ASUS ROG Ally X review – the handheld console of your dreams… now for real –

It seems far away, but it was just over a year ago I got my hands on the ROG Ally, ASUS’ answer to Valve’s unexpectedly successful Steam Deck. The category of PC-based handheld consoles is still relatively new, we can expect that if a new player enters the market, everything will not go well: this was later proven by the Legion Go as well as from Deck, which debuted 2.5 years ago a new, fine-tuned version has arrived.

The ROG Ally wasn’t perfect either, mainly due to its weak battery and mixed cooling (which couldn’t ensure that the SD card reader should not melt), and the slow Armory Crate soured the experience of early buyers. Now here’s the ROG Ally X, apparently shaped by feedback, with a number of issues fixed, and even our inevitable encounters with Windows 11 aren’t as frustrating as they were with the previous model.

Ally with extras

The Ally X is not a generation-changing machine, it uses the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor that was also found in the Ally, and a 7-inch, 1080p, 120 Hz refresh and 500 nit maximum brightness display was built into it. , but here is the list of components that have not been changed at least a little.

The storage became a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe (2280) SSD, double the previous one, and the RAM was changed from 16 GB LPDDR5-6400 to 24 GB LPDDR5X-7500. The joysticks have become firmer, the D-Pad is more comfortable, the extra macro buttons on the back are significantly smaller (which are almost impossible to press by accident), the speakers are louder, and the maximum charging speed has also changed to 100 W, although the box still contains a 65 W- os charger can be found. With this – on paper – we can feed an 80 Wh battery instead of 40 Wh, which is much more durable – we will discuss whether we really succeeded in giving twice as much energy to the machine later. The XG Mobile port used to connect the external video card has been replaced by a USB Type-C (USB4), which is accompanied by the returning USB Type-C (10 Gbps), and the jack input and the SD card slot have also remained.

In terms of the cover, not only has the white been changed to black: the handle is more comfortable to hold, the front buttons are slightly higher, it is better to play with, even though the machine itself has gained 70 grams and has become thicker; this does not feel like a burden during use. We did not dare to use it for a long time on a hot day, but under normal conditions, the parts where we come into contact with the machine should not feel its heating. Cooling has improved overall, larger fans and better heat dissipation ensure that the machine does not overheat under intense load, nor does it buzz too loudly. If you pay close attention, you can hear it, but the noise of the vents is basically not disturbing during the game.

Easy to use

While using the first Ally, I shed the most tears because of the Armory Crate and the Command Center, but the ASUS developers worked a lot to ensure that the interfaces that make the use of the machine smoother work as expected. Although the situation on Ally has also improved a lot in the meantime, in the case of Ally X, the built-in programs can be used from the very first moment, which are useful even though we still cannot get over the encounter with Windows 11.

Armory Crate loads when the machine is started, and in this we can see the installed games in one place, regardless of whether we downloaded them from Steam, the Xbox application, or Epic – but you still have to use separate clients to download them. I struggled a lot with the Xbox app before it was willing to recognize that I was already logged in, but that’s not ASUS’s fault, I had the same experience on my laptop. The fact that you can call up a mouse cursor by clicking down on the right analog makes managing the system much easier than if you were forced to use the relatively small display, and I didn’t have to call up the keyboard all the time, and the games didn’t even think it was connected when it obviously wasn’t – I had a problem with this a long time ago.

In 2023, I was still complaining that some of the games worked and others didn’t – now I started the adventure directly with Forza Horizon 5, which didn’t start on the first Ally, but here without any problems, just like Ghost of Tsushima, The Rogue Prince of Persia, XDefiant, Throne and Liberty beta, and ten more new and older games from different locations. I dare not say that everything will go wrong, because it is PC gaming, but we can try with more confidence.

All the problems I could bring up with the factory software have been solved for now, it’s just a few steps to achieve console smoothness. By the way, Armory Crate has also received such useful functions as the ability to fine-tune control and vibration per game, but overall we can achieve more settings; it has become an essential, useful software that significantly helps the use of Allys, which can also be called up at any time with the push of a button, and starts with a 7.5-minute tutorial video that guides us through all the important functions of the machine.

Fuck him!

Since the performance did not improve significantly even on paper, I did not deal with scrolling the settings, I was mostly interested in how much energy the games consume, how long we can enjoy the Ally X in the three selectable operating modes. With a minimum resolution of 1080p and Low graphics settings, 40 fps can be expected even from more intensive games, but if you don’t want to save energy, 60 is just fine – and detail is less important on a 7″ display.

Forza Horizon 5 ran for 4 hours and 10 minutes with 1080p resolution, Low settings, fps between 30-40 in the most energy-saving mode called Silent, before the battery went to rest, in Performance mode, where I no longer had to let the 60 From -120 fps, it lasted for 3 hours and 20 minutes, and in Turbo mode, where I increased the detail in order to load the system more, the machine worked for a little more than 2 hours. Almost the same results were achieved with the wonderfully optimized Ghost of Tsushima at Medium settings, and obviously with anything that puts less strain on the hardware, we can play even more. Based on our tests so far, even if the increase in battery capacity did not double the operating time, it did improve it significantly.

For the sake of order, I consider it important to mention one more method of use: connected to a TV using a simple USB-C-HDMI converter and connected to a monitor, I also tried it with a bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and I can say that it is flawless: the ROG Ally X is a relatively painless desktop device to use as a machine. The only reason I don’t recommend it instead of a laptop (in itself) is because it doesn’t have a built-in support, which makes it a bit more difficult to use than a machine or tablet designed for this purpose. When connected to power, we can unlock the 30W Turbo mode (instead of the portable 25W), which helps games run a little more smoothly.

Along with the changes to the Ally X came a price increase: it costs HUF 379,990, which is not unbearably much, but we have to think carefully about whether we would take advantage of its advantages. It is comfortable to play with, games start without any problems, in full screen or frameless window, it is very rare that you have to enchant something with a program before you can use it. Armory Crate and Command Center work as expected, and while we can’t escape Windows 11, it doesn’t make our lives miserable either.

The modifications are so significant that it is worth choosing this instead of a basic Ally, surcharge here or there. I’m not saying that the first Ally should be thrown away, if you have it and are happy with it, feel free to use it, since the software updates fixed a lot of things, but if you were a new user experimenting with portable PC consoles, believe me, you will be better off with the new edition.