The ROG Ally X20 is basically the same handheld with OLED and gold trim

The Asus Xbox ROG Ally X is arguably the most high-profile PC gaming handheld from a major supplier, rivaled only by the Lenovo Legion Go 2. So as it is wont to do, Asus has decided to give it a bit of a boost. The new X20 model upgrades the design with an OLED screen, new control enhancements, and… some gold trim. If you were waiting to hear a chip upgrade at the end of that list, keep waiting.

Downer note aside, the OLED upgrade is indeed welcome, bringing Asus in line with Valve and Lenovo on the high end. It’s ever-so-slightly bigger at 7.4 inches, and brighter (at least at peak brightness) with 1,400 nits. The resolution and refresh rate remain the same at 1080p and 120Hz, respectively. Asus says it has a new cooling solution to protect the panel as well. Elsewhere the gadget gets new drift-proof TMR thumbsticks and a “transforming D-pad.” The pad doesn’t come off like a premium controller, but rotate it 90 degrees and you can swap between 4-axis and 8-axis controls. That should be a big boon to fighting game fans.

The X20 swaps out the all-black housing for retro translucent black plastic, with gaudy gold trim around the thumbsticks and on accent buttons. The Xbox button also glows green. But under the surface is the same device we’ve been using for the better part of a year: a Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme (8 cores/16 threads) with impressive integrated graphics, 24GB of DDR5 RAM, 1TB of storage, and, for better or worse, Windows 11. If you weren’t sold on the Xbox Ally X the first time around, you probably won’t be convinced here, no matter the price. And those who have an eye on performance will probably want to wait to see how those new Intel Arc G3 handhelds measure up.

And what’s the price? We don’t know. We also don’t know when it’ll land. The Xbox Ally X and its little non-X brother seem to be the last major PC gaming handhelds to resist big RAM-crisis price increases, sitting at their original $1,000 and $600 prices even after the Steam Deck shot up by a huge margin. But I doubt that stickiness will survive a new model.

Asus also announced an accompanying partner product, the ROG XReal R1 Edition 20 Gaming AR Glasses. These appear to be the same augmented reality display glasses as the ROG Xreal R1 revealed at CES back in January, just with a bit of gold trim to match the X20 handheld. Plug them into the USB-C port on the Ally (or any compatible Windows device, among many others) to get a floating heads-up display with 1080p resolution, 240Hz of refresh, and up to 171 inches of virtual size. The regular ROG XReal R1 costs $850, so presumably it’ll be around the same or slightly more for the special edition.

Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld