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In celebration of the 20th anniversary of its Republic of Gamers (ROG) series of devices, Asus has unveiled a special edition upgrade to the Xbox Ally X handheld gaming PC: the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20.
Rather than just a repackaged Ally X, this anniversary edition makes a few minor changes to justify its existence. The most immediately noticeable difference is the design, with the X20 combining a sleek, translucent black chassis with gold-accented internals, creating a distinct, vaguely cyberpunk aesthetic.
The display is also upgraded, now an OLED panel and slightly larger, at 7.4in. Combined with the top bezel being 60% smaller than the previous version, this should make the display real estate feel tangibly more spacious.
As for the rest of the display specifications, the refresh rate is 120Hz, you’re getting Premium Pro support, the response time is 0.2ms and peak brightness is quoted at 1,400 nits. There’s Corning DXC glass over the top for scratch protection and an anti-reflective coating that Asus claims reduces glare by 65%.
In one of its more interesting upgrades, the Ally X20 comes with a transforming D-pad that allows you to convert it from four-way movement to eight-way control, which especially good for fighting games, according to Asus. This is very simple to do, requiring you to pull the D-pad out slightly from the grip, twist it, and lock it back in place.
The other main change is that the X20 uses TMR (tunnelling magnetoresistance) joysticks that should offer superior precision and control, and resist stick drift, due to their wear-proof magnetic sensors.
The internals look to be the same as the ROG Xbox Ally X, with an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor, 24GB of LPDDR5X RAM and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD. No confirmation is given but, considering the rest of the specifications, I’d say it’s likely that the X20 will use an 80Wh battery, too.
Asus ROG XREAL R1 AR Edition 20
Also getting the anniversary treatment are the Asus ROG XREAL R1 AR glasses, which are bundled in here as the “Edition 20” variant. The black and gold colouring of the Ally X20 is mirrored here, and the glasses plug directly into the Ally via a single USB-C cable.
Once equipped, the AR glasses display a massive 171in virtual screen, positioned to look like it’s roughly four meters away, covering around 95% of your in-focus field of view, for maximum immersion. The display refreshes at up to a speedy 240Hz and the response time is a near-instant 0.01ms.
Native 3DoF (three degrees of freedom) allows the screen to follow you as you move your head, keeping it firmly fixed in your field of vision, while Anchor mode locks the screen in one place, if you prefer it stationary.
There’s no word yet on when we can expect to see the anniversary edition ROG Xbox Ally X20 hitting shelves, nor how much this bundle is likely to cost, but given that the standard Ally X currently starts around £849 and the XREAL R1 AR glasses will set you back £749, I would expect this bundle to run at least £1,600.
