Customer Ratings & Reviews

I really think they should lower the price and make it more user friendly. Kind of a bug trading wreck

Clunky, slow windows based gaming. Returned in less than one week.

Trigger stopped working already wftwr n ine seeioj ot good use

I mean you can play games but at a slow slow rate!!!!

Gotta be straight about this, at the same price point other than the ergonomics and batter capacity this is a downgrade from the Z1E version while priced the same. It's a hard sell IMO. You're not going to play some of the newer games at over medium. You may never see FPS go over 40 even with tweaking. You'll fill your drive space quickly if you like traveling with a lot of games installed. You won't be able to allocate much RAM to the GPU. Basically get this if you like older games or play lower demanding new games. My first test was Baldur's Gate 3. I had to set to medium and them tweak a bunch of other settings even lower. With that I only maxed out at 38FPS. It's not really an issue with a turn based game, but I'd stay away from any shoots if I can't hit at least 45FPS. Things get too stuttery even with VRR. Here's to good part, according to Windows I have about 2hrs of estimated play time with BG3. I didn't run it all the way down and only played for 15 min, so not sure how accurate the estimate was. Now, the best thing about the Xbox Ally is the ergonomics. You don't have to buy 3rd party grips. This unit fits perfectly in my hands and the sticks and buttons are easy to reach. One bad thing is the layout of the USB C ports. They're right next to each other, so if you use a dongle for your headsets you either have to buy an extension, block one port, or block a button. Extension is the most sensible, but I hate having things dangle from a handheld. If you get this you have understand specifically that this is lower performing version of the Xbox Ally. It's so underpowered that it's not even close in real use. Set your expectations low, then tweak them a little lower than that and you'll be happy. If you like emulators and low demanding games then this Ally will suit you fine.

There are two things that stand out with this handheld. It is extremely comfortable to hold and play for long periods of time. The XBox remote play is an amazing feature. I've found it best for less demanding games, but was able to play some newer demanding games by reducing quality settings. On a screen this small, I didn't notice that much of a difference and the battery life gains are totally worth it. The UI is instersting. Once you go through the set up process with Windows, and install any updates, you will be greeted with a nice XBox interface that allows you to jump right into games easily. This makes it feel like a proper console and it is easy to get into any settings you need or just start playing. There is some really good competition for similar devices and this one stands our for the comfortable use, the great battery life, and the XBox interface. The processor isn't cutting edge, but that makes it less demanding of the battery. Overall, this is a good handheld with some great tweaks for portability.

Finally! I have been waiting for this since it was announced. To say the least Im not disappointed. As a previous ROG Ally owner there were a few things I didn't care for. Mostly ergonomic issues. All of those issues have been solved with the ROG Xbox Ally. It feels just like holding a regular Xbox controller. Its amazing, since picking it up I really havent played my console. Now I will say not all games are compatible as of yet. Once more and more games go cloud based this thing will dominate. Currently I have COD black ops6 loaded and it runs it super well. Game loading is a bit slow but it typically is on the console also. Having a really good wireless internet connection is a must as it is wifi only connection unless using a adapter from type C to eithernet. I have used it on my personal hotspot on my phone as well on a drive to Vegas this week and it ran perfectly when cell service was good. Battery life is pretty decent but would recommend an external battery or play near a wall outlet.

I'm a huge fan of handheld gaming. I tend to game at random intervals in short spurts, so handheld devices have always fit my needs nicely. This is my first Windows based handheld. I was eager to pick this up as a lot of my favorite games simply aren't compatible with Steam OS, and they aren't available on other platforms. After playing with this device for a week, my feelings on this device are mixed. The hardware is excellent. The grips are comfortable, the screen size is terrific, the image quality is great, the buttons are well positioned (though I did have issues with some of the buttons getting "stuck" if pressed at just the right angle), battery life is fairly impressive, and having dual USB-C ports and a micro-SD slot are huge benefits. My one complaint about the hardware is that it needs more storage space. I've read that the hard drive is user replaceable, but that's not something I'm eager to tackle until I've had the device a bit longer. I'm going to be using a larger micro-SD card in the short term instead. The software has some serious issues. I've had several Windows tablets in the past, and I'm no stranger to interacting with the default Windows experience via touchscreen. In a lot of respects, I wish that they'd just kept as the default on this device. By default, the handheld opens into the XBox app. The user interface is extremely cluttered, and it's trying entirely too hard to sell you stuff. I get the impression that the interface was designed more for making sales than the user experience. At the time of this review, the device comes with 3 months of GamePass' middle tier option. From within the XBox app, It's extremely unclear as to which games are playable and which games aren't. The interface hits you with a little bit of everything (including games that are only available on console). XBox has really been pushing cloud gaming lately, but it's unclear which games are able to be played from the cloud as well. Clicking the little cloud icon along the left again brings up an array of games that may or may not be available for this device. On top of issues with the user interface, I also found that the XBox app liked to freeze when first opened. The only way to get it working again was to hit the physical library button. The app would immediately unfreeze after visiting the library. The library is also the best way to find which games are installable and cloud playable. You can use the filters along the top of the library to locate these games (note that it has a default filter set for "installed games" when you first open the library. You need to turn this off to actually find anything). When I first got the Ally, the Armoury Crate software was completely unusable. I got a consistent error about it being unable to update followed by a crash screen. I endured this for three days before I visited ASUS' site, downloaded a fresh copy of Armoury Crate, tried to install it, got told I couldn't install it without first installing ASUS' uninstall utility to remove the previous version, installed and ran that, and FINALLY got a working copy of Armoury Crate on my device. The Armoury Crate software is a lot cleaner than the XBox app, and it offers more options for customization, but it also lacks integration with GamePass. If you're not planning on using GamePass with this device, you may want to just stick with Armoury Crate for navigating your game library. Controls are not standardized across applications. I had to learn a completely different set of controls for navigating the Epic Game Store vs. the XBox app or Steam. I don't like touching the screen on my handheld unless absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, there were several instances (including during the initial Windows setup) when you simply have no choice. Sadly, the screen is an absolute fingerprint magnet. Once you're actually in a game, the device works well, and the game play is nice and immersive. It's just getting to the point of actually getting into a game that's a struggle. I think the hardware on this device is excellent, but the software experience isn't very good right now. Software could be fixed with future device updates, so I'm cautiously optimistic that the user experience may improve over time. As it stands at the moment though, device navigation is extremely frustrating.

I was pretty darn excited to get a chance to use and review this. However, this first week has been extremely disappointing and underwhelming, to say the least. Right from the initial opening, not having any type of instructions other than how to turn it on, what all the buttons are and where to go to watch instructional videos was the first sign of many things to come. The power supply is a 65 watt mini brick of a charger that I did not use. I, instead, hooked it up to my existing 100 watt phone charger and it was full in a matter of hours. Starting it up was fun and exciting but the screen is so small if you are older with trouble seeing, you will have a hard time reading anything on this device (even after messing with the resolution settings). In theory, what this machine is capable of is very impressive, however, thinking it will operate like a XBOX is a mistake. This works mostly like a mini PC and the initial updates taking a couple of hours proves it. Finding how to log into your Microsoft account, download games that would actually run on this and somehow keep it from freezing up took a better part of a week. I have finally played a game for a couple of days that had subtitles (could hardly read) and while it is fun and the sound is impressive, I find myself getting tired of it and moving to my laptop, phone or XBOX Series X. This is definitely for the much younger crowd for light gaming and entertainment. Videos work well, and the sound is great but I struggle to see the benefit of this for serious gamers.

Out of the box, this was a pain to set up. You're not setting up a new xbox - you're setting up a really slow, small, new windows computer. It went slightly faster once I realized it was a touchscreen and I didn't have to move the cursor around with the joystick or buttons, but it was still really slow and painful, especially when it needed a windows update immediately. I had to set it down to update unattended and come back to it the next day. Then, you're going to have no access to any of your games unless you've bought the digital copy online. There is only a t i n y selection of games with the trial game pass subscription that comes included. Nearly everything needs to be purchased to play. Even for the games you already have in your library, most of them come with some kind of warning that certain features are not optimized for this setup. The screen itself is good quality for the size, and the sound is actually pretty impressive. If you really want to play your xbox on the go, and you're willing to pay for games or a better subscription tier, then this might be for you. If you're just a casual xbox gamer, I'd say pass this one up.

The ROG Xbox Ally FHD is a really good first step towards the future of what handheld gaming can be and while this is a great first step, I do think that this device has some shortcoming. The fact that you can play Xbox games on a handheld device is just unbelievable to me. Ten years ago, I never could have imagined how far gaming would evolve. The setup and installation for the ROG x Xbox is super easy with a BIOS update and you will have to log onto windows 11. After that you will have access to the XBOX gaming store. This is where handheld gaming has a short coming. I noticed that a few games that I wanted to try out in handheld are not offered. I also noticed that performance is wildly inconsistent and I assume that is do to formatting of the games into a smaller screen and for handheld. I started to test out Halo which made note that the game will not be the same in handheld but is playable. It happens to play fairly well and looks really nice but it still is just missing the WOW factor. Racing games happen to look and play really well on the device as well. I am sure games like fortnite, doom and others will look and play really well and are probably perfect for the device. To me the device has the size and feel of the original Sega game gear which quite frankly disappointed me. To me this device just feels way to big, clunky and cheap. When I look at something by a major competitor, it can play AAA games really well in both handheld plus you can output it to a TV. I am excited by the prospect of what ASUS and Xbox can do moving forward but right now I cannot give this product more then three stars.

NOT AN XBOX, it lags and was not running Skyrim well even. It also needs to be on WiFi to play most games, which to me defeats the purpose of a mobile handheld game system. Not worth it at all and was very disappointing. Also the 599 one is veryyyy underpowered, especially being the price as an Xbox series x!

You need to be connected to the internet all the time to be able to play. Which makes no sense to buy a console to play with when you are away from home.