Customer Ratings & Reviews

The purchasing process was extraordinarily simple, the purchase confirmation was timely, and the delivery time was more than adequate. And the above, without considering that the item had a discount of $100

Great system, and pretty easy to learn to use even being a beginner. Would definitely recommend.

I’ve had the original ROG Ally (Z1 Extreme) since launch day last year and I’ve been generally happy with it despite its battery life and well-documented SD card slot issues. The originally Ally seemed like a slightly rushed attempt from ASUS to get a device into the increasingly competitive gaming handheld market. The new ROG Ally X should not be viewed as a major upgrade to the original model. Rather, it is a refinement — it represents what I think ASUS should have launched last year, with some major quality-of-life improvements and minimal performance gains. Unfortunately, even this new model at least one widespread quality control issue that ASUS will have to work to fix. === SETUP === - Setting up the ROG Ally X is essentially like setting up a Windows laptop or desktop, but the major drawback is that there are a TON of updates out of the box that must be installed. And the updates are in multiple places: Windows Update, the Armoury Crate app, the MyASUS app, and probably some other places that I’m forgetting. Just be sure to allow at least 30 minutes to set up the device and apply updates. - Armoury Crate continues to act as the central location for system settings and your game library on the ROG Ally X. The app seems slightly refined on this new model, with the most commonly used screens and settings more readily accessible. - Users who aren’t familiar with PC gaming might feel overwhelmed when trying to tweak the various settings on the Ally X to ensure optimal performance. This is partly because the most important settings are located in multiple places: Armoury Crate, the AMD Radeon GPU driver software, and Windows settings. In addition to this, you’ll need to research (or at least play around with) the in-game graphics/performance settings for every game to find a good balance of visual quality and performance (FPS). Unlike a game console, this is not a set-it-and-forget-it kind of device. === DESIGN AND COMFORT === - The Ally X is noticeably heavier than the original Ally, but it doesn’t feel *too* heavy. It feels just right, thanks in large part to the more ergonomic handgrips that are much easier to grip for long periods of time. The handgrips are ever so slightly thicker and more contoured at the edges. The differences are minor at first glance, but they feel so much better in the hand. - I’m glad that the Ally X comes in black — the white color of the original Ally was always very distracting to me while gaming. The is RGB lighting around each joystick is basically identical to the original Ally and can be customized or turned off via Armoury Crate. They look nice, but they also flash or pulse even when the device is in standby mode, which can be distracting. - On the Ally X, ASUS greatly reduced the size of the rear paddles, so they are much harder to press by accident (thank you, ASUS!). The joysticks also have a slightly tighter, more premium feeling to them. - Other notable design changes/improvements: The Ally X now supports up to 100W charging (though only a 65W adapter is included); it now supports full-size, M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs, allowing for easy and cheap SSD upgrades (potentially up to 8 TB); and the XG Mobile external GPU connector is gone and has been replaced with a second USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 capability. - The SD card slot — easily the most controversial part of the original ROG Ally — has been moved from the left side of the device to the right side. It remains to be seen whether this redesign will solve the Ally’s SD card problems, but I have not had any issues with it in my 1 week of using the device. - The Ally X has the same 1080p, 500-nit, 120Hz screen as the original model. It’s a great screen, but I still think I would have preferred an OLED panel, even if it meant a slightly lower refresh rate. === PERFORMANCE === - The Ally X has the same Z1 Extreme chip as the original Ally, but this time, ASUS has included 24GB of faster LPDDR5X RAM, with 8GB allocated by default to the GPU. This alone results in some performance gains, but it’s not a drastic difference compared to the original model. In the Armoury Crate app, you can adjust how much RAM is dedicated to the GPU. - Since I still own the original Ally, I was able to compare the performance of both models running the same games. I ran all of these games rendering at 720p with medium presets on Turbo mode. Resident Evil 4 (Ally X: 58 FPS; Original Ally: 54 FPS); Cyberpunk 2077 (Ally X: 46 FPS; Original Ally 43 FPS); God of War (Ally X: 58 FPS; original Ally: 53 FPS). - So yes, there are marginal performance gains across most games, but it is barely noticeable in most use cases. I will probably be able to squeeze out a bit more performance by further tweaking the in-game settings and AMD driver settings, but the point stands: don’t upgrade to the Ally X expecting some massive leap in gaming performance. It just isn’t there. - Now for the bad part: there is a very annoying issue with the Ally X that causes the rumble/vibration motor to constantly stay activated while gaming. If you fire a weapon or perform some other action in a game that would normally cause a brief controller vibration, the Ally X vibrates - but it just keeps on vibrating and does not stop. The only way to stop the vibration is to pause the game or switch to the Windows desktop, and then go back into the game. My initial research on various forums indicates that this is a widespread issue. ASUS needs to address this ASAP with a firmware update, because it makes gaming almost impossible if you leave the rumble feature turned on. === BATTERY LIFE === - One of my biggest complains with the original Ally was that you basically had to be near a power outlet or an external battery pack if you wanted to game while traveling. Somehow, ASUS has managed to double the capacity of the battery in the Ally X without adding significant bulk or weight. The original Ally had a 40Wh battery; the Ally X has an 80Wh battery. - With the original Ally, I was rarely able to get more than 90 minutes of battery life. With the Ally X, I have been able to use it for more than 3 hours on battery while running games on “Performance” mode. To take advantage of this beefier battery, ASUS has even increased the total power draw in Performance mode from 15W to 17W, resulting in small but noticeable performance gains while gaming on battery. - Long story short: the battery life problems of the original Ally are largely a thing of the past with the Ally X. But I still wouldn’t leave home without a fast USB-C charger. === OVERALL === The ROG Ally X is what the original Ally should have been. It is not an Ally 2.0 nor does it offer any significant new features or performance gains — so most users of an original Ally should not feel the need to upgrade. Rather, ASUS has addressed some of biggest frustrations and limitations of the original model with the Ally X. It feels more comfortable to hold, supports standard size SSDs, and has incredible battery life for a gaming handheld. Unfortunately, it’s not perfect: navigating the multiple apps and settings menus to adjust performance and install updates can get very confusing; there’s no OLED display; and there is a very annoying bug with the rumble/vibration motor. Still, this is arguably the most powerful and capable gaming handheld on the market.

It was okay but the steamdeck is much better. I think if you’re a big high end game player then it might be worth spending the extra money but it just seemed overly complicated and required a lot of tinkering of controls for each game.

Great handheld, i like it better then Steam Deck because it paid all games and is not limited to some games like the deck

I’ve been using the original Ally since it came out last year. Overall I’ve been happy with it and it’s gotten better over time with Asus’ continued support, but it hasn’t been a perfect experience. My microSD reader ended up failing like it did on many other units and one of my thumbsticks also failed. As time has gone on I’ve also become more and more aware of the limited battery life of the original Ally. The Ally X improves on all of these issues and more and I think it’s a lot of small changes that add up to a big improvement. The battery is a night and day difference over the original and while performance doesn’t take much of a leap, if you’re looking for a gaming handheld that’s not the Steam Deck this is the peak. In the box is the ROG Ally X, a 65W charger, 2 cardboard stands, and some documentation. The ROG Ally X is black instead of white this time around and I do think it looks good, but it takes away from the aesthetic that differentiated the Ally from other handhelds a little bit. The extra weight from the bigger battery is noticeable, but it feels right for the size and the updated contours make it comfortable to hold. The buttons, D-pad, and thumbsticks have all been updated for the new model and I think they’re an improvement. The thumbsticks have more resistance to them and the face and shoulder buttons have a nicer feel and sound to them. The triggers are also larger as well. The D-pad is a big improvement over the original Ally and feels like it’s got a lot more segmentation compared to the old one where I would often accidentally trigger the wrong input. The customizable rear buttons are much smaller this time around, but still easy to reach, which is good for me since I rarely used them on the original Ally and would press them more accidentally than not. Overall it's a nice-feeling and very refined device. There are 2 USB-C ports, one USB 4 at 40 Gbps and one USB 3.2 Gen2 at 10 Gbps. They can both charge the Ally X at up to 100W and output DisplayPort 1.4. Having the extra USB-C port is really nice and I don’t miss the proprietary XG Mobile port at all since the USB4 connection allows for a more traditional eGPU connection. There’s also a headphone jack, microSD card slot, and the power button has a built-in fingerprint reader. Opening up the Ally X is pretty easy and just requires loosening 6 phillips-head screws. I would recommend having some plastic pry tools on hand though so you don’t accidentally scratch the case. There is a small ribbon cable attached to the rear casing that goes between the mainboard and the rear buttons to watch out for. The SSD is now a full size M.2 2280, which opens up a lot more options for upgrading. The screen is the same 7 inch 1080p 120Hz touch display as last year, and it supports variable refresh rate. I still think it looks great and it gets very bright, but it would have been cool to seen an OLED upgrade. The Ally X still uses the Z1 Extreme processor from last year, but the built-in RAM is now 24GB instead of 16GB and it’s faster too. The 24GB setup allows 8GB to be dedicated to VRAM and 16GB to system memory, which is the kind of thing you’d see on a lot of gaming laptops and does help out in some of the most demanding games. The Ally X is still running Windows 11 and I’ve never had any major issues getting things done. The right thumbstick works the cursor and the right shoulder button and trigger works as left click/right click. The touchscreen keyboard automatically when needed most of the time, though it does take up a good portion of the screen, so much that sometimes you aren’t able to see what you are typing. It seems like Microsoft has an interest in making this experience better, but not much has changed since last year. After the initial Windows configuration and logging into various services though this stuff mostly disappears into the background and Armor Crate can take care of the rest. Armory Crate SE 1.5 is new for the ROG Ally X and is mostly a layout change, but does add a few new features here and there. It’s an overall decent way to interact with the Ally X and you can change almost everything you need to about your settings and your game profiles within the app. There is also a customizable quick settings menu that can be brought up from anywhere that lets you do things like adjust your power profiles, resolution, FPS, etc. on the fly. Gaming performance is excellent for such a small device. Indie games and older titles are not a problem and can often run at full 1080p/120fps. Xbox One/PS4-era run great with the right tweaks. And even the most demanding games like Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk can run on the Ally X, albeit at the lower settings and highest performance modes. Running each game requires a little bit of experimentation with the performance modes and individual settings, but with the extra 8GB of RAM I no longer have to tinker with VRAM allocation for most games. The default performance modes are a 13W Silent, 17W Performance, and 25W Turbo (30W when plugged in). The Silent mode works well for indie games, though I noticed some hitching in higher-end games when using this even if the average frame rate was high, so the Performance mode was a better fit there and in general the sweet spot for most games balancing performance and battery life Speaking of battery life, it’s SO much better on the ROG Ally X. Even on the Turbo performance mode I’m still getting at least 2 hours on a single charge, where I was getting maybe 50 minutes on the original Ally at the same performance. It adds so much flexibility in that I can now play most games for almost twice long and I can push up settings and game on Turbo for the same amount of time I might have played that same game at 15W on the original Ally. It’s such a game changer and it takes away a lot of anxiety I had about using the old one and constantly making sure I had it charged up and ready to go. The only thing that gives me pause about the Ally X is the cost. $799 is a lot to ask for a handheld PC even with all the upgrades. I would have hoped to see it at the same cost as the original Ally or maybe $50 more with the original getting some kind of price cut. The old Ally was regularly on sale for $100 off, so maybe we’ll see something similar for the Ally X. As far as the reliability issues go, only time will tell on that. Asus seems to have addressed or upgraded most of the parts that failed before in the Ally X, even if it took them a long time to acknowledge there was a problem. If you have the original Ally I don’t necessarily think you need to run out and upgrade to the Ally X, but I’m really happy with everything Asus has done here. If you’re looking for a handheld PC with a little bit more oomph than the Steam Deck I think the Ally X is where it’s at. I’m excited to still see Asus actively supporting the Ally and I’m excited to see where they go from here.

I am happy with my rog ally X and the best buy service, everything is perfect, the best purchase

So worth it this thing can play anything and you are able to run at 720 and can’t notice it still looks great

Great customer service, i was in and out! Bought my self an ally ROG for gaming

Amazing handheld and was super easy to setup honestly couldn't be happier

Amazing quality. Worth the purchase. I’ve been playing it since I picked it up.

If you want to have have any where buy this!!!!!!!

In my honest opinion, it seems to me that Asus once again takes top spot in the world of handheld PC gaming. I am in no way fanboying because the specs and performance speak for itself. The TLDR reason for my rating is if this is your 1st ever handheld it's a 5/5 but as an upgrade like myself did, it is hard to justify the price for the "upgrades" from the previous generation and gets a solid 4/5. In the box is the Ally X itself covered with protection and how to charge and turn it on, 65w power brick with USB C connection and 2 stands (kinda serves no purpose). I love the new black color scheme this time around vs the white of the original. Note that you can use up to a 100w charger to charge the system via 1 of the 2 USB C ports though you will need to buy it separately. Just remember during setup, that the Ally X is a Windows 11 based OS so you will need to install a LOT of updates before gaming (almost 1.5hrs for me including ASUS's own updates) The most notable changes from my Ally to the X are: - Color - Weight - The X is barely a little heavier than the OG - Redesigned IO - 2 USB C on top (40 Gbps and 10Gbps), fingerprint scanner on the recessed power button, micro SD slot moved away from the exhaust causing the notorious failure from the 1st gen Ally. - Sound is 10x better - Battery Life is the big winner - Thumbsticks have a more quality feel - Comfort - as in heat Comfort After a week daily driving the X, I found out my previous complaint on the OG Ally was addressed with the new thermals and design.. The area where you grip stays at a nice and comfortable temp and feels great for long sessions of gaming. Also I have noticed the back buttons were redesigned and feel a lot more natural. The intake in on the back and the exhaust is now "funneled" out the top center away from you and vital components. Performance This is where Asus takes the crown from the competition. Doubling the battery from 40Whr to 80Whr means more time gaming and less time charging. Sound for the speakers have been vastly improved (unless you use headphones and never use them). RAM has been upgraded slightly but that also meant performance boosts to gaming. I only use Steam and Epic, the latter not being already installed for some reason was easily added to the Armory Crate menu. I play a lot of indie games and Metroidvanias while on the go and battery life has gone from 1:30-1:45 to now more than 3 hours. Everything in both my libraries have not struggled with the X. Asus lets you customize your gameplay and performance settings on the fly. You can cap your FPS if you want, change refresh rate and even adjust battery consumption with the press of a button. If you find yourself wanting more space for your games, ASUS listened and instead of using the more expensive 2230 size NVMe, you can install a standard size 2280 NVMe! This is a most welcome feature and would suggest to people with huge libraries to invest in one. Closing thoughts As I mentioned at the beginning, the ROG Ally X is a refresh of the OG Ally. The QoL features you get with the X is undoubtfully amazing when compared to its predecessor. If it's your 1st time jumping into the world of mobile PC then I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the X. With my case, the double battery life and the option to install standard size 2280 NVMe sold me instantly.

Best Buy made the whole experience very easy and huge shoutout out to the worker for helping me decide

UNBOXING: Inside the box, you’ll find the ROG Ally X, a couple of paper stands for the Ally X, and a 65W USB-C wall adapter. And just like the 2023 Ally, there is no case or screen cloth included. Other than that, you’ll have your warranty card, manual, and safety info. BUILD: The Ally X uses a sturdy plastic build. Compared to the 2023 Ally, it’s thicker because of its much larger battery. And while this makes it heavier, ASUS also improved the ergonomics by making the corners more rounded, so they don’t dig into my palms as much as the 2023 Ally did. PORTS, EXPANSION & UPGRADES: When it comes to expandability, the Ally X improves upon the 2023 Ally in a couple significant ways. ASUS decided to forego the ROG XG Mobile external GPU dock in favor of a new Thunderbolt 4 Type C port which can support Thunderbolt eGPU enclosures, Thunderbolt docking stations, and much more. But they also kept the original USB 3.2 gen 2 Type C port, so now you have access to 2 Type C ports that also support both DisplayPort & Power Delivery. This also opens up more opportunity to use USB-C peripherals like headsets while also charging using the included USB-C wall adapter. Given how expensive the XG Mobile graphics were, I think this was a smart move by ASUS. In addition to that, ASUS has seemingly revised a design flaw from the original Ally with Micro SD cards being destroyed from thermal stress. On the Ally X, the SD Card slot has been moved to the right on the top side. Only time will tell if this has truly fixed the issue. Other than that, you have a 3.5mm combo audio jack on top, as well As far as hardware upgrades are concerned, ASUS managed to fit a standard 2280 size m.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. This is an improvement over the original Ally which used a 2230 size m.2 which is significantly more expensive to buy. Overall, I’m very happy with the improvements made over the 2023 Ally. CONTROLS: Compared to the 2023 Ally, the face buttons feel a bit more tactile, but I don’t feel it’s a drastic departure for me—I’d be happy with either. The D-Pad has also been revised with a matte texture instead of glossy. For some reason, my unit sometimes squeaks when pressing the left side of the D-Pad, and I didn’t have that problem on the original Ally X. The shoulder buttons seem to be using more tactile switches, so they are a bit louder, but they also feel less mushy and are easier to click. The triggers are also noticeably louder. Both the shoulder buttons and triggers appear to be a bit larger compared to the original Ally, so they’re more comfortable for bigger hands. The thumbsticks have also been improved from the original Ally, as they now seem to have a bit more of an indentation like the Xbox Series controller, so your thumbs will never slip. Additionally, the rear macro buttons have been slimmed down and relocated to prevent false triggers. Personally, I think this was a good decision because there were times where I unintentionally triggered a hotkey, and most people probably won’t use these macro buttons, so it’s better to keep them out of the way until they’re occasionally needed. The Command Center button on the left of the display gives quick access to various performance settings like power profiles, an FPS limiter, a real-time performance monitor, a 60Hz/120Hz refresh rate toggle, and 720p/900p/1080p resolution toggle. Having this quick button is super helpful so you can dial in your performance needs for different types of games. And on the right of the display you have the Armoury Crate button which will give you access to your game content and settings, letting you skip the need for interfacing with Windows most of the time. And also on the top, you have the volume buttons and power button that also functions as a fingerprint reader. DISPLAY: The Ally X leverages the same display as the 2023 Ally. It uses a 7” 1080p IPS touch screen display that can operate at 60Hz or 120Hz and with FreeSync Premium support. The display is sufficiently sized for handheld PC gaming, and the display gets plenty bright for daytime usage, and reasonably dim for darker environments, as well. I also really appreciate that it supports FreeSync since there are plenty of performance-demanding PC games that can’t run at a locked 60fps or higher, and having FreeSync can reduce screen tearing and stuttering. MICROPHONES: The onboard dual array microphones are positioned just above the view and menu buttons. In my testing, they are very clear and do a great job at isolating speech. I played online games and used Discord for voice chat, and I got compliments about the microphone quality, but I did have to lower the game volume so it wouldn’t bleed into the microphones. In the Realtek Audio Console or in the Armoury Crate Audio settings, I used the Directional Recording Mode, but using the Conference AI Noise Canceling mode will yield even better noise cancellation, but may impact battery life. SPEAKERS & HEADPHONE: Audio continues to be well-implemented on the Ally X. The two front-firing speakers deliver clarity while also being plenty loud. Compared to the original Ally, the X delivers better treble performance along with better bass while also being louder , but the original Ally sounded great, so this is just icing on the cake. Headphone performance is also sufficient for most consumer grade headphones and IEMS. I’m still glad to see ASUS still offering a headphone combo output since it’s conceivable some folks may play the Ally in environments where speakers aren’t appropriate, so having the ability to use some IEMs is a good way to game without disturbing others. PERFORMANCE & BATTERY: Performance on the Ally X will be more akin to the original Ally Z1 Extreme since they both share the same Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor, but the Ally X increases the memory to 24GB and uses faster memory clocked at 7500 MT/s. This means that the Ally defaults to 8GB of memory dedicated to the GPU, whereas the original Ally defaulted to 4GB—which isn’t always enough for many modern games. In my testing, more games were able to run at 60fps with appropriate settings. And if you’re coming from the Z1 non-extreme, the jump in performance can be significant for modern 3D titles. The Z1 Extreme uses 8 cores and 16 threads and 12 RDNA3 compute units. 2D titles will be a breeze on the Ally X, and 3D games will yield a more stable experience compared to the original Ally. I spent a lot of time playing Enshrouded—which is a quite demanding 3D title. And it plays reasonably well on the Ally X. When plugged in on the 30W turbo profile, I am able to achieve 60fps without having to dial everything to low, and when on battery, I can opt to make some graphical concessions and still achieve 30fps so that I can play unplugged for a couple hours. I also played another title Lost Castle 2 which appears 2D, but is actually built in Unity 3D. This game is much less demanding than Enshrouded, but still demands quite a bit of performance to achieve 60fps. A game like this looks great even at lower resolutions. At 720p under the 17W Performance profile, I’m able to achieve around 60fps on highest settings, and even at the 13W Silent profile, I’m able to achieve 40-60fps. And thanks to FreeSync, those framerate drops are not as impactful to the experience. Under the 13W setting over a 74 minute play session with Discord voice chat, I went from 100% battery down to 77%—estimating over 5 hours of gameplay on battery using these settings. Frankly, most of my gaming library is much less visually demanding than either of these two games. But there’s no doubt that I could not play these games unplugged nearly as long if it weren’t for the bigger 80 Whr battery in the Ally X. CONCLUSION: Ignoring price, the ROG Ally X is a great handheld gaming console. In my experience, it improves upon all of the major things that I complained about with the original ROG Ally. While it isn’t impenetrable to the performance demands of many modern 3D titles, it takes a great product and makes it even better. The Ally X brings improved comfort, stability, controls, battery life, performance, sound, and expandability. However, there’s no doubt that the ROG Ally X is expensive, and while it absolutely has competition, I feel that ASUS has one of the best implementations for a premium handheld console at this time. So if you’re willing to pay the premium price tag, I do think you’ll be getting a good product that delivers on its mission.

Product came on time. Will buy again from best buys!

It so far overall I like the device I haven’t really done anything with it since I’ve only had it for like a day so far, but I feel like it’s more user-friendly than the Legion go out of this the Legion go and the steam deck I think I like the Ally x the best so far but only time will tell

Worst console I’ve ever purchased. Two of them one “refurbished” and one brand new. The problem is both of them had similar issues being defective. One had issues crashing the refurbished one the brand new one I woke up to see it on displaying “S.M.A.R.T. Test warning.” Refusing to boot or do anything telling me drive is at risk of failing mind you I’ve had this thing for like 3 weeks and only played maybe an hour of halo on steam. Yes that’s it.

I really want to love this thing, but quality control from Asus on both the Ally, and Ally X is not there. I traded in my Day one Ally for the X version. My orignal one had sticky buttons out of the box, over time it worked its self out. The X out of the box seemed pretty solid but i nothiced things over time. I went to calibrate the buttons through the software and the right trigger didnt seem to have full motion unless i pushed pretty hard, and makes a completely different sound from the left trigger. The right joy stick makes a very slight metallic noise when I let return to the center, i only here it when im scrolling when its quiet. Just today I noticed a dead pixel. This really annoys me. Unfortunately im passed my return window, I can deal with all the other things, but dead pixels shouldn't be making it past "quality checks".

returned due to the battery life being less than opt6imal, will wait for next generation