As someone who has spent the vast majority of my life playing handhelds with limited capabilities, being able to pull something out of my bag that can run Dark Souls 3, Cyberpunk 2077, or Skyrim without compromising what the game is and how it looks still feels magical. For me, handheld gaming PCs still aren’t commonplace enough to feel ordinary, so I don’t take for granted that I have, as the great Doctor Otto Octavius once said, “the power of the sun in the palm of my hands,” and by “sun” I mean my Steam, Xbox, and GOG game libraries.
Having said that, there are now enough of these devices that they’re starting to step on each other’s toes. The ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X are the latest entries into the handheld gaming PC world and, as far as toe-stepping goes, they’ve got steel-toed boots, and they are stomping.
As the name indicates, the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X are new versions of those same Asus devices that have been available for a few years now, except they align themselves with the Xbox brand. The thing is, there’s not much new about them, they are effectively the same hardware with Xbox branding, and what little is new is executed to various degrees of success.