It’s turning out to be a good year for handheld-focused gamers, what with the confirmation of a new Nintendo console, and now the announcement of the ASUS ROG Ally X. While we still need to wait for the full reveal in a few weeks, we can confirm some details about the revised console.
ASUS announced it’ll do a full product reveal on June 2, 2024, with all the specs – but a stream on May 9 briefly showed the ASUS ROG Ally X. Remember that this isn’t the ROG Ally 2 – that’ll be a separate console we’ll see in the future, much like the difference between the Steam Deck OLED and a possible Steam Deck 2.
So what’s different about the X? Similar to how we got the OLED version of the Nintendo Switch, the ROG Ally X is a souped-up version of the Ally, allegedly offering more than 40% extra battery capacity within a ‘revised’ shell. Compared to the first ROG Ally’s 1.5-hour average battery, this is a huge improvement.
The screen and chipset remain the same as the original model, but ASUS notes that it’s trying to upgrade storage, graphics, memory, and ports on the X, according to senior product manager Gabriel Meng. Internally, the SD card slot is now further away from the heatsink, and there’s a larger SSD for storing more games.
The Ally X comes in a sleek black color, which eagle-eyed fans did actually see in this Tweet, peeping out of the shelving unit on the left. It should ship in the second half of the year, and we expect more information on how to get your hands on one soon.
Will you be grabbing an upgraded Ally? If not, we can recommend the best portable gaming consoles out there, and some retro game consoles if you fancy playing some older games, too.