“Still, but better” has become the mantra of post-Steam Deck portables. Or, to be more specific, post-Steam Deck OLED PCs. Since Valve showed that it was possible to quickly overhaul an upgraded handheld without upsetting owners of the original, Lenovo hinted at a new Legion Go, MSI announced an improved Claw, and Asus here launched the ROG Ally X. Still another ROG Ally – but better? Yes, it is, in almost every way except the speed at which it will plunge you into financial destitution.
There'll be time to whine about the £799/$800 asking price later, I'm sure, but to be fair it does pay off with a raft of improvements, including some that address the original ROG Ally's most acute pain points: the battery size has been doubled, the thumb sticks feel more solid and grippy, and the microSD card slot is no longer positioned directly above an internal hotspot, thus saving the ROG Ally X from the embarrassing overheating issues of its predecessor.
The APU remains unchanged – it’s the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme you get in the higher-end ROG Ally models – but the RAM is upgraded from 16GB LPDDR5 to 24GB LPDDR5X, and the standard SSD capacity goes from 512GB to 1TB. It’s also a physically larger (and faster) drive, in the same M. 2 2280 form factor you’re likely to find in your desktop PC, rather than the smaller and slower 2230 drives most portables use. I also approve of the addition of a second USB-C slot, which replaces the old ROG XG Mobile docking port that almost no one uses with a universal connector that everyone can use.
While some of these hardware tweaks could be blamed on the ROG Ally X's newfound bulkiness (it's both noticeably thicker and noticeably heavier than the ROG Ally), they also make for a more enjoyable handset to use. Those thumbsticks could easily have been removed from a luxury gaming controller, unlike the plastic originals, and the less cramped interior (aided by the addition of a third exhaust vent on the top edge) seems to help the ROG Ally X run cooler and quieter. The expanded outer shell also allows for larger shoulder buttons, and I found them to be much less prone to pinching my bratwurst fingers on the triggers. True, it's heavier in the hand, but no heavier than a Steam Deck.
The switch from a 40WHr to an 80WHr battery also benefits battery life – literally doubling it. Grand Theft Auto V would wear out a fully charged ROG Ally in just 1h 36d, but on the same settings (and with the default Performance power profile), the ROG Ally X kept going for 3h 12d – a full 100% longer. Forza Horizon 5 came very close, improving its runtime from full to empty to 2h 55d.
For me, this is the ROG Ally X's biggest triumph, not least because it finally has a real rival for the Steam Deck OLED in terms of durability. A portable device without good battery life is at odds with its own nature, and despite all this talk about thumbstick textures and cooling vents, nothing makes a device like this feel more useful than significantly extending its lifespan. On these grounds, the ROG Ally X is instantly more appealing than the blazing-fast original.
A more surprising, but no less welcome, improvement is in actual gaming performance. The RAM upgrade turned out to be a serious business, with the ROG Ally X consistently producing frame rate gains of 10% or more over the original (and further extending its lower-resolution superiority over the Steam Deck).
In addition to making your games last longer and run better, the ROG Ally X lets you load them a little faster. In addition to being larger and easier to replace, this new 1TB SSD also outpaces both the Steam Deck and the original ROG Ally in terms of speed: it loaded a Shadow of the Tomb Raider save in 13.4 seconds, beating the ROG Ally’s 14.6 seconds and the Deck’s 15.9 seconds, and with a boot time of 7.7 seconds, the Aperture Desk Job beat the boot times of 8.1 seconds and 10.8 seconds, respectively.
Even the screen is better, and I don't recall that being an advertised improvement. It's still a 7-inch, 1920×1080, 120Hz LCD panel – that much hasn't changed – but I measured its peak brightness at 532 cd/m2, so it's a bit brighter than the original's 501 cd/m2 screen. It also covers a few more colours across the RGB gamut, covering 97.1% compared to the first ROG Ally's 93.6%, and has a slightly superior contrast ratio of 1311:1 to 1239:1. The catch here is that the Steam Deck OLED outshines both Asus models with its unrivalled deep blacks and 984 cd/m2 peak brightness – the latter also adds HDR support in select games. Still, it's another tick in the ROG Ally Upgrades column.
Whether these improvements justify the demand seven hundred and ninety nine Your pound sterling, well, that's another matter. You can't expect Asus to make the changes it did and then reduce the ROG Ally X to nothing, but it's a full £200 more than the ROG Ally, the same amount more than the Lenovo Legion Go and £230 more than the top-end 1TB Steam Deck OLED. I've run the numbers and can confirm that these are all very, very big things, especially knowing that – I repeat – the ROG Ally X is a redesign rather than a generational redesign. Looking at the changes individually, the single completely What's transformative is the extended battery life, a benefit the Steam Deck OLED has had for years. And at least it comes with a case.
The ROG Ally X leaves the Deck family behind in terms of game compatibility, completely lacking the anti-cheat and launcher incompatibility that Windows 11's SteamOS can still suffer from. It also lets you play your Game Pass games freely, something that's only possible on the Steam Deck if you resort to always-online cloud streaming.
Windows has its issues when deployed on such a portable device, though, from the general discomfort of navigating a purely desktop-style operating system with thumbsticks and a touchscreen to the recurrence of bugs. For all of SteamOS's shortcomings, it's polished to a shine and feels fundamentally better suited to portable use. On a few occasions with the ROG Ally X, I found games would simply switch to small windows without prompting, or launchers wouldn't launch anything at all. It's also not a bug, but I'm starting to question the value of the ROG Ally X's integrated fingerprint reader when Windows 11 almost always asks for a PIN to log in.
The Steam Deck OLED’s contrasting ease of use and more reasonable pricing make it the best of these rebadged portables. As expensive as it is, the ROG Ally X is at least the best of the Windows portables. It’s clearly a step up from the original, and overall, its battery, performance, and build quality upgrades outweigh the Legion Go’s uniqueness and flexibility. I’d love to go on a full-on arm-waving rampage at the table over who should have a better price tag, but I guess you can’t have everything.
This review is based on a retail unit provided by Asus.