On April 1, 2023, Asus unveiled its greatest April Fools' Day prank to date: The ROG Ally. Except it wasn't a joke at all.
Following three days of confusion, Asus would confirm that the ROG Ally, a Windows handheld gaming PC powered by AMD's latest (at the time) Ryzen Z1 APU and embroidered with the company's signature RGB panache, was very much real — and every bit as impressive as its original reveal led us to believe.
In our May 2023 review of the ROG Ally, we awarded it four out of five stars, rating it as one of the best handheld gaming PCs to date.
Since then, we've seen a well-received mid-cycle refresh for the ROG Ally in 2024's ROG Ally X (which scored an even more impressive four-and-a-half stars during our review in July 2024), but a next-gen follow-up has yet to be seen. Until now, that is.
On the verge of Nintendo's first Switch 2 showcase, Asus has swooped in with a gaming handheld reveal of its own, teasing a faster, redesigned, and longer-lasting ROG Ally successor.
Not only that, it may be the first Xbox handheld to hit the market.
The new ROG Ally: Fresh look, faster speeds, marathon stamina
Handheld gaming PCs have exploded in popularity over the last few years, with Valve's Steam Deck spearheading the ultra-portable PC gaming charge since its February 2022 release.
Asus' ROG Ally would follow a little over a year later, and the ROG Ally X a year on from that, both offering a considerable performance upgrade over Valve's Linux-based handheld with a full Windows 11 experience to boot.
Since then, the Ally and the Ally X have been the handhelds to beat, fending off stiff competition from the likes of the Lenovo Legion Go and the MSI Claw 8 AI+.
Asus' freshly-teased handheld hopes to build upon that success, with the hardware's trailer promising a fresh look, faster speeds, more capacity, and marathon stamina.
Our little robot friend is cooking something up...#ROG #ROGALLY #PlayALLYourGames #NextLevelGaming pic.twitter.com/nDG7rlEIhHMarch 31, 2025
The new ROG Ally's secret weapon?
While unconfirmed, key to these claimed upgrades could be AMD's new Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU, revealed during CES 2025, a next-gen version of the Z1 Extreme chip that powered the original Ally.
We've already seen the Z2 family of APUs (primarily designed for entry-level handhelds) in action through the Z2 Go of Lenovo's Legion Go S.
However, the Z2 Extreme is a different beast entirely, built on the Zen 5 architecture with RDNA 3.5, 8 CPU cores (16 threads), 16 GPU cores, a 24MB cache, and a cTDP of 15-35W.
As AMD's Director of Product Marketing, Adam Kozak tells Laptop Mag, on the difference between Z2 Go and Z2 Extreme performance, for "the guys who want to play the latest games with the full settings... It's night and day."
An Ally to the Xbox
Also of note from the new ROG Ally tease was a reply from Microsoft's official Xbox account, suggesting that the brand may somehow be involved with the new handheld.
It's been previously reported that Microsoft is working with Asus to develop an Xbox branded handheld ahead of a "true" Xbox handheld to be launched alongside a new generation of consoles in 2027.
While this means that the new ROG Ally will likely remain as a Windows gaming handheld, similar to the original, Microsoft's recent changes to the Xbox app that position it as a hub to access all games on a system could see it positioned as a front-facing launcher for the new Ally, and tie-in to the consoles "fresh look" claims alongside a redesigned chassis.
However, we'll need to wait to hear more from Asus or Xbox to be certain of how far this collaboration goes (if at all). There's still a chance that the new ROG Ally could be its own machine, with an Xbox-branded alternative available in the future.
Pricing and availability, along with the full reveal of the handheld console, remains to be seen.
