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.
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,
two 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 non-X version that only has 16 gigs
of memory, not to mention the numerous other hardware downgrades that we will get to later.
Another nice feature I really appreciate is the shutdown confirmation. Before, if you accidentally
held the power button down, maybe you're gaming in a weird position, it would just turn off like a
PC. Now, you get this nice little slide down to confirm. It really makes it feel more console-like,
and speaking of console-like, hey, we got a 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 the 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. It 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 because 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,
I mean, thanks to Armory Crate's 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, 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 Ally 2, sorry, excuse me, I mean, the ROG Xbox Ally 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 gotta 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 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 thumbstick 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 Ergo 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 thumbsticks. 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
non-X. The thumbsticks, 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 teardown, 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 precision screwdriver,
lttstore.com, and also maybe some help from my prying tool. Both have easily accessed 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
moved the magic to them both open, you can see both feature a full length 80 millimeter m.2
NDME slot and, oh, oh, that's really nice. Ample clearance on the underside for a double-sided
m.2 module. Oh, hold on. At least that's definitely true of the X for the non-X. I'm not sure I might
have to take this up. Today, nobody is putting, you know, an eight terabyte 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 because 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. Eight cores, 16 thread CPU,
16 cores of our DNA 3.5 graphics. Okay, yes, you'll be paying a lot for it. The starting price is
999, so a thousand US dollars for the X. It's paired up with 24 gigs of LPDDR5 memory, a 1TB SSD
to start with, a second USB-C 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. One and a half gigabit
download speeds? Yes, please. As for the non-X, I don't know what to call this thing other than
a massive disappointment. Guys, do not let AMD's bullshit naming scheme fool you here.
The Z2A has nothing Z2 about it. This chip is essentially a mini update of the same
Ayrith processor that first launched inside the Steam Deck three and a half years ago. I mean,
sure, they juiced it with another five watts of power, but guys, this is ZEN2, an 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 sell unless there are some surprises when it comes to performance. Four
shadowing. Boom, let's go! Now, to be clear, it does have advantages over the Steam Deck.
The 1080p 120Hz 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 two and a half
years ago. It's solid, but I wouldn't have minded seeing an upgrade. With that said, the non-X is
going to struggle to drive that resolution anyway, especially in more demanding games,
bringing us perfectly to performance where, surprisingly, the extra five watts gives the
Xbox ally a roughly 22% advantage over the Steam Deck in Cyberpunk at 720p. Oh, 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 three to six FPS more, so it's unlikely that it's going
to be the difference between 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 eight AI plus manages to marginally beat the Xbox ally X,
and the same goes for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, where it tops in averages but loses in the all
important 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
1280 by 800 pixel panel on the Steam Deck. See, only the Xbox ally X and the MSI claw managed to
maintain console-like performance, reaching a consistent 30 FPS gaming experience in Cyberpunk.
And for the claw, the story's 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 ally X can really flex its more powerful GPU,
it crushes the old ROG ally X 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 ally X in the lower 17 watt power profile yielded about the same performance
in Cyberpunk as the old ally 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 ally X and the ROG Xbox
ally X might have the same 80 watt hour capacity battery, you can expect a lot more real world
playtime out of the ROG Xbox ally X 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 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 f***ing called it that. Anywho,
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 six hours in our light gaming workload at 720p. That's enough
for the lead, but both of the ally Xs are nipping on its heels at five hours in change. A surprise
here for me was the Xbox ally non X, which managed almost six 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 six Watts rather than eight 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 ally X and the older ROG ally 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 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 three 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 non-X hit a
maximum of 65 degrees 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 degrees in our testing, it hit an average of just 69 degrees,
which is pretty nice to see in a handheld like this. Bottom line, is it finally time for me
to replace my OG ally that I actually upgraded the battery in rather than pay for the ally X?
And I gotta 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 Middle East 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, non subsidized 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 Xbox like 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 LIX as a streaming device.
Given the importance of Xbox cloud gaming to Microsoft, that probably seems like a huge
omission. But I gotta be honest with you guys, I didn't really feel like there was much to say.
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 Ark things, this is the play.
The Nodex, 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 Deck's track pads. 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 one terabyte SSD. If only they'd had the foresight. Now I just wish I had the foresight
to write a better segue to our sponsor. 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? It really has changed
the handheld PC space.