Asus just announced the OLED Xbox Ally X of my dreams

If you ask me what I would change in this matter Xbox Ally X handheld – aside to repair WindowsI mean – I can tell you two important things.

First, give me a bigger, better screen. Although it’s a little bigger, so the game feels less claustrophobic and it’s a really bad bezel. Second, remove the “Library” button. I am therefore I’m tired of the random press taking me out of my game and into the Xbox library with no easy way back.

With the newly announced ROG Xbox Ally X20, Asus has done both – and then some. Now it’s a great looking handheld with Gulikit TMR touch controls, a D-pad switch that goes from 8-way to 4-way by collapsing its corners when you rotate it, toggle buttons, haptic switches, fan tweaks…

Not only is the Xbox Ally X20 upgraded from a 7-inch IPS display to a 7.4-inch 120Hz OLED at the same 1080p-friendly resolution, the screen itself feels better. It is a 600-nit group in SDR with HDR peaks of 1400 nits, higher than. Lenovo Legion Go 2although they are both VESA DisplayHDR TrueBlack 1000 certified. And, it supports Dolby Vision.

Like the Legion Go 2, it also has a variable refresh rate (VRR) that drops to 30Hz instead of 48Hz on the original Ally, which will make games smoother when the AMD Z2 Extreme chip can’t make games hit 48fps to begin with. It’s the same chips here as the original Xbox Ally X, by the way: AMD Z2 Extreme, with 24GB of 8000MT/sec RAM and 1TB of storage.

The handle is a bit large to facilitate the adjustment: 9mm wide, half a millimeter thick, and 41 grams heavy.

Not only is the “Library” button gone, it has been replaced by an “Action” button that seems to be useful: it will take a picture and print it once or take a picture with a long press, just like modern controllers do.

The ABXY buttons now stay in contact with the casing when you press them down, the main switches have been moved and have a longer, more stable response time, and the fans have been changed a bit to allow more air to flow through the chassis to reduce glare, Asus spokesperson Anthony Spence tells me.

In addition, the Xbox button now lights up green, which just makes sense – and it has a MicroSD Express card slot, just like the Nintendo Switch 2.

What’s not so cool, and honestly doesn’t make sense to me, is that Asus won’t let you buy it yourself. This holiday, it will come as part of a bundle with two Asus and Xreal glasses are priced at R1which (at $849) costs almost $1,000 more than the Xbox Ally X alone.

Asus isn’t paying those prices just yet, but I suspect the bundle will do a lot to lower the price of the handset – one at a time. everything else in the hand is increasing – instead of helping to sell glasses at a lower price.

I think the Xreal glasses are a great replacement for small, claustrophobic screens, but if I’m buying a new Ally to get a better screen, do I even need the glasses?

I think I’m dreaming. For what it’s worth, Spence says he hasn’t heard of plans to increase the price of the original Xbox Ally X. It’s still at $1,000 right now. I have asked if Asus will provide a way to change the home button of the mobile Library, too.