There was a lot of speculation before the Asus livestream this afternoon that the company would be announcing an Asus Rog Ally 2. That wasn’t the case though, as the company announced a new device that is more of a refresh of the Asus ROG Ally than a sequel.
The livestream did not provide many details about the new ROG Ally X. Instead, it was more of a teaser for a full reveal on June 2.
Whitson Gordon, Senior manager of content marketing for Asus, told viewers that the Ally X is “a ROG Ally built for the enthusiast that wanted a bit of extra goodies.” He continued that the changes being made are based on community feedback from the last year.
Gordon and Asus video producer Jake Kulinski wouldn’t provide many details either, but here’s what we do know.
Somethings are staying the same, the Ally X should have same Z1 Extreme chipset and the same screen. The ROG Ally X will feature a black shell, previously teased by Asus itself.
It is getting a new, larger battery though that is supposed to substantially improve battery life. We managed just over 90 minutes over battery during our testing. Some leaks have hinted that Asus is aiming for double or more than that with this new battery. However, with the new battery, the Ally X will be slightly heavier. It's also getting revised grips that also might add to the weight.
The current Ally has 16GB of RAM and that is supposed to increase in the Ally X, it’s also supposedly getting a longer M.2 2280 SSD slot. The SD card reader that was breaking expandable storage cards has been replaced. The new one will be the same card reader that is on Asus laptops with a rearranged layout. Apparently, Asus does not believe that the SD card woes some users experienced were due to overheating, though the Ally does get pretty hot.
The Ally X is also expected to start at a higher price than the Ally, but by how much more hasn’t been confirmed yet. Most of the livestream was spent on an update to the Armory Crate centralized library. The new update appears to be an attempt to get around Windows 11 and keep users in the games themselves. However, certain things like uninstalling games still needs to be done via Windows.
Beyond a cleaned up UI, the one feature Asus hyped was the ability to share button mappings with other Ally users. Both current Ally decks and the forthcoming Ally X will be getting this update in July.
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