I tested Xbox’s new super-powerful super-heavy handheld

During a series of in-person Xbox demos at the 2025 Summer Game Fest, I got the chance to play Gears of War: Reloaded on the company’s upcoming handheld: the ROG Xbox Ally X. The 7-inch screen looks gorgeous, and the game’s remaster is a stunner no matter what size screen it’s on (I also played it on some much bigger TV screens). But the most noticeable thing about the ROG Xbox Ally X was, unfortunately, how tired my forearms were after just 20 minutes of playing the Gears of War remaster.

Designing a handheld console is a tightrope walk. If I’m playing at home, I want a device that’s powerful enough to compete with my TV or gaming PC. If I’m lounging on the couch playing your Switch 2 or Steam Deck, there needs to be a reason why I’m not reaching over for the remote and just playing a game on the TV instead. For me, a handheld console also needs to be light enough that it feels truly portable — something you can throw into a purse or backpack and bring with you to a place where it won’t be competing directly with your TV or PC. So it needs to split the difference between being powerful enough to run contemporary AAA games and have them look great in comparison to your TV, and yet not so powerful that it weighs down your travel bag.

Most important of all, no matter where I’m playing it, a handheld needs to be comfortable to hold for hours at a time. The original Nintendo Switch was no trouble whatsoever; it would be ages before you even notice its minuscule weight (although you sure might notice how few contemporary AAA games it can run). On a Steam Deck, I might feel that weight much sooner, the impressive processing power aside. And if it’s the ROG Xbox Ally X — well, I haven’t played it for long enough to know for certain, but I have held it and played a game on it for about 20 minutes, and it was already an issue even in that short time.

Let’s talk ROG Xbox Ally X specs

The Xbox Ally comes in two versions, just like the Xbox Series X and S consoles: There’s a little one and a big one. As a proud owner of the Xbox Series S (which I lovingly refer to as “the baby Xbox”), I’ll probably be fine with the smaller Xbox Ally. But the main reason I’m saying that is actually the weight. Let’s get into the numbers, shall we?

Looking up all of these numbers after the Xbox event was a comfort to me, because it made me feel like I wasn’t imagining that the ROG Xbox Ally X was the heaviest one I’d ever held. It will be the heaviest handheld on the market, once it reaches all of us this holiday season. (I did talk to an Asus representative at the Xbox event and told him my concerns about its weight, but I fully recognize it’s probably too late for them to change it. Let it be known that I tried, though.)

What’s interesting about this is that it might not actually bother that many other people who aren’t me. This is a pretty subjective problem, and I would say it’s somewhat gendered as well. There were lots of other reporters at this event with me, the majority of them men. I overheard many of them praising the way the Xbox handheld felt in their hands — “just like an Xbox controller.” I can’t disagree there; it’s the right shape and absolutely does feel comfortable in terms of size and layout. But I wonder: Did any of those guys notice the weight? Or is that just a problem for somebody of my stature?

The thing is, people of my stature do actually also play video games. And I play a heck of a lot of them in handheld format; I’d say about 50% of the time I’m on a big screen, the other 50% in handheld. I’m still in LA at Summer Game Fest right now, but the first thing I’m going to do when I get home tomorrow night is open my Switch 2 box and play Mario Kart World — probably in handheld mode. And even though the Switch 2 is heavier than its predecessor, I bet I’m going to feel pretty relieved by how light it feels compared to the Xbox handheld I tried out yesterday.

Inside the ROG Xbox Ally X’s Windows OS

All that said, there’s a lot about the Xbox Ally that’s very impressive. Unlike the Steam Deck, it uses Windows, and the Linux users reading this aren’t going to want to hear what I’m about to say, but that’s going to be a preferable operating system for most people because it’s so much more familiar.

Over the years, I have managed to get quite a few games running on my Steam Deck that were not necessarily intended to run natively on that device, but it’s taken some serious fiddling. By contrast, the Xbox Ally has Steam and Battle.net icons that you can just click on, as well as Discord integration. I can already tell it’s going to be extremely simple to play tons of different games on there, without nearly as much fiddling as it took for me to get my Blizzard games working properly on my Steam Deck.

The Xbox handheld is clearly designed with power in mind. It’s heavy because it has a lot under the hood that helps games look great and run smoothly. That’s certainly going to help it compete with the Steam Deck as well, especially as that handheld is increasingly showing its age. Put all of that together and it could make for an impressive holiday launch, even in the same year as the Switch 2.

But every time I think about this device entering my home, I think about how my arms start to hurt when I’ve been playing the Steam Deck for too many hours in a row. I think about how I sometimes have to rest my arms on a pillow and even then, it’s not quite the right angle, and it’s kind of annoying. It’s not something that most buyers are even going to be aware of until they have the device in their hands, but if they’re anything like me in terms of size and arm strength, it’s going to be the very first thing they notice as soon as they take it out of the box. Microsoft can only hope that doesn’t result in them putting that device right back into that box and slapping a return label on it.