Asus ROG Xbox Ally Hands-On: Promising Idea, Unsatisfying Performance at Gamescom 2025

At Gamescom 2025, a TechRadar reviewer spent roughly half an hour with the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and its more powerful sibling, the Xbox Ally X, a month ahead of release. It was not enough time for a formal review, and the reviewer says as much. It was enough to leave a first impression, and that impression was not a good one.

The reviewer came in as something of an outsider to PC handhelds. They have never owned a Steam Deck, and the original Asus ROG Ally passed them by. At home they have a capable gaming PC and a Nintendo Switch 2 for portable play. Friends and colleagues who swear by the Steam Deck had left them open to persuasion, and they arrived optimistic. They left unconvinced.

The pitch is easy to understand. The device runs the full Xbox Series X|S dashboard and gives access to your Xbox games, Game Pass, Cloud Gaming and the Microsoft Store, alongside Steam and other libraries. The reviewer likes the idea, calling it perhaps the best demonstration of Microsoft's 'this is also an Xbox' pitch, and says it does not feel cynical. Taking an Xbox library on the road makes the same sense that taking a Steam library out does on a Steam Deck.

The execution is another matter. Today's PC handhelds are bulky and heavy next to less powerful portable systems, and the reviewer found that uncomfortable, though they accept the size is needed. The ergonomics themselves are fine. They grew to like the controller-style grips, and buttons, sticks and triggers felt well made, although the Xbox Home button sits a little too close to the left stick. The 7-inch FHD display is clean and matches the Switch 2's handheld spec of 1080p at up to 120Hz. It looked a touch dark by default, and neither model supports HDR. AMD FreeSync support should help smooth demanding games, to a degree.

Performance is where the reviewer felt most let down. They mainly used the Ally X, which has 24GB of RAM and a custom AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor. The standard Ally drops to 16GB and a Ryzen Z2 A. Even on the stronger hardware, results were mixed. Lies of P, pre-installed on the device, was extremely choppy at Medium settings, and Gears of War: Reloaded, at similar middle-of-the-road settings, also stuttered. Forza Horizon 5 was the exception. It ran beautifully on both models at a clean 60fps, and lower settings barely hurt image quality on the 1080p screen. The reviewer's advice is to drop settings wherever possible, and says neither handheld felt polished above low settings.

The Xbox software caused trouble too. Quick Resume, which holds multiple games in standby, made the Ally run uncomfortably warm, and the system crashed once when the reviewer tried to resume a suspended game. Load times were painful despite the M.2 SSD, which is 1TB on the Ally X and 512GB on the standard model. In-game loading was tolerable, but first-time game launches were glacial and ate into the limited session.

The reviewer is careful not to single out the Ally. Switch 2 handheld play also involves lower performance and resolution, particularly in demanding ports like Hitman World of Assassination - Signature Edition and Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition. The difference, they note, is that those games are tailored for Nintendo's hardware, so there is usually work behind making them run acceptably.

The verdict is conditional. First-time handheld buyers who want their Xbox library portable, and can tolerate rocky performance in some titles, may find plenty to like, particularly those already in the Xbox ecosystem. Everyone else, the reviewer says, is better served by the Steam Deck, which now costs much less and benefits from 'Deck verified' patches that smooth performance.

A lower price could change the picture, as could first-party games. If Fable, Gears of War: E-Day and the next Halo and Forza arrive optimized for the handheld, the reviewer says they could be won over. For now, they judge the Xbox Ally's fate to rest on how well Xbox's own future games run on it.