In May, Asus confirmed it was working on a beefed-up version of 2023"s ROG Ally portable gaming PC, called the ROG Ally X. Today, during a live stream on YouTube, the company revealed more information about the product and also announced its price and launch date. The Windows 11 handheld will launch in July, with a price of up to $799. Pre-orders should start today.
The new version will include the same AMD Radeon Z1 Extreme chip inside and the same 7-inch 1080p display with a 120Hz refresh rate. However, the Asus ROG Ally X will include an 80w battery which is double the size of the 40w battery of the original ROG Ally. While the battery is much bigger, Asus says the ROG Ally X"s weight increased by just 70g compared to the original.
The Asus ROG Ally X also has 1TB of SSD storage out of the box, compared to the 512GB of the original. It will also accept the standard M.2 2280 internal SSD size so owners can more easily upgrade to larger storage amounts if they want. The RAM amount will also go up to 24GB with LPDDR5X-7500 support, compared to 16GB of RAM in the ROG Ally. The company says it had to redesign the motherboard of the ROG Ally to include all these features in the new ROG Ally X.
The new version also comes in a black color, compared to the white ROG Ally. The ergonomics of the ROGH Ally X have also been improved so it should be more comfortable to hold in the hands. The joysticks have also been improved so they can last up to 5 million cycles, versus 2 million on the original. The D-Pad has also been redesigned so it is more precise.
Other features include offering two USB-C ports on the top, instead of just one. The two fans that are part of the device"s cooling system are smaller and thinner but can actually generate 10 percent more airflow for the ROG Ally X compared to the ROG Ally.
One thing the ROG Ally does have is a port so you can connect it to an Asus external XG mobile GPU. That port is not available on the ROG Ally X.
In addition to the Asus ROG Ally X, the company is releasing a new version of its Armour Crate software for the device in July. The new version 1.5 will include a more intuitive user interface and new functions. More info on the Armoury Crate update will be revealed in the coming weeks.
Finally, Asus in North American has just announced via X that all of the ROG Ally products, including the new X model, will have their warranties boosted to two years.