Mention ‘Handheld Gaming’ and your mind would instantly harken back to the days where you can simply, armed with a pair of fresh AA batteries, switch on your trusty Nintendo Game Boy and go on hours and hours playing Super Mario Land. Or for the youngins, Pokémon, before the games went stale, of course.

In 2025, we are definitely not starved of options when it comes to handheld gaming with Nintendo’s Switch line but when it comes to devices with a wider reach, especially for the PC crowd, the Steam dDeck held the inaugural crown. ASUS came close in recent years with their ROG Ally offerings and to many enthusiasts, is poised to claim the crown this year following their partnership with Microsoft and Xbox. A match made in heaven – on paper at least – as not only would this collab put the PC crowd into ASUS’ pockets; they would gobble a huge chunk of the console market too!

So how does the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X (boy that’s a mouthful!) stack up against its competitors and is this the device that will change how we play PC games or in this particular device’s case, Xbox console titles moving forward?

X Marks (And Hits) The Spot

For starters, the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X (or the XAX for brevity’s sake) is easily the most powerful handheld gaming PC in the market. It is essentially having a medium-to-high spec gaming PC that’ll fit into your (large) fanny pack.

The XAX runs on a 2.0GHz AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme Processor paired with an integrated GPU based on AMD’s RDNA 3.5 architecture. Performance-wise, number crunchers claim that the XAX should stand on par with the GeForce RTX 2070 or even up to the 3060Ti in some scenarios. It’s got 24GB of memory baked in alongside 1TB of storage topped by a 7-inch, 500 nits screen that spits out up to 120hz of frames without breaking a sweat.

So yeah, while many would complain about its retail price (US$999 / RM4,299), that’s some serious package crammed into a relatively portable device and once you realize it duals as a standard Windows PC; things just start to make more sense.

Our biggest issue with handheld gaming has always been ergonomics. The Switch carries a weird screen angle when in hand while the previous ROG Ally releases felt clunky to handle; they were almost begging to be dropped. The Steamdeck was an unwieldy behemoth that will trip itself over the edge of the table at the slightest of nudges and when held in hand over a period, tend to cause Carpal Tunnel.

While the XAX does not solve everything, it is still, by far, the wield-iest of the bunch. Them boffins at ASUS clearly spent several all-nighters with their Xbox counterparts when designing the XAX as the Xbox controller DNA is all over the device. The XAX may be among the heaviest portable gaming PC in the market at the moment but due to its construction and ergonomics, is also the most comfortable in-hand.

From the button layouts, to the reach of the bumper and triggers to the Xbox-esque side grips – it just moulds into your hands. Textured grips keeps it in place in spite of sweaty palms but we aren’t huge fans of the screen which smudges easily exacerbated by it being touchscreen-capable.

Battery-wise, gaming on the XAX should take you well over a couple of hours but we’d keep a charging cable and power port close by for the more intensive sessions or resource-heavy, modern-AAA titles. Cyberpunk 2077, which is somehow the yardstick title for handheld PCs would easily go on for over two hours on battery alone. Indie games? Have a field day. That’s at least four hours or perhaps five episodes of Dispatch on a single charge.

For more recent, intensive titles, you’ll have a good time on Battlefield 6 at medium to high graphics settings and with the inclusion of 3.5mm headphone jack, scream at strangers even while you’re traveling. We also appreciate the added security features including the fingerprint scanner which doubles up as power button.

All these are wrapped up in a snazzy presentation where every game downloaded into the XAX – regardless of source; Xbox PC, GOG, Steam – are all laid out like what is seen adorned on televisions all around the world when the player boots up their Xbox console. Look, while we like what ASUS was attempting with their Armoury Crate in creating an all-inclusive lobby where all titles installed can be directly accessed, it is nowhere near this crisp level of delivery.

And when you grow tired of the Xbox interface, swiping your finger up from the bottom of the screen allows you to switch it to the more pedestrian Windows 11 mode for other … adulting stuff like Zoom or God forbid, Microsoft Teams.

In essence, the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X is by far, THE handheld gaming PC you want to get your paws on, cost notwithstanding.

X As It Seem

“But Kakuchopurei,” you may ask. “What’s the deal with your title? What is hampering greatness?”

It all boils down to the case of what is written on the tin not actually reflecting what is in it. The marketing of the XAX betrays itself most spectacularly.

With ‘Xbox’ on the label, one would be forgiven to believe that this is indeed in-line with Microsoft and Xbox’s more recent campaign of bringing Xbox to everything with a screen.

Microsoft’s aggressive step in pushing their cloud services and bringing Xbox to non-dedicated devices is a genius move. Console gaming has always been limited to platform exclusivity but with the ability to stream any content to any device with decent internet connection, 2025 might be the turning point and ASUS may be Microsoft’s trumpcard in not just catching up with Sony’s PlayStation, but also superseding the blue brand.

But a portable Xbox, the XAX is not. Switching on the device, we were warmly greeted with a familiar interface. The Xbox homepage which adorned our living room televisions for years now. However once you tear away the upper layer, the cracks start to appear. Let’s rip off the bandaid straight away, shall we?

Similar to many of its contemporaries and even the devices it is replacing, the XAX CANNOT play all the games from your Xbox library unless the game has the ‘Xbox Play Anywhere’ feature. To make things even more perplexing, at the time of writing, we cannot even stream many of our Xbox console titles on the XAX; we were able to do so in previous ROG Ally iterations.

Sure, you can tap into your Xbox PC Games or PC Game Pass libraries but that’s as far as it goes when it comes to Xbox content. Spent a ton of money on Xbox Game Pass or even purchased games on your Xbox consoles in the past? Sorry. You won’t be able to play most of them. That 200+ hours of Cyberpunk 2077 you’ve accumulated? Too bad. Either you continue that save on your Xbox Series X/S or you’ll have to purchase a new PC version of the game from Steam or anywhere else that sells the game.

This is of course, can be remedied with a software patch which at the very least, reintroduces the ability to directly stream your Xbox titles to your device. But our wish was to have ASUS and Xbox unleash the XAX’s true potential. To fully install and play modern and classic Xbox titles directly on the device.

Allay Your Misunderstandings

None of this would have been an issue if ASUS dropped the ‘Xbox’ branding from the start and just call the XAX ‘Rog Ally X 2’ instead, for example. Branding begets expectations and with expectations leads to disappointment. A portable Xbox, the XAX is not. But a great portable gaming PC, it is. It’s better to overdeliver than ask for forgiveness for your shortfalls, ASUS.

A great product made ‘just OK’ due to an overpromise. The ASUS Xbox Ally X came with so much promise but ultimately, undermined by its own self-imposed hiccup of a branding. Barring that, if you just want a portable gaming PC powerhouse, just add 20 extra points to the score we give it below to make it a 90/100.

The Asus Rog Ally X is like Jared Leto: Oscar winner, But also, Morbius.

Final Score: 70/100

A unit of the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X was supplied to us by the good folks at ASUS Malaysia. The ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X is now on sale from RM4,299. Its skinner cousin, the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally is also available. Check them out at the official ASUS online store.