The ROG Xbox Ally X priced at $1,000 and available to preorder in October, making it officially the

Xbox's latest device isn't a new console: instead, it's a set of familiar-looking handheld gaming PCs, and very expensive ones at that. After months of teases, rumours, and speculation, we finally have the official pricing details. You will be able to preorder both the as of today, with the standard Ally fetching $600 and the Xbox Ally X costing $1,000.

The cheaper of the two devices, the comes with a Z2 A processor, which offers eight RDNA 2 cores and a boost frequency of up to 1800 MHz. This is almost the same as the , which comes in at half the price, and benefits from the lightweight, Linux-based SteamOS. Not a good start for Microsoft.

Up next is the black ROG Xbox Ally X, which has the new Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip in it and comes [[link]] in at $1,000. , which you will find in the still rather great original ROG Ally X. Despite the upgrade to three Zen 5 and five Zen 5c cores (as opposed to eight Zen 4), the Z2 Extreme only sees a performance uplift of 12% in Cyberpunk 2077 with both machines at 25 W.

Dropping down to 17 W, that same test saw a 22% difference. Effectively, the Z2 Extreme [[link]] only really sees a noticeable improvement over the Z1 Extreme in environments with lower power draw and resolution. Memory bandwidth is a problem with the shiny new CPU, which is a far cry from the .

This means, in many cases, you will see little uplift from Z1 Extreme to Z2 Extreme, which feels decidedly, well, not very extreme. The Z2 Extreme is a Strix Point chip, with the same architecture as the HX 370, but with fewer cores. It has effectively the same GPU but a less powerful CPU.

We a while back, comparing the 16-CU 890M iGPU found on that chip to the 12-CU 780M found on the ROG Ally X. Even with a good deal more power as we were comparing a laptop to a handheld (54 W to 30 W), [[link]] we saw roughly a 20% improvement in average FPS in Horizon Zero Dawn. In F1 22, that was a 31% improvement.

Comparing the in the with the HX 370 in the OneXPlayer F1 Pro, we found them to be very comparable chips, with the former being significantly cheaper. Importantly, the Z2 extreme is less powerful than the HX 370, and still more expensive than the Claw 8 AI+.

With companies like and cramming Strix Halo into upcoming handhelds, and the Lenovo Legion Go 2 outselling expectations (despite being a $1,000+), it seems like the gaming handheld PC space is only getting more expensive. The 256 GB Steam Deck (that launched three years ago) is still a budget darling, and is

Should you want to preorder either Xbox Ally (something I'd advise against until more testing comes in), you can do so right now, and it should arrive at your door on October 16. If I were shopping around for a beefy handheld, I think my money would be going on the impressive instead, though, with its great Lunar Lake chip, lovely screen, and excellent battery life.

Best handheld PC 2025

1. Best overall:

2. Best budget:

3. Best Windows:

4. Best big screen:

5. Best compact:

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