is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
What does “Xbox” mean? Some might say it can only refer to a box-shaped Microsoft game machine. Others will argue it’s a collection of Xbox-native titles like Halo, Gears, Forza, and Fable. I think most would probably agree it’s a game console experience, a way to kick back and easily play the latest games without thinking too much. Press the power button, play, press it again to pause.
The 7-inch Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X gaming handhelds, on sale tomorrow, don’t meet that bar. The cheaper one doesn’t even come close.
They run Windows 11, and they never let you forget it — not during their lengthy setup process, not when you’re trying to navigate their menus, and not when you want the latest games to “just work.” They also don’t play Xbox games designed for an Xbox console, only Xbox games ported to PCs; when GTA VI comes out next May without a PC version, you won’t be playing it here. Not unless you’re streaming from the cloud.
To be fair, no Windows handhelds meet that bar, and the $999 Xbox Ally X is better than many! But these first “Xbox” handhelds were supposed to be Microsoft’s answer to the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch. They were supposed to combine “the best of Xbox and Windows together” by reimagining Microsoft’s operating system. We were told the new Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) “isn’t just surface-level changes.”
So why does it look so much like lipstick on Windows, with a sluggish UI that feels designed for a mouse? Why are Microsoft and Asus shipping these handhelds today when they’re buggy and clearly not ready for launch?
The white $599 Xbox Ally and black $999 Xbox Ally X officially arrive tomorrow, October 16th.
Both are the same size, shape, thickness, and weigh roughly the same 1.5 pounds. On paper, the only differences between the Xbox Ally X and Xbox Ally are the processor (Z2 Extreme vs. Z2 A), storage (1TB vs. 512GB), memory (24GB LPDDR5X-8000 vs. 16GB LPDDR5-6400), battery (80Wh vs. 60Wh), and whether you get impulse triggers and a USB 4 port or not.
They both supposedly ship with the new Xbox Full Screen Experience, which should let you boot into a desktop-less Windows 11 that suppresses startup apps, saves memory, lets you navigate by gamepad controls instead of requiring you to touch the screen, and puts your Xbox, Steam, and titles from other stores all in one handy interface, with the desktop still a click away if you want.
Hopefully you will only experience this once if at all — an hour-plus process that locks your handheld to an update screen before you can use it at all.
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