After much teasing and a couple of months’ wait, Asus and Microsoft have finally let fans loose on the new ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handhelds at Gamescom 2025.
The two devices are on preview at both the Microsoft and Asus stands at the show this week, although there are caveats as to what I could do with them, it being an exhibition and all.
The Microsoft stand provided a more software-focused experience, with the handhelds being mostly ‘unlocked’ with a choice of games, while in Asus’ case, they were locked down for a more hardware-centric experience with Hogwarts Legacy on the pricier Ally X model.
Nonetheless, I’ve had a little bit of time with the two devices on both stands, so I can provide some early impressions ahead of the October 16 ‘on-shelf’ release date. While there is a release date, no pricing information has been revealed yet; this is apparently due to tariff issues.
Design
- Comfortable shell
- Sensible button placement and feeling
- Reasonable, modern ports
The two devices, besides colour – white for the standard model, and black for the X option – look and feel virtually identical, with the same mostly flat chassis, with bulges at either end for the controller grips.
They are slightly thicker than the original Asus ROG Ally models, while the standard ROG Xbox Ally is ever-so slightly lighter than the X by some 45g, owing to the lack of the beefier Z2 Extreme processor found in the more powerful X model, and its ‘impact triggers’ as found on the Xbox Wireless Controller.
With this in mind, I found the pair of them to feel comfortable, with familiar button placement, a pleasant texturing to the thumbsticks, and a splash of atmospheric RGB for good measure around them. There is also some handy texturing on the underside of each device to provide a more comfortable grip.
The ROG Ally Xbox X is undoubtedly the meaner of the two, with its monochromatic black colourway reminding me of an Xbox Elite controller, and arguably leaning more into the Series X look than the ROG Xbox Ally that feels more at home next to a Series S, being white and all.
Both devices feature the same 7-inch Full HD IPS screen, making them comfortable to hold and use, with a pleasant screen size for the most part.
Ports-wise, both have a set of two USB-C ports, a UHS-II microSD reader and a headphone jack. The specs differ between the two consoles, though, with the standard Xbox Ally having a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports with DisplayPort 2.1 and Power Delivery 3.0, while the Ally X model has one of those alongside a more powerful Thunderbolt 4-capable USB4 Type-C port that supports DisplayPort 2.1 and Power Delivery 3.0.
Features and Performance
- Potentially beefy performance
- Pleasant to use in demo scenarios
- Clever Xbox-centric software
I feel obliged to say at this point that these aren’t an ‘Xbox’ handheld in the sense that you might expect; this isn’t a Nintendo Switch 2 competitor, for instance, and it isn’t a ‘true’ Xbox console ported to a handheld form factor.
Instead, it’s a PC handheld that’s running proper Windows 11 Home in the background, although with a much more streamlined and focused OS, especially against the original ROG Ally handhelds from a couple of years ago.
With this in mind, PC games can be played natively, while you can also engage in Xbox titles either when streaming over Xbox Cloud Streaming or directly from an operational console. There is perhaps too much of a technical challenge to get proper Xbox console exclusives running on PC at the moment.
Alongside the differences in ports, the ROG Xbox Ally X also benefits from those impulse triggers, the effect of which was hard to judge as I played different games during my time with the device, and it is only supported in a handful of PC Titles as is. In addition, the thumbsticks on the X model are hall-effect for more accurate and in longer-term use, reliable operation due to the prevention of stick drift.
The ROG Ally Xbox has a 60Whr battery, while the Ally X model has a larger 80Wh cell – the same as the previous non-Xbox Ally X.
The big change with the X model is the move to AMD’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip, although without any real look at the software side from the Asus booth, plus the controlled conditions in which the games were played, it’s hard to judge performance from the outset. That’ll come in our full review.
The ROG Xbox Ally has a Ryzen Z2 A chip, which is based on the same architecture as the Steam Deck‘s SoC, and also has the same RAM speed at 6400MT/s as the Steam Deck OLED and comes with 16GB. By contrast, the -X model is packed with more in the sense of both capacity and speed, with 24GB of 8000MT/s RAM.
Base storage for the ROG Xbox Ally sits at 512GB, with the X model having 1TB. These are standard PC form factor M.2 2280 drives, so they are theoretically swappable as with a normal PC. Networking across both devices is identical, with support for WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.4.
In general use, I didn’t have many issues with the games, with both devices feeling responsive in their respective titles – Forza Horizon 5 for the ROG Xbox Ally and Hogwarts Legacy for the ROG Xbox Ally X.
The 7-inch Full HD panel worked okay for the demo time I had, and as much as it would be easy to bemoan the lack of OLED, the reason for Asus or Microsoft not including it was because they would lose out on variable refresh rate tech, which was deemed too important.
To my eye, it felt like quite a sharp and responsive panel, not least with its 120Hz refresh rate, although I’d need to take a colorimeter to it to properly gauge its accuracy and depth.
There were reports from those around me of Forza particularly bugging out in menus, although it wasn’t something I experienced. It’s perhaps too early to judge performance, but I certainly enjoyed the handheld experience afforded by both devices. The rumble felt pleasant and decently precise in the case of Forza Horizon 5, as if using an oversized Xbox Wireless Controller in my hands.
The only issue I necessarily experienced was that some touch gestures inside the games seemed to behave somewhat erratically, although I’d expect this to be ironed out with the full release.
On the point of software, it’s particularly here where the experience has changed against the original Ally and Ally X models.
Chief among these is an upgraded Xbox app that acts as the general home screen and unified games launcher of sorts for the whole device. There is full-fat Windows running underneath, which you can switch to, but Microsoft has made as much as possible of the Xbox software, and implementing as much into shortcut buttons around the screen for switching in and out of games, and booting up the Command Center where you can quickly change settings such as the screen resolution and power modes, among other things.
By moving as much into these shortcut buttons and into the Xbox Game Bar UI, it simplifies the experience to make what is a powerful handheld PC feel more like a console. From that respective point, I take Microsoft’s marketing that it is indeed an Xbox.
I was told by a Microsoft engineer that you technically don’t even need to boot into the Windows 11 install that the Xbox UI runs on top of for things such as going through a Windows update, which has previously been quite a laborious process on other Windows-based handhelds.
Pressing the Xbox button brings up a useful quick-switcher so you can satisfyingly swap between full screen apps, such as games or Discord. Plus, you can also swipe on the screen to get things such as notifications and such in a more mobile-type manner – a feature that the engineers seem very proud of in my conversations.
Microsoft also said that games from most major game launchers, such as Ubisoft Connect and the Epic Games Store, should pull through to the Xbox launcher, so there isn’t any need to back out into Windows to launch them.
The customised version of Windows that the Xbox Ally devices use with the Xbox launcher does mean that services such as the desktop window manager that run by default on more standard Windows devices are disabled, and when switching into the full variant of the operating system, those services will start.
If, once this is done, you do decide to go back into the Xbox launcher, you may experience a small performance penalty with those background instances taking up system resources, or you’ll need to restart the device to get full performance back.
Technically, as this is running Windows 11 Home underneath, it is possible to use the device as its own PC – there are enough ports for connecting things such as a mouse and keyboard, or hooking it up to an external display with the Thunderbolt-capable USB-C ports on top. With this, you could also install another OS, such as Bazzite, although by doing so, you’d lose out on all the Xbox-first software stuff that this handheld is arguably built around.
