Asus has announced a new version of its Windows-based ROG XBOX Ally with an OLED display and improved controls. However, to get your hands on the supercharged handheld gaming console, you’ll need to buy a special anniversary bundle.
The ROG XBOX Ally X20 now includes a 7.4-inch 1080p OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and 0.2ms response time – or ROG Nebula HDR Display as the company calls it. That’s an upgrade on the existing 7-inch IPS display available with the standard Asus ROG XBOX Ally.
The new display supports FreeSync Premium Pro support with 1,400 nits of peak brightness. It has a Vesa Display 1000 rating and supports Dolby Vision. It’s coated by Corning DXC glass with an anti-reflective coating.
The controls are also getting a significant boost thanks to a new Transforming D-Pad that can be converted from four-way to eight-way movement that Asus says is better for fighting games. There’s upgraded joysticks with TMR technology with Hall Effect sensors tasked with “delivering pinpoint precision, smoother tracking, and longer‑lasting performance for serious play on the go. Designed to eliminate drift while enhancing responsiveness, these advanced sticks translate every micro‑movement exactly as intended.”
The face buttons have been adjusted to, so they sit flush against the chassis “to enable smooth and uninterrupted thumb sliding.” while the handgrips now have comfort-boosting rubberised coating. The design also has gold accents now.
There’s also support for Auto SR preview, which we’ve previously seen on Windows 11 CoPilot+ PCs. It can “efficiently upscale frames rendered at lower resolutions to deliver smooth gameplay on larger screens without losing sharpness, letting users dock their gameplay to the big screen without having to compromise FPS.”
The internals remain the same with the AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme Processor, 24GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage handling the heavy lifting. Because of the need for different heat management, Asus redesigned the airflow channels.
The bundle comes with a pair of ROG XREAL R1 Edition 20 Gaming AR Glasses, which plug into the Ally. The bundle is to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Asus Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand.
We’re yet to hear a price or a release date for the bundle, but don’t expect this to be cheap. The standard Xbox Ally X costs a grand and those recently-announced glasses aren’t far short. Probably looking at a couple of G’s for this one.
Read the full article here
