ASUS ROG Ally X Gaming Handheld Review (2024)

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

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The gaming handheld market has exploded since Valve first released the Steam Deck in February of 2022; since then, we have had ASUS come to market with the Ally and Lenovo with the Legion Go. In addition, MSI decided to join the market, bringing a unique set of hardware from Intel. With that, we enter the second generation of gaming handhelds as ASUS has decided to go back to the drawing board with the Ally and change up the design to be more robust, offer more flexibility with its storage options, and improve the battery life; all these changes bring us the ROG Ally X.

Above is a slide from ASUS showing the differences between the OG Ally and the Ally X being launched today. From the top, we know this new iteration uses the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor, giving users eight cores and sixteen threads, a base clock at 3.3GHz with a boost of 5.1GHz. Memory for this handheld has been increased to 24GB, up from the 16GB of the OG, while speed has been improved to 7500MHz with LPDDR5X. The Z1E also has integrated graphics with the AMD Radeon 780M, and the Ally X can directly dedicate 8GB of memory to it. Next up, we have the display, which does appear to be unchanged, a 7" 1080p 120Hz offering with brightness up to 500 nits.

As for I/O, ASUS has done some work here as well. Most notably, they moved the microSD slot to the top of the chassis and cleared more room on the internal motherboard for a m.2 2280 form factor NVMe solution. Ours did come with a 1TB solution. Externally, we now have two USB-C ports, one offering 10 Gbps connectivity along with Power Delivery and DP support and the second offering USB4 connectivity, which, too, supports DisplayPort 1.4 and PD 3.0.

The ROG Ally X costs $799, which is $100 more than the launch price of the OG Ally.

Overview

The Ally X arrived in retail packaging, including a silhouette of the device and plenty of ROG branding.

The backside of the box offers hardware information.

Unboxing, we have the power adapter at 65W and the device's user manual.

When we first look at the Ally X, we appreciate the black colorway. The screen is top to bottom, edge to edge, and the button placement is similar to that of an Xbox controller. The speakers are on either side of the screen.

Looking closely at the controls, the left side offers the DPAD and a joystick. Off to the right are the command center and view buttons, with one of the microphones just above.

The right side offers the four Skittles: A, B, X, and Y, with a second joystick below. Off to the left, we have the armory crate and menu buttons with a second microphone above.

Across the top of the Ally X, we start with the trigger and bumpers on either end of the chassis. We then have the power button on the far left, followed by the 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD slot. We then have a space for the cooling vents, followed by the volume button, which sits slightly above the chassis, and both USB-C ports.

On the backside of the chassis, there is a good amount of venting, along with both "M" buttons.

Opening up the chassis, the battery takes up the entire bottom half and is an 80Wh offering. Above, we have the M.2 2280 slot for NVMe and a rather large cooling system on either side. The M.2 Wi-Fi slot can be found under the left side of the battery.

Dimming our photo lights, we can see the AURA lighting for the Ally X.

BIOS/UEFI and Software

The Ally X's BIOS is very similar to what we find in other ROG gaming laptops. It includes an "easy mode," allowing users access to all the basic options. These include the system layout across the top with the CPU, GPU, and memory listed. Below this, the display resolution is listed next to the USB ports and storage. Down below, we have a hardware monitor that shows current fan speeds and temperatures along with battery status.

Flipping to advanced mode, the main page just shows hardware information. Advanced goes into more detail with options for Cloud Recovery and System Diagnostics. Further down the list, we have the choice for Armoury Crate, SVM Mode, and frame buffer size. At the bottom, users will find settings for EZ-Flash to update BIOS.

Software

The software for the Ally X is Armoury Crate. The software's initial launch will give you a list of your installed games, as seen above.

Moving to the settings tab, we have the dashboard for configuring the device, which includes a choice on the right panel to edit how you want the command center to look.

Starting with general options, the Ally X offers information about the device in the info tab.

Switching to the performance tab, we have preset performance options across the top and current CPU and GPU stats along the bottom.

Eco Assist is another way to tune your device for power savings.

GPU settings give you access to performance options for the integrated Radeon 780M.

Moving to the Calibration menu system, you can calibrate the left and right sticks individually, as well as the triggers and gyro.

Game Visual will automatically calibrate the display based on the preset configs above.

The device's lighting can also be customized. ASUS offers several preset options and an Aura Sync option.

System/CPU Benchmarks

Cinebench

Cinebench is a long-standing render benchmark that Intel and AMD have relied on to highlight their newest platforms during unveilings. The benchmark has two tests: a single-core workload that utilizes one thread or 1T and a multi-threaded test that uses all threads or nT of a tested CPU.

For this review, we are working with raw data instead of charts. Our CB2024 screenshot above shows the Z1 Extreme pushing a rather impressive 100-point single-core score and 788-point multi-thread.

BAPCo CrossMark

CrossMark™ is an easy-to-run native cross-platform benchmark that measures overall system performance and responsiveness using real-world application models. CrossMark™ supports devices running Windows, iOS, and macOS platforms.

CrossMark offers an overall score of 1544 for the Ally X.

AIDA64 Memory

Memory performance gave us 58K read, 104K write, and 73K copy. Latency landed at 123ns.

PCMark

PCMark Extended landed a score of 6973 for the Ally X.

3DMark

CPU Profile picked up 979 single threads and 1893 for two threads. At higher thread counts, we see 5878 for eight threads and 6886 for sixteen threads.

3DMark Storage came in at 1592 with 270 MB/s bandwidth.

Testing the ROG Ally X with Steel Nomad, we see a score of 2992, which appears as Legendary based on the hardware.

Gaming

We started our gaming testing by going to one of the better RTS DX12 benchmarks available in Ashes of the Singularity. As you can see from the screenshot above, testing in DX12 mode with the low preset, we pick up an average framerate of 71 FPS for the Ally X.

Sticking with AotS but moving to the medium preset, we pick up 43 FPS.

The high preset in AotS gives us 22 FPS.

Switching to the latest installment of Forza Motorsport, we start with the low preset and achieve an average framerate of 44 FPS.

The medium preset within Forza takes things up a notch, but we still ended up with 39 FPS in testing.

Lastly, we have a high preset for Forza, which gives us an average of 24 FPS for the Ally X.

Cyberpunk 2077 has long been my benchmark of choice, so we start with the low preset, keeping FidelityFX on but in Auto mode, which gives the Ally X a pretty nice 51 FPS in testing.

Switching to medium with the same FidelityFX settings as the earlier run, we come away with a slightly better FPS for the Ally X at 52 FPS.

This time, we are high preset, keeping FidelityFX on Auto. We once again keep the 51 FPS.

Battery Life and Final Thoughts

Battery Life

We used PCMark with its gaming scenario to test the Ally X's battery life. The Ally X managed nearly three hours of battery life in this test.

Final Thoughts

The ASUS ROG Ally X is the third gaming handheld I've used over the last year or so, fourth if we want to count the Nintendo Switch. Coming away from testing the Ally X, I first have to say the ergonomics on this iteration of the Ally are probably some of the best I've experienced. I enjoyed the feel of the Skittles as they closely mirror my Xbox controller. The joysticks have more resistance, making games like Forza Motorsport more enjoyable. The triggers on the Ally X are smooth as butter, and even better, the "M" keys have been flattened out so as not to get in the way, which is a major issue for me on other handhelds.

The display is quite good for this device, though we would all love to see ASUS jump to OLED because they are gorgeous. Outside of that, I had no issues in testing or gaming over the last few weeks with the Ally X. Connectivity on this device is good overall. I would have liked to see the USB-C ports split up because when you need to use a dongle, things can get a bit busy, especially if you're plugged into AC power. The volume up/down buttons are good, and there are no issues. ASUS did decide to have them raised from the chassis to make them easier to identify, a solid choice in my book, and the microSD, which was a nasty issue with the OG Ally, has been moved up top as well, so hopefully that resolves any melting or overheating of memory cards.

Looking internally, layout changes have allowed ASUS to offer a massive battery for the Ally X, double of the OG, and even better, in my mind, support for 2280 NVMe SSDs - this certainly opens the Ally X up to better and higher capacity options for storage. On the downside, I was disappointed to see ASUS deploy the Mediatek Wi-Fi 6E. It is probably the worst chipset across the board for Wi-Fi, and even worse, to upgrade the Wi-Fi card, which is PCIe-based, you will likely need to remove the battery.

On to the performance, the Ally X did quite well in our system benchmarks, first picking up a 100-point single core in CB2024, which is quite good considering the Core Ultra 155H landed around 108 points. CrossMark was also good with an overall of 1544. We could push this up with an SSD upgrade, as responsiveness was the weak point in that benchmark. Memory was a bit odd in testing, picking up an amazing 104GB/s in memory write, but the latency, on the other hand, was quite high, nearing 125ns. Our only synthetic gaming workload, Steel Nomad, did very well, giving us a Legendary score of 2992 overall.

In legit gaming workloads, Cyberpunk 2077 was the only FidelityFX-enabled game we tested, and the Ally X took full advantage, giving us around 52 FPS independent of the preset we used. Forza Motorsport was the hardest on the Ally X, though we did gather solid performance in both low and medium presets with 44 and 39 FPS, respectively. The high graphics level preset was a bit too much, grabbing just 24 FPS. AotS ran fantastic on the Ally. We picked up a massive 71 FPS using the low preset, which dropped to a playable 43 FPS using the medium preset.

To wrap up this review, pricing did jump $100 if we look at launch day pricing between the Ally X and the OG. That said, at $799, the Ally X is positioned in direct competition with the MSI Claw and Legion GO, which both come in at $749 for the top SKUs.