Asus is ready to launch its new gaming handheld, the ROG Ally X, at the Computex 2024 even set for June 4 in Taiwan. Given the name, you may have already guessed that it’s not a direct successor to the regular Ally. As the company previously confirmed, it’s more of a refresh with some improvements over the predecessor. But these improvements have made it a little pricier.
More specifically, the Asus ROG Ally X was listed for pre-order in Taiwan. As the listing reveals, the new gaming handheld will cost 25,999 TWD, which is $800. To look back, the non-X gaming handheld with AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme goes for $700. That means we are seeing a $100 price increase.
The Listing Has Also Revealed the Specs of Asus ROG Ally X
As per the listing, the Asus ROG Ally X will come with the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, which is a top-end gaming handheld APU. It features the well-known AMD Radeon 780M iGPU, which basically makes these devices capable of offering good gaming performance. And yes, this is the same CPU that the top-end non-X variant came with.
Asus has paired the Ryzen Z1 Extreme with 24 GB of LPDDR5 RAM. To compare, the non-X ROG Ally had 16 GB of RAM. The higher amount of RAM in the newer handheld will make it more capable of handheld high-end games. We also see a storage upgrade on the newer model, as it comes with a 1 TB M.2 SSD.
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Another notable upgrade from the non-X variant is the battery. The new ROG Ally X comes with an 80 Wh, which is twice the capacity of the regular version. This will lead to longer runtimes. With all these upgrades, the $100 price bump does seem worth it. But if you already have the non-X variant, this isn’t an upgrade.
However, There’s One Big Drawback – No XG Mobile Port
If you’re planning to get the Asus ROG Ally X, you need to consider one thing. There’s no XG Mobile port, which the non-X variant came with. So, what is this port for? Well, it is a proprietary port developed by ASUS. With this port, you can connect the device with a compatible graphics card dock.
As mentioned earlier, the XG Mobile port is available on the regular ROG Ally X. Thanks to that, you can hook the gaming handheld to a desktop graphics card. With such a setup, you can get more gaming performance, which can even be similar to high-end gaming laptops.
Instead of the XG Mobile port, the Asus ROG Ally X comes with a USB 4 port. Now, it’s not like you can’t use a USB 4 port with an external GPU dock. You can. But with Asus’s proprietary solution, you get a PCIe Gen 3 x8 level of bandwidth, which is 63 Gb/s. On the other hand, with USB 4, you will be maxed out at 40 Gb/s.
While this difference may not seem like much, the bandwidth limitation lowers the eGPU performance. So, if you do plan to use your next gaming handheld with an external GPU, you will be better off with the non-X Asus ROG Ally.
