Ports and Wireless Performance

The ROG Xbox Ally X comes with two USB-C ports, a microSD card slot, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. The primary USB-C port supports USB4 and all that entails, such as DP Alt mode with FreeSync support, 40 Gbit/s bandwidth, USB Power Delivery, and more. You can use the Xbox Ally X with an eGPU without issues. The second USB-C is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port that supports DisplayPort Alt Mode, USB Power Delivery, and has a bandwidth of 10 Gbit/s.

While other handhelds offer dual USB4 ports (like the MSI Claw 8 and Claw A8), we don't find the lack of a second USB4 port a negative. The USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port has enough bandwidth for any dock, and you can also use it to charge the device at full power if you've got a 100 W charger.

During our testing, we found that some chargers, like our UGREEN Uno 65 W charger, didn't play nice with the Xbox Ally X. While we'd get the slow charge warning, we could use the 35 W power profile because the ROG Xbox Ally X allows you to set power up to 35 W manually, even when not hooked to a charger.

The included Wi-Fi chip worked great. We were able to max out our 300 Mbit/s internet plan while downloading games, and the Xbox Ally X managed to stay connected to our 5 GHz network even in places where our phone (Samsung Galaxy S21 FE) would disconnect and switch to the 2.4 GHz band.


Local game streaming also worked great. After connecting the Wi-Fi chip to my 5 GHz network, I managed to up the bandwidth to 250 Mbit/s without any hitches, and the experience was great overall. Excellent image quality coupled with low input lag.

Battery Life

We tested the battery life with the screen brightness set to 50%. Note that the battery drain when sleeping is about 0.5% per hour.

The ROG Xbox Ally X can run at up to 35 W on battery when using the Manual power profile, allowing us to do an apples-to-apples battery life comparison with the MSI Claw 8. Despite having a larger screen, the Claw 8 trumps the Xbox Ally X at every power level.

That said, the ROG Xbox Ally X isn't a poor performer by any stretch. It lasts just a few minutes less than the Claw 8 at 30 W, and only 15 minutes less at 20 W. In other words, you should get almost three hours of battery life playing demanding games at 25 W, but even if you push it to its limits, you should get about one and a half hours of playtime before needing to plug in a charger.

At 15 W, where the Xbox Ally X is still quite capable, you're getting more than three hours of battery life. Since the Z2 Extreme offers plenty of performance between 15 W and 20 W, you should get around two and a half hours of playtime in all but the most demanding AAA games. You can squeeze two hours out of the battery even in those games, if you're ready to drop the settings and resolution to maximize battery life.

Lastly, at 10 W, the ROG Xbox Ally X is more than usable for 2D and less demanding and older 3D games. You should expect it to last almost five hours when gaming at 10 W, which is a mighty fine result.

While we aren't wowed by its showing—considering that the MSI Claw 8 remains the reigning champion of our battery life tests—we're very pleased with the level of longevity the Xbox Ally X achieves.