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It's hard for me to even understand what this is, let alone explain it to you. I

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mean, Microsoft calls it an Xbox, but

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it's plastered with ROG branding. You can't play the vast majority of your old

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Xbox game library. And even the special sauce, the Xbox full screen experience

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that runs over top of Windows feels like it could have just as easily been an app

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that runs over top of Windows. But then, hey, I'm a PC gamer. So, this kind of

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collaboration between the Xbox team who takes gaming very seriously and the

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Windows team who takes, I don't know, telemetry very seriously, it's basically

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what I've been asking Microsoft to do for years. And many of you watching

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probably feel the same way. I mean, imagine it. The perfect fusion of the

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game library and versatility of Windows gaming with the optimization and the

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seamless, more affordable console experience of Xbox gaming in one perfect

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device. Now, keep imagining that because

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unfortunately, the ROG Xbox Ally isn't

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it. That doesn't mean it's bad. It just

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isn't what we were promised. What is bad though is Dbrand's treatment of me over

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the years. What is it this time? Oh, a relatively simple assignment. I

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just put one of their kill switch cases onto a handheld. Yay. No broken glass.

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No saw traps.

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Oh, good job, Dbrand. That is a very

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open ventilation hole thing. No,

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seriously. I mean, you don't want your case to affect your cooling. Wow. They

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uh they really had to think about how to get this thing into a kill switch. That

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slit's pretty smart. They may be ass, but they're smart ass, you know. I'm

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sure there are instructions, and I'm Oh, wow. Yeah, this really doesn't seem

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right. This little piece is full. Oh wow. Okay, there we go. Hey, not bad.

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Nice little grip on there. Ribbed for your gaming pleasure. Includes a

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kickstand, which how is it that this thing was so bulky and didn't manage to

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include a kickst Nintendo managed to include a kickstand with the Switch.

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Now we got a kickstand. Got a travel cover so you can keep your joysticks and

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your screen safe when you're on the go. Although for your screen, you should probably just have a prism screen

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protector anyway. And maybe the coolest thing is Dbrand is finally growing up.

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Instead of taking an adversarial relationship with the makers of the

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devices that they profit off of with their accessories, they're actually

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certified designed for Xbox. Wow. Good

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job, Dbrand. And there's a hidden SD card holder.

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Where's that? >> Is that it?

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>> Oh, yeah. And you can save $10 if you bundle it with a screen protector. No

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code required. Check it out at shortlinus.com or at Best Buy in the US.

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I'll get into all the benchmarks in a sec, but first there's something more

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important than the hardware I'm holding today, and that's the software. In a lot

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of ways, Windows handheld mode, it's not a whole lot different from the typical

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Windows experience. You get Windows app compatibility, Windows game

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compatibility, multitasking, co-pilot. So, good or bad, if it's in Windows, you

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got it. So, then what exactly did they cut out? I don't know. But they weren't

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kidding when they said that it is way more efficient. Now, 2 gigs of memory

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savings might not sound like that big of a deal, but when our system memory is

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also acting as our VRAM, it is a very

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respectable amount to claw back. And it's especially important if you're on

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an older Windows handheld or if you're on the nonX version that only has 16

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gigs of memory. Not to mention the numerous other hardware downgrades that

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we will get to later. Hey, we got quick resume.

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Well, almost console-like. Also, classic

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Windows. Don't be too surprised if your device randomly wakes up for a little

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bit before going back to sleep. Not enough to drain your battery too much

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over the course of a day, but if you leave it for a week, it might be dead by

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the time you come back. kind of like a hamster. These complaints though aren't

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meant to take away from the incredible work that the Xbox team has done here.

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And the coolest part is that these optimizations are for everyone. If you

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want to try the Xbox full screen experience, you can do it right now. No

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purchase necessary. And I would recommend at least taking it for a test

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drive. It's pretty slick. And if you've used the Xbox app before, it should feel

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pretty familiar right out of the gate, except for the extra benefit of having

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all your games in one location now, regardless of where they were purchased.

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Kind of feels like a way better version of what Microsoft tried to do with that

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cool games folder on Windows Vista. It's not perfect. I mean, just cuz you aren't

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using the Steam interface doesn't mean that it doesn't need to run. So, waiting

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around for Steam to launch and then dismissing all the annoying little pop-ups the first time you fire up a

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Steam game, that's a distinctly Windows

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experience here. But the only other real issue we encountered with the full

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screen experience was occasionally the UI would get randomly stuck and then all

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of our inputs would action at once. It does seem to happen less once the device

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has been running for a while and we expect this to improve over time, but it

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is something we saw, so it's something we have to mention. Other than that, it

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is shockingly polished and complete feeling for launch software, social

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features, store, cloud gaming, game pass. Uh, I mean, thanks to Armory

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Crates overlay, you've even got things like built-in performance monitoring.

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The only major thing missing is Xbox games. Modern ones, no problem.

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Cross-platform play anywhere licenses have been common for years now. But if

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you have a big digital library of older Xbox games, I'm sorry to say that a

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bunch of them will not run on this device. And there were plenty of

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comments on Xbox's reveal video asking, "Okay, well, how is this an Xbox then?"

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And the truthful answer is, "I don't know." But, I mean, given that all it is

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is just a mode for Windows 11 that happens to be launching on these new

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devices that have Xbox branding on them, maybe that shouldn't be a surprise.

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except that Microsoft kept shouting Xbox

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every time the subject of the ROG Ally 2 came up. So, this is a completely

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self-inflicted wound. On the subject of the Alli 2, sorry, excuse me, I mean the

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ROG Xbox Alli X. Let's talk about the

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hardware. This is a generational leap

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both in terms of the internals and in terms of the design with the most

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obvious change being the ergonomics. Let's start with the most controversial

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change, the angled screen. I was pretty

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skeptical about this one, but after using it for a week, I got to give them

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credit. In a lot of cases, it's pretty great. If you ride the bus or you're a

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distracted pedestrian who holds your device up in front of you like this, it

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is more golden than the K-pop demon hunters. But if you lie on the floor or

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on the couch or you sit with bad posture, you might find yourself wishing

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that they'd left it flat or maybe even angled it the other way. And we've got a

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couple of other little gripes, too. What was this? They went and flipped the menu

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buttons. That's not awful on its own.

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New users probably won't notice, and returning allies should get used to that

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sort of thing pretty quickly. But guys,

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the lower one on the right used to be a dedicated button for Armory Crate. So, I

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never even noticed how much the placement sucks. Now that it's a button

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that I need to use regularly,

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why is this thumb stick in the way of reaching it? On the subject of thumbs

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and buttons, I'm not too crazy about the face buttons. They do have a nice long

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kind of desktop grade travel distance. I just wish they were a little bit less

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wobbly. To ASUS's credit though, in just

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about any position, the Erggo grips make this as comfortable, maybe even more

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comfortable than any handheld we've tested before. And that is in spite of

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the fact that it is heavier than most of them. Another huge improvement is the

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thumb sticks. Seriously, like I handed this to my son and the first thing he

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said was, "Wow, these are way better." And they also managed to squeeze impulse

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triggers into the X and Hall effect triggers into the nonX. The thumb

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sticks, by the way, are not Hall effect, but we did hear a rumor that a certain

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someone might be making some nice TMR sticks for these bad boys. Oh, speaking

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of which, time for a quick tear down, don't you think? Since we've got both units here, let's talk about the specs

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because both the price and the hardware are very different between these two.

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Both have easily accessed screws, making it dead simple to get apart with my uh

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precision screwdriver, ltstore.com,

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and also maybe some help from my prying tool. Both have easily access screws.

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And if you just get a little pry tool in here, you should be able to remove the

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backing. Just like that. Just watch out for this ribbon cable. You don't want to

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rip that. Now that we've movie magicked them both open, you can see both feature

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a fulllength 80mm M.2 NVMe slot. And

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oh, that's really nice. Ample clearance on the underside for a doublesided M.2

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module. Hold on. At least that's definitely true of the X for the nonX.

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I'm not sure. I might have to take this up. Today,

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nobody is putting, you know, an 8 TBTE freaking double-sided SSD in this one

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because if you're spending that kind of money on your SSD, you should probably just be getting the X. But in the

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future, if you wanted to put a double-sided SSD in there, I think you

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could probably get away with it. I would just be very curious to see the logic

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for why this one needed this grounding strip attached to what appears to be a

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pretty rudimentary heat spreader and this one didn't cuz it has a heat

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spreading sticker. I always enjoy playing spot the differences between

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cousin devices. Here's the power for the impulse triggers and here's the pad

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where we don't need it over here. Also, the front chassis is apparently the same

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other than the color. There's a lot of shared components here. You can see the

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joystick modules back here are exactly the same as well as some of these little

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daughter boards. But the biggest difference between the two is look at

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the size of the SoC on the X. This thing

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is loaded for bear with AMD's new flagship handheld CPU, the Ryzen Z2

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Extreme. This thing is nuts, you guys. 8 core 16thread CPU, 16 cores of RDNA 3.5

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graphics. Okay, yes, you'll be paying a lot for it. The starting price is $999,

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so $1,000 for the X. It's paired up with

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24 gigs of LPDDR5 memory, a 1 TB SSD to

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start with, a second USBC port that is Thunderbolt 4 compliant, enabling the

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use of external GPU enclosures, Thunderbolt docks, and high resolution

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external displays. And the performance difference is very noticeable, even

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doing mundane things like installing games. 1 and a half GB download speeds.

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Yes, please. As for the NonX,

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I don't know what to call this thing other than a massive disappointment.

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Guys, do not let AMD's naming

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scheme fool you here. The Z2A

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has nothing Z2 about it. This chip is

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essentially a mini update of the same Aith processor that first launched

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inside the Steam Deck 3 and 1/2 years ago. I mean, sure, they juiced it with

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another 5 watts of power, but guys, this is Zen 2 and RDNA2.

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Neither of which would be a huge problem if it was priced right, but as it

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stands, you can get a Steam Deck or even a Steam Deck OLED for less than these

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things. And then, if you love Windows handheld mode so much, you can just

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install that on it, making this

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Xbox a pretty tough cell, unless there are some surprises when it comes to

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performance. foreshadowing. Boom. Let's

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go. Now, to be clear, it does have

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advantages over the Steam Deck. The 1080p 120 Hz IPS type screen is the same

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one that is featured on the X variant. Although, it's worth noting it's also

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the same one that was featured on the original ROG Ally 2 and 1/2 years ago.

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It's solid, but I wouldn't have minded seeing an upgrade. With that said, the

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NonX is going to struggle to drive that resolution anyway, especially in more

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demanding games. Bringing us perfectly to performance, where

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surprisingly, the extra 5 watts gives

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the Xbox Ally a roughly 22% advantage

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over the Steam Deck in Cyberpunk at 720p. Huh, maybe this thing deserves to

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exist after all. And even at 15 watts,

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it still manages a 10% uplift in average

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FPS, likely thanks to its faster memory.

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Don't get too excited, though. While that percentage sounds pretty big, we're

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still only talking about 3 to 6 FPS more. So, it's unlikely that it's going

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to be the difference between h completely unplayable and smooth in

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demanding titles. What is though is upgrading to the Xbox Ally X. Would you

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look at that? Once again though, the

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advantage over the last generation Ally X is less than we'd like, especially

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since it's sucking back more juice to get that extra performance. As for the

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rest of our games, the general trend continues. Though, it is notable that in

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Grid Legends, MSI's Claw 8 AI Plus

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manages to marginally beat the Xbox LAX. And the same goes for Shadow of the Tomb

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Raider, where it tops and averages but loses in the allimportant minimum FPS.

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But come on, most of the devices we're looking at can do 1080p, not 720p. So

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why are we limiting ourselves? Well, for the same reason that Valve wisely opted

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for a 1280x 800 pixel panel on the Steam

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Deck. See, only the Xbox Alli X and the

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MSI Claw managed to maintain consolelike

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performance, reaching a consistent 30fps gaming experience in Cyberpunk. And for

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the claw, the story is not all positive. It was the reason that we couldn't

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include Red Dead Redemption in our results due to the anomalies that made

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it impossible for us to compare it to our other devices. Keep trying, Intel. I

200
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do really mean that, though. Then, in the rest of the games, the story remains

201
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much the same. Now that the Xbox Lax can really flex its more powerful GPU, it

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crushes the old ROG Liix when both of them are running in their maximum power

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profile. But there's an interesting subplot here that emerges when we turn

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down the power profiles. We found that running the new Liix in the lower 17watt

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power profile yielded about the same performance in Cyberpunk as the old X at

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full power. And that's no one-off. We got similar results in Shadow of the

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Tomb Raider as well. That means that while both the ROG Alli X and the ROG

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Xbox Alli X might have the same 80watth capacity battery, you can expect a lot

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more realworld play time out of the ROG Xbox if you typically game at 1080p

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without compromising on performance. By the way, can I take a moment to offer

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some constructive criticism on the naming of these new consoles? Microsoft,

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you couldn't name aim your way out of a wet paper bag, but we already knew that. So, Asus, it's you that I'm truly

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disappointed in. This is the Ally X2,

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and it really would have made everyone's lives better if you had just called

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it that. Anyh who, bad names aside, the icing on

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the cake here is that for the sake of compatibility with our benchmarks

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automation tools, we actually ran all of our tests in Windows desktop mode, not

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in the Xbox full screen experience. So, when you bring one of these home, I

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would bet money that they run even faster than the results we've shown

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today. How much faster? That seems like

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the sort of thing that the fox would investigate. So, I'm just going to optimistically link to his channel in

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the video description. He does great videos on handhelds. Coming back to

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battery life, the MSI claw managed to exceed 6 hours in our light gaming

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workload at 720p. That's enough for the lead, but both of the Alli X's are

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nipping on its heels at 5 hours and change. A surprise here for me was the

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Xbox Ally NonX, which managed almost 6

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hours. Though, it is worth noting that you cannot manually adjust SPL or

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sustained power limits on this thing. So, it's actually running at 6 watts

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rather than 8 watts. So, that's a little unfair.

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Let's crank things up now where there are two main takeaways. First, it's

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clear that the Xbox Liix and the older ROG Alli X are going to deliver similar

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battery life in similar power profiles. It's just a question of how much power

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you need and whether the ergonomics of the new package are enticing for you.

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The second thing that's clear is that the Steam Deck's smaller battery is

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holding it back in a big way compared to the Xbox Ally. The Steam Deck OLED does

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have a larger battery, but it wouldn't be enough to close this gap. Also, since

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we're on the subject, while we will be forever grateful to Valve for their work

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bringing handheld PCs and especially Linux gaming to the masses, the Deck

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also charges pretty slowly compared to the new hotness. Our LCD Steam Deck

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takes 3 hours to charge from zero to full, while our white Xbox charges in

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just over 90 minutes. At this point, I kind of feel like they should have just

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called this thing the Steam Deck Extreme. Actually, I'm kidding. We

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already made the Steam Deck Extreme. Nobody else needs to make one. And they

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probably won't need to make an Extreme version of the Xbox Ally either. The

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NonX hit a maximum of 65° with an

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average of just 54. And even though the X draws an extra 15 watts of power, and

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it did peak briefly at 90° in our testing, it hit an average of just 69°,

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which is pretty nice to see in a handheld like this. Bottom line then, is

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it finally time for me to replace my OG Ally that I actually upgraded the

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battery in rather than pay for the Alli X? And I got to say, when I saw the 720p

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results, I was underwhelmed. Yeah, the

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ergonomics, yeah, the convenient Xbox button, but like whatever. But I game at

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1080p like most people, and the difference in battery life while still

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providing a great 1080p mobile gaming experience has literally changed the way

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that I've used my handheld over the last week. I put probably 25 hours into the

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Elise Chronicles and almost all of that

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was away from the wall, not stressing about finding a charger and I'd have the

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ability to play heavier games that way as well. So, yeah, it's not an Xbox, but

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as a PC gamer who already loves my handheld PC and already accepts the

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crappy nonsubsidized PC pricing model,

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this is a clear step up from what we had before. It's not as big of a step up as

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we would have liked, and like basically everyone else, I was really hoping for a

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more Xboxike price to accompany the Xbox

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name. But with that said, based on the recent trajectory of Xbox pricing, maybe

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that would have been a monkey paw outcome. Anyway, it is worth noting that we didn't really investigate the Xbox

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LAX as a streaming device. Given the importance of Xbox Cloud Gaming to

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Microsoft, that probably seems like a huge omission. But I got to be honest

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with you guys, I didn't really feel like there was much to say. Like, yeah, it

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works fine. Of course it does. But if I wanted cloud gaming, there are cheaper,

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lighter devices that are better optimized for that, like the Logitech

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G-Cloud. If I want to game on local hardware though and I don't want to

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spend $2,000 or fight with Arc things,

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this is the play. The NonX, that's

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another story entirely. If this thing was price competitive with the LCD Steam

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Deck instead of being above the OLED, it'd be a no-brainer for anyone who's

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not married to the Dex trackpads, but it isn't. And regardless of why they're

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pricing it so high, it's a pretty tough pill to swallow at $600. I mean, they

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didn't even manage to sweeten the deal by including a 1 TBTE SSD. If only

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they'd had the foresight. Now, I just wish I had the foresight to write a

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better Segway to our sponsor. Or maybe I could have had the foresight to know I

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don't need one cuz this video is sponsored by Dbrand featuring their kill

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switch. I love doing Segways though. It's more

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like a killjoy. Check it out at shortlininus.com.

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If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out our unveiling of the Xbox Ally

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series. Or how about our original coverage of the Steam Deck? really has

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changed the handheld PC