Similarly, the ROG Ally X doesn't look too different from the original ROG Ally, but you can feel how different it is in your hands. Holding the Ally X for 60 or even 90 minutes didn't bother me. The Ally's curves and weight distribution put stress on my pinky fingers and the base of my palms, but the Ally X, despite weighing 70 grams more, feels all-around better. Everywhere it could, Asus gave the ROG Ally X a grip-friendly texture, and it has to be the most unsung benefit of this hardware refresh.

The buttons and sticks on the Ally X have seen some improvement, too. My biggest issue with the Ally's controls—the one I mentioned in my original review—was that the thumbsticks tilted enough that my thumbs sometimes tapped the screen, triggering unintentional actions in some games. Asus mostly fixed that issue; it happened perhaps once or twice in weeks of testing.

Those thumbsticks also have a better, grippier edge to them and a less thumb-sliding face. The face (A/B/X/Y) buttons do not stick like they do on the original. The addition of a third vent on the top seems to have made the whole rig a bit quieter, especially in its Silent and Performance modes. Asus claims the ROG Ally X provides up to 24 percent more airflow, which keeps the display panel cooler by up to 6 degrees Celsius.

Performance: The difference a big battery and RAM make

Besides effectively doubling the battery inside the device, Asus also retuned its three primary modes—Silent, Performance, and Turbo—with an emphasis on battery life. The original device ran on 9-, 15-, and 30-watt levels on battery, while the X is set to 13, 17, and 25 W (30 W if you keep it plugged into sufficient power). Tuning things down so that more handheld-appropriate games run for longer makes good sense.

PC Mark 10's gaming battery test suggests 2 hours and 15 minutes on Turbo, just under 3 hours on Performance, and something like 4 hours on Silent. My own tests with Elden Ring on Turbo (1 hour 48 minutes), Deathloop on Performance (2h 49m), and desperately trying to wear this thing down with Tactical Breach Wizards (somewhere above 3h 30m, with some sleep/suspend hitches) suggest that it really depends on what kind of game you're playing.

The ROG Ally X has the same basic chip as the ROG Ally, though the new device has more RAM available for GPU purposes. That, plus the wattage level changes, provides quite a few differences between how things ran on the old and new Ally. In all honesty, it made benchmarking this device on GeekBench, 3DMark, and other suites, compared to last year's ROG Ally, a head-scratching conundrum. Some of the "Turbo" results from the Ally X came in lower than those of its predecessor, but that likely means you're getting better battery life in exchange for a slightly lower ceiling on high-level processing. AMD's super-sampling FSR technology also works better on the ROG Ally X than on the ROG Ally, given more memory, and that made a slight but noticeable difference in frame rate returns.

Credit where it's due: James Archer at Rock Paper Shotgun has done the hard work of keeping all his settings straight and directly comparing the ROG Ally X, ROG Ally, and Steam Deck to one another in both a review and an Ally-versus-Deck comparison. My own results in Cyberpunk 2077 provide some apples-to-different-wattage-apples comparisons, too.

You can set many variables when fine-tuning the ROG Ally X, but most of them aren't worth your time. The biggest boost you can give yourself is by setting a game to 720p resolution, but then, why would you own this 1080p device if you wanted to play at a lower resolution than on a Steam Deck, which costs significantly less?

What I see, in both benchmarks and hands-on gameplay, is that the Performance setting is a lot more useful on the ROG Ally X than it was on last year's Ally. It's a great default for most AAA games from one to three years ago, which is also the sweet spot for mobile PC gaming generally. I've played Marvel's Midnight Suns, Deathloop, and a few other games from my Steam library, and after a few medium-minded settings tweaks, most of them ran pretty well in Performance mode.

Software: Handheld Windows is still handheld Windows

I have to believe that the Asus team put some work into improving its own software and the ROG Ally X's Windows integration since the original device's launch. The Ally's software was—after the poor battery life and SD card melting—the most notably unpolished part of the experience. Windows compatibility for gaming on a handheld should be a secret weapon, but it's too often an Achilles' heel on this device. It still is, if perhaps less so than on its predecessor.

The Command Center overlay that pops up from a physical button on the left side of the screen has better tools and is more responsive and less prone to crashing than it was when I last tested it. It feels like the kind of software Asus would like this device to have if it had control of the whole OS.

Armoury Crate, the gamepad-friendly launcher that aims to keep all your games and platforms in one place, seems to crash or fail to launch your games less often. What happens after you launch your game, however, is a bit of a die roll. The game may launch after you see some windows shuffle around. Or perhaps Steam or the Epic Games Store will launch instead, and your game will be in a background window or just not launch. Sometimes the game will launch minimized on a taskbar that you have to pull up from the bottom of the screen with a stick-controller cursor or your thumb.

When the system reaches a sufficiently low battery level, Windows will pop up a warning notification that gets screen priority. Dismissing this notification and bringing your game back up will either waste more battery life or possibly crash your game, which was not ready to be minimized. Can you fix this in Windows settings? Sure. Is that the kind of experience for which you paid $800, though? How much tiny-target finger tapping or monitor hook-ups for deeper configuration seems reasonable?

The best Windows handheld gaming PC, for what that's worth

If playing intensive games while free from power cords is your thing, or you like putting lots of time into Windows titles that simply can't run on the Steam Deck, then the ROG Ally X is a winner. It feels and performs notably better than its prior iteration, and Asus has shown dedication to fixing as much as it can inside its software sandbox. If you have the $800 to spend (and a few more bucks for a case and accessories), it fits into that couch- and travel-minded gap between a lower-spec Steam Deck and a gaming laptop.

But $800 is $100 more than the last ROG Ally and about $250 more than the 512GB Steam Deck OLED. How many of the games you want to play fit into the performance space just beneath the ROG Ally X? How important is having Windows—with its greater compatibility but notable headaches—versus a SteamOS that plays most Windows games and is much, much better to navigate? These aren't rhetorical questions; they're the main things any ROG Ally X buyer should consider.

The good

• New power schemes are effective
• Battery life is significantly improved, especially for low- and mid-power games
• Extra RAM can really help certain games

The bad

• Windows is still an awkward OS for a small-screen, single-app experience

The ugly

• The $800 price