The ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X are launching today, October 16, 2025. Reviewers are coming out with all their impressions of the gaming handheld – and someone has come out with performance tests of Rockstar’s games.
What Is The Consensus For The Xbox Ally Handhelds?
The Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X seem to have turned out in the same odd situation the Xbox console family is in the market.
Objectively, these are industry leading devices which can do more than devices like the Steam Deck and the Switch 2. But you can still be disappointed with them.
In a general sense, these will have the best potential performance in the market. It uses AMD Ryzen Z2 CPUs, packed into as small a device that can run Windows on the go as possible.
Microsoft also delivers on what is generally a convenient Windows portable experience. They have streamlined playing games with a new Xbox fullscreen experience.
Under this setup, you can easily enter and leave Steam or your Xbox library to play games and change settings. Microsoft has also optimized this setup so that you can save 2 GB RAM while using the Xbox fullscreen experience.
But this is where the complications we’ve gotten used to from Microsoft comes in.
Here’s Where The Xbox Ally Handhelds Get Troublesome
For one, the Xbox Ally can only access your Xbox PC library. It’s not a literal handheld Xbox, so it can’t play your Xbox console games.
If you have games in your Xbox library that are Xbox Play Anywhere, or at least have PC versions, you can access those games. But there are some games that you will need an Xbox console to play.
On another end, the Xbox fullscreen experience is still not fully optimized as some fans would hope. There are issues running things like Ubisoft Connect.
This is something that the Steam Deck or the Switch 2 cannot offer at all. But even so, the imperfect experience on the Xbox Ally is a letdown.
But this is where we talk about game performance.
How Does Red Dead Redemption 2 Play On The Xbox Ally X?
For the most part, The Xbox Ally delivers on the basic promise. You can play the newest games on this device and they will look and play great.
If you pay attention to the finer details, you might not be fully satisfied. Even with the best CPU AMD can offer, it cannot play new games at 4K 60 FPS.
In the case of Red Dead Redemption 2, YouTuber Deck Wizard set the device at 25w 900p. He also used a combination of custom ultra medium and low graphics settings.
And the results? The game hits an average of 40 to 50 FPS. Rockstar’s open world masterpiece never dips to 30 FPS, but it also can’t reach 60 FPS.
This is objectively better than the Steam Deck. You can get the game running on that platform to 40 FPS up to 80 FPS, but only if you set resolution at a lower 800p.
We will note that this may not be the optimal settings for the Xbox Ally X, and Microsoft and ASUS can add further optimizations later. In any case, you can see Red Dead Redemption 2 playing on the Xbox Ally X timestamped to this video here.
