Asus’ next ROG Ally will be the ROG Ally X

The Asus ROG Ally was the first real challenger to the Steam Deck; While I’d say it fell a bit short, it legitimately improved the state of affordable Windows portable gaming with its hip performance improvements and smooth variable refresh rate display. Now, Asus is starting to unveil its successor: the ROG Ally X.

Don’t call it an Ally 2: When it ships in the second half of the year, the Windows-based Ally not quite like the Steam Deck OLED, where Valve had AMD overhaul its chip for better battery life and stability and added a new, larger, brighter, gorgeous OLED panel with a time improved response and slimmer bezels.

But the new black colored handheld will have a substantial improvement in battery life, says Shawn Yen, vice president of Asus. The edge – because Asus will fit a much larger battery into the Ally X’s revised shell. “We’re not looking at a 30 to 40 percent increase in capacity,” he tells me. “We’re looking at a lot more than that.”

Asus won’t talk about specific specifications today. Instead, Yen asks me how much battery life I would realistically want from a reviewed handheld. I say I’d like to double the worst-case battery life to three hours, because I’m currently seeing maybe 1.5 hours in intensive gaming. “This won’t disappoint your worst-case scenario,” he told me.

Yen says battery life has been the biggest request since launch; Asus has seen how the community sometimes attaches giant external batteries to their handhelds, even though the Ally theoretically had room inside for a larger battery.

“When we launched (the original Ally), we didn’t have as clear an understanding that battery could be something people wanted more than a lighter device,” he admits.

The battery isn’t the only change Asus is talking about today; Ally X aims to address many of the community’s top priorities for how to review the original. “We think about battery and storage, graphics and memory, ports… our goal is to fit as much of that into a device like this as possible,” says Gabriel Meng, senior product manager at ‘Asus.

Again, no specs today, but Asus says the Ally It should have a longer M.2 2280 SSD slot, so buyers can more easily find and purchase larger SSD upgrades than the current M.2 2230 allows.

The Ally Although I haven’t been able to see it for myself, Asus claims the handheld will be slightly heavier due to the larger battery, with revised grips and slight adjustments to things like the D -Pad, joysticks and triggers.

Above: A video showing the interior of the original ROG Ally.

And, while Asus still won’t admit that the Ally’s SD card reader had any faults, it tells me that it’s the exact same SD card reader that it uses in its laptops, and says he doesn’t think any problem is actually related to overheating. , the Ally “We don’t want people to think that’s what we had do,” Meng says of moving the SD drive. “We had to move things around on the board to make them fit. »

Asus says the Ally X’s improvements will come at a cost; Unlike the Steam Deck OLED, which has largely replaced Valve’s LCD model at the same price points, the Ally X will start at a higher price than the original. The original ROG Ally 2023 will also continue to stick around and could see discounts.

When it comes to the ROG Ally 2, Asus acknowledges that it has a similar philosophy to Valve: it wants to build a true successor when it can deliver a significant improvement in performance, not just an incremental increase.

And while Asus doesn’t plan to sell an aftermarket battery upgrade for original Ally buyers, a significant software update is also coming for those buyers: Armory Crate SE 1.5 is not just a whole new coat of paint and navigation improvements – it will finally let players share their button mappings for various games with other Ally owners.

Asus tells me it still believes in Windows. While Meng says, “We’re very open-minded to considering other solutions” and the company has conversations with Valve, Asus says it has philosophical and logistical reasons for doing so. hold on to Microsoft’s operating system, including the desire to have “inclusiveness”. of all the different gaming platforms” instead of relying on Steam. I’ll tell you about some of the logistical reasons in a future story.

Asus says it will officially announce the ROG Ally X on June 2.