Asus has just announced the ROG Xbox Ally X20. This new handheld gaming PC is basically the same as the original Xbox Ally X, only with a 7.4-inch 120Hz OLED display, which should be a big improvement over the LCD-equipped Xbox Ally. But there’s a catch: it’ll only be available bundled with a pair of ROG XReal R1 Edition 20 Gaming AR Glasses.
The 7.4-inch OLED is a decent bump from the 7-inch LCD of the Xbox Ally X. Asus says it outputs at 1,400 nits and carries a VESA DisplayHDR 1000 rating, which should mean very good HDR support. It also works with Dolby Vision and features 0.2ms response time. And it’s got an anti-reflective coating that Asus claims will reduce glare by 65%.
So what else is new for this update to the reigning champ of handheld gaming PCs? Well, it’s translucent, for starters, and it has a “Transofrming D-Pad” that “can easily be converted” from the standard 4-way affair to 8-way control. It also features new “Gulikit TMR joysticks,” according to The Verge, which should mean they won’t develop stick drift anytime soon, if ever. The company says it has improved face buttons, too. They’ll sit “flush against the chassis smooth and uninterrupted thumb sliding.” If you read that and balked at first, the way I did, don’t worry; the buttons aren’t embedded down into the body.
Internally, not much appears to have changed from the Xbox Ally X – this is a cosmetic upgrade. The system still features an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme Processor, 24GB of RAM, and 1TB of NVMe storage. You can probably blame the ongoing RAM and storage crisis for that one. Also like the Xbox Ally X, it’ll support Auto Super Resolution, which uses AI to upscale lower-resolution games to output at higher framerates and resolutions.
About that catch, though. Asus hasn’t announced a price, which isn’t encouraging if the company truly isn’t releasing the console on its own. A pair of XReal R1 AR glasses alone will set you back about $850, and presumably these “Edition 20” ones are the same glasses. And the Xbox Ally X is a $1,000 machine, too. Bundled together in a time when Valve has cranked the price of the Steam Deck by $300, this new Ally could cost a very pretty penny.
That said, the XREAL R1 seems like an impressive device. As Asus writes, it presents gamers with “a 171-inch virtual screen at 4 meters, 240Hz display that covers 95% of the focused field of view, with a near-instantaneous 0.01ms response time thanks to micro-OLED.” It has 3DoF head-tracking so that the screen follows your head around, although you can also choose to have it remain in one spot as you look around. The R1 plugs into the new handheld via USB-C.
Asus has not revealed a release date for the bundle.
Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom’s Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn’t be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.
