Xbox? Not an Xbox? Who cares? The ROG Xbox Ally is a wonder

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It’s likely that the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally will land to conflicting perspectives.

Seen through the lens of a lifelong console player, the system simply isn’t ready to be compared to the locked-down, slick user experience of a Nintendo Switch 2.

But viewed by a lifelong PC gamer, especially one with experience playing on today’s handheld PC gaming systems, that’s a different story altogether.

This story.

The latest iteration of Asus’ handheld gaming PC is more revolution than evolution, thanks to a deep partnership with Microsoft and an Xbox wrapper that stretches far beyond a bit of badging and an extra button.

The ROG Xbox Ally officially arrives on Oct. 16 in two versions. The ROG Xbox Ally, which features an AMD Ryzen Z2 A processor, 16GB RAM, and 512GB of storage, costs about $600. The ROG Xbox Ally X features an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme Processor, 24GB RAM, and 1TB of storage, and will cost you about $1,000.

ASUS was kind enough to send me a review unit of the ROG Xbox Ally X a week or so ago, and I’ve spent my evenings playing everything from the Call of Duty beta to Battlefield 6, to games like Hollow Knight: Silksong.

You can read the full column, which was first published Oct. 8 on Game.