While Microsoft might be getting ready to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Xbox with the launch of its Xbox Series X25 console, Asus is similarly celebrating the 20th anniversary of its Republic of Gamers label with a new model of the ROG Xbox Ally X. The company has announced that its celebratory handheld gaming PC, dubbed the Xbox Ally X20, is priced at $1,299 on its own.
If you want more X20 things, the handheld is also available alongside the ROG XREAL R1 Edition 20 AR glasses, a 68-watt power adapter, and a custom Pelican Protector Case for $2,499. The ROG Xbox Ally X20 will hit store shelves on October 15th, and pre-orders have already been kicked off.
The Xbox Ally X20 has a translucent black plastic chassis that calls back to ROG’s older aesthetics. The see-through body showcases the high-end portable hardware powering the device, and even gives hints of the gold accents present throughout.
It is worth noting, however, that in terms of internal hardware, the ROG Xbox Ally X20 offers a minor upgrade over the ROG Xbox Ally X. While running on the same AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor and 24 GB of LPDDR5X memory, the X20 features a larger 7.4-inch OLED display. On the outside, it also includes a transforming D-pad, refined bumpers and ABXY buttons, rubberized grips, an LED for the Xbox button, TMR joysticks, and support for MicroSD Express.
As for the ROG XREAL R1 Edition 20, the glasses offer the equivalent of a 171-inch virtual display as if it were being viewed from four meters away. The display in the glasses themselves features a 240 Hz refresh rate with a 57-degree field of view that covers 95 percent of a user’s focused field of view. For gaming purposes, it has a response time of 0.01 ms, as well as native support of 3DoF tracking to ensure that it can properly follow head movements. Stationary gamers can enable Anchor mode to keep the simulated display in one place.
Both the Xbox Ally X20 and the XREAL R1 Edition 20 were unveiled back in June, and even at the time, one of the biggest benefits of getting an Xbox Ally X20 was noted as being the OLED display. At the time, Asus had also confirmed that the anniversary edition of the handheld gaming PC would feature a redesigned cooling channel for its internals, owing to the heat sensitivity of OLED panels when compared to LCD.
While the effects of the new cooling layout might have little to do with the system’s performance as a whole, it might end up offering some minor improvements to some particularly demanding games. However, aside from that, don’t expect many differences when playing your favorite games on the Xbox Ally X20 when compared to the Xbox Ally X.
The original Xbox Ally X was launched with a $999.99 price tag. However, since then, the world has started going through component shortages. This has led Asus to start raising the prices of its handheld gaming PCs across the world by between $100 and $200, depending on the region.
