Microsoft is asking a lot to justify the cost of the upgraded APU, redesigned Ally X chassis, and Windows overlay. Though it is, altogether, the best handheld I've ever used, but at a price I find hard to recommend to most people.
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The Asus ROG Xbox Ally X is a handheld gaming PC that is filled with, and fills me with, contradictions. 'This is an Xbox,' cries Microsoft of what is patently just a PC. 'This is the best handheld gaming PC I've ever used,' I cry of a device that I could not in good conscience recommend anyone with budgetary constraints should buy.
Such is the folly of the redesigned and rebadged Asus ROG Ally X . A handheld gaming PC that goes a long way to ironing out many of the kinks inherent in Windows-based devices, but does so with what I believe is a fundamental misunderstanding of why people buy handhelds in the first place.
At its heart, it's a new version of the Asus handheld, but with a new AMD APU inside and a reskinned, reimagined version of Windows on top. And both are improvements over what's gone before. But Microsoft, having ditched its own plans for an in-house handheld, has slapped an Xbox badge on it and is now asking gamers to pay far more than they have for any Xbox console that has ever existed.