ASUS' ROG gaming brand is turning 20, and to celebrate, the company is releasing a new version of its Ally handheld gaming PC systems. Dubbed the ROG XBOX Ally X20 and continuing the partnership with Microsoft's gaming brand, the new hardware is touting a completely redesigned mainboard, an upgraded display, better joysticks, and even a translucent chassis.
The display is the biggest upgrade here, with ASUS putting in a 7.4-inch OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate. It is slated to have a peak brightness of 1,400 nits, FreeSync Premium Pro support, 0.2ms response times, a VESA DisplayHDR 1000 rating, and full Dolby Vision support. Playing in brightly lit areas will also be manageable thanks to its anti-reflective coating that's supposed to reduce glare by 65%.
As for its next trick, the Ally X20 has a "Transforming D-Pad" that functions as a traditional four-way control mechanism. But lifting and twisting the D-pad enables eight-way control that is useful for fighting games and others.
Joysticks have gone through a major upgrade, too, featuring sticks with TMR (Tunneling Magnetoresistance) technology. These should result in almost no stick drift issues, unlike standard joysticks, while also coming with better input accuracy and much better power consumption compared to previous-generation magnetic sticks like Hall Effect.
Other changes to the handheld include improved button placement, a rubberized coating for better grip on the back, a green Xbox button to match the new branding, and a translucent plastic body showing off the new gold-accented internals.
Even with these upgrades, the AMD chip powering the Ally X20 hasn't changed from the last release. It houses an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor, 24GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and 1TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage.
ASUS has not announced pricing for the ROG XBOX Ally X20 yet, but it's supposed to launch sometime this holiday period.
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