Asus ROG Ally X
Asus has refreshed the design of the original ROG Ally, bringing with it a new color, a bigger battery, and upgraded storage and ports. It’s called the ROG Ally X, and Asus has created it for enthusiasts.
There is a reason I gave the ROG Ally X a high score of 9/10 for my review, and that’s because it is easily the best PC gaming handheld that launched this year. Sure, there are plenty of great options to choose from, like the Steam Deck or the Legion Go, but I find the ROG Ally X offers the most polish and the best performance, ensuring I can play my games how I want to play them, whether that is at the native 1080p resolution, or scaled up from 720p to ensure even demanding AAAs are an option.
The only real issue here is that perfection doesn’t come cheap. But since we’re a stone’s toss from Black Friday, plenty of sales are already out there, and one such sale is for the ROG Ally X; even though the X model isn’t even a year old, you can snap the 1TB model up for $700, which is $100 off the retail price. Frankly, that’s nothing to sneeze at when you’re looking to purchase the best of the best.
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The ROG Ally X is basically everything I wanted from a refresh of the gaming handheld
Enthusiasts assemble, this one’s for you
What’s great about the ROG Ally X gaming handheld
You won’t find anything better
The perk at the top of my list is that the ROG Ally X offers a 16:9 screen. This is important so that games actually fill the screen space, unlike the Steam Deck, where plenty of games don’t support 16:10. So if you can’t stand letterboxing, the ROG Ally X is for you. While I personally find playing games at the native 1080p resolution a little too demanding for most games, Asus offers a slick feature called RIS, which is image sharpening, and I tend to apply it to games that I play at 720p to ensure sharp text on the 1080p screen despite the fact I’m not playing at the native resolution of the screen.
Better yet, there are more options to ensure your games look the best, with settings like RSR, which can upscale games from 720p to 1080p, another way to play demanding games without having to waste performance on a large resolution displayed on a small 7-inch screen, instead, spending that performance on upscaling, so things look native despite the fact they are being rendered at a lower res.
You should also consider the improved controls that come with the ROG Ally X, as the D-pad and trigger buttons have been reworked from the standard ROG Ally model, making for a much more comfortable device to hold (when it comes to pressing the triggers) to one that is much more precise, thanks to a D-pad that can now take on even the most complicated fighting games.
As a lifetime gamer and a huge fan of handhelds, for me, the ROG Ally X is the best PC gaming handheld currently available, and today, you can snap one up for $700, saving $100 while ensuring you’ll have an exceptional Christmas filled with gaming. And with Black Friday right around the corner, it’s unlikely we’ll see the ROG Ally X go any lower, so now is the time to jump.
