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After years of rumor and speculation, finally getting my hands on an actual Xbox handheld is a pretty surreal experience. The ROG Xbox Ally X is an exceptionally impressive piece of technology, and a bold new way to interact with the Xbox ecosystem. It's also the result of a somewhat shocking collaboration between a platform holder looking to get serious about a burgeoning 'Play Anywhere' strategy and a manufacturer looking to widen its mass market appeal – ASUS having become best known for creating powerful, if somewhat unapproachable, handheld gaming PCs.
It's exceptionally rare for platform-holders to collaborate with external partners like this. Hardware is treated as serious business. When you're asking players to make a large financial investment, you better get it right the first time; one wrong move in the console market and it's near impossible to recover.
The Dreamcast decimated SEGA. An ill-defined vision crippled the Wii U. It took Sony seven years to regain ground after the PS3 launch debacle. The Xbox One was so poorly received that it inflicted psychic damage on an entire generation of players. Even Valve got a rare reality check with its Steam Machines, forcing the company to eventually refocus its hardware ambitions towards the Steam Deck.
So, why risk taking a new hardware initiative out of house? Collaboration is, after all, code for relinquishing some amount of control – be it over form-factor, internal components, or user experience. All of this preamble is vital context to say that I think Xbox may have made the right move here. The ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X – the two systems headlining this new initiative, set for release in 2025 – appear to take the best of what Asus already has on the market, matching it with some really interesting refinements and optimizations, to make the system more palatable for a wider mass market.
Hands-on the Xbox handheld
Let's start with how the ROG Xbox Ally X felt in my hands. At 715 grams, it's technically heavier than the Steam Deck (669 grams) and its OLED variant (640 grams), but you wouldn't know it from the way weight has been distributed across the console. I can't say how well the ROG Xbox Ally X will hold up during longer play-sessions, but the hour I spent with the machine didn't raise any immediate red flags.
I'm also a big fan of the ROG Xbox Ally X form-factor, with Xbox having worked closely with Asus on a redesign of the existing ROG Ally X. The console features new contoured handgrips, built to the same design principles that inspired the Xbox Wireless Controller. It's largely comfortable, the ABXY button and asymmetrical thumbstick placement make immediate sense to a brain wired to Xbox's controller rhythms.
Xbox's CVP of gaming devices and ecosystem, Roanne Sones, says this has been done to make the console more accommodating to a wider range of handsizes, although I must admit I did still struggle to comfortably stretch my index fingers across the left and right bumpers. The inclusion of Impulse Triggers into the ROG Xbox Ally X design (these aren't included in the cheaper ROG Xbox Ally) felt fantastic as I was chewing through Locust in the opening stages of Gears of War: Reloaded.
Speaking of the play experience, it felt exceptionally smooth. The ROG Xbox Ally X is powered by an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor, packs 24GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. I've always been more a console player then a PC gamer, so I'll admit that the significance of the silicon and components inside of the system is a little lost on me. But I know a good feeling and looking video game when I play one.
Play Anywhere
So while I can't speak to how more demanding titles will ultimately handle on the system – nor to the experience of Xbox Cloud Gaming or Xbox Remote Play – there was little obvious daylight between playing a first-party Xbox game natively on ROG Xbox Ally X versus playing it on Xbox Series X. The framerate of Gears Reloaded was rocksolid 60fps, with the system supporting 120Hz refresh rate and FreeSync Premium, and the remastered visuals popped on the 7-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) screen. I'm genuinely impressed, and can easily see the ROG Xbox Ally X becoming a vital part of my commute.
What's really sold me on the concept of the ROG Xbox Ally systems is the work Microsoft has done to optimize the core user-experience. This isn't merely a standard ROG Ally with an Xbox button punched in above the left thumbstick, the Xbox and Windows divisions have collaborated to create a more refined mobile ecosystem. One of the reasons I've always been a little scared off by PC gaming handhelds like the ROG Ally are that they are exactly that – the standard PC experience scaled down to handheld size. I've always gravitated towards console gaming because I want as few barriers to getting into the games I want to play as possible, optimized for the best possible experience out of the box.
Booting up the ROG Xbox Ally X, rather than hit standard Windows 11 OS screens I'm pushed directly into the Xbox full screen experience. An aggregated gaming library is right there waiting, designed to reflect the look and style of the traditional Xbox ecosystem as it exists across console, mobile, and cloud devices. I say aggregated gaming library because as well as supporting native, cloud, and remote play experiences, the ROG Xbox Ally systems will also give quick access to all of your video games across Xbox, Game Pass, Battle Net, and any other Windows PC-based storefront. It's really clean, it's fast, and features none of the nonsense that I sometimes (fairly or not) associate with playing on PC.
This Xbox full screen experience has been fully optimized for handheld too. Background activity and non-essential tasks in the Windows 11 OS are minimized, routing system resources like the 24GB of memory towards higher framerates and consistent performance. The Xbox button brings up a Game Bar overlay allowing for easy access to apps, chat, and settings, and lets me quickly shift between recently played games. It didn't feel like I was interacting with an existing handheld PC that had been retrofitted to allow for integrated Xbox functionality, but rather a device that was built to deliver it.
Is it worth it?
I've been wanting an Xbox handheld for years now. In a world where I can access the best Xbox games through everything from the Series X to web browsers, or punch into Game Pass from Smart TVs and Fire Sticks, it didn't make much sense to me that Microsoft didn't have a comprehensive solution for gaming on the go. The inelegant solution up until now had always been to strap my smartphone into something like the Razer Kishi V2 and pray that the battery life or Wi-Fi connection held. That is about to change.
I always said I'd purchase a Steam Deck once (and only once) an optimized Game Pass experience was available. I was starting to crack on that purchasing decision, the console becoming more attractive the more I've been exposed to them in the world. But the ROG Xbox Ally X has come around just in time. While I'm certainly curious to know what a first-party developed Xbox handheld would look like – to be clear, Xbox staff I've spoken to have made no commitment to such a device in the future – the ROG Xbox Ally X is shaping up to be an exceptionally solid solution. A way to natively pick up my progress of whatever Xbox game I'm playing in any given week, and take it out into the world without having to worry that the experience will be hindered by some invisible force.
The question that will ultimately determine whether the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X are a success, however, is the cost of the thing. Xbox and Asus will not speak to pricing just yet, and I am worried that the two systems are going to be prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of players. The existing ROG Ally and ROG Ally X consoles retail at $649.99 and $799.99, respectively. If this pricing structure holds for the ROG Xbox Ally consoles, that would put the two incoming devices as the most expensive pillars of the Xbox hardware family. The Xbox Series X recently increased in price from $499 to $599.
The question then, perhaps, Microsoft will be asking players around Holiday 2025 is just how much they value the idea of having a full Xbox experience with them everywhere they go. With a 512GB Steam Deck OLED priced competitively at $549, and the Nintendo Switch 2 at $449.99, it might be an uncomfortable conversation.
Here's all of the key upcoming Xbox games that you'll be able to play on the ROG Xbox Ally X.
