despite the fact that the Asus ROG Ally X has two USB-C ports for charging and peripherals, I still like the Steam Deck’s identical analog sticks. They fit my thumbs perfectly while the right analog stick of the Ally is offset, causing an unwanted change of grip. The larger screen real estate of the Steam Deck along with its not-as-cramped 16:10 aspect ratio is also something to be missed.
Windows can be very problematic when it comes to the sleep and wake functions, the identification of fingerprints, a black screen during games, or sudden waking up. The Armoury Crate settings app of the Asus sometimes loses configurations like the Joystick RGB lights after the wake-up.
But Armoury Crate has gotten better, it provides an intelligent game launcher, an easy way to assign buttons and gyro controls, and actual updates.
- Why choose Asus when it avoided our SD card reader issue inquiries and its customer service is a complete mess?
Asus ROG Ally X uses the same SD card reader that is present in its laptops according to Asus, which is somewhat comforting. Looking at the performance after one week of use,
I have not faced any problems when playing games from an SD card. However, the Asus ROG Ally X is not a perfect machine as I still would not trade it for the $549 or $649 Steam Deck OLED. The Steam Deck can definitely play legacy Steam games, and it has a reliable sleep function; however, the customer support issue is another factor that adds confusion.
The Asus ROG Ally X is easily the best Windows handheld to date, if you need Windows or if you want to play the latest games on the go. I would like to see more such large batteries and VRR screens in the future and plan to test the device with Bazzite, a kind of SteamOS fork, in the second half of this year.