ROG Xbox Ally X – First Impressions and Thoughts

So, upgraded to the new ROG Xbox Ally X from my launch day ROG Ally, and here’s my thoughts:

General Feel – More comfortable and balanced compared to the first Ally. Grips add so much comfort. Battery life is better, but not great. Two USB-C ports is a nice upgrade. Nice to have a full size SSD to be able to swap when needed.

OOBE/Setup Experience – Nearly took me an hour to setup the device. Just a ton of updates, many of them very large. Also, the Xbox interface in Windows OOBE doesn’t work great. Lots of touching on random things is still required. Felt rushed.

Xbox Full Screen Experience – There’s a start and effort here, but this is undercooked. You are just dumped into it after a truncated OOBE, and there’s no tutorial or explanation of how to balance the ASUS Armoury Crate SE software and the Xbox experience. Armoury Crate SE supports Command Center in Game Bar, and I think Game Bar is very helpful (especially with FPS metrics and links to Wifi/Bluetooth/Settings/Power) now compared to ASUS building its own thing, but it’s a clunky hybrid of software. Hopefully this improves, but I was able to setup my game platforms software and the device fully without jumping to the desktop at all. I would love to see this come to all gaming devices. Keeps alerts and the current state of the Windows Desktop away from gaming pretty well.

It’s a Copilot+ PC!? – This surprised me because it’s not covered anywhere, but it has a 40 TOPS NPU as part of the Z2 Extreme. I feel like this wasn’t talked about at all, but I’m curious what this is going to unlock for the Xbox interface. This also explains the long OOBE, as the models had to update. It has Recall and everything in Desktop mode you get in a Copilot+ PC.

Performance – Wildly powerful. Feels at least like a 25-30% uplift in FPS in games like Avatar, Cyberpunk, and a few others. Overall performance feels better, but I think it’s the more RAM too. Feels like a little PC powerhouse in your hands, and curious how much an external GPU would unlock. Perfect I think to dock and use a full PC too.

It’s still Windows – Want to browse your files? You need to jump into Desktop and Windows. Want to do Mod Management? You’ll need to jump into Windows. The current divide reminds me of Metro vs Non-Metro in Windows 8, and if the Xbox team can deliver on some basic File Management, and other features – I think you could not have to jump into the Windows Desktop if at all/ever.

Still playing with it and enjoying it. Not a huge change from the first ROG Ally, but it’s an improvement, and I think the most interesting thing here is the software stack and what this is for the future of PC Gaming and Xbox. Feels like it’s marching towards a “best of all worlds” solution for PC gaming, simplicity, and choice. Let’s hope Microsoft can stick the landing as part of Windows. Steam Deck feels like the better platform right now, but I could see Microsoft really growing here, if they can focus on it and deliver a fully finished experience.