Asus ROG Ally X Review: An All-Weather Friend

gadgets.ndtv.com:

The Asus ROG Ally laid down the gauntlet for Windows-based gaming handhelds when it arrived in 2023. While it had its flaws, including an SD card reader that was unpardonably prone to malfunction, the Ally established itself as the device to beat in the category despite subsequent competition from Lenovo and MSI. Earlier this year, Arnold Su, Vice President of the company's consumer and gaming PC business, told me that the company didn't believe in waiting. The Taiwanese firm's strategy to be the first to market across device categories has paid dividends in India, so why wait when you bring something new?

And Asus has struck the iron when it's hot, doubling down on its handheld bet. The ROG Ally X was unveiled in June ahead of Computex Taipei 2024 and launched in India last month. It's available in a single 1TB SSD storage variant that now comes with 24GB of RAM. It still runs on the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme chipset as its predecessor and sports the same 7-inch display. However, there are many changes — both within and without. The Asus ROG Ally X is also more expensive than the original Ally, coming in at Rs. 89,990 in India.

But are the upgrades packed in this refresh worth the higher price? At Computex, when I first got a hands-on opportunity to try the Ally X, I felt that Asus had made all the right choices for a mid-gen refresh of the ROG Ally. After spending some time testing the device, it's clear that the company took no half-measures. 

The ROG Ally X dwarfs the Nintendo Switch

Asus returned to the drawing board to make the new Ally more ergonomic. While the handheld retains the visual language of its predecessor — barring the Black colourway, there's little that differentiates the Ally X from the Ally at first glance — there are studied design tweaks all over to make the handheld more comfortable and natural to, well, hold in your hands. Most notably, the grips feature a more pronounced curve than the original ROG Ally — taller by 4.5mm, so the rear side