Xbox has announced its long-rumoured handheld, a collaboration with ASUS, which is building upon the hardware already released with the ASUS ROG Handheld.

The primary difference between this console and the other handheld gaming PCs is that the ROG Xbox Ally will boot directly into an Xbox ecosystem and will be optimised to play games running in this manner, with fewer background processes. The downside of full-PC handhelds is that they function as PCs; you also have to deal with the booting process and any potential problems that a Windows PC could encounter. The other significant difference, of course, will be that the shape of the handheld is made to match an Xbox controller.

The handheld will be released in two versions, the ‘ROG Xbox Ally’ and ‘ROG Xbox Ally X.’ The base Ally will have lower specs than the ‘X,’ similar to the Xbox Series X|S of consoles.

• ROG Xbox Ally: white console with an AMD Ryzen Z2 A processor, 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage.
• ROG Xbox Ally X: black console, AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor, 24GB memory and 1TB of storage.

For comparison’s sake, the current ‘ROG Ally X’ handheld features the AMD Ryzen Extreme processor, 24GB of memory, and 1TB of storage. Although prices for the new consoles aren’t yet available, the current ROG Ally X handheld retails for $ 1,599.

Are you interested in picking up either of the ROG Xbox All handheld consoles? Let me know in the comments section below.