Hi, I'm Jeff. I'm on the wrong side of thirty-five and probably best described as a “lapsed gamer.” The most up-to-date system I own is the OG Nintendo Switch from all the way back in 2017 and, like a lot of us with jobs, kids and other commitments — I don’t get a whole lot of time to use it.
Even so, I was lucky enough to get my hands on the Nintendo Switch 2 for a few hours before its release a couple of months back. Now it’s here, I figured I’d almost certainly hand over my hard-earned cash for the new system before long.
Then I spent a week with the Asus ROG Ally X — and it changed everything.
To set the scene for just a second; I was facing a trip away with the family and idly wondered whether or not my Switch would make the cut for the carry-on.
But the talk around Tom's Guide these days is all about handheld gaming over on the PC side of the aisle. Sensing an opportunity, I politely asked a colleague to fix me up with the Asus handheld. That way, I could strategically ignore family time with a bit of gaming under the pretext of doing it "for work."
So, here we are — a week later and my first experience with a handheld PC has got me completely rethinking whether or not there’s a Switch 2 in my future at all.
Let me explain.
There's so much more choice
For me, a handheld system offers the best gaming proposition. The TV in my house is frequently occupied by other members of the family and the portability of a handheld lets me throw it in a bag and take it on a trip, or to the office, and grab some gaming time as and when it presents itself.
The Switch has always been good to me because it offered a nice blend of blockbuster and independent titles. I’m willing to look past technical shortcomings if the gameplay is good and experiences like Breath of the Wild and FIFA were enough for me.
But then I fired up the Asus Rog Ally X and discovered I could pick up games not just from Steam, but also Xbox’s excellent Game Pass (you get three months alongside the Ally X) as well as the Epic Game Store and GOG. A whole world of gaming — and the option to catch up on years of missed titles — suddenly opened up.
Part of my problem with the Switch 2 is that I don’t feel the need to replay yet another Mario Kart or Zelda game just yet. While it’s great to see Nintendo’s hardware improvements welcome more AAA third-party games to the system, the fact is many of these have been available on PC for a while.
And thanks to frequent Steam sales, you can usually save some serious cash playing on PC, too.
A tool as well as a toy
Windows 11 catches a lot of flak from gamers, it seems. SteamOS is where it’s at and Microsoft’s clunky OS just brings down the entire experience. This is undoubtedly true from a game-playing perspective. However, I think the only silver lining to having Windows on the ROG Ally X is that if you’re traveling with it, you’ve got a fully functional PC in your bag.
I don’t make much of a habit of working on vacation, and I’m not going to try and defend Windows on a gaming handset. But I did get a bit of a thrill from having a gaming system and a productivity machine in one device. All I needed to do was bring along a slim keyboard like the Logitech Keys-to-Go 2 and a mouse and I could get work on documents or tend to emails.
The one thing this does throw up for me is the lack of a kickstand on the ROG Ally X. In my opinion, any handheld should come with a built-in kickstand so you can use it with a controller or keyboard in a tabletop mode. But that goes double when you can use this as a laptop replacement.
The Ally X also feels more like a high-powered product with those ergonomic grips and aggressive ROG styling. It’s a little on the heavy side at 1.49lbs (which makes it all the more frustrating Asus didn’t add a kickstand) but the thumbsticks especially feel premium with a great range of motion and just the right amount of tension built in.
Fun for (not) the whole family
Nintendo has fixed itself firmly as “the family console” and is going even further with GameChat on the Switch 2. Even if you’re traveling with just the console, you can break off a Joy-Con and hand it to a friend or family member for some social Mario Kart racing. And that’s wonderful, if it’s what you’re looking for.
Me? I want to use gaming as a way to get away from other people. The same way I don’t want to sit and read a novel with somebody else. I’ll throw on a pair of the best noise cancelling headphones, kick back in a chair and go on my own personal adventure with Indiana Jones, thanks very much. Plus, since Asus added a second USB-C port, you can really go to town with a pair of Xreal or Viture AR glasses and shut out the outside world entirely.
Now if only the amount of time I had equated to the battery life on the ROG Ally X. Asus doubled the capacity compared to the previous ROG Ally to an 80Wh cell. My colleagues got over three hours of juice while running the Gaming PCMark 10 benchmark test and the handheld can easily go for longer than a couple of hours playing some of the most demanding games.
Device | Battery life hh:mm (Gaming PCMark 10) |
|---|---|
Asus ROG Ally X | 03:04 |
Lenovo Legion Go | 01:59 |
Asus ROG Ally | 01:43 |
Bottom line
I’ve not just been impressed with the Asus ROG Ally X, I’ve been blown away by how far handheld gaming has come since the Nintendo Switch in 2017. Now, I’m not immune to the issues of the ROG Ally X. That $899/£799 price point is a bitter pill to swallow and there is definitely a bit of a learning curve when it comes to tweaking and organizing performance compared to the boot-it-up-and-play nature of console gaming.
The Switch 2 is a fantastic gaming system, no question. But the chances of me getting one just became a whole lot smaller now I’ve had my first taste of gaming on a PC handheld.
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