ROG Ally X Review: Very Good, With Caveats
Our full ROG Ally X review after two weeks of testing: measured performance, battery figures, and whether it is worth £799.
Daniel Reyes
Where it lands
The ROG Ally X is Asus's 2024 entry in a crowded gaming Hardware market, and at £799 it is competing against some of the strongest hardware we have tested. After a fortnight of daily use, the headline is straightforward: it delivers the fastest handheld we have measured.
In a sentence: Buy it for the fastest handheld we have measured. Think twice if this would bother you daily: windows on a handheld is still a poor fit.
In the hand
There is nothing experimental here, which is mostly to the ROG Ally X's credit. The detail worth calling out is that it ran 31 percent faster than the Steam Deck at the same wattage. Against the rest of the gaming Hardware category it feels considered rather than novel.
Performance
Our testing runs the same suite on every device so figures stay comparable across years. The figure worth quoting is Play time: 3h 10m in demanding titles. That places it comfortably above average for its price bracket.
| Specification | ROG Ally X |
|---|---|
| Display | 7in IPS, 120Hz, 500 nits |
| Chip | AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme |
| RAM | 24GB LPDDR5X |
| Storage | 1TB NVMe |
| Weight | 678g |
| Battery | 80Wh |
| Play time | 3h 10m in demanding titles |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent two weeks as the reviewer’s only games machine, across a fixed set of twelve titles. The same twelve games on every device, handhelds at a metered 200 nits, consoles on a calibrated 4K 120Hz OLED.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Play time | Battery life in three demanding titles at default settings, averaged, from full to shutdown. |
| Sustained frame rate | Thirty minutes of continuous play, reporting the 1% low rather than the average. |
| Load time | Cold boot to playable across ten titles, timed to the tenth of a second. |
| Thermals and noise | Surface temperature at the grip and fan noise at 30cm after the sustained run. |
| Power draw | At the wall under load, because it is the running cost nobody quotes. |
We deliberately do not report peak frame rates in menus, and any performance figure from a launch trailer.
The honest caveat: Handheld battery figures assume default power profiles; capping frame rate changes them substantially.
What we liked
- The fastest handheld we have measured
- The 80Wh battery doubles the original Ally
- It runs anything Windows runs, including Game Pass
Taken together, those strengths make it a natural fit for players who need Game Pass or a launcher Steam does not cover.
Where it falls short
- Windows on a handheld is still a poor fit
- The Armoury Crate launcher is slow and crash-prone
- It is £320 more than a Steam Deck OLED
None of these are dealbreakers on their own. Whether they matter depends entirely on how you intend to use it, which is why the section below matters more than the score.
How it compares
The closest alternatives on price are Legion Go and Ayaneo Air 1S. All three have been through the same tests, so the figures below are directly comparable rather than collected from different reviews.
| Model | Price | Our score | Standout | Weak point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ROG Ally X (this review) | £799 | 4 / 5 | The fastest handheld we have measured | Windows on a handheld is still a poor fit |
| Legion Go | £699 | 3 / 5 | The largest and highest resolution handheld screen at 8.8in 1600p | 854g is genuinely too heavy to hold comfortably |
| Ayaneo Air 1S | £649 | 3 / 5 | 450g makes it the only Windows handheld comfortable for long sessions | A 38Wh battery in a machine that can draw 30W |
Nothing at this price scored higher in our testing, which is the strongest argument for the ROG Ally X.
Is it worth the money?
At £799 the ROG Ally X asks £250 more than the category average of £549, against an average score of 3.9 out of 5 across the gaming Hardware we have tested. Its own 4 works out at roughly £200 per point. You are paying a premium for a genuinely better result, which is defensible if the fastest handheld we have measured is what you are buying it for.
If the budget is the binding constraint, the Xbox Series S at £249 is the floor we would still recommend — below that the compromises stop being ones you can live with.
Two weeks in
Two weeks in, the figure that stopped mattering was display — 7in IPS, 120Hz, 500 nits is more than adequate and you forget about it by the third day. What kept surfacing instead was that windows on a handheld is still a poor fit, which is easy to shrug off in a spec comparison and harder to ignore at 6pm on a Friday. On the other side, it ran 31 percent faster than the Steam Deck at the same wattage turns out to be the sort of detail you only appreciate after living with the alternative.
Who this is for
Buy the ROG Ally X if you are players who need Game Pass or a launcher Steam does not cover. Skip it if this is something you would notice every day: windows on a handheld is still a poor fit.
Buy it if:
- Players who need Game Pass or a launcher Steam does not cover
- You want the fastest handheld we have measured
- You value the 80Wh battery doubles the original Ally
Skip it if:
- You need windows on a handheld is still a poor fit to be a solved problem
- The Legion Go at £699 already covers what you need
- You upgraded within the last two years — the gap is not worth the outlay
Verdict
Buy it for the fastest handheld we have measured. Think twice if this would bother you daily: windows on a handheld is still a poor fit.
Score: 4 / 5 · £799 at the time of writing.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the gaming we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are ROG Ally X vs Ayaneo Air 1S: Is the 2024 Model Worth the Change? and ROG Ally X vs Legion Go: Is the 2024 Model Worth the Change?.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
