GoKawiilis 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.
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Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and more: all the news about the handheld PC gaming revolution
If you asked me what I’d change about the Xbox Ally X handheld — aside from fixing Windows, I mean — I’d tell you two key things.
First, give me a bigger, better screen. Even a little bit bigger, so games feel less claustrophobic and with less ugly bezel. Second, get rid of the “Library” button. I am so tired of an accidental press booting me out of my game and into the Xbox library without a simple way to get back.
With the just-announced ROG Xbox Ally X20, Asus did both — and then some. It’s now a slick translucent handheld with drift-resistant GuliKit TMR joysticks, a transforming D-pad that goes from 8-way to 4-way by dropping its corners when you rotate it, button tweaks, haptic feedback tweaks, fan tweaks… and what could now be the best screen on a handheld yet.
Image: Asus
Not only does the Xbox Ally X20 upgrade from an 7-inch IPS display to a 7.4-inch 120Hz OLED at the same performance-friendly 1080p resolution, the screen sounds fantastic. It’s a 600-nit panel in SDR with HDR peaks of 1400 nits, even higher than the Lenovo Legion Go 2, though both are certified VESA DisplayHDR TrueBlack 1000. And, it supports Dolby Vision.
Image: Asus
Like the Legion Go 2, it’s also got an improved variable refresh rate (VRR) that goes down to 30Hz instead of the 48Hz on the original Ally, which could make games feel smoother when the AMD Z2 Extreme chip can’t quite make a game hit 48fps to begin with. It’s the same chips here as in the original Xbox Ally X, by the way: AMD Z2 Extreme, with 24GB of 8000MT/sec RAM and 1TB of storage.
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