After plenty of rumours, ASUS make it official: The ROG Ally X is a decent upgrade on the original Ally with plenty of key changes to the battery, storage, and more.
Although many little details of a refreshed ROG Ally have been popping up over the past few weeks, we can now put the rumours and leaks behind us as we've got the official rundown of just what you need to know about this updated Republic of Gamers handheld from ASUS.
The company officially announced this new ROG Ally at Computex, a tech expo currently taking place in Taipei.
The new device, as expected, goes by the 'ROG Ally X' name — and although this sounds cool enough, it's worth noting that this isn't actually a full-blown follow up to the original 2023 portable gaming PC, and is instead more akin to something of a mid-gen refresh — updating several key elements and improving things marginally over the original vision.
So, what's new in the ROG Ally X? Well, the headlines are without doubt the improved battery, more storage, and more memory.
Jake Kulinski and Whitson Gordon of the ROG team explained all of the new changes with us.
The ROG Ally X comes with an 80 watt battery, which is double that of the original ROG Ally. It also comes with 1TB of storage, by default, up from the previous 512GB. The X also packs in 24GB of faster memory, this is up from the 16GB found in the original ASUS portable.
These nice bumps up are designed with 'power users' in mind — with ASUS clearly pitching this at those wanting the best of the best in this portable form factor.
"couldn't be prouder of this device" — Jake Kulinski
Due to all of the changes found within this new ROG Ally X — which yes, comes in black — the ASUS team had to completely redesign the layout of the motherboard.
This internal tinkering also allowed for changes to the thermals of the device — with new, smaller fans, sporting thinner blades — all of which is said to help improve the airflow of things.
But the changes in this updated device aren't only to the internals, as there are a few minor tweaks to the exterior of the device too.
ASUS shared that the device should now be more comfortable due to alterations made to the shape of the device. We haven't gone hands-on with the ROG Ally X just yet, but ASUS was keen to point out how this updated device now has improved ergonomics. This is down to not only small tweaks to the shape of the handheld, but also slight changes to the button layout, a more precise D-Pad, and improvements to the durability of the joystick module.
One more change — which may not be to the appeal of all — is the removal of the XG Mobile port found on the original Ally. This I/O change sees the XG Mobile port (used for connecting the handheld to desktop graphics cards) has been swapped out for a Thunderbolt 4 port. As such the XG Mobile port can now only be found on the original device, but the new handheld should now support eGPUs from other brands.
All nice improvements, which when put together seem to add up to a worthy improvement on the 2023 model.
The ROG Ally X will not be replacing the original ROG Ally, but instead will sit alongside it as a pricier option in the line up. Details on launch dates and final pricing is not yet confirmed (although plenty of rumours are putting it at a $799 price point).
In addition to the hardware changes found in the X, ASUS also outlined a new line of Ally accessories, and a future update for their Armoury Crate software — more on that here.
Kevin Wammer
Timo Schmidt