Right behind the new Lenovo Legion Go 2 PC gaming handheld, the ROG Xbox Ally X ($999) follows up on Asus' 2024 Editors' Choice-award-winning ROG Ally X with a deep Xbox collaboration. Unlike the iterative Legion Go 2, the ROG Xbox Ally X reimagines the Ally's design, here with controller grips resembling an Xbox gamepad. Microsoft used this partnership to debut its brand-new Xbox full-screen experience layered over Windows 11, and it is mostly successful at replicating the Xbox interface for handheld console screens.

While the ROG Xbox Ally X’s most exciting software features are delayed to a 2026 update, the Xbox Ally X’s plush feel, potent performance, and promising future are tough to deny. Even if the price—still cheaper than Legion Go 2!—gives you pause, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X is the new best handheld gaming PC, earning our Editors' Choice award. Early adopters should prepare for some bumps, but this is the peak for Windows-based gaming handhelds, at least for now.

Design and Configurations: The First Handheld Xbox

You’ll quickly realize that the Xbox Ally X design stands out, and you can see that right away in its shape. Contoured grips inspired by Xbox controllers frame the console, complete with impulse triggers. It feels like holding a wide Xbox controller in my hand, and it’s easily the most comfortable gaming handheld I’ve tested.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Measuring 1.9 by 11.4 by 4.7 inches (HWD), it’s about as wide as a Steam Deck OLED. Regarding weight, we’re looking at about 1.5 pounds, which is far lighter than the Lenovo Legion Go 2 but not quite as light as the Steam Deck OLED’s 1.4 pounds.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Make no mistake—the Xbox Ally X is a premium device. It doesn’t feel like two ends of a controller glued onto a tablet screen like the PlayStation Portal, even if that’s essentially what’s going on here. Thanks to the controller grips, the weight is strategically distributed, so it feels lighter than you’d think and is especially easy on your hands and wrists. It feels like a real evolution in design compared with the previous Asus ROG Ally and Asus ROG Ally X.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

That comfort and grip make playing faster, action-oriented games easier. For example, I’ve been playing the Gears of War remaster, and I can maintain the same amount of control as I do with an Xbox controller. I can’t say the same when playing on the much bulkier Legion Go 2. The Xbox Ally X also runs much quieter than the Legion Go 2, even with the fans on turbo mode.

When it comes to the handheld’s looks, while it’s not an Xbox in the traditional sense, it’s clear that this collaboration is a point of pride for both Asus and Microsoft. From the Asus ROG logo on the backside to the words “Xbox ROG” trickling down the system’s face like the code from The Matrix, not to mention the new Xbox button that launches the Xbox Game Bar, Xbox's branding and the existing ROG Ally design language seamlessly blend.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Turning to the screen, we’re looking at a 1080p 7-inch IPS touch screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. The system supports variable refresh rates by way of AMD FreeSync Premium. However, some caveats: First, this is not an OLED, so it lacks the vibrant colors and deep blacks those screens are known for. The Xbox Ally X screen also has no support for HDR, a feature even the Nintendo Switch 2 had at launch. (Though, at a glance, it does seem like it gets much brighter than the Switch 2.)

The screen size is much smaller than the Legion Go 2 (8.8 inches), the Legion Go S (8 inches), and even the Switch 2 (7.9 inches). With the panel's max brightness of 500 nits, you’ll likely have no issues seeing most games. Playing Hollow Knight: Silksong, for example, looks exceptional, with its colorful, painterly backdrops popping well against the screen, and Forza Horizon 5’s recreation of Mexico is breathtaking on the small screen. But darker games, like Resident Evil 4 or Baldur’s Gate III, don't fare as well without cranking up the screen’s brightness. It’s hard to return to a smaller 7-inch screen, and even harder to return to a non-OLED panel, but the screen looks smooth and sharp in almost every situation.

Asus equipped the Xbox Ally X with 24GB of DDR5 memory and a 1TB M.2 solid-state drive. Two USB-C ports line the top of the handheld (one USB-C 3.2 and one USB4), both supporting Power Delivery 3.0 and DisplayPort 2.1 output. The USB4 port is also Thunderbolt-compatible. A 3.5mm headphone jack also makes an appearance (placed at the top, where it should be, unlike the Legion Go 2’s), as does a microSD card reader, which supports SD, SDXC, and SDHC formats.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

While the ROG Xbox Ally X is Asus and Microsoft's flagship product for this lineup, the duo will sell an entry-level version, called simply the Asus ROG Xbox Ally. This more-affordable, all-white alternative will have a lower-power AMD Ryzen Z2 A processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD for $599.99. (That model also lacks USB4 and has a smaller 60Whr battery, versus the Xbox Ally X's 80Whr one.) This cheaper model is optimized for 720p play, unlike the Xbox Ally X, which aims for a 900p-to-1080p experience across games.

Interface: What Is the Xbox Full-Screen Experience?

What do your PC, phone, and TV have in common? According to Microsoft, they’re all Xboxes. The Asus ROG Xbox Ally X is the latest device to join Xbox’s growing family, according to Redmond. And while it’s not an Xbox in the traditional sense, it’s the closest thing we’ve got to a mobile one.

Asus' Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X are the first handhelds to introduce the Xbox full-screen experience. This interface is Microsoft’s attempt to bring the Xbox console experience to handhelds. It's also Xbox’s shot across the bow at SteamOS, aggregating your game library across all the PC storefronts and making navigating easier with the control sticks and face buttons rather than using a mouse, a keyboard, or a touch screen. 

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

In some ways, the Xbox full-screen experience is not so different from what Asus Armoury Crate and Lenovo Legion Space have done on other PC handhelds. (In fact, Asus Armoury Crate is still on board.) Still, the Xbox interface is just so much easier to navigate, and better-looking, too. I like that all I have to do is press the newly added Xbox Button to bring up the Xbox overlay, which lets me bounce easily among games and storefronts, capture clips, and join parties with friends, just like on my Xbox or PC.

The new Ally X can access virtually your entire library of Xbox games. In addition to natively playing your Xbox games from your device, you’ll also have access to the massive Xbox Game Pass library of games (assuming you have an Xbox Game Pass subscription). You can tap into Xbox Remote Play to stream games directly from your Xbox console and Xbox Cloud Gaming, which lets you stream your Xbox library to your handheld on the go using Wi-Fi.

But the Xbox full-screen experience is more than just the Xbox App. The Xbox Ally X is a Windows 11 handheld, similar to the Legion Go 2, the Lenovo Legion Go, the MSI Claw, and previous Ally consoles. But unlike those consoles, the Xbox full-screen experience pushes Windows 11 into the background. The overlay cuts all Windows processes to the most essential to maximize game performance.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

It’s similar to how Valve's SteamOS tucks the Linux desktop away. As I uncovered while testing the Legion Go S (Z2 Go, SteamOS), Windows 11 can weigh down game performance significantly. While I wish you could ditch Windows 11 entirely, the Xbox full-screen experience makes it so you don’t have to interact with it as much as you did on the previous model.

While in Xbox mode, you can access your Steam, Epic Games Library, GOG, and, of course, your Xbox libraries through the full-screen experience. However, it’s not foolproof, and even in my testing with the pre-release build, I found more than a few bugs and glitches that made navigation annoying.

One weird glitch would force Steam to open every time I pressed the Xbox Guide Button on the desktop, and other times the system didn’t recognize that I was trying to enter my PIN to unlock the system. Switching between the desktop and Xbox full-screen experience requires a reset to optimize performance. Sometimes the system would just lock up and need a hard reset, and one time it locked up so badly that my only choice was to let the battery run its course. I trust that the bugs will be squashed by the time consoles reach players' hands, and for the most part, playing games across platforms and swapping between them was a mostly painless process.

The Xbox Handheld Compatibility Program: Setting Expectations for Playability

Taking a page from the Steam Deck’s compatibility program, Xbox will introduce the Handheld Compatibility Program. Scrolling through your library, you’ll see two distinct badges that make it easier to tell which games are optimized or mostly compatible with your ROG Xbox Ally. If you spot the "Handheld Optimized" tag, you’re golden. On the flip side, the "Mostly Compatible" tag means you’ll likely have to fiddle with settings before you can get to gaming. It's similar to how Steam lists if a game is Steam Deck verified or compatible.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

To better understand how games will run on your device, you’ll also find a Windows Performance Fit indicator that reflects expected performance on your Ally X. Games that carry the “Should play great” designation will average 60 frames per second (fps) or better. In contrast, games marked with the “should play well” label should average 30fps or better. These additions should help everyone adjust their performance expectations, as some games are just too powerful for even this well-endowed handheld.

Another feature worth mentioning is advanced shader delivery, allowing select games to launch up to 10 times faster, run smoother, and use less battery on first play. Gears of War: Reloaded is one such title, and more will follow.

The CPU: What Is the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme?

The Asus ROG Xbox Ally employs a variant of AMD's Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor that powers the Legion Go 2. The Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme has a similar configuration to the non-AI variant: It leverages AMD’s “Zen 5” technologies on the CPU side and delivers 16 RDNA 3.5 graphics cores for GPU acceleration. But the major difference here is that the new Z2 chip includes a dedicated neural processor (NPU) rated for up to 50 trillion AI operations per second (TOPS). 

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The NPU on board offloads AI tasks from the CPU and GPU. One of the Xbox Ally X’s new features is Gaming Copilot, accessed in the Xbox Game Bar. Like Microsoft Copilot for Windows 11, the Gaming Copilot will provide game recommendations and help you pull up information on your game. So, if you get stuck in a game, you can use the gaming assist to search for information on what to do next.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Perhaps the NPU's Automatic Super Resolution (Auto SR) will be more widely applicable. Auto SR is a system-level feature that uses the NPU's power to upscale games running at lower resolutions, like AMD's FSR, freeing up more resources for graphics rendering. However, this feature is unavailable and scheduled for release early next year.

In fact, a few other promised features, including highlight reels created by AI, improved save reliability in low-power mode, and a game save sync indicator, will be added via an update sometime in 2026. The full-screen experience will also come to other PC gaming handhelds next year.

Testing: How Does the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme Perform?

Like the Legion Go 2, I’ve split our performance testing into two parts: Our productivity/content creation/synthetic graphics tests as one set (and compared against one group of systems) are first. Then, our gaming benchmarks follow, charted against a host of recent PC gaming handhelds instead. I've also outlined some additional anecdotal game testing I did outside of our formal tests to give you an idea of real-world gameplay across various game genres.

The first set includes a few gaming handhelds and a new, like-priced gaming laptop, the MSI Katana 15 HX ($999 as tested). The more directly comparable gaming handhelds include the Ryzen Z2 Go/Windows version of the Lenovo Go S ($599 as tested), the Asus ROG Ally X ($799.99 as tested), the MSI Claw 8 AI+ ($899.99 as tested), and the Legion Go 2 ($1,349 as tested). Let's get into those numbers first.

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC's storage throughput. Three more tests we rely on are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.

In these comparisons, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X tussled with the Legion Go 2 in most tests, though the difference between the handhelds is mostly slight. The PCMark Full System Drive benchmark, which evaluates storage performance using simulated real-world tasks like booting the system, launching applications, and copying files, revealed either a problem or an anomaly. The Xbox Ally X performed even worse in this test than its predecessor. However, we suspect an incompatibility of some kind with the test (i.e., not the system's fault), so we didn’t publish the numbers. We’ve contacted Asus and Microsoft, and will update our review once we resolve the issue and can produce a sensible score.

You can’t expect miracles from the handheld machines, but the additional cores and threads certainly helped the Z2 Extreme variants outperform the base-level Z2 Go and even keep pace with the MSI Katana 15 HX. With a monitor, mouse, and keyboard attached via a USB hub dock, you can use the ROG Xbox Ally X to complete basic work between play sessions.

Graphics Tests

Ordinarily, we challenge each reviewed system’s graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. The first two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The second pair, Steel Nomad's regular (4K) and Light (1440p) subtests, focuses on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. A fifth test, Solar Bay, emphasizes ray-tracing performance. Some systems here could not run all five of these tests, so Wild Life Extreme and Steel Nomad results have been omitted from the charts below due to lack of data.

It’s no surprise that the MSI Katana 15 HX blew the competition out of the water, thanks to its discrete GPU. When it comes to the handhelds, however, both the ROG Xbox Ally X and Legion Go 2 remained in lockstep, with the Intel-based MSI Claw 8 AI+ cleanly beating both in the 3DMark Wild Life benchmark. Like the Legion Go 2, the ROG Xbox Ally X is a capable polygon-pushing machine considering the form factor.

Formal AAA Gaming Tests

Moving on to our real-world gaming benchmarks, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X takes on most of the Legion Go family, including the Legion Go 2, a variety of Go S models, and the Steam Deck OLED. For our formal benchmarking, we dropped our usual Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and F1 2024 benchmarks and employed benchmark tools from Cyberpunk 2077, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Guardians of the Galaxy to help evaluate performance across all the current Legion Go handhelds, as well as Valve's Steam Deck.

Each console was tested in the device's performance mode while plugged directly into power, with the only difference being the resolution. (The Steam Deck screen is 800p, the Legion Go S models and Legion Go 2 are 1200p, and the ROG Xbox Ally X is 1080p.) Finally, we take a look at some popular titles for some anecdotal testing. All results are measured in fps. Also, every game tested on the ROG Xbox Ally X was launched via the Xbox full-screen experience.

For our first test, we examine Cyberpunk 2077. Using the Steam Deck graphics preset, as shown in the chart, the Xbox Ally X came in around what we observed on the Legion Go S (Z1 Extreme, SteamOS) and the Lenovo Legion Go 2. It easily trumped the Z2 Go models with or without Windows and comfortably cruised past the Steam Deck.

Moving on to the Ultra and Ray-Tracing benchmarks, the Xbox Ally X slightly won out on Ultra, but for the most part, landed in a nearly identical spot as the Legion Go 2. Cyberpunk is CPU- and GPU-intensive, and the AI Z2 Extreme has the same threads and cores as the Z2 and Z1 Extreme. The Xbox full-screen experience, cutting Windows 11’s processes to the bare necessities, may have helped eke out a few extra frames, but overall, we’re looking at similar results to the Z2 and Z1 Extreme.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Running the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark suggested that the Xbox full-screen experience may slightly boost performance after all. The Xbox Ally X averaged ahead of the Legion Go S (Z1 Extreme, SteamOS) and markedly faster than the Legion Go 2.

Onto the Guardians of the Galaxy test. Here’s where the Go 2 flexed its muscle, reporting speeds well above the Legion Go S (Z1 Extreme, SteamOS) and other consoles. However, the Xbox Ally X seems to have handily won this strongman competition.

Why did the numbers shake out like this? We know that Windows 11 incurs some real performance overhead on resource-limited systems. While the Xbox Ally X doesn’t eliminate Windows outright, eliminating as many background processes as possible seemingly shows performance benefits in some games. Of course, an ROG Xbox Ally X that excises Windows 11 entirely would likely be even faster. However, for many customers, Windows 11 is a plus, and even with it, the Xbox Ally X was a top performer here, beating out the Legion Go 2 in most cases.  

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

After some formal benchmarking, I also ran various games to give a realistic idea of the type of performance you can expect from this console. The games on my list include popular releases like Baldur’s Gate III, Coral Island, Hades II, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Forza Horizon 5, Gears of War: Reloaded, and Resident Evil 4 (2023)—and the results are impressive. In particular, games like Forza Horizon 5 and Gears of War: Reloaded impressed me the most, with high refresh rates at the full 1080p resolution.

Battery Testing

The Xbox Ally X2 has an 80Whr battery, bigger than the Lenovo Legion Go 2's 74Whr battery, the Lenovo Legion Go S's 55.5Whr battery, and the Steam Deck OLED’s 50Whr battery. Asus doesn’t list an estimated battery endurance per charge, but we’ve seen devices like these usually last for approximately three to 12 hours on a charge, depending on the use case.

For all-out play, battery life depends on the game you’re playing. A graphically intensive game will likely draw more power than something simple. We set the system to 50% brightness and 100% volume, deactivated all the Dim Display and Sleep options, and turned the device on Airplane mode. We set each system's power profile to Performance. Using Cyberpunk’s Steam Deck preset, I left the game idle and found it lasted for 2 hours and 58 minutes.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

In addition, we test each system's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We ensure the battery is fully charged, with Wi-Fi and additional RGB backlighting turned off before the test. I chose the silent operating mode (13W) for my testing. Under these settings, the Xbox Ally X tapped out at 13 hours and 42 minutes.

The larger battery benefited the Xbox Ally X here, beating out the Legion Go when it comes to both video playback (11 hours and 4 minutes) and real gameplay (2 hours and 11 minutes). While different games will tax the system battery more or less, overall, the Xbox Ally X packs more than enough juice for a commute to the office or even a short flight.