ROG Ally X

I bought myself a used Z1E at the beginning of the year, the first thing that I spent my scholarship on. I paid about 330€, with some accessories, and man that was a great purchase! Installed Bazzite basically day one and I'm having a blast ever since. No matter what game I try, it's always playable (granted, there are cases like jedi survivor, where I had to run two frame generators on top of each other and play at 768p to have a decent frame rate with enormous input lag, but hey, it still was fun). I've had my eye on handheld PCs even before the steam deck was released, and even more after that since they became much more popular, but I'd never expect for them to become this cheap with that level of performance. Gaming for me was quite hard lately, since I live about 50/50 in my house and in my dorm, and my gaming PC can be only in one place at the time, and I don't really have the time to play for multiple hours at once. But now, I finally can play basically anywhere, even on a train, which is absolutely crazy! Tbh I don't know if I haven't played more games in that year, since, well ever. About a month ago I did the battery mod, 79 Wh from AliExpress with an aluminium plate and 3D printed backplate (I may not look that good as the original but has better grips and it's stupidly cheap when you have your own 3d printer). After that the Ally feels almost perfect, about 3 hours of battery life in more demanding games, which is absolutely more than enough for me. I'm not even mentioning everything else that comes with a fact, that this is *literally* a PC. I used it as a smart TV for my projector, as a computer when I didn't have access to my laptop and probably a few more things that right now I can't even remember. Tl;dr fantastic device with amazing price and insane capabilities, would recommend to anyone who's not scared of PC gaming

After months of research and searching I finally received the Rog Ally Z1E! I got it for ₹35800 ($380). It's looking neat and has no issues so far. Battery is at 74% (29,181/40,001). This is the first gaming console I'm buying on my own; I used to spend hours on my PSP my father bought me when I was a kid and the comfort of playing games on a couch/bed/car or wherever I am never left me. I have had a gaming laptop for some time now, but I never played too many games on it. Mostly because I already had a lot of things going on and thought gaming would take away too much time. I also have to set up the whole system, and I have to sit in the same chair I've been in all day for work. And then when I start playing, something interrupts and I have to turn it off again. I just installed The Witcher 3 and started playing again. I first played it about 2 years ago but never finished it. This time, I’m hoping the Ally makes it easier to pick up and play whenever I get some free time and finally complete the game. Feels nice to finally have a handheld again after all these years. If you’ve been using the Ally for a while, I’d love to hear any tips, game recommendations, or things I should know.

It's been a day or so I received my Xbox Ally X, put about 10 hours of gaming into it and want to share my thoughts, especially comparing it to SD Oled. I had the SD Oled since launch and previously owned ROG Ally X. TLDR; Xbox Ally X has much better hardware, buttons, ergonomics, it's more comortable to play games. It runs games much better and starts them much faster. However the Full Screen Experience is completely shit and Windows on handheld is still dick cutting nightmare. XAX is very heavy, surprisingly, holding it by the grips makes it seem like her than OG Ally X. SD feels like a toy compared to it - although the SD is slightly bigger. The controls are better on XAX - most noticeable for me are the Dpad, sticks and triggers. Playing FPS games feels absolutely amazing, since you can 100% rely on the buttons and they're super accurate. Face buttons are LOUD and a bit hard to press. Not a fan, still better than SD as they're larger. BUT - the trackpads are absolutely insane on SD and I regularly use them for Heroes and Wii Emulation. And I sure as shit can't emulate most Wii games on the XAX itself. Screen is good - you bump up the vibrance a bit and it looks awesome. I'm constantly moving between OLED, VA miniLED, IPS so I'm sort of desensitised to the wow factor of OLED. But the image is course better on SD with VibrantDeck. I'm still leaning towards the XAX as VRR is a must on low powered handhelds with high refreshrate screen. The 7" size isn't a deal breaker when having it next to the bigger SD. The new chip in XAX has incredible performance at 17W - i run everything at 17W which gets me around 3 hours of battery Im usually away from the outlet and want to be as portbale as possible, so Ill never really consider anything above those W. The system starts up faster, games start faster too. Ghost of Tsushima runs at 60 on med/high 1080 FSR. For about 10 minutes before it crashes. FG about 80. FFVII Rebirth runs at around 35 on med/high 1080 native 100% min RES scale. Yakuza Like a Dragon runs at around 45 on med/high 1080 native. Found Rebirth to not be optimised that well, very little settings. Yakuza runs like shit in general, VERY hars to get good performance out of that game. The Xbox Full Screen Experience is completely dogshit. It starts up, is unresponsive for the next 15 secconds. Launching other launchera, e.g. GoG Galaxy always takes a couple of tries. Launching games is super weird, some are launched in background and you have to manually switch to them. I spent almost 3 hours installing windows updates. C O N S T A N T freezes and lags. It's either super responsive or it doesn't so anything. No reliable sleep, HUGE deal breaker if not for Bazzite. Bottom line is, once Bazzite stable releases, this is imo the beat handheld out there due to the fact that I can get into games much faster and they play much better. The experience of playing DOOM 2016 on XAX and SD Oled are two different things, due to the performance and controls of the XAX. The point of a handheld for me is to play as many games for the longest of time - traveling, camping, commuting. Want to take it out, play, put it back. The 17W mode plays everything and has amazing battery. Once Bazzite releases, it will finally have sleep that isn't shit. Btw. Where I live, the equivalent of SD Oled 1TB is about 30% cheaper the XAX. I would absolutely not consider the SD LCD to be any sort of a competitor to anything anymore.

Love handheld gaming any chance I get. What’s everyone’s favorite from here? Can’t decide on which one I like the most. SteamDeck is the good ol reliable, ally x battery life and performance is great but small screen, the LeGo S I haven’t had too long but the screen is amazing.