There’s nothing worse than FOMO, the dreaded fear of missing out, to set gamers’ teeth on edge. The $1,000 Asus ROG Xbox Ally X—which launches Oct. 16—sports a new version of Windows all its own. The greedy little handheld PC will be the first in its category to run a version of Microsoft’s OS built customized to make it easier to access games. Oh, and your titles may run better than they did on previous versions of Windows.
The new version of Windows built for handhelds sports the FSE, a boring initialism for an even duller name, the “full screen experience.” What this does is position all your windows as separate apps you can spool through with a long press of the Xbox Ally’s special Xbox button. It means you no longer have to use a touchscreen in desktop mode to access all your various game launchers. It works well enough at this early stage; I wish it were available to all Windows PCs, akin to Steam’s Big Picture Mode.
For the moment, however, the feature is limited to the Xbox Ally. In the last few months, we’ve heard different things at different times from both Asus and Microsoft about whether other handhelds could soon receive it. Lenovo has claimed to The Verge that its devices will receive the update in spring of next year. But that’s not what Microsoft is saying. In an email statement, Xbox told Gizmodo, “We’re focused on launching the full-screen experience on the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds for Oct. 16. We have nothing more to share at this time.”
The FSE is still early in the crib. It’s better to think of it as a beta, even though Asus and Microsoft are keen to launch it exclusively with the Xbox Ally on Thursday. I’m one of multiple reviewers who have experienced glitches where waking the handheld from sleep results in a black screen. The software also eats up battery, even when the device is ostensibly asleep. Asus has confirmed that these are known issues, reassuring me Thursday that fixing the glitch is “definitely high in the priority list.”
But even before all its kinks are ironed out, the FSE would still make devices like the Legion Go 2 infinitely more accessible. So I fired up a unit and tried to make it happen.
PC gamers are well used to digging through Windows for hidden or beta features. You can find several guides online detailing the process to install the 25H2 Windows 11 update, though you’ll need to sign up for the Windows Insider beta program. There’s already a detailed guide on Reddit available for those who dare to try. However, you may end up using a third-party program called ViVeTool to manually force the update onto the handheld, which is likely enough of a hindrance to give less-dedicated PC gamers pause. Changing your settings may even break controller-first menu navigation, as IGN detailed in a report last month.
So rather than force a nonstandard version of the FSE onto the Lenovo Legion Go 2, I tried loading the 24H2 update (KB50657089). No dice—even with that installed, the handheld was displaying the regular Windows desktop with no option to swipe through full-screen apps.
Interestingly, though, I still saw improved performance. In Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks, I experienced an average of 5 more frames per second after the update than I did when I first reviewed the Legion last month on the stable Windows channel. Shadow of the Tomb Raider performance also improved by an average of 3 fps.
When I asked Microsoft whether the promised performance uptick was due to the FSE or a general update, the company told me, “While the Windows Update may include general Windows improvements, the Xbox full-screen experience offers the memory and performance improvements, including minimizing background tasks to give more power back to your games.”
In 3DMark benchmark tests on the Legion Go 2, I could nail between 100 and 200 points better in Time Spy and Steel Nomad Light tests. That may not seem like a lot, but 3 or 5 fps may be enough to let you boost graphics settings or make a previously unplayable game playable.
I then tried porting the same update onto the original ROG Ally X from 2024. I also ended up tied to the traditional desktop on that device. I could, unlike with the Legion, access the new Game Bar with the left menu button. But the performance bump on this model was underwhelming: Though the device is now running a bit better than it was at launch last year, it didn’t display nearly the same boost in performance that the Legion Go 2 did post-update. Long story short, there doesn’t appear to be a clean way for folks who don’t own the Xbox Ally, specifically, to experience the full benefits of the FSE.
That’s not the biggest problem—yet. The FSE-equipped ROG Xbox Ally X still can’t run all the latest AAA titles at 60 fps on their highest settings. You can net 30 fps in most intense games when you push down the graphics and sacrifice any hope of ray tracing. That said, the frame rate gains here are similar to the delta I’ve seen between the Windows-powered Legion Go S and the Legion Go S with Valve’s Linux-based SteamOS. Which means that if Microsoft finds it in its heart to give more people this update, maybe some gamers won’t feel as strong a desire to hop over to Linux and avoid the slow decline of Windows 11 as a gaming platform. Microsoft still has to fix some bugs first, though.