If you’ve been holding off on buying the ASUS ROG Ally X because of its eye-watering price tag, well, I have some good Black Friday news for you.
For Black Friday through Cyber Monday, the ASUS ROG Ally X is down $100 from its typical asking price, to $699 at Best Buy in the United States. It’s still not cheap by any means, but it is the best and most beefy of the PC gaming handheld wave, with beefy battery life, boosted RAM, and improved inputs.
🔥The hottest Black Friday deals🔥
Is the ASUS ROG Ally X worth it at $699?
The ASUS ROG Ally X is the apex of the PC gaming handheld ecosystem, particularly those of the Z1 Extreme variety. The AMD Z1 Extreme has totally change the game for portable high-end gaming, boasting vastly more power than the Steam Deck while also offering the full suite of Windows versatility available. Easily launch into Battle.net, the Riot client, Epic Games Store, GOG, the HoYoverse launcher, or PC Game Pass without jumping through extra hoops, in addition to Steam itself of course. The downside is arguably Windows itself, which generally isn’t designed to run on these types of experiences, although improvements have been coming in thick and fast.
One of the downsides of the Z1 Extreme is battery life ultimately. While it is monstrously efficient, it’s still a laptop-style chip at the end of the day, and slurps up battery life rapidly especially when running 3D games. The ASUS ROG Ally X was built to offset some of those issues, adding a boosted battery pack which adds anywhere up to an hour of extra juice. Typically, I keep my devices plugged in when I play, even when I’m on the go, but I concede it defeats the point a bit if you find yourself having to carry around a bunch of extra battery packs on top.
If battery life isn’t an issue for you, you may want to consider the regular ASUS ROG Ally or the Lenovo Legion Go instead. You’re looking at around 1.5-2 hours of 3D gameplay with the ASUS ROG Ally X, and around 1 hour with the regular ASUS ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go. However, you can net yourself some pretty significant savings if you don’t mind dropping from 1 TB storage down to 512 GB, and losing some battery life in the process.
Buy the ASUS ROG Ally X if you want the current best of the best, and remember, you can always trade it in later.
- ASUS ROG Ally X: Z1 Extreme, 1 TB storage, 1.5-3 hours battery life, 24GB RAM ($699 at Best Buy).
- ASUS ROG Ally: Z1 Extreme, 512 GB storage, 1-2 hours battery life, 16 GB RAM. ($499 at Best Buy).
- Lenovo Legion Go: Z1 Extreme, 512 GB storage, 1-2 hours battery life, 16 GB RAM. ($549 at Best Buy)
Whichever you decide to buy, you won’t be disappointed. My current go-to recommendation is the ASUS ROG Ally and Ally X both overall. The software and drivers from ASUS are a bit more mature than its competitors, it also has a VRR display which makes a big difference on games that might get some occasional performance hiccups on these chips.
🍁More great Black Friday deals🦃
- Best Buy: Big savings on video games, accessories, and more
- Walmart: Huge savings on practically everything
- Target: Live deals on a huge range of products
- Dell: Top deals on laptops, gaming PCs, accessories, and more
- HP: Save big on laptops, desktops, accessories, and more
- Lenovo: Doorbuster deals on all Lenovo PCs, monitors, accessories, and more
- Newegg: Save on PC gaming accessories, components, and more
- Razer: Take advantage of free shipping for a limited time
- Samsung: Holiday deals on laptops, TVs, phones, and more are live
- Amazon: Constantly rotating sales on everything you can imagine
