ROG Xbox Ally Has One Killer Feature: Full-Screen Xbox UI With Less Windows 11 Bloat

Xbox has officially announced the long-rumoured “Xbox handheld,” now dubbed the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X at the Xbox Showcase 2025.

This is essentially ASUS ROG’s Ally handheld PC’s latest refresh, but with a twist. The form factor now looks more like an Xbox controller stretched apart to fit a screen in the middle rather than just a slab.

But it’s not really the specs (which we’ll come to later) and the physical redesign that makes this Ally interesting. It’s actually the software side. To ensure this is has “an authentic Xbox experience in a handheld form factor,” to quote Roanne Sones, CVP at Xbox, the ROG Xbox Ally is the first to receive this new “full Xbox experience” where the handheld, still running on Windows 11, doesn’t boot into the OS proper. But rather, it will load into what’s more or less Xbox’s take on Steam Big Picture Mode. The entire UI is designed for controller usage as a result, making it a proper console, rather than a Windows 11 machine in an ill-suited form factor for a PC OS.

The UI will also expand the use of the Game Bar, allowing access to apps (like Discord) as widgets within the Xbox UI. And all the settings you need, including connecting to a Wi-Fi network, won’t require you to fiddle with Windows 11’s desktop mode. Now that’s a proper console experience that these portables need.

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By not running the full Windows 11 straight away, this should also cut some overhead, allowing access to more power to run games instead of whatever ancillary and needless feature Windows 11 is stuffed with these days that don’t have to do with gaming.

The Xbox Ally is still a Windows 11 machine, so access to other PC stores outside of the Microsoft Store (i.e. Steam, Epic Game Store, GOG and the like) will be available. And so are mods, which some require copying and pasting files into a directory. But not having to deal with the PC interface on a handheld, especially if you’re just using them to play games and nothing else, is a game-changer.

That said, this is still not a portable Xbox Series X|S. But Xbox is doubling down again on Xbox Play Anywhere, their policy of selling one copy of a game that entitles access on Xbox consoles, the Xbox app on PC (i.e. Microsoft Store app) and Xbox Cloud. And with a console-like Big Picture Mode, this should feel like proper Xbox.

Spec-wise, the Xbox Ally comes in two variants similar to how the Xbox Series console is set up.

The lower-end Xbox Ally is white and feature an AMD Ryzen Z2 A APU, 16GB RAM and 512GB M.2 SSD upgradable storage.

While the black Xbox Ally X has AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme APU, 24GB RAM and 1TB of storage. Both Xbox Allys (Allies?) uses a 7-inch 1080p 120HZ IPS screen, which is more than enough for a gaming handheld.

While it has Xbox branding all over, this is still an ROG product, so the designs of the device carries more of the ASUS’ gaming brand’s harder edge design sensibilities. That’s not technically an Xbox controller being cut in stretched, it’s an “Xbox-inspired” controller. It does include impulse triggers, tiny rumble motors on the triggers as haptic feedback, similar to Xbox controllers for the Xbox Series consoles.

The ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X will launch later this holiday in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Only two of those countries are in Southeast Asia, but rest assured, any market where ASUS has sold an ROG Ally before will also have the ROG Xbox Ally later, so Malaysia’s going to get one of these too next year. It’s the closest thing the country will get an official Xbox console to release officially here (though they have start selling the controllers in Southeast Asia).