The first handheld Xbox is almost here – rather, the first Xbox-branded third-party handheld gaming PC is – as Asus has announced that the ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X will release on October 16th. Spooky!
Earlier this month, a retail leak suggested preorders for the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X would start on August 20th. Alas, the company says pricing and preorder details are still to come. That’s fair; who knows what exciting new tariffs will have been announced by October? Both machines will come first to the US and other regions like Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and later to more places where existing ROG Ally handhelds are sold now.
These are the first handheld gaming PCs designed in concert with Microsoft as Xbox-first machines, with a minimal version of Windows and a built-in Xbox app that should mean gaming without all the muss and fuss of ordinary portable Windows gaming machines. Asus promises that if a game has been labeled “Handheld Optimized,” you shouldn’t need to dive into settings at all to get the game running as smoothly as it can.
Minimal or not, this being a Windows machine means you can also play games from other places like Steam and Epic Games, and in fact, the Xbox app leans into this, facilitating importing them instead of pretending they don't exist. The ROG Ally series has already earned IGN’s pick for best Windows handheld gaming PC, so if Asus and Xbox have done their job well, the Xbox Ally X should be a cinch to take over the title.
To recap, here are the specs you can expect: The ROG Xbox Ally X will pack an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme APU – enabling features like Automatic Super Resolution – a 16-core GPU, 24GB of RAM, 1TB of onboard SSD storage, an 80Wh battery, and a 50 TOPS neural processor. (That’s 10 more than is required for a computer to be considered a local AI model-friendly Microsoft Copilot Plus PC.) Meanwhile, the lower-end ROG Xbox Ally will come with a Ryzen Z2, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 60Wh battery. They’ll both have 7.0-inch, 120Hz 1080p displays with variable refresh rate and AMD FreeSync to help ease screen tearing.
For more Xbox gear, check out our guides to the Best Xbox Headsets and Controllers.
Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.
