It's hard for me to even understand what this is, let alone explain it to you. I
mean, Microsoft calls it an Xbox, but
it's plastered with ROG branding. You can't play the vast majority of your old
Xbox game library. And even the special sauce, the Xbox full screen experience
that runs over top of Windows feels like it could have just as easily been an app
that runs over top of Windows. But then, hey, I'm a PC gamer. So, this kind of
collaboration between the Xbox team who takes gaming very seriously and the
Windows team who takes, I don't know, telemetry very seriously, it's basically
what I've been asking Microsoft to do for years. And many of you watching
probably feel the same way. I mean, imagine it. The perfect fusion of the
game library and versatility of Windows gaming with the optimization and the
seamless, more affordable console experience of Xbox gaming in one perfect
device. Now, keep imagining that because
unfortunately, the ROG Xbox Ally isn't
it. That doesn't mean it's bad. It just
isn't what we were promised. What is bad though is Dbrand's treatment of me over
the years. What is it this time? Oh, a relatively simple assignment. I
just put one of their kill switch cases onto a handheld. Yay. No broken glass.
No saw traps.
Oh, good job, Dbrand. That is a very
open ventilation hole thing. No,
seriously. I mean, you don't want your case to affect your cooling. Wow. They
uh they really had to think about how to get this thing into a kill switch. That
slit's pretty smart. They may be ass, but they're smart ass, you know. I'm
sure there are instructions, and I'm Oh, wow. Yeah, this really doesn't seem
right. This little piece is full. Oh wow. Okay, there we go. Hey, not bad.
Nice little grip on there. Ribbed for your gaming pleasure. Includes a
kickstand, which how is it that this thing was so bulky and didn't manage to
include a kickst Nintendo managed to include a kickstand with the Switch.
Now we got a kickstand. Got a travel cover so you can keep your joysticks and
your screen safe when you're on the go. Although for your screen, you should probably just have a prism screen
protector anyway. And maybe the coolest thing is Dbrand is finally growing up.
Instead of taking an adversarial relationship with the makers of the
devices that they profit off of with their accessories, they're actually
certified designed for Xbox. Wow. Good
job, Dbrand. And there's a hidden SD card holder.
Where's that? >> Is that it?
>> Oh, yeah. And you can save $10 if you bundle it with a screen protector. No
code required. Check it out at shortlinus.com or at Best Buy in the US.
I'll get into all the benchmarks in a sec, but first there's something more
important than the hardware I'm holding today, and that's the software. In a lot
of ways, Windows handheld mode, it's not a whole lot different from the typical
Windows experience. You get Windows app compatibility, Windows game
compatibility, multitasking, co-pilot. So, good or bad, if it's in Windows, you
got it. So, then what exactly did they cut out? I don't know. But they weren't
kidding when they said that it is way more efficient. Now, 2 gigs of memory
savings might not sound like that big of a deal, but when our system memory is
also acting as our VRAM, it is a very
respectable amount to claw back. And it's especially important if you're on
an older Windows handheld or if you're on the nonX version that only has 16
gigs of memory. Not to mention the numerous other hardware downgrades that
we will get to later. Hey, we got quick resume.
Well, almost console-like. Also, classic
Windows. Don't be too surprised if your device randomly wakes up for a little
bit before going back to sleep. Not enough to drain your battery too much
over the course of a day, but if you leave it for a week, it might be dead by
the time you come back. kind of like a hamster. These complaints though aren't
meant to take away from the incredible work that the Xbox team has done here.
And the coolest part is that these optimizations are for everyone. If you
want to try the Xbox full screen experience, you can do it right now. No
purchase necessary. And I would recommend at least taking it for a test
drive. It's pretty slick. And if you've used the Xbox app before, it should feel
pretty familiar right out of the gate, except for the extra benefit of having
all your games in one location now, regardless of where they were purchased.
Kind of feels like a way better version of what Microsoft tried to do with that
cool games folder on Windows Vista. It's not perfect. I mean, just cuz you aren't
using the Steam interface doesn't mean that it doesn't need to run. So, waiting
around for Steam to launch and then dismissing all the annoying little pop-ups the first time you fire up a
Steam game, that's a distinctly Windows
experience here. But the only other real issue we encountered with the full
screen experience was occasionally the UI would get randomly stuck and then all
of our inputs would action at once. It does seem to happen less once the device
has been running for a while and we expect this to improve over time, but it
is something we saw, so it's something we have to mention. Other than that, it
is shockingly polished and complete feeling for launch software, social
features, store, cloud gaming, game pass. Uh, I mean, thanks to Armory
Crates overlay, you've even got things like built-in performance monitoring.
The only major thing missing is Xbox games. Modern ones, no problem.
Cross-platform play anywhere licenses have been common for years now. But if
you have a big digital library of older Xbox games, I'm sorry to say that a
bunch of them will not run on this device. And there were plenty of
comments on Xbox's reveal video asking, "Okay, well, how is this an Xbox then?"
And the truthful answer is, "I don't know." But, I mean, given that all it is
is just a mode for Windows 11 that happens to be launching on these new
devices that have Xbox branding on them, maybe that shouldn't be a surprise.
except that Microsoft kept shouting Xbox
every time the subject of the ROG Ally 2 came up. So, this is a completely
self-inflicted wound. On the subject of the Alli 2, sorry, excuse me, I mean the
ROG Xbox Alli X. Let's talk about the
hardware. This is a generational leap
both in terms of the internals and in terms of the design with the most
obvious change being the ergonomics. Let's start with the most controversial
change, the angled screen. I was pretty
skeptical about this one, but after using it for a week, I got to give them
credit. In a lot of cases, it's pretty great. If you ride the bus or you're a
distracted pedestrian who holds your device up in front of you like this, it
is more golden than the K-pop demon hunters. But if you lie on the floor or
on the couch or you sit with bad posture, you might find yourself wishing
that they'd left it flat or maybe even angled it the other way. And we've got a
couple of other little gripes, too. What was this? They went and flipped the menu
buttons. That's not awful on its own.
New users probably won't notice, and returning allies should get used to that
sort of thing pretty quickly. But guys,
the lower one on the right used to be a dedicated button for Armory Crate. So, I
never even noticed how much the placement sucks. Now that it's a button
that I need to use regularly,
why is this thumb stick in the way of reaching it? On the subject of thumbs
and buttons, I'm not too crazy about the face buttons. They do have a nice long
kind of desktop grade travel distance. I just wish they were a little bit less
wobbly. To ASUS's credit though, in just
about any position, the Erggo grips make this as comfortable, maybe even more
comfortable than any handheld we've tested before. And that is in spite of
the fact that it is heavier than most of them. Another huge improvement is the
thumb sticks. Seriously, like I handed this to my son and the first thing he
said was, "Wow, these are way better." And they also managed to squeeze impulse
triggers into the X and Hall effect triggers into the nonX. The thumb
sticks, by the way, are not Hall effect, but we did hear a rumor that a certain
someone might be making some nice TMR sticks for these bad boys. Oh, speaking
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
because both the price and the hardware are very different between these two.
Both have easily accessed screws, making it dead simple to get apart with my uh
precision screwdriver, ltstore.com,
and also maybe some help from my prying tool. Both have easily access screws.
And if you just get a little pry tool in here, you should be able to remove the
backing. Just like that. Just watch out for this ribbon cable. You don't want to
rip that. Now that we've movie magicked them both open, you can see both feature
a fulllength 80mm M.2 NVMe slot. And
oh, that's really nice. Ample clearance on the underside for a doublesided M.2
module. Hold on. At least that's definitely true of the X for the nonX.
I'm not sure. I might have to take this up. Today,
nobody is putting, you know, an 8 TBTE freaking double-sided SSD in this one
because if you're spending that kind of money on your SSD, you should probably just be getting the X. But in the
future, if you wanted to put a double-sided SSD in there, I think you
could probably get away with it. I would just be very curious to see the logic
for why this one needed this grounding strip attached to what appears to be a
pretty rudimentary heat spreader and this one didn't cuz it has a heat
spreading sticker. I always enjoy playing spot the differences between
cousin devices. Here's the power for the impulse triggers and here's the pad
where we don't need it over here. Also, the front chassis is apparently the same
other than the color. There's a lot of shared components here. You can see the
joystick modules back here are exactly the same as well as some of these little
daughter boards. But the biggest difference between the two is look at
the size of the SoC on the X. This thing
is loaded for bear with AMD's new flagship handheld CPU, the Ryzen Z2
Extreme. This thing is nuts, you guys. 8 core 16thread CPU, 16 cores of RDNA 3.5
graphics. Okay, yes, you'll be paying a lot for it. The starting price is $999,
so $1,000 for the X. It's paired up with
24 gigs of LPDDR5 memory, a 1 TB SSD to
start with, a second USBC port that is Thunderbolt 4 compliant, enabling the
use of external GPU enclosures, Thunderbolt docks, and high resolution
external displays. And the performance difference is very noticeable, even
doing mundane things like installing games. 1 and a half GB download speeds.
Yes, please. As for the NonX,
I don't know what to call this thing other than a massive disappointment.
Guys, do not let AMD's naming
scheme fool you here. The Z2A
has nothing Z2 about it. This chip is
essentially a mini update of the same Aith processor that first launched
inside the Steam Deck 3 and 1/2 years ago. I mean, sure, they juiced it with
another 5 watts of power, but guys, this is Zen 2 and RDNA2.
Neither of which would be a huge problem if it was priced right, but as it
stands, you can get a Steam Deck or even a Steam Deck OLED for less than these
things. And then, if you love Windows handheld mode so much, you can just
install that on it, making this
Xbox a pretty tough cell, unless there are some surprises when it comes to
performance. foreshadowing. Boom. Let's
go. Now, to be clear, it does have
advantages over the Steam Deck. The 1080p 120 Hz IPS type screen is the same
one that is featured on the X variant. Although, it's worth noting it's also
the same one that was featured on the original ROG Ally 2 and 1/2 years ago.
It's solid, but I wouldn't have minded seeing an upgrade. With that said, the
NonX is going to struggle to drive that resolution anyway, especially in more
demanding games. Bringing us perfectly to performance, where
surprisingly, the extra 5 watts gives
the Xbox Ally a roughly 22% advantage
over the Steam Deck in Cyberpunk at 720p. Huh, maybe this thing deserves to
exist after all. And even at 15 watts,
it still manages a 10% uplift in average
FPS, likely thanks to its faster memory.
Don't get too excited, though. While that percentage sounds pretty big, we're
still only talking about 3 to 6 FPS more. So, it's unlikely that it's going
to be the difference between h completely unplayable and smooth in
demanding titles. What is though is upgrading to the Xbox Ally X. Would you
look at that? Once again though, the
advantage over the last generation Ally X is less than we'd like, especially
since it's sucking back more juice to get that extra performance. As for the
rest of our games, the general trend continues. Though, it is notable that in
Grid Legends, MSI's Claw 8 AI Plus
manages to marginally beat the Xbox LAX. And the same goes for Shadow of the Tomb
Raider, where it tops and averages but loses in the allimportant minimum FPS.
But come on, most of the devices we're looking at can do 1080p, not 720p. So
why are we limiting ourselves? Well, for the same reason that Valve wisely opted
for a 1280x 800 pixel panel on the Steam
Deck. See, only the Xbox Alli X and the
MSI Claw managed to maintain consolelike
performance, reaching a consistent 30fps gaming experience in Cyberpunk. And for
the claw, the story is not all positive. It was the reason that we couldn't
include Red Dead Redemption in our results due to the anomalies that made
it impossible for us to compare it to our other devices. Keep trying, Intel. I
do really mean that, though. Then, in the rest of the games, the story remains
much the same. Now that the Xbox Lax can really flex its more powerful GPU, it
crushes the old ROG Liix when both of them are running in their maximum power
profile. But there's an interesting subplot here that emerges when we turn
down the power profiles. We found that running the new Liix in the lower 17watt
power profile yielded about the same performance in Cyberpunk as the old X at
full power. And that's no one-off. We got similar results in Shadow of the
Tomb Raider as well. That means that while both the ROG Alli X and the ROG
Xbox Alli X might have the same 80watth capacity battery, you can expect a lot
more realworld play time out of the ROG Xbox if you typically game at 1080p
without compromising on performance. By the way, can I take a moment to offer
some constructive criticism on the naming of these new consoles? Microsoft,
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
disappointed in. This is the Ally X2,
and it really would have made everyone's lives better if you had just called
it that. Anyh who, bad names aside, the icing on
the cake here is that for the sake of compatibility with our benchmarks
automation tools, we actually ran all of our tests in Windows desktop mode, not
in the Xbox full screen experience. So, when you bring one of these home, I
would bet money that they run even faster than the results we've shown
today. How much faster? That seems like
the sort of thing that the fox would investigate. So, I'm just going to optimistically link to his channel in
the video description. He does great videos on handhelds. Coming back to
battery life, the MSI claw managed to exceed 6 hours in our light gaming
workload at 720p. That's enough for the lead, but both of the Alli X's are
nipping on its heels at 5 hours and change. A surprise here for me was the
Xbox Ally NonX, which managed almost 6
hours. Though, it is worth noting that you cannot manually adjust SPL or
sustained power limits on this thing. So, it's actually running at 6 watts
rather than 8 watts. So, that's a little unfair.
Let's crank things up now where there are two main takeaways. First, it's
clear that the Xbox Liix and the older ROG Alli X are going to deliver similar
battery life in similar power profiles. It's just a question of how much power
you need and whether the ergonomics of the new package are enticing for you.
The second thing that's clear is that the Steam Deck's smaller battery is
holding it back in a big way compared to the Xbox Ally. The Steam Deck OLED does
have a larger battery, but it wouldn't be enough to close this gap. Also, since
we're on the subject, while we will be forever grateful to Valve for their work
bringing handheld PCs and especially Linux gaming to the masses, the Deck
also charges pretty slowly compared to the new hotness. Our LCD Steam Deck
takes 3 hours to charge from zero to full, while our white Xbox charges in
just over 90 minutes. At this point, I kind of feel like they should have just
called this thing the Steam Deck Extreme. Actually, I'm kidding. We
already made the Steam Deck Extreme. Nobody else needs to make one. And they
probably won't need to make an Extreme version of the Xbox Ally either. The
NonX hit a maximum of 65° with an
average of just 54. And even though the X draws an extra 15 watts of power, and
it did peak briefly at 90° in our testing, it hit an average of just 69°,
which is pretty nice to see in a handheld like this. Bottom line then, is
it finally time for me to replace my OG Ally that I actually upgraded the
battery in rather than pay for the Alli X? And I got to say, when I saw the 720p
results, I was underwhelmed. Yeah, the
ergonomics, yeah, the convenient Xbox button, but like whatever. But I game at
1080p like most people, and the difference in battery life while still
providing a great 1080p mobile gaming experience has literally changed the way
that I've used my handheld over the last week. I put probably 25 hours into the
Elise Chronicles and almost all of that
was away from the wall, not stressing about finding a charger and I'd have the
ability to play heavier games that way as well. So, yeah, it's not an Xbox, but
as a PC gamer who already loves my handheld PC and already accepts the
crappy nonsubsidized PC pricing model,
this is a clear step up from what we had before. It's not as big of a step up as
we would have liked, and like basically everyone else, I was really hoping for a
more Xboxike price to accompany the Xbox
name. But with that said, based on the recent trajectory of Xbox pricing, maybe
that would have been a monkey paw outcome. Anyway, it is worth noting that we didn't really investigate the Xbox
LAX as a streaming device. Given the importance of Xbox Cloud Gaming to
Microsoft, that probably seems like a huge omission. But I got to be honest
with you guys, I didn't really feel like there was much to say. Like, yeah, it
works fine. Of course it does. But if I wanted cloud gaming, there are cheaper,
lighter devices that are better optimized for that, like the Logitech
G-Cloud. If I want to game on local hardware though and I don't want to
spend $2,000 or fight with Arc things,
this is the play. The NonX, that's
another story entirely. If this thing was price competitive with the LCD Steam
Deck instead of being above the OLED, it'd be a no-brainer for anyone who's
not married to the Dex trackpads, but it isn't. And regardless of why they're
pricing it so high, it's a pretty tough pill to swallow at $600. I mean, they
didn't even manage to sweeten the deal by including a 1 TBTE SSD. If only
they'd had the foresight. Now, I just wish I had the foresight to write a
better Segway to our sponsor. Or maybe I could have had the foresight to know I
don't need one cuz this video is sponsored by Dbrand featuring their kill
switch. I love doing Segways though. It's more
like a killjoy. Check it out at shortlininus.com.
If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out our unveiling of the Xbox Ally
series. Or how about our original coverage of the Steam Deck? really has
changed the handheld PC