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It's an Xbox. It's an ROG Ally. It's the

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Xbox ROG Ally X. And there's a lot to

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unpack here because this is loaded with things that I have never seen before.

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For starters, this is my very first hands-on with the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme,

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a Zen 5 16CU mobile gaming monster, if

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my first impressions are anything to go by. It's also the first time a third-p

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partyy PC has ever borne the Xbox name.

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And even bigger, yes, than even those two other things. This is the first time

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that the Xbox team has been given the power to dive under the hood and

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fundamentally alter the gaming experience on Windows. I'm talking Xbox

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team code right into the Windows branch. Like your PC boots directly to an Xbox

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full screen UI that brings together all your favorite games across Game Pass,

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Windows, and yes, even leading thirdparty app stores. Not only

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that, but the Xbox team was given the power to trim the fat, so to speak.

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Meaning that in the new gaming UI, non-essential processes, even the

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Windows desktop, are simply not loaded, which frees up substantial system

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resources. They're quoting 2 GB of RAM savings now and have made it very clear

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that they're not done yet. It's cliche, folks, but Valve appears to have

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awakened the giant, and this thing could be a gamecher for handheld PC gaming.

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It's also cliche, but uh here's a segue to our sponsor, War Thunder. Experience

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Let's kick things off with the elephant in the room. the big kind of funky

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looking elephant in the room. This is not a slim, sleek console like the

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Nintendo Switch 2. But that decision was made for a number of very good reasons.

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See, the goal from the Xbox team was to take the Xbox controller experience and

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translate that to a handheld PC. That means large contoured grips, full-sized

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analog sticks, a subtly angled screen to improve neck ergonomics, and in the X

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version, impulse triggers like we first saw with the Xbox One. I assumed

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Microsoft wouldn't provide competing devices at this first look. So, I

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brought a whole backpack of them. And the most obvious one is, of course, the

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original ally. And the interface is extremely similar with only the

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rhombus-shaped Xbox button really being added by comparison. This is used to

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access the game bar overlay and armory crate, which raises an interesting

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question. What's the armory crate button here for then? I don't know. I've asked

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if maybe it could be a reconfigurable macro button going forward. I got a firm

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maybe on that. Realistically, a lot of things are still up in the air on this.

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The back is completely different and really shows how much ASUS, probably

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with some help from the Microsoft team, has learned about ergonomics over the

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last couple of years. Even though this is a heavy device, very much like the

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Alli X, which at least managed to lose the uh squared off corners, it feels

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lighter. And I was really unsure about the angled screen. Honestly, I kind of

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thought I'd hate it, but I completely forgot about it when I was using it, and

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it just feels natural. Of course, Asus isn't the only ones who makes handheld

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PCs, and some makers figured out that

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ergonomics were important right from the get- go. So, how's it compared to the

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Steam Deck? Obviously, the middle section is way thicker and it's

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noticeably heavier, but from a packability standpoint, it's actually

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less wide and you do get the benefit of

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larger face buttons, though you lose the touchpads that many Steam Deck users

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really love. As for the Switch 2, I had intended to talk more about this

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comparison, but it's clear from looking at them that these are entirely

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different classes of device, and the customer for one is simply not going to

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be the customer for the other, I don't think. Bottom line, while the weight

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might be a turnoff for some, I think they nailed the ergonomics on this.

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Though, uh, ironically, actually feels a

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little closer to the curves of the Dual Sense than it does to the Xbox

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controller. Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing.

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Now, I mentioned there are two versions of the Xbox Ally, and there are, and

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there are enough differences between them that you will not want to accidentally buy the wrong one. From the

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outside, the X version is black versus white with impulse triggers and an

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upgraded Thunderbolt compatible USB 4 port next to the regular USB 3.2 Gen 2.

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This port allows the use of powerful external GPUs, but that's about it.

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Across both, we get the same IO that will be familiar to owners of previous

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generation Allies with a volume rocker, UHS2 micro SD card, 3 and a half

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millimeter combo jack, and a power button with Windows Hello fingerprint reading. No biggie so far then. But

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inside, these are very, very different beasts. The Xbox Ally X features a

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cutting edge AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor with three Zen 5 and five Zen

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5C cores, 24 gigs of lightning fast 8,000 mega transfer per second LPTDR5X

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memory, a terabyte of storage, and an whopping 80Wh battery. The Xbox Ally

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NonX does not have all of those things.

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And while it is a little lighter, at least it's not even smaller. And

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particularly disappointing to me was the inclusion of an albeit tuned version of

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AMD's Ryzen Z2A processor, which from

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early leaks appears to be very similar to the Zen 2based Aerith processor from

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the original Steam Deck, which was announced

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4 years ago. Now, to be clear, these are both current gen machines in other ways.

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They both use 80mm M.2 SSDs for easier

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upgrades. They've both got Wi-Fi 6E and they both come with a reasonably speedy

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65 watt charger, but the NonX is weaker by enough that Microsoft explicitly

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positions it as a 720p gaming console,

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which makes one of the other similarities between the two devices

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kind of unexpected. See, the screen is the same between both models. And

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actually, for that matter, the same as previous versions of the Ally. 1080p 120

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Hz with Freync premium variable refresh rate and 500 nits peak brightness. So, I

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guess on this one, you're either going to render out a lower resolution or rely

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on AMD's FSR upscaling in order to reach native. In either case, it's an okay

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display. It's good enough that I still daily drive an Ally, but it is not on

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par with the eyepopping HDR, instantaneous response times, or

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incredible low brightness night gaming comfort of the Steam Deck OLED. One of

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my first questions then was with such different hardware across the product

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family, how is Xbox going to manage gamers expectations and work with

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publishers to optimize the experience? The answer to this is a little complex,

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but it is worth hearing because it gives us tremendous insight into Microsoft's

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vision for this device and for Xbox more broadly. Like Valve, Microsoft is

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working on a verified program of sorts. But unlike Valve, Microsoft obviously

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won't have just one piece of hardware to target. Meaning, I wouldn't expect to

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see an Xbox ally setting in the graphics quality drop down anytime soon. So, what

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are they going to be doing then? Well, for one thing, they're going to be validating the usability elements just

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like Valve does. Does the game support a controller? Does text scale correctly on

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smaller, higher DPI displays? As for the performance side, well, the strategy is

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going to involve using Windows telemetry data, including specs of your machine,

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the game you're playing, and gaming frame rates to group similar systems

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together to give gamers a rough idea of which titles will perform well. All of

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this is going to be presented in the game library of the Xbox full screen

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experience. And I'm going to come back to the game library in a second because

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first, I got to say, the UI looks slick.

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And more importantly, it's the first thing you'll see when you boot up your

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handheld or wake it up from sleep. They've done so much here. On top of the

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resource optimization that I mentioned earlier, the Xbox team has a really cool

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multitasking interface that gives you quick access to a browser or Discord.

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And they claim they have already managed to triple the efficiency of standby with

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a ton more work coming to make this the most console-like PC experience you've

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ever had. None of which is to say that you will lose out on any of the good

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things about gaming on Windows. Compatibility is expected to be on par

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with regular Windows. And should you desire a more desktop-like experience,

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you can access that using the joysticks as a mouse or with standard peripherals,

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either connected directly or through a dock. The system will just load up the

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necessary Windows processes and hopefully put them back to sleep when

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you go back to the Xbox full screen experience. They didn't have a firm answer on that one. Nor did they have a

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firm answer on how Windows updates are going to be managed. Are they going to

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be more Windows-l like with the constant interruptions and the background

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resource hogging and the flavor or are they going to be more Xbox like TBD?

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Okay, let's come back to the game library. Now, the idea here was to bring

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all your games together in one place. And I know I can already see the XKCD

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comic in my mind's eye, but this implementation looks like one that I

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might actually want to use. bringing together your Windows games, your Game

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Pass games, your cloud streamed games, and even remote play from your Xbox

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console, allowing you to quickly and easily synchronize your progress and

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achievements and your recently played titles, so you can just grab and go and

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game anywhere. The new game bar also,

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honestly, kind of sick. For the first time ever, I have wanted a hotkey to

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access the game bar. Who'd have thunk it? Instead of a big cluttery full

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screen interface, they used the shoulder buttons to flip through menus in a way

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that was honestly intuitive to me within seconds of my hands-on time. They also

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showed off gamepad support, by the way, for entering pins from the Windows lock screen. It was super cool. And all of

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this sounds great, at least for the privileged few who own an Xbox Alli X.

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But what about the rest of us? Well, coming back to the vision, hiding away

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at the bottom of one of the slides was a very interesting little nugget that

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described these innovations as being great for handhelds like the Xbox Ally

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and Alli X. That like is doing a lot of heavy lifting. While the highlight today

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is obviously the partnership with Asus ROG. When the Xbox team got jacked into

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Windows development, it seems to me that they weren't tasked with cleaning up

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Windows gaming for one premium handheld device, my impression is that they were

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tasked with cleaning it up more broadly and bringing it in line with Microsoft's

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vision that in the future, every screen is an Xbox. So, I think that at some

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point we can expect general Windows users to benefit immensely from these

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developments, many of which are positioned as long-term projects that

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will be constantly improved with feedback from both partners and from

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gamers, which is a really good thing

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because while I couldn't get a firm answer on pricing of these new allies,

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I'm expecting them to be more in line with previous allies than with

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Microsoft's traditional console competitors. They're uh they're going to

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hurt a little. Hurt almost as much as I feel like the Xbox folks watching people

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like me lament the death of handheld gaming on Windows have hurt. First they

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must have been hurt because they knew that what we were saying was true and

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they were powerless to fix it. And then it must have hurt because they knew that

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they'd finally been given the power to do something to fix Windows gaming, but

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they've been stuck operating in stealth mode. Well, now that the cat's out of

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the bag and they're ready to talk about it, the energy is palpable, both from

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Asus and Microsoft and also from the other folks that have laid hands on

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these devices. I'm also feeling another kind of energy, the energy to tell you

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this video, you know what? I'd say the closest analog is when we first checked

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out the Steam Deck under very similar circumstances. We didn't get to do as

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much gaming, though I did get to play a preview of Gears of War that looked

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incredible and makes me extremely bullish on the performance of the Z2

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Extreme.