- 2 days ago
Is the New Xbox Ally X Actually an Ally? Today we are durability testing the new handheld XBox.
Xbox decided that they want to test the portable gaming waters with a hand held Xbox console that's TWICE the price of everyone else. Lets see how that works out for 'em.
We are also going to teardown the Xbox Ally X and see if there are any Easter eggs inside... Fingers crossed!
Xbox decided that they want to test the portable gaming waters with a hand held Xbox console that's TWICE the price of everyone else. Lets see how that works out for 'em.
We are also going to teardown the Xbox Ally X and see if there are any Easter eggs inside... Fingers crossed!
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TechTranscript
00:00Apparently Xbox was a little jealous that Nintendo was selling 154 million switches,
00:07so they decided to jump in with their own gaming handheld, the Xbox Ally X, which sells for $1,000.
00:15We're going to see how well that works out for them. Fun fact, if you buy a big jerry
00:19rig knife, you'll get a little jerry rig knife for free. Just put them both in your shopping
00:23cart at the same time, and then you can put them both to work opening up all your Christmas presents.
00:27It's the best $15 you'll ever spend. Way better than $1,000. Anyway, inside the box there's a
00:33little hidden Easter egg in the top lid. A portable dock made of paper. It is definitely made out of
00:40paper. Also inside the box we have the console itself. It's basically a handheld computer with
00:46full-blown windows installed. Kind of like a laptop with way left buttons. There's also a 65 watt
00:51charger in the box. And since it's basically a whole computer, it definitely needs every
00:57watt it can get. There's a few more paper instruction booklets, but I think we've had enough paper for
01:03the moment. The Xbox Ally X is wrapped in a clear plastic, and the first time you turn it on,
01:11it also needs to be plugged in, which is fine. Everything is fine.
01:17You might have noticed that this Xbox Ally X is co-branded with another familiar name in the gaming space,
01:24ROG. These guys make laptops, graphic cards, phones, and now of course, handheld Xboxes.
01:31With the Xbox now outside of the regular box, I feel like the screen is quite a bit more dim than
01:36I was expecting, even though Xbox says it's 500 nits. This might just be my imagination,
01:42but it does look way less bright than the supposedly 450 nit LCD on the Switch 2. To be fair, it could just
01:49be that Hogwarts is a darker game. But for sure ROG doesn't want you to forget who makes this hardware
01:55with its little ROGX BOX lettering plastered a thousand times all over the surface. Even the
02:02texture on the side grips is made up of bajillions of little ROG letters. But I guess it is a gaming
02:09system, so it's okay if the shell looks like a broken crossword puzzle. Let's see what the screen is
02:14made of. One interesting aspect of the Nintendo Switch 2 is that the screen starts scratching
02:19at a level 2 since the exterior layer is a permanent plastic screen protector. Gorilla Glass Victus,
02:25like we see here on the Xbox Ally X, starts scratching at a level 6 with deeper grooves at a level 7.
02:31This is great from a scratch resistance perspective, but without the screen protector, it does leave the
02:37Ally X in a more vulnerable position to shattering its screen. And as any gamer would attest,
02:43being in a vulnerable position is the last thing you want on a $1,000 piece of hardware.
02:49Just FYI, my channel sponsor dbrand does have two rectangular oleophobically coated screen
02:54protectors for just 19 bucks. I'll leave a link in the description, and yes, they are indeed real glass.
03:01Making our way up to the buttons on the Xbox Ally X, I realized that my microphone rage quit,
03:07and threw in the towel. So to anyone who doesn't like the sound of plastic scratching,
03:12you're welcome. Enjoy the few moments of silence. It'll be back momentarily. I am allowed to make
03:18a mistake every decade or so, so please forgive me. I do like the way the clear buttons look,
03:23but I think the matte buttons on the Switch 2 are a little more practical and hold up to abuse better.
03:29But if you're nice to them, I'm sure everything will be fine. The joysticks are just sleeved in a
03:33rubberish grip. This can be sliced through and peeled away. I imagine it'll take a decade's worth of daily
03:39use for the rubber to detach, so I'm not too worried about it. Ah, I got it fixed. The rest of the
03:48buttons and the directional pad are made with a hard plastic, along with every other piece of exposed
03:54material. It's all plastic. Even around the dual USB-C ports, volume buttons, vents, micro SD card slot,
04:03headphone jack, and fingerprint scanning power button. And like, yeah, game controllers have
04:08been plastic for decades, but they have also never cost $1,000 before, so I'm rather torn on the
04:16material choice. And yes, the Nintendo Switch 2 is also made from plastic, but it's also half the price.
04:23Do you think Xbox should have upped their materials game or dropped their price? Let me know down in the
04:28comments. The psychedelic decal with ROG's logo for the trillionth time is just a glorified sticker.
04:35For $1,000 you might think that the 7 inch 1080p display would be OLED, but with how the pixels
04:41immediately go black and then recover, we know that it's an IPS LCD. Compared to the current competition,
04:48I think this Xbox Ally X is overvalued by about 200%. Even the Steam Deck gives us an OLED version for
04:55about $550. But at least now we know what it's made of. But what about its structure? As a portable
05:03gaming console, it's definitely subject to the same, if not more, egregiously extreme abuses
05:09than smartphones might come across. Luckily though, in part due to its massively thick body and stocky
05:17plastic shell, there is no snapping this thing in half from the back nor the front.
05:21And when I try to torque the sides around, the torsion has no lasting effect on the console.
05:28It's still very much alive and well, extremely solid. The Xbox Ally X survives my durability test.
05:36Xbox has historically hidden some Easter eggs inside of the regular Xbox consoles,
05:41and since this Ally X survived, we'll have to open it up manually to see if there are any hidden gems
05:47this time around. There are 8 black Phillips head screws around the back side of the console,
05:52very visible and very easy to remove, and thankfully we'll only need one bit from my
05:56tool kit this time around since everything inside uses the same screw head.
06:02With the back panel off, I'll unclip one of the ZIF connectors that plug the rear buttons on the back to
06:07the motherboard. And yes, the official name of these styles of plugs is actually ZIF. Z-I-F. It's got a
06:14latch at one end, and the ribbon with its gold contacts can be plugged in with zero insertion
06:20force, hence the acronym ZIF. Xbox and ROG use a lot of these inside the Ally X. She's still awake
06:27though, so I'll hit the old power button and put her to sleep for the rest of the operation.
06:32There are some hexagons molded into each of the side grips. Not quite an Easter egg,
06:36but I'll take it. The Ally X has a pretty large battery that spans the entire width of the console.
06:42I'll remove the 5 more screws and pull up on the battery plug. Then we get our first look at all
06:4880 watt hours of it. For reference, the 14 inch MacBook Pro has a 72 watt hour battery,
06:54so this thing is packing some power. And it is super easy to replace, so massive thumbs up for that.
07:00The other part that's super easy to replace is the M.2 SSD. I'll just remove one little screw,
07:06and he pops right up like he's excited to be out. So far I'm a fan of the modularity.
07:10And speaking of fans, I'll remove those next. These are the same turbo style fans we see in
07:17other laptops and inside the red Magic gaming phones. In the 5 minutes my console was awake,
07:22it did get pretty hot to the touch, so the fans are definitely needed. I'll remove another ZIF ribbon,
07:28and the screws that hold down the back of the joystick. This little potentiometer is very easy
07:33to swap out. And there does seem to be some disappointment in the gaming community that these
07:38are pots and not halls. And I agree, potentiometers use physical contacts that wear away. So these
07:44joysticks will start drifting eventually, where hall effect joysticks use magnetic sensors for better
07:50durability and longevity. But they are more expensive. The Nintendo Switch 2 also uses the
07:56same potentiometer style joysticks, so it is what it is. I was just hoping that at $1,000 we would see
08:02some more premium hardware. But we don't. I'll remove the other joystick and the top trigger buttons.
08:09These are spring loaded, but luckily come as a complete unit, so we don't have to deal with the
08:13tiny springs flying off into the abyss. I'll unscrew three more Phillips head screws around the loudspeaker,
08:19and unplug the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signal wires. The loudspeaker itself is pretty big,
08:24and isolated on rubber pads. It's got the whole woofer exposed, as well as the large enclosure behind
08:30it. And I don't see any balls, but with the speaker already as big as this, it probably doesn't need
08:35them. The vibrator comes out next. I made a whole video on how vibrators work a while back. This is
08:41a haptic style vibrator, very similarly sized to the vibrator that was inside of the iPhone Air. I always
08:47appreciate a good organ donor. Xbox put the vibrator on both sides of the Ally X. I'll remove four more
08:53screws holding down the black cooling vapor chamber system over the processor. This vapor chamber uses
08:59fins and the dual internal fans to keep the Ryzen AI-Z2 extreme processor cool. It's got like 8 cores.
09:06The heat pipe is very similar to other gaming systems and laptops. The Nintendo Switch 2's pipe
09:11wins in girth, but the ROG Ally's pipe wins in length. I'll remove two more screws holding in the
09:17motherboard, as well as the larger LCD display ribbon cable. Also, the power button at the very top
09:23unplugs just like a little Lego. It's the only Lego style ribbon connector on the whole board. The rest
09:28are ZIFs. And there she is, and all her blue Easter egg-less glory. I'm mostly disappointed in
09:35the price of course, but I'm also disappointed in the lack of Easter eggs. ROG managed to add their logo
09:41to the outside a Google amount of times, but couldn't squiggle a Master Chief on the insides anywhere.
09:46The back side of the motherboard has some foam airflow channels. Kind of smart. The micro SD and headphone
09:52jack are soldered to the main board. And of course, the LCD screen is permanent. So if the glass ever
09:58breaks, you kind of just got to bust it out of the housing. Fingers crossed my ally still works when I
10:03put it back together. With the blue motherboard installed and the cooling system with its original
10:07thermal paste screwed back in, it's kind of like bubble gum that you find under a desk. It definitely
10:13works just as good the second time around. I can put the joysticks back in place along with the speaker,
10:18vibrator, dual turbo fans, SSD, battery, and a whole lot more of the ZIFs. It's a pretty cool system.
10:26I mean, personally, I'd rather buy two Nintendo Switches instead of one Xbox Ally X,
10:32but I guess it boils down to what kind of games you play. If you're going to drop a full stack
10:36though on a gaming console, make sure you're protected with a kill switch case. Dbrand actually
10:41worked with a team over at Microsoft to certify compatibility, and it is a certified beast. The grippy,
10:47rubberized texture on the side totally de-brands the ROG lettering everywhere while completely
10:53protecting the whole unit. There's even cute little booties for the joysticks. My favorite part though
10:58is the travel cover, which keeps those potentiometer joysticks from getting prematurely kinked and
11:03permanently damaged. Dbrand says it's brush proof, which I might have to test someday, but until then
11:09there are a few days left of Dbrand's holiday sale, and you can get $45 off if you get the screen
11:14protector at the same time. To keep your joystick safe for years to come, a kill switch case is
11:20basically mandatory. The link is down in the description, and thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.
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