In the span of one minute and 41 seconds, Asus and Microsoft did what few would have expected: they confirmed a new handheld, heralded a new chip, and shone a spotling on the long-absent Hollow Knight: Silksong all in one fell swoop. The trailer was brief, but between the upgraded ROG Ally X and the return of the Metroidvania messiah, the message was loud and clear: Xbox is serious about handhelds, just not in the way people thought.
Ally X looks like a familiar face but with bulked-up confidence. At first glance, this refreshed model doesn’t rewrite the design book, but it does clean up some of the smudges. A proper Xbox button now sits proudly next to the Command Center switch. Ergonomics also take a step forward, with chunkier grips that promise better comfort for extended play sessions. The screen now protrudes slightly, which might not win over everyone, but there’s a good chance your hands will thank you more than your eyes will complain.
Under the hood is where things really heat up. Ally X debuts AMD’s freshly announced Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip, a 4nm APU built on Zen 4 cores and RDNA 3 graphics. It’s paired with AMD’s new XDNA 2 architecture for AI acceleration, unlocking features that could go beyond gaming. With a quoted 54 TOPS of performance, it has the theoretical grunt to handle AI-enhanced upscaling, frame generation, or even background tasks that help keep Windows smooth. For now, those benefits are more promise than reality, but they plant a flag in the ground that AMD is pushing handhelds into the AI PC era.
| Asus ROG Xbox Ally X | Asus ROG Xbox Ally | |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme | AMD Ryzen Z2 A |
| Memory | 24GB | 16GB |
| Storage | 1TB SSD | 512GB SSD |
| Colourway | Black | White |
The new flagship handheld isn’t alone, as the original portable also gets a makeover in the form of ROG Xbox Ally, now fitted with a Ryzen Z2 A chip. Unfortunately, that silicon sits closer to the capabilities of a Steam Deck, which is comparatively ancient in the tech space at three years old. That’s not disastrous, especially considering memory has been bumped to 24GB of LPDDR5X across both units, but it does colour expectations. The real generational shift is absolutely happening inside the X model.
Despite some clear gains, there’s still a sense that Windows handhelds are playing catch-up in one important area: user experience. Microsoft has yet to overhaul its OS in a meaningful way for smaller screens, but Xbox Ally and Ally X both go some way to remedying concerns. Taking the fight to SteamOS, the newly-demoed Xbox App now looks cleaner, can add games from other storefronts, and even deprioritise background activities and non-essential tasks to allocate more resources to gameplay. If nothing else, this has me excited for what else Microsoft is cooking after reports of pausing its own Xbox handheld in favour of improving Windows 11 UX for gaming portables.
One welcome surprise, however, came not from hardware but software. The Ally X trailer closed with gameplay footage from Hollow Knight: Silksong, the long-silent sequel that has haunted wishlists and Twitter threads for years. Its inclusion was a moment of validation, and just hours later, Microsoft confirmed the game is still targeting a 2025 release window. That might not satisfy those burned by previous delays, but it is, at the very least, a pulse check that Team Cherry is still alive and cracking away.
ROG Ally X isn’t revolutionary, but it doesn’t need to be. Asus already helped put Windows handhelds on the map with the original Ally, and this iteration builds on that foundation. There’s more power, better ergonomics, and at least the potential for future AI-enhanced experiences, even if the Windows layer isn’t one-for-one with SteamOS just yet.
Whether AI Z2 Extreme will outpace the Z1 Extreme in real-world scenarios remains to be seen, and only hands-on time will settle the question of how well the new form factor fares. But paired with the excitement of Silksong’s reappearance, Ally X might have just given Microsoft’s handheld future its most promising step yet, even if it’s being led by Asus rather than Xbox. For more on the latest tech, follow Club386 on Google News.
