• ASUS South Africa has confirmed when pre-orders for the ROG Ally X go live in South Africa.
• It features the same processor as the predecessor, but improves the battery, RAM, and storage.
• No official pricing has been revealed, but it is expected to retail for more than the original that launched last year.

Amid a flurry of announcements at Computex 2024, ASUS revealed its latest handheld PC gaming console – the ROG Ally X.

The successor to last year’s offering, which has since prompted a number of manufacturers to debut similar offerings, the second iteration of the ROG Ally features the same chipset as the original. Namely, an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor.

Importantly, however, ASUS has made improvements to other elements of the ROG Ally X, which include upgraded storage, RAM, and battery life.

“Built with user feedback at its heart, the ROG Ally X amps of many of its crucial internal components. A new 1 TB SSD ensures users have room for all their games, up from 512 GB on the original Ally. In addition, the ROG Ally X uses a redesigned motherboard featuring an M.2 2280 form factor slot, allowing users to more easily upgrade their storage to larger drives than previously possible,” explains ASUS South Africa in a release sent to Hypertext.

Along with the storage upgrade, 24GB of DDR5-7500 RAM is found. ASUS adds that as an APU, the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme shares its video RAM with the device’s system RAM. “With modern games using more VRAM for high-resolution, lifelike textures, 24 GB of system memory allows users to allocate more memory to both the system and the GPU for better performance in the next generation of AAA titles,” it noted.

As for the battery, the Taiwanese manufacturer has included an 80Wh unit here, which doubles the capacity of the previous model. Whether that yields twice the battery life remains to be seen, with this aspect being one we highlighted as needing improvement when we reviewed last year’s model.

Other enhancements include the joysticks which have been replaced with a new, more durable module, rated for a five-million-cycle lifespan. These offer stiffer springs too for a better response curve to long time controller gamers, according to ASUS. The D-Pad has been similarly improved, with more precise eight-direction input for fighting and retro games.

Another user feedback request is more universal I/O, which has seen ASUS replace the original XG Mobile port with two USB Type-C ports on the ROG Ally X, one of which is Thunderbolt-compatible for third-party docks and external GPUs. 

In terms of when local gaming fans interested in this handheld can pre-order it, they are set to go live on 27th June 2024, according to ASUS South Africa. At the time of writing, the recommended retail price has not been shared, but we have seen the likes of Stuff SA outline a R18 000 price tag.

If that is true, the ROG Ally X will come in a full R2k more expensive than its predecessor. As such, the improvements to RAM, storage, and especially battery life will need to be notable if consumers are to pick up this new device instead of the older one.

To see how last year’s edition fared when we reviewed it, you can click on the embedded post below.