ASUS ROG has finally announced (after teasers and leaks of course) the new ROG Ally X gaming handheld that has been granted upgrades in several aspects.
Thanks to official sources, it is easy to tell which one stays the same – the CPU of the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme, the 7-inch FHD screen with 120Hz refresh rate, running Windows 11 OS, comes with a 3-month code for Xbox Game Pass – yap yap.
The upgrade most easy to tell apart is the now 1TB SSD in M.2 2280 instead of the 512GB M.2 2230 while the 16GB RAM is now 24GB with even higher speeds of 7500MHz.
Even then that’s not enough – the battery has been essentially doubled to an 80WHr unit but this doesn’t translate to twice the effective use time (don’t argue with physics thanks). As for how they did it, it basically comes from making the fans 23% smaller and 50% thinner blades while 2 new tunnels in the fan housing push hot air out towards an additional 3rd exhaust vent. TLDR – overall stronger air movement provides better cooling while consuming less space.
Another crucial change is from shifting the use of the ROG XG mobile port for eGPU connection, a USB-C 4.0 takes its place with DP 1.4 and PD 3.0 protocols support. Definitely a more sensible change since the original iteration probably proved that players would prefer to bring it along for its portability rather than hooking it up with another graphics card for some eye candy (while sitting down, yikes).
As for its look, it now has an additional black colorway while the joystick and face buttons have been slightly adjusted. For this point, I’ll probably leave it to the users to decide if the new layout is comfortable for them or not. But at least we know that the parts are now extra durable and more input-sensitive for more intense game sessions.
