Rog Xbox Ally: our grip of the new laptop console well determined to shake the market

It is a jealously kept confidential project in our eyes that Asus and Microsoft are preparing. There, or rather the Rog Xbox Ally were unveiled last June during a special Xbox Livestream – Silence Radio since, the 2 entities remaining very secret on the release date and the price of this hardware duo. The wait ends today, right for the launch of Gamescom 2025. That’s good, we were able to take charge of these new arrivals on an ever more crowded market.

No doubt, the Rog Ally Xbox are Rog Ally consoles. Understand by this that if you have already tested the first portable console of Asus, its alliance with Xbox is in the right continuity. The arrangement of the buttons is identical, as well as the diagonal of the 7 inch screen. The notable difference is in ergonomics: with two handles at the ends, the Rog Xbox Ally offer a very different feeling in hand.

More comfortable than the ROG Ally Standardthere MSI CLAW or the Nintendo Switch 2they look like “long” controllers … and finally place themselves at the steam deck for comfort in play. It is only a shame that the directional cross, always as unclear and soft to use.

Yes, we are talking about of the Rog Xbox Ally, because two different SKUs are offered by brands. The flagship model is soberly named Rog Xbox Ally X. In addition to its blacklinting, it has an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip, with 8 calculation cores (3 x Zen 5, 5 Zen 5C) and especially 16 RDNA 3.5 graphic hearts. An apu beast which, on paper, presents itself as one of the most powerful on the market. As for the other console, the Rog Xbox Ally, it swaps black for white and an AMD Ryzen Z2A chip (4 Zen 2, 8 RDNA2 graphic cores), much less powerful and overall equivalent to a first generation steam deck.

Difficult to judge the power gap that separates the 2 animals with ten minutes of shared trial, especially as the most gourmet games (Clear obscure: Expedition 33,, Gears of War Reloaded) were reserved for the ROG Xbox Ally X, certainly at the height to comfortably manage ambitious titles, with a few resolution and graphic details – which will be more important on the lower hardware of the Rog Xbox Ally.

In hand, the handling of the two consoles is identical, with one difference: the ROG Xbox Ally seems considerably lighter (670 g) than its sister Rog Xbox Ally X (715 g), even if the weight gap is contained. A delta which is explained by the batteries, the Rog Xbox Ally carrying out a modest battery of 60 Wh against 80 Wh on the Rog Xbox Ally X. Finally, for everything related to this famous new Xbox interface supposed to transform the Windows 11 experience on laptop consoles, we reserve our impressions for a dedicated article to come. One thing is certain: the user experience, fluid and simple, is very close to what is found on the Xbox Series and Xbox Series S consoles, and it is far from a chance …

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