Every Little Thing is BETTER

Asus ROG, you stand accused of creating a flagship gaming handheld with slightly loud face buttons, no TMR joysticks, and a mere 7in display. Worse yet, it's not even OLED. How do you plead? It's a good idea. Then I have no choice. In spite of your sponsorship of this video, I sentence you to Wait. Great, Scott. The ROG Xbox all X20 changes everything. Charges dismissed. It has a 7.4 in OLED display that hits 1,400 nits peak brightness with Dolby Vision. And that's only the most obvious change. ASUS has added rubberized grips, fine-tuned shoulder buttons, support for ludicrously fast storage cards, and a completely redesigned PCB to improve air flow to their new fangled OLED display. And with a fully torn down unit here on hand, they're being uncharacteristically transparent about this thing for an unreleased product. By the way, pun fully intended. Have I even mentioned yet the awesome smoke black translucent housing? So, let's dive in for a look at what kind of handheld Asus would build if they were celebrating the 20th anniversary of ROG. Obviously, we have got to start with the display. It jumps from 7 in to 7.4 in in the same size chassis, which means marketkedly smaller bezels for a way more modern look. And inside those bezels, it leaprogs every other handheld that I've ever seen on specs, boasting 600 nits peak in SDR, 1,400 nits peak in HDR with Vasa HDR true black 1000 certification and Dolby Vision. Now, a big compromise with previous generation OLEDs was refresh rate or support for variable refresh rate. Well, guess what? That's covered off too with support for Freync Premium Pro from 30 to up to 120 hertz refresh rate. And it's topped with the same Corning Victus Glass with DXC anti-reflection as the original ROG Xbox Alli X. And that's not the only thing the two have in common. The X20 isn't so much a sequel as it is a refinement to the regular Xbox Alli X. So the bulk of the specs aren't really changing. Ryzen AIZ2 Extreme processor, 24 gigs LPDDR5X memory, 1 TB storage, USB 4 with support for Thunderbolt, Wi-Fi 6, and an 80Wh battery. All that stays the same, but that doesn't mean that this was a simple panel swap. It was anything but. As ASUS provided full tearowns of both units, and the first thing I noticed was that the PCB was pretty much completely redesigned. Now, some of the changes were pretty obvious from just reading the briefing. The new hybrid metal dome switches give the D-pad a much more satisfying and tactile feel, but the reason for some of their other changes was not as obvious to me. Here's one that jumped out. The USB 4 ports are surface mounted now rather than being in plane with the board. That made me wonder, hey, hey guys, did the old way have reliability issues or something? But no, according to ASUS, this was actually done so that they could shift the position of the motherboard a few millimeters this way while keeping the thickness of the device unchanged. You combine that with upgraded fins on the fan and the heat sink, and this provides a channel for additional air flow over the back of the OLED panel, something that wasn't needed for the old LCD. The allnew board, not to mention the switch to translucent plastic, also necessitated completely new tooling for the outer shell. And I got to say, it was worth the additional work. The same ergonomic handles are back, but now they're rubberized for even better grip. And the smoked black plastic with subtle gold accents, both inside and out, is just mwah. Nearly everything on the face of the device has also been upgraded in some way. The ABXY are designed to be slightly more tactile, but also quieter. The joysticks are now TMR with ASUS boasting reduced power consumption and a tiny 3% dead zone for finer control over everything from your crosshair to your racing line. This is a welcome upgrade for a flagship device. And each stick is also flanked by four LEDs rather than two, so you can program cool effects as you move them around. Me personally, I always turn them off for better immersion, but hey, it's an option. The Xbox button is now back lit, green, of course, to align with Microsoft's return to their old school branding. And the D-pad gets probably the biggest upgrade of all. I already talked about the better dome switches. You can even hear it. But what I haven't shown you is the party trick. If you're all about fighting games and you want better diagonal control, watch this. Click. How cool is that? That puts your diagonals right in plane with your up, down, left, and right. And when you're done and you just want to play a retro RPG or something, you just rotate it again and you're good to go. This is easily my favorite new feature other than the new display. The shoulders are slightly realigned to improve ergonomics based on user feedback. And oh yeah, this is another big one. The micro SD card slot is gone. It's replaced by micro SD Express. Yes, they're expensive, but commodity micro SD Express cards can reach nearly a gigabyte per second, making them a great way to expand your game library without cracking open your chassis. Now, ASUS isn't making any claims about battery life at this time. This thing isn't launching until holiday of this year, but depending on how high you crank the screen, it seems like they're expecting it to be roughly in line with the original. The one place where we get a small downgrade is actually in the weight. Between the reinforced plastics, cuz transparent plastics are not as good, and the larger screen, we gain about 50 g. But I got to say, I don't really notice it thanks to the rubber. Now, a big question in light of the current state of the market has got to be price. Asus is staying tight lipped on that for now. That's probably wise. But they have said that the screen upgrade means that it is not going to be coming in at the same price as the Xbox LA X. With that said, in the meantime, they have committed to working hard to keep pricing as low as possible for the current Xbox allies that are in the field. And they're also working on a new lowerric dock for all allies, new and old, that's going to communicate better with your TV, allowing automatic activation of ALLM and game mode. No word on CEC support for now, but if that's something that you guys would like to see, hey, let ASUS know in the comments because I think that would really elevate their game. That's not the only new accessory, and this one is uh more for the folks out there with a less limited budget. Right now, these anniversary edition Alli X20s are uh going to be bundled with the new ROG XRel R1 glasses. These offer up to a 171in microLED display at up to 240 Hz and 3D capabilities. And it's all powered directly off of your Ally with a single cable for both power and display. These are very similar to the ones that I showed off on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon a couple of years ago, except higher refresh rate. They are a great way to game on the big screen anywhere, but uh ASUS is not quoting pricing other than expensive. And I assume at some point maybe you could buy this without them, but we don't know that for sure. What we do know for sure is you should check out some more of our Computex coverage. We're going to have a playlist linked down below. And if you guys enjoyed this video, you may want to check out the one where I used these to build a PC in the third person. Like I had a camera behind me and I could only watch myself build it. It was really hard and nauseating, but fun.