I tested the ROG Xbox Ally at Gamescom and had some surprising thoughts
I’m at Gamescom right now, previewing new Switch games and getting up close and personal with exciting hardware, namely the ROG Xbox Ally. Asus’ brand-new handheld PC is an odd concept for me, as the current ROG Ally Z1e and ROG Ally X are still quite young. What attracts me to the Xbox Ally is the decision to reduce bloatware and offer a SteamOS-style experience. Valve’s dashboard is far cleaner than any of the Windows portable consoles by a mile. Can the Xbox Ally solve that?
While the showroom model prohibits me from tearing into the nitty-gritty side of the console, I can speak to its performance and overall feel. The demo of choice is Hogwarts Legacy, and it’s immediately apparent how crisp it looks on the Xbox Ally’s display. I still wish Asus would offer an OLED model, but the jump to 500 nits is noticeable. Shadows in the darkness of Hogwarts’ grounds contrast beautifully on the display, and retaining support for 120Hz is always a bonus in my book. Aside from this, there’s nothing too different from its predecessors on the display front.
The real area where it needs to impress is performance, and luckily, the Xbox Ally is starting strong. Again, the showroom model prevents me from accessing Armory Crate, so I can’t see if anything like Turbo mode or CPU Boost is engaged. A quick peep into the game’s settings reveals light usage of AMD FSR 3, while the game runs at what appears to be a stable 60fps at 1080p. However, some instances of movement on my broom did throw a few screen tears my way. Nothing too distracting, but enough to consider further tweaking with the game’s fidelity options.
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I’m at Gamescom right now, previewing new Switch games and getting up close and personal with exciting hardware, namely the ROG Xbox Ally. Asus’ brand-new handheld PC is an odd concept for me, as the current ROG Ally Z1e and ROG Ally X are still quite young. What attracts me to the Xbox Ally is…