ROG Xbox Ally X: The Ars Technica review

Here at Ars, we have been writing about rumors of a portable Xbox for literal decades now. With the ROG Xbox Ally, Microsoft has finally made those rumors a reality in the weirdest, most Microsoft way possible.

Yes, the $600 ROG Xbox Ally—and its souped-up cousin, the $1,000, ridiculous-mouthful-of-a-name ROG Xbox Ally X, which we tested—are the first official handheld hardware to sport the Xbox brand name. But Microsoft isn’t taking the exclusive-heavy, walled garden software approach that it has been committed to for nearly 25 years of Xbox home consoles. Instead, the ROG Xbox Ally is, at its base, simply a new version of Asus’ Windows-based ROG Ally line with an Xbox-flavored coat of paint.

That coat of paint—what Microsoft is calling the Xbox Full-screen Experience (FSE)—represents the company’s belated attempt to streamline the Windows gaming experience to be a bit more console-like in terms of user interface and overall simplicity. While that’s a worthy vision, the execution in these early days is so spotty and riddled with annoyances that it’s hard to recommend over the SteamOS-based competition.

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