Over the weekend, Microsoft held its big Summer Xbox Showcase, and during the event, it fully revealed and officially announced the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally handheld. This is what was initially thought to be the Xbox handheld before it was revealed that Microsoft was working on its own handheld in addition to this that it was working on with ASUS. ASUS also teased its Xbox-branded Ally earlier this year, and it even leaked well ahead of the June 8 announcement.
Part of the handheld was a surprise, but the design was leaked prior to the event, so there’s likely a good chunk of interested consumers who already knew what this device would look like. That being said, now the design is confirmed. In addition, with the full announcement out of the way, Xbox and ASUS have shared full details about the handheld, including specs and most features.
The ASUS ROG Xbox Ally handheld is still a Windows device
Before anyone gets super excited at the thought of an Xbox handheld, like a proper portable Xbox, this isn’t that. Not in the way that you might think. Based on Microsoft’s new marketing of Xbox, lots of things are Xboxes now. However, to be clear, this is not a handheld version of a console.
What it is is an updated version of the ROG Ally and ROG Ally X with the Xbox branding. There are some updated components. As well as what appears to be a user interface that’s potentially easier to deal with. That being said, it’s still a Windows 11 device. So, it will be able to do what the regular Ally models do. The main difference between this and the regular Ally models is that this has an “Xbox Full Screen Experience.” Think of this like the Armoury Crate section on the ROG Ally X. It aggregates all of your games from different PC clients and puts them in one place. Making them easily accessible from one location. It just looks like the Xbox app instead of ASUS’s own flavor of the library.
Microsoft also confirms that when you power on the Xbox ROG Ally, it boots directly into the Xbox Full Screen Experience. The benefit of this is that less memory and resources on the device are being used up by non-essential tasks. Letting the hardware focus more on delivering a great gaming experience.
Pricing and availability have not been announced yet
Almost everything about this device has been confirmed now, save for the release date and the price. Microsoft says that these details will be announced “soon,” but doesn’t give any other hints as to when. There are two models that will be available. The ROG Xbox Ally and the ROG Xbox Ally X.
The former comes in White, and the latter comes in Black. They also come with a different APU, different RAM, and different storage. The ROG Ally model comes with the AMD Ryzen Z2 A, along with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The ROG Ally X model comes with the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme, 24GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. Both feature contoured grips, 65W charging support, and the same size display and resolution. The refresh rate is the same at 120Hz as well. The ROG Xbox Ally X does have a bigger battery, however. It’s 80Wh compared to 60Wh.
