I was tough As for the original Asus ROG Ally, I’m perhaps a bit harsh on the uptake, as many of the issues I had with it are inherent to the very concept of a Windows-based handheld gaming console. That’s why when I got my hands on the new ROG Ally X, I tried to be a bit more open-minded. It wasn’t hard, because the newer model is a substantial improvement. But some hurdles just can’t be overcome.
The ROG Ally X looks almost identical to its predecessor, save for a fresh coat of black paint. There are subtle differences, like rounded grips that are more comfortable to hold, slightly raised ABXY buttons, and an eight-way D-pad that handles diagonal movements a little better. If you don’t look too closely, though, you’d be forgiven for thinking little has changed.
But under the hood, Asus has made some major improvements. The most notable is the battery size. duplicateThe original ROG Ally had a 40Wh battery, roughly comparable to that of the original Steam Deck. The ROG Ally X, on the other hand, somehow packs a massive 80Wh battery. That’s larger than the battery in Asus’s gaming Zephyrus G14. laptopwhich I loved for its long battery life. Despite this huge increase, the Ally X only weighs about 70 grams more.
Asus has also upped the storage capacity (it now comes with a 1 terabyte SSD instead of 512GB) and 8 more gigabytes of DDR5 RAM. The company has also replaced the XG Mobile port, which is only really useful for Asus’s external GPUs, with a USB4 port that can reach speeds of up to 40Gbps, making it ideal for connecting external docking stations. But specs can’t tell the whole story.
Photography: Eric Ravenscraft
The insurmountable wall of windows
Windows is not designed to run on a portable device. It’s a simple and unavoidable truth. Microsoft expects you to access its operating system with a mouse and keyboard, or at least a large touchscreen. Trying to navigate the operating system with a controller will always be an exercise in frustration. Try as I might, I can’t escape the basic problem of trying to interact with things on the screen.
A prime example of this is the Xbox app. Asus has made some major strides with its Armoury Crate SE app, which aims to be the bridge between all the other game libraries on your system. Armoury Crate launches at system startup, there’s a dedicated button next to the right stick to open it whenever you need it, and it has shortcuts to apps like Steam (which launches in controller-friendly Big Picture mode) or Xbox, so you can jump into any game you own.
Photography: Eric Ravenscraft