ASUS and Microsoft have opened retail sales for the ROG Xbox Ally X20 that was announced back in June, with the upgraded handheld now in stock at Best Buy and the ASUS webstore starting at $1,299. Developed in close collaboration with the Xbox team to commemorate the brand's 20th anniversary, the ROG Xbox Ally X20 tilts into premium territory with some notable upgrades.
The centerpiece of the hardware refresh is a 7.4-inch OLED display with a 1920x1080 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and up to 1,400 nits of peak brightness. For the 20th anniversary model, ASUS swapped out the IPS panel found on the standard ROG Xbox Ally X and went a little bigger (7.4 inches versus 7 inches) and more premium to help justify the higher pricing.
Flanking the upgraded panel are new TMR (Tunnel Magnetoresistance) joysticks. Similar to Hall Effect technology, TMR utilizes magnetic fields rather than physical resistive tracks to combat stick drift, which is the unwanted phenomenon that can occur over time as standard analog sticks wear out on the inside.
"Equipped with magnetic TMR sensors in the joysticks designed to significantly reduce the potential for stick drift and have a tight 3% dead zone, the Xbox Ally X20 gives gamers millimeter precision without four-axis snapping thanks to a new algorithm," ASUS says.
Under the hood, the ROG Xbox Ally X20 taps AMD's Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor, as well as 24GB of fast LPDDR5X memory, a 1TB NVMe solid state drive (SSD), and an 80Wh battery, all of which are unchanged from the ROG Xbox Ally X.
There are other hardware changes beyond the display and joysticks, though. Namely, the ROG Xbox Ally X20 gets an upgraded microSD Express slot for faster expandable storage, a bump to DisplayPort 2.1 (up from DisplayPort 1.4), and a specially-designed chassis with 20th anniversary branding and enhanced rubberized grips.
Paul is a seasoned geek who cut this teeth on the Commodore 64. When he's not geeking out to tech, he's out riding his Harley and collecting stray cats.