It melts into your hand, and it pulled us back into Windows handhelds.
I’ve been around the handheld block. I owned the original ROG Ally and both versions of the Steam Deck, and somewhere along the way I fell out of love with Windows handhelds. For a while I mostly played through the cloud instead. The ROG Xbox Ally X, built by ASUS ROG with Xbox, is the device that pulled me back in. It’s not perfect, and the Windows seams still show, but as a pure way to play games in your hands, this thing is special.
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Design and feel
The first thing that hits you is how it feels. It melts into your hand, and it’s now my go-to handheld. The grips take their cues from the Xbox Wireless Controller, and it’s light for what it is but sturdy, with nothing creaky or cheap about it. Two assignable back buttons sit right where your fingers rest, and I mapped mine to A and B, which made menus and combat a breeze.
Performance and screen
Under the hood is AMD’s Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme with 24GB of fast LPDDR5X memory, a 1TB SSD and an 80Wh battery, and you feel all of it. I put a serious lineup through it, all unplugged and at default settings: The Outer Worlds 2, Dying Light: The Beast through Steam, Battlefield 6, Ball x Pit, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Keeper, Ninja Gaiden 4, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black and the ARC Raiders beta. They all ran smooth. The 7-inch 1080p, 120Hz screen is sharp and gorgeous, and I found myself reaching for it over the TV, simply because it’s easier and it frees me to play wherever I’m comfortable.
Software: The Xbox experience, mostly
The Xbox full screen experience is the star. Boot up, land in your Xbox library, pick a game, play. For an Xbox player it’s intuitive and close to perfect, and the power profiles just work. Steam slots right in too.
But this is still a Windows PC, and every so often you peek behind the curtain. Settings like pairing Bluetooth headphones kick you out to the standard Windows settings app, Windows and Armoury Crate updates are handled separately, and clips don’t open in anything that feels made for a console. To be fair, each of those opens in its own full-screen tab you can swipe away, so it never turns into a mess of overlapping windows. It just feels unfinished. I also expected every launcher to feed into one library, but games from the EA app and Epic didn’t show up there for me, so I still had to go into those stores to launch them.
On the flip side, that Windows foundation has perks. The personalization options let me set a black theme for the on-screen keyboard and the interface, which is a lot easier on the eyes at night.
Docking
When docking works, it’s the dream: play in your hands, plug into the TV, grab a controller, keep going. My first sessions were flawless. Then it stopped working with the same cables and monitor, and it took some trial and error to sort out which port does what. The two USB-C ports aren’t equal, one is USB4 and the other is USB 3.2, and the labeling should make that obvious. A simple drop-in dock port on the bottom would go a long way too.
Verdict
As a handheld you hold and play, the ROG Xbox Ally X is a nine all day. The rough edges, the trips out into Windows, separate updates and a docking setup that tripped me up, bring it down to an eight overall. If Microsoft finishes pulling settings and updates into the Xbox experience, this could be a ten. As it stands, it won back a handheld skeptic.
Image: ASUS Republic of Gamers / Xbox
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The verdict: Great
It melts into your hand, and it's now my go-to handheld.
Pros
- Incredibly comfortable, light but sturdy
- Runs big releases smoothly at default settings
- Sharp, gorgeous 120Hz screen
- Xbox full screen experience is intuitive for console players
- Handy back buttons and Windows personalization
Cons
- Settings and updates still push you out into Windows
- Games from some other stores didn't appear in the unified library
- Docking was finicky, and port labels could be clearer
Platform played: ROG Xbox Ally X (Windows 11, Xbox full screen experience)
Where to buy
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