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Asus ROG Xbox Ally X Review: Blistering power, but Windows keeps getting in the way

Asus ROG Xbox Ally X Review: Blistering power, but Windows keeps getting in the way

G
GAIAOctober 15, 2025
12 min read
Reviews

Asus ROG Xbox Ally X: The fastest handheld I’ve used, wrapped in Windows weirdness

I hauled the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X around for two weeks-couch, bed, backyard, airplane tray table-trying to make it my go-anywhere gaming machine. The headline is easy: the Ryzen Z2 Extreme absolutely flies, the new grips feel fantastic, and the speakers punch way above their weight. The catch is equally obvious: Windows still acts like it missed the memo that this is a handheld, and Microsoft’s “new” Xbox layer doesn’t fix the mess. If you’re chasing raw frames, this is the one to beat. If you want smooth, console-like living, the Steam Deck still gets it.

My setup for context: 1TB model, updated firmware, playing mostly via Steam and Game Pass, with sessions split between plugged-in Turbo mode at my desk and Performance mode on battery on the couch. I prefer 60fps targets when possible, 1080p native unless I need to pull a visual lever (FSR, lower preset) for battery health. I’m also the kind of gremlin who will happily cap to 45fps if it means smoother pacing and another hour off the plug.

First impressions: the grips sold me in five minutes

The “Xbox” tagging might imply more than it delivers, but the physical design here is a legit win. The deeper, controller-like grips are not a gimmick. The split contour at the bottom lets your fingers actually wrap around something substantial, which makes one-handed holds (scrolling a launcher, fiddling with settings) feel secure. After an hour with Hades 2, my wrists thanked me-on the Legion Go I tend to shift around every 20 minutes, on the Deck my palms get warm. On the Ally X, the weight (715g) feels better balanced than it sounds on paper.

Buttons and sticks land firmly in the “no drama, good travel” camp. The D-pad is responsive enough for precise quarter-circles in Vampire Survivors’ oddball moves, and the triggers have a smooth pull for racers. I like the two rear buttons more than I expected; I mapped one to the Xbox overlay and another as a shift modifier for quick brightness and refresh rate tweaks. The RGB rings around the sticks are a “your mileage may vary” flourish—I turned them off to save a sliver of battery and never looked back.

Screen and sound: a fast LCD that gets the job done

Let’s be blunt: this is not OLED, and if you’re coming from a Steam Deck OLED you’ll notice softer blacks and less pop in dark scenes. That said, the 7-inch 1080p LCD at up to 120Hz with VRR is a great match for the horsepower. I bounced between 60Hz and 120Hz depending on the game—Hades 2 and indie stuff at 120, heavier titles at 60—and the variable refresh kept things tear-free in that 40-55fps zone that handhelds live in.

Color-wise it’s squarely in sRGB land and looks natural. The panel tops out around 500 nits; bright enough for indoor play near a window but not a sunny patio. Motion handling is solid for an LCD, and at handheld viewing distances I didn’t miss OLED response times much outside of the usual “dark alley in Cyberpunk” moments where OLED would shine. No HDR here, and I didn’t expect it to matter on a 7-inch screen, but it’s worth noting for those who care.

The speakers are shockingly good. Forward-firing, loud without shredding your ears, and with enough body to keep Hi-Fi Rush punchy and voice chat legible. On a plane I still reached for earbuds, but in a quiet room I was happily controller-clicking without cans. The 3.5mm jack is clean—no hiss even with sensitive IEMs—and Bluetooth was stable with my Sony XM5s. Points where they’re due.

Windows and the Xbox layer: the friction you can feel

I really wanted Microsoft’s handheld-focused Xbox app to be the “just works” layer. It isn’t, not yet. The app boots with the system and offers a big friendly face for your library (including Steam and Epic shortcuts), Game Pass, and social. Nice start. But once you try to actually live through it—tweaking brightness, power modes, refresh rate, audio, Wi-Fi—you smack into split-brain UI. The Xbox button pulls up an overlay where you can launch recent games, check achievements, and… also adjust some settings. The adjacent Asus Command Center pulls up a similar but not identical panel with the power states (Silent 13W, Performance 17W, Turbo 25W/35W), FPS limiter, resolution, VRR toggle, brightness, volume—you get the idea.

There’s overlap, there’s redundancy, and there are places where the Xbox app just punts you back to Windows anyway. And Windows, bless it, is still not designed for thumbs and taps. After a firmware push mid-week, my Xbox button started launching Steam Big Picture instead of the intended overlay, and the D-pad stopped moving the cursor in that context. I remapped to the ROG button as a workaround, but it’s the kind of bug that shakes your confidence in a “console-like” pitch.

Compare that to Steam’s Big Picture Mode (or Deck UI), where brightness, audio, controller templates, downloads, and power are in one obvious stack, and you see the gulf. The Ally X has all the controls, spread across three layers and a standard Windows desktop that never quite gets out of the way. It’s not unusable, but it keeps reminding you you’re wrestling a laptop masquerading as a handheld.

Performance: the Z2 Extreme flexes, and games fly

This is the fun part. AMD’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme makes the Ally X feel like a generation leap over first-wave Windows handhelds and a clear step up from the Deck in brute force. With the device plugged in (Turbo 35W), it’s frankly silly how close to “mini PC” territory it gets. On battery (Turbo 25W), you still get excellent playability without cooking your hands or nuking the battery instantly.

Here’s where I landed after a bunch of back-and-forth testing and a lot of couch time:

  • Cyberpunk 2077: 1080p, Low/Medium mix with FSR 2 Balanced, Turbo 25W on battery, VRR at 60Hz. I saw 45-55fps in the city, and capping at 45 made it butter-smooth and extended battery by ~20-25 minutes.
  • Elden Ring: 1080p, Medium with Grass Low, Performance 17W, VRR 60Hz. Typically 40–50fps roaming Limgrave and Liurnia. Locking an FPS cap to 45 smoothed the hitching nicely.
  • Forza Horizon 5: 1080p, High with a couple settings on Medium, Turbo 25W. 60fps on open road; city centers dipped to high 50s. Plugged in at 35W, 60fps is locked, period.
  • Baldur’s Gate 3: 1080p, Medium, Performance 17W. Easy 60fps indoors, 45–60 outdoors. A prime candidate for 40–50fps VRR play with great battery returns.
  • Halo Infinite: 1080p, Low/Medium, Turbo 25W. Campaign is 50–60fps; MP is viable at 60 with tweaks, but I preferred a 60 cap and 60Hz for stability.
  • Hades 2, Dead Cells, Sea of Stars: 1080p, 120Hz, Silent 13W or Performance 17W. All sail past 90–120fps; you can happily drop to 60Hz to save battery with zero feel-loss.

If you’re coming from a Steam Deck (even the OLED), the extra headroom is instantly noticeable. The Ally X lets you aim for 1080p without feeling like you’re torturing the game. And when you embrace the FPS limiter (30/45/60) and VRR, it’s very easy to find the “looks good, plays smooth, lasts longer” triangle that handhelds demand.

Battery life and thermals: big tank, honest trade-offs

The 80Wh battery is the secret sauce. In Performance (17W), I routinely cleared 4–5 hours with indie or less demanding 3D games at 60Hz. In Turbo (25W) running a big boy like Cyberpunk, I averaged around 2.5 hours at a 45fps cap. Silent mode (13W) is great for retro and 2D and creeps toward 6–7 hours if you also drop the refresh rate and dim the screen.

Fan noise is there, but it isn’t obnoxious. Turbo will make itself known in a quiet room, a smooth whoosh more than a whine. Performance mode is comfortable on a couch beside a TV. The grips get warm, never hot; the back vent pushes heat away from your fingers effectively. I had no thermal throttling issues, and the chassis never crossed into “sweaty palms” territory even during long Forza runs.

Charging is quick with the included brick over USB-C, and having two Type-C ports means you can dock and charge simultaneously without silly adapters. I swapped in a 2TB 2280 SSD with zero drama—the long M.2 slot is a rare and welcome nod to actual upgradability on a handheld. The UHS-II microSD slot made a real difference too; I installed smaller indies there and load times felt snappy enough not to care which drive I was on.

Software friction: the little paper cuts add up

Windows resume is better than it used to be, but I still had a few “wake to desktop” events where my game was minimized and controller input vanished until I alt-tabbed via the on-screen keyboard. The Xbox app emphasizes discovery more than your installed stuff; the Library view is the sweet spot, but it’s buried. And you’ll encounter the strangest redundancy: I counted three places to adjust system volume (Xbox overlay, Asus Command Center, Windows slider) and two separate brightness controls depending on which overlay you’re in. None of this is deal-breaking. All of it screams “ship the feature; we’ll tidy later.”

Steam Big Picture is where I lived most of the time. Add non-Steam games to the library and you get a cohesive controller-first layer with per-game controller profiles, quick resume that mostly works, and a consistent UI paradigm. The irony of using Valve’s shell to make Microsoft’s “Xbox” handheld feel console-like isn’t lost on me.

Versus Steam Deck OLED and Legion Go: what are you really buying?

If you’ve made it this far, you probably already know where each option shines. The Steam Deck OLED is still the king of pick-up-and-play. Suspend/resume is nearly foolproof, the UI is unified, and the OLED screen makes darker games look incredible. But you will give up raw frames and occasionally drop settings harder to hold 60. If you mostly live in Steam and love indies and AAAs that scale well, the Deck remains a feel-good purchase.

The Legion Go brings the big screen and detachable controllers, which is its own flavor of cool, but it’s heavier and I never loved the ergonomics for long sessions. The Ally X threads a middle path: better comfort, higher performance than the Deck, fewer party tricks than the Legion, and a more reasonable price than boutique options like AyaNeo for similar silicon. At $999, it isn’t cheap, but given the 1TB SSD, 80Wh battery, and the Z2 Extreme, it lands on the “competitive for what you get” side of the line.

Small delights and nagging annoyances

  • Delight: The fingerprint power button actually sped up my “open, play” loop. Tap, authenticate, back in the game—when Windows behaved.
  • Delight: The FPS limiter works reliably. 45fps caps with VRR feel fantastic on a 7-inch display and are the best battery bargain on this device.
  • Delight: Rear buttons are perfectly placed. Mapping one to a quick overlay saved me from diving into the Windows desktop again and again.
  • Annoyance: The Xbox app shows big icons without labels by default on the home page. Cute, but not helpful when you have twenty games installed.
  • Annoyance: The Xbox button sometimes launched the wrong overlay after an update. It’s a bug, sure, but it undercuts the promise of cohesion.
  • Annoyance: No OLED option. At a grand, I wished for it—even if I admit the LCD’s 120Hz VRR makes practical sense for battery and cost.

Who should buy the ROG Xbox Ally X

If you want handheld power that can run modern blockbusters at 1080p with smart compromises, and you don’t mind (or even enjoy) tinkering with settings, the Ally X is the best Windows handheld right now. It beats earlier Windows devices on comfort and performance, and it avoids some of the boutique tax that made similar performers hard to recommend.

If you want console simplicity, painless suspend/resume, and a UI that never makes you think about Windows, the Steam Deck OLED still wins. You’ll give up some frames and some settings, but you’ll gain sanity. And if you’re chasing big-screen carnival tricks or detachable controllers, the Legion Go remains its own vibe—just be ready for the extra heft.

Final verdict: brilliant hardware outpaced by middling software

Across two weeks, my opinion settled into a simple arc: the Ally X hardware is a joy, and I don’t want to go back to smaller batteries and weaker chips. The performance uptick is real and meaningful, the grips are genuinely comfortable, and the speakers make portable play feel less compromised. But every time Windows decides to behave like a desktop OS with a mouse I don’t have, or the Xbox layer reminds me it’s an app and not an environment, I miss the frictionless vibe of the Deck.

None of this kills the Ally X. It’s my pick for raw power in a handheld I can actually hold for hours, and it’s priced as sensibly as you can at this spec tier. I just wish Microsoft would take the last step: copy everything good about Steam’s handheld UI, unify the overlays, and turn this from a brilliant portable PC into a great handheld console. Until then, the Ally X is a beast you need to tame—and if that sounds like fun, it’s going to be your favorite toy.

Score: 7.5/10

TL;DR

  • What I loved: Ryzen Z2 Extreme performance at 1080p, comfy controller-like grips, loud and clean speakers, big 80Wh battery, dual USB-C, easy SSD upgrade.
  • What frustrated me: Windows handheld UX is still clumsy, Xbox app/overlay overlap and bugs, no OLED option at $999, occasional resume quirks.
  • Best for: Tinkerers who want top-tier portable performance and can live with Windows’ quirks; Game Pass + Steam power users.
  • Not ideal for: Players who want console-smooth simplicity—get a Steam Deck OLED and don’t look back.
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