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The Asus ROG Ally was one of the first portable gaming PCs to truly give the Steam Deck a run for its money when the Asus handheld launched last year, thanks to a good mix of processing power, design, and a competitive price.
But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t room for improvement. So earlier this year, Asus unveiled the ROG Ally X, a moderately more expensive model that brings a number of small improvements designed to enhance the portable gaming experience. After going up for pre-order in June, the ROG Ally X is available for purchase for $800.
So far, the general consensus from the reviews I’ve read is that the ROG Ally X East a nice step forward from the original.
It has twice the battery capacity and even more Battery life is twice as long thanks to some efficiency improvements. There’s 24GB of LPDDR5-7500 RAM instead of 16GB of LPDDR5-6400 and 1TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage instead of 512GB. The M.2 slot now also supports M.2 2280 cards, which should make it easier to find affordable SSDs if you want to upgrade storage.
Asus has replaced the proprietary ROG XG Mobile interface that only worked with the company’s XG Mobile graphics docks with a 40Gbps USB4 port that should work with most third-party eGPUs. And while the original ROG Ally had a history of dropping SD cards, the new model appears to have been redesigned to prevent that from happening.
Some technical specifications haven’t changed: the ROG Ally X still has an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor and a 7-inch, 1920 x 1080 IPS LCD display with a variable refresh rate ranging from 48 Hz to 120 Hz. And for that reason, it’s not clear that it makes much sense for people who already own the ROG Ally to upgrade to an Ally X – it might be wiser to wait for a true second-gen model.
But if you’re in the market for a brand new portable gaming PC and aren’t put off by the $800 price tag (which is still pretty cheap compared to what you’d pay for a high-end model from AYANEO, GPD, or One Netbook), it looks like the ROG Ally X could be a winner.
That said, with AMD’s new Ryzen AI 300 series mobile chips promising big improvements in CPU performance and Radeon 800M graphics, I wonder how long it will be before we start to see TRUE next-generation handhelds that don’t use the same Radeon 780M integrated graphics card.
ROG Ally X | ROG Ally (Z1 Extreme) | ROG Ally (Z1) | |
Display | 7 inches 1920 x 1080 pixels Variable refresh rate from 48 to 120 Hz | ||
Processor | AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme 8 Zen 4 CPU cores / 16 threads 9 – 30 W TDP | AMD Ryzen Z1 6 Zen 4 CPU cores / 12 threads 9 – 30 W TDP | |
Chart | 12 x RDNA 3 Computing Units | 4 x RDNA 3 Compute Units | |
RAM | 24 GB LPDDR5-7500 | 16 GB LPDDR5-6400 | |
Storage | 1 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 2280 | 512 GB PCIe NVMe M.2 2230 | |
Ports | 1 x USB4 (40 Gbit/s) 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (10 Gbps) 1 x 3.5mm audio 1 x microSD card reader | 1 x ROG XG Mobile Interface with USB 3.2 Gen 2 1 x 3.5mm audio 1 x microSD card reader | |
Wireless | Wi-Fi 6E BT 5.2 | ||
Battery | 80 Wh | 40 Wh | |
Dimensions | 280 x 111 x 24.7 – 36.9 mm 11″ x 4.4″ x 1 – 1.5″ | 280 x 111 x 21.2 – 32.4 mm 11″ x 4.4″ x 0.8 – 1.3″ | |
Weight | 678 grams 1.49 pounds | 608 grams 1.34 pounds | |
Operating system | Windows 11 Asus ROG Armoury Crate (Game Launcher and Settings) | ||
Price | $800 | $700 | $500 (down from $600 at launch) |
Here are some of the early reviews of the ROG Ally X: