In 2023, we marveled at the sheer mass of Lenovo’s Legion Go, a 1.88-pound, 11.8-inch-wide monstrosity of a Windows gaming handheld. In 2026, though, Ayaneo unveiled details of its Next II handheld, which puts Lenovo’s big boy to shame while also offering heftier specs and a higher price than most other Windows gaming handhelds.
Let’s focus on the bulk first. The Ayaneo Next II weighs in at a truly wrist-straining 3.14 pounds, making it more than twice as heavy in the hands as the Steam Deck OLED (not to mention 2022’s original Ayaneo Next, which weighed a much more reasonable 1.58 pounds). The absolute unit also measures 13.45 inches wide and 10.3 inches tall, according to Ayaneo’s spec sheet, giving it a footprint approximately 60 percent larger than the Switch 2 (with Joy-Cons attached).
Ayaneo packs some seriously powerful portable PC performance into all that bulk, though. The high-end version of the system sports a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 chipset with 16 Zen5 cores alongside a Radeon 8060S with 40 RDNA3.5 compute units. That should give this massive portable performance comparable to a desktop with an RTX 4060 or a gaming laptop like last year’s high-end ROG Flow Z13.
The Next II sports a massive screen and some adult-sized controls.
The Next II sports a massive screen and some adult-sized controls. Credit: Ayaneo
Ayaneo isn’t the first hardware maker to package the Max+ 395 chipset into a Windows gaming handheld; the OneXPlayer OneXfly Apex and GPD Win5 feature essentially the same chipset, the latter with an external battery pack. But the Next II neatly outclasses the (smaller and lighter) competition with a high-end 9.06-inch OLED screen, capable of 2400×1504 resolution, up to 165 Hz refresh rates, and 1,155 nits of brightness.
Enlarge/ It’s hard to fit the perfomance-minded but pricey ROG Ally X into a simple product category. It’s also tricky to fit it into a photo, at the right angle, while it’s in your hands.
Kevin Purdy
The first ROG Ally from Asus, a $700 Windows-based handheld gaming PC, performed better than the Steam Deck, but it did so through notable compromises on battery life. The hardware also had a first-gen feel and software jank from both Asus’ own wraparound gaming app and Windows itself. The Ally asked an awkward question: “Do you want to pay nearly 50 percent more than you’d pay for a Steam Deck for a slightly faster but far more awkward handheld?”
The ROG Ally X makes that question more interesting and less obvious to answer. Yes, it’s still a handheld that’s trying to hide Windows annoyances, and it’s still missing trackpads, without which some PC games just feel bad. And (review spoiler) it still eats a charge faster than the Steam Deck OLED on less demanding games.
But the improvements Asus made to this X sequel are notable, and its new performance stats make it more viable for those who want to play more demanding games on a rather crisp screen. At $800, or $100 more than the original ROG Ally with no extras thrown in, you have to really, really want the best possible handheld gaming experience while still tolerating Windows’ awkward fit.
The ROG Ally X is essentially the ROG Ally with a bigger battery packed into a shell that is impressively not much bigger or heavier, more storage and RAM, and two USB-C ports instead of one USB-C and one weird mobile port that nobody could use. Asus reshaped the device and changed the face-button feel, and it all feels noticeably better, especially now that gaming sessions can last longer. The company also moved the microSD card slot so that your cards don’t melt, which is nice.
There’s a bit more to each of those changes that we’ll get into, but that’s the short version. Small spec bumps wouldn’t have changed much about the ROG Ally experience, but the changes Asus made for the X version do move the needle. Having more RAM available has a sizable impact on the frame performance of demanding games, and you can see that in our benchmarks.
We kept the LCD Steam Deck in our benchmarks because its chip has roughly the same performance as its OLED upgrade. But it’s really the Ally-to-Ally-X comparisons that are interesting; the Steam Deck has been fading back from AAA viability. If you want the Ally X to run modern, GPU-intensive games as fast as is feasible for a battery-powered device, it can now do that a lot better—for longer—and feel a bit better while you do.
The Rog Ally X has better answered the question “why not just buy a gaming laptop?” than its predecessor. At $800 and up, you might still ask how much portability is worth to you. But the Ally X is not as much of a niche (Windows-based handheld) inside a niche (moderately higher-end handhelds).
I normally would not use this kind of handout image with descriptive text embedded, but Asus is right: the ROG Ally X is indeed way more comfortable (just maybe not all-caps).
Asus
How it feels using the Rog Ally X
My testing of the Rog Ally X consisted of benchmarks, battery testing, and playing some games on the couch. Specifically: Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and Tactical Breach Wizards on the devices lowest-power setting (“Silent”), Deathloop on its medium-power setting (“Performance”), and Shadow of the Erdtree on its all-out “Turbo” mode.
All four of those games worked mostly fine, but DRG: Survivor pushed the boundaries of Silent mode a bit when its levels got crowded with enemies and projectiles. Most games could automatically figure out a decent settings scheme for the Ally X. If a game offers AMD’s FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) upscaling, you should at least try it; it’s usually a big boon to a game running on this handheld.
Overall, the ROG Ally X was a device I didn’t notice when I was using it, which is the best recommendation I can make. Perhaps I noticed that the 1080p screen was brighter, closer to the glass, and sharper than the LCD (original) Steam Deck. At handheld distance, the difference between 800p and 1080p isn’t huge to me, but the difference between LCD and OLED is more so. (Of course, an OLED version of the Steam Deck was released late last year.)
Enlarge/ VideoCardz’ leaked image of a ROG Ally X, seemingly having gone through the JPG blender a couple times.
Asus’ ROG Ally was the first major-brand attempt to compete with Valve’s Steam Deck. It was beefy and interesting, but it had three major flaws: It ran Windows on a little touchscreen, had unremarkable ergonomics, and its battery life was painful.
The Asus ROG (Republic of Gamers) Ally X, which has been announced and is due out June 2, seems to have had its specs leaked, and they indicate a fix for at least the battery life. Gaming site VideoCardz, starting its leak reveal with “No more rumors,” cites the ROG Ally X as having the same Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU as the prior ROG Ally, as well as the same 7-inch 1080p VRR screen with a 120 Hz refresh rate.
VideoCardz’ leaked image, seemingly from Asus marketing materials, with the ROG Ally X’s specifications.
The battery and memory have changed substantially, though. An 80-watt-hour battery, up from 40, somehow adds just 70 grams of weight and about 5 mm of thickness to the sequel device. By increasing the RAM from 16GB to 24GB and making it LPDDR5, the ROG Ally X may be able to lend more of it to the GPU, upping performance somewhat without demanding a new chip or architecture. There is also a second USB-C port, with USB4 speeds, that should help quite a bit with docking, charging while playing with accessories, and, I would guess, Linux hackery.
How does it feel? Only Sean Hollister at The Verge knows, outside of ASUS employees. The sequel has lost the weirdly sharp angles on the back, and more of your hand fits around the back, without the rear buttons being accidentally triggered so easily. The triggers and buttons all seem to have received some feedback-based upgrades to durability and feel.
Expanding the viability of handheld PC gaming means more developers targeting these systems, in specs or just accessibility. More demand for new types of handhelds makes the whole field more interesting and competitive. Microsoft, which is keenly aware of this developing market and is contemplating a more cloud-based and less Xbox-centered gaming future, can only make Windows better on handhelds because the bar is pretty low right now.
All of that gives me more games to play on the couch while the rice is cooking, whether or not the device I’m holding has more and faster RAM and better USB-C ports than my gaming PC.
