Watch out Steam Deck OLED. You have a new competitor coming for your crown as the potential best handheld gaming PC on the market. After various recent leaks and rumors, Asus has finally officially announced the ROG Ally X. Following on from last year’s decent but not class-leading OG Ally, the Taiwanese company has packed its new portable gadget full of drool-worthy screen tech and other desirable features.
The ROG Ally X is available to buy right now in the U.S. and will set fans of the best PC games back $799. If you’re reading this in the U.K. you’re going to have to be a little more patient, as Asus’ handheld won’t be out on our frigid shores until June 22, when it will launch at $799.
Though Asus has decided to stick with the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor of its predecessor, the Windows 11-powered ROG Ally X now boasts a number of key improvements over last year’s model.
The headline selling points of the new handheld? A Full HD screen with a refresh rate of 120Hz that’s capable of reaching 500 nits of brightness; a new 80wh battery that offers a claimed 200% battery boost over the 40wh one you got in the Ally; Dual USB-C ports; an updated version of Armory Crate (called SE 1.5) that lets you customize your game library; front-facing Dolby Atmos speakers; with a more precise D-Pad and more durable joysticks rounding off an exciting package.
Can it down the Deck?
On the storage front, you get a 1TB of M2. 2280 SSD out of the box, and Asus claims you can easily increase this capacity with a larger SSD via a process that doesn’t sound much more complicated than swapping out the drive of Sony’s PS5 Slim. 24GB of on-board LPDDR5X 700 memory should also help boost frame rates in your favorite games.
Though the Asus ROG Ally X will be 11.5% heavier than the vanilla Ally, it looks like heat dispensation on the new backpack-friendly console will be much improved. Brace yourself for a lot of slightly tiresome buzzwords (so apologies in advance), but here goes… The Ally X sports “Anti-Gravity Heat Pipes'', an “ROG Dust Filter” and a “Zero Gravity Thermal Solution” also represents upgrades over last year's unit. If you don’t speak fluent Asus, in real-world terms, this means the Ally X will run cooler and more efficiently than its predecessor.
As a diehard Deck fan, I’m still of the opinion there still isn’t a Windows handheld on the market that can be classed as anything close to essential. Yet I can’t deny the specs of the Asus ROG Ally X are making me rethink my Valve-loving opinions… at least a little bit. Right now, I’m super keen to get hands-on with a gaming device that ticks almost every box on paper.
More from Tom's Guide
- Asus ROG Ally review: A solid but imperfect Steam Deck challenger
- I love the Steam Deck but I’m ditching it for Steam Deck OLED
- The best handheld gaming consoles: Our top picks
