Key Takeaways
- The ROG Ally X is a solid upgrade from the original with improved features and performance.
- Console gaming has long embraced mid-cycle refreshes, and now Windows handhelds follow suit.
- Existing ROG Ally owners may not need to upgrade, but newcomers should consider the Ally X for its enhancements.
The Asus ROG Ally is our favorite Windows handheld. Its powerful processor and high refresh rate screen ensure smooth gameplay. Despite controversies and quality control issues, the company sold enough units to satisfy its investment. How do we know that? Because the ROG Ally X was released at Computex 2024, bringing a host of improvements to the handheld gaming console as a mid-cycle refresh. Is the ROG Ally X worth the upgrade if you already own the Ally? Well, that depends on whether you hit any of the issues, like the seemingly defective microSD card reader.
Even then, the improvements are minor, more of a mid-cycle refresh than the OLED Steam Deck’s substantial update. Which is fine, I suppose. The console market is full of mid-cycle refreshes as the technology inside them matures, or as the manufacturers decide to tweak things for better cooling or make other improvements that don’t warrant a new device. Sony, Xbox, and Nintendo all set the stage for gaming handhelds to get iterative upgrades and proved that gamers would still buy the revised devices.
The ROG Ally X was inevitable
We shouldn’t be surprised Asus did this
Asus might not have changed the chipset when releasing the ROG Ally X, but they changed or improved enough features that it’s the gaming handheld you should pick out of the company’s offerings. Our own Brady Snyder had a wishlist for the ROG Ally 2, and Asus seemingly listened to this list and other user feedback when designing the new console. The main changes include doubling the battery capacity to 80Wh to combat the drain of more demanding games, and building an improved thermal solution that expands the TDP the handheld can draw from. The proprietary ROG XG Mobile port was also removed, favoring a more versatile USB-C port now.
The ROG Ally’s SSD was already upgradable but limited to the 2230 form factor, which meant it topped up at 2TB. The ROG Ally X can use full-sized 2280 SSDs, making it possible to stuff 8TB of speedy storage into the gaming handheld and carry a substantial amount of entertainment with you. Complaints about the joysticks and other buttons were addressed with new joysticks, an improved D-pad, and a better shape for the customizable back buttons. And it now also has a redesigned motherboard with 24GB of DDR5-7500 memory, solving the headache of how much VRAM to allocate while leaving enough memory for general tasks.
Again, this is a mid-cycle refresh, even considering how many things were fixed or improved. Unless you really want the new black colorway and don’t mind trying to find a buyer for your white ROG Ally, it can be skipped for existing owners. It’s excellent that Asus did fix things, although it does suck for existing owners. At least the microSD card issue prompted Asus to double the warranty period of the original ROG Ally.
Gaming consoles have done this for years
Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have all been at it
PC gamers have been spared the mid-cycle refresh until now. Sure, mid-range GPUs and CPUs usually release later than the flagships, but that’s not a refresh; it’s just an expansion of the product stack to fit more budgets. Console gamers, on the other hand, have had to live with mid-cycle releases for a while. The only difference is that console refreshes usually come at the same price as the original and replace them on shelves.
The latest example is the PlayStation 5 Slim, which shrunk and got a better cooling solution. It also has a modular disc drive, so you can buy the digital edition and then add the drive later. The Nintendo Switch also got a mid-cycle refresh, with a larger 7-inch OLED screen instead of the 6.2-inch LCD on the original. That upgrade added $50 to the cost of the console; however, it gave Valve ideas and led to the OLED Steam Deck. The PS4 got the PS4 Pro, the PS3 got the PS3 Slim, and so forth.
The point is that mid-cycle refreshes are part and parcel of console gaming. Even though Windows handhelds run the same games as our more powerful PCs, they’re still consoles, and we can’t expect companies to treat them any differently.
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Even if it isn’t a full refresh, the ROG Ally X is still a good handheld
The ROG Ally X isn’t the ROG Ally 2, and that’s good. Asus opted to build on the core they already had, instead of rushing development on a new, untested processor and other internals. When the true successor comes, it will likely improve on the tweaks made on the Ally X and bring a more powerful, more efficient chipset to the party. If you don’t already have a Windows handheld, the ROG Ally X is the one to get. If you already have a ROG Ally, you can sit this one out and wait for the next iteration.
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