The Asus ROG Ally X turns PC gaming into a portable console

Just over a year after launching the ROG Ally, Asus is launching an improved version of its gaming laptop, the ROG Ally X. This Windows-powered machine starts shipping on July 22 for $800. I’ve been playing with the gaming laptop for a few days, and there’s already a lot to like — especially when it comes to the hardware.

Valve’s Steam Deck was released in 2022, and it helped popularize portable gaming. The company wasn’t the first to explore the form factor, but Valve managed to hit the right mix of specs, portability, and price.

When it became an instant success, computer manufacturers took notice. Lenovo released Go Corps Asus has its own take on gaming laptops with the ROG Ally. Other specialist manufacturers, such as Ianyoalso.

The device has a bright 7-inch 1080p display with a 120Hz refresh rate. Like the Nintendo Switch, the display is surrounded by a standard array of gaming buttons and joysticks.

Unlike the Switch, the controls aren’t frustratingly small. The ROG Ally X feels like a full-sized controller in your hands. The joysticks feel like those on a modern Microsoft Xbox controller. The A/B/X/Y buttons are large and easy to click. The analog triggers have plenty of travel.

I wasn’t entirely sold on the D-pad, though. It feels a bit mushy, like the D-pad you’d find on a budget third-party controller. Similarly, the view and menu buttons are hard to reach. They’re right next to the screen, requiring me to reach my thumb out to pause the game.

There are two additional macro keys on the back of the device. I configured them as view and menu buttons, which helped. On either side of the screen, you’ll also find a Command Center button for adjusting performance on the fly and arsenal box button To view Asus’s game launcher.

The ROG Ally X’s main software interface, Armoury Crate SE, is decent at best. It acts as a game launcher, pulling together everything you’ve installed from Steam, the Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect, and so on. It can also change your hardware settings, from joystick LEDs to gamepad profiles.

If you spend as little time with it as possible, it will do the trick. But there are bugs (a game I installed using GOG Galaxy mysteriously disappeared from my list), the menu can be frustratingly slow to open, and I did encounter a few crashes.

The same goes for the Command Center. It’s an indispensable tool for adjusting settings on the fly, like switching from silent mode to performance mode or turbo mode, but it can sometimes be slow to respond to your interactions.

The device is comfortable to hold—at least for short sessions. The main problem with this type of portable gaming device is that it is heavy. It also gets hot, especially when gaming.

Before testing the ROG Ally X, I spent hours playing with the Logitech G Cloud, an Android-powered mobile device designed specifically for cloud gaming and remote play. It’s a very satisfying experience, as the G Cloud stays quiet (it’s fanless), you don’t have to worry about battery life, and it’s easy to hold in your hand.

We’re still at the beginning of this massive shift in PC gaming from full-fledged towers to fast but capable portable devices. Over time, portable gaming devices will become smaller, lighter, and quieter. They’ll look and feel more like Android mobile devices. However, experiences like G Cloud remain limited for now.

On the other hand, the ROG Ally X looks like the pinnacle of portable gaming. When Nintendo launched the Game Boy 35 years ago, it looked like you could play NES games on the go.

Likewise, the ROG Ally X seems like a good gaming companion for long commutes or daily subway commutes, and despite its heft, I had no problem immersing myself in gaming for hours at a time.

standalone gaming machine

When it comes to performance, Asus has kept the same APU for the ROG Ally X, the AMD Z1 Extreme. However, the RAM has been increased from 16GB to 24GB. This makes a difference in gaming performance as the memory is shared between VRAM and system RAM.

The laptop comes with a user-replaceable 1TB NVMe storage card (2280 format). The battery is twice as large (80Wh) as its predecessor, and the eGPU port has been replaced with a more standard USB Type-C port with USB 4 support.

The device performs particularly well with games that don’t require a high-end PC, like Jusant, Cocoon, or Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. The ROG Ally X can easily render 60 to 120 frames per second for those games at 1080p without using the 30W boost mode.

For AAA games, you have to make some compromises. I can get around 45fps on the high graphics preset in Marvel’s: Spider-Man by enabling RSR, AMD’s resolution upscaling feature. For games that really struggled on previous mobile devices, there’s no magic here. For example, you have to use low settings and crank up the resolution dramatically in The Last of Us: Part I to get to 30fps.

If you’re a fan of strategy or simulation games, the ROG Ally X might not be the best choice for those games. At least you can connect it to a monitor and use a mouse and keyboard if that’s your only computer.

As for battery life, it really depends on what games you play and what power mode you choose. You can play Baba is You in “Silent Mode” for a long time. But using “Boost Mode” for The Last of Us will take a toll on battery life. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time with the device to conduct comprehensive testing, but I’m sure many reviewers will be releasing benchmarks this week.

As a gaming console, the most impressive thing about the ROG Ally X is that it’s a Windows PC—at least on paper. Sure, you can install whatever you want and use it in a desktop environment. But Windows without a mouse and keyboard is a frustrating experience. That’s fine if you want to install a game launcher and a few games. But a proper laptop (or even a smartphone) is better suited for everything else.

Likewise, since it’s a computer, you can install it. everyone Games are available on Windows. But some run better than others, so you’ll need to adjust your expectations. You can also tweak settings to get longer battery life or better-looking games.

The ROG Ally X has a console-like form factor. But don’t expect a polished console-like experience — this is no Nintendo Switch competitor. In many ways, the ROG Ally X, or at least this portable form factor, can be seen as an early preview of the future of PC gaming. A future in the form of a console that works like a PC.