ROG Xbox Ally X20 with OLED review: Finally here – but for €1,400?

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents ROG Xbox Ally X20 with OLED review: Finally here – but for €1,400.

ROG is turning 20 – and Asus is celebrating with the ROG Xbox Ally X20, a new model in its handheld lineup. The highlight is right in the name: for the anniversary, there's finally an OLED display in the compact console-format PC. What sounds like a well-rounded upgrade, however, comes with a price: Asus charges €1,400 for the device, according to Numerama.

For you, that means: if you've been waiting for an OLED variant of the Xbox Ally lineup over the past few months, it's here now – just not as a bargain. The reviewers agree the new display is the decisive leap. On price, though, opinions diverge noticeably.

What ROG delivers with the X20 for the 20th birthday

The ROG Xbox Ally lineup isn't a classic gaming laptop, but a PC built like a console – portable, with controllers on the left and right and a screen in the middle. Asus picks up exactly that concept with the X20, this time, according to Numerama, finally "with an OLED screen everyone has been waiting for." „Asus lance enfin un modèle de son PC portable déguisé en console avec un écran OLED. La dalle tant attendue est là", writes the tech desk.

ROG itself uses the X20, according to Frandroid, to celebrate the brand's 20th birthday. „ROG fête son 20e anniversaire avec la ROG Xbox Ally X20" – and the list of "many expected improvements" the Frandroid team mentions is correspondingly long.

The OLED leap – and the question of timing

Numerama draws a clear conclusion and calls the X20 simply „l'aboutissement" – the culmination of the lineup. Finally no more LCD, finally the colors and the blacks you know from current high-end displays. Anyone who held the predecessor and groaned about the washed-out picture apparently gets exactly what was missing.

At Frandroid, the praise sounds similar, but it's tarnished: the screen „nous a fait rêver", the magazine writes – in other words: it made us dream. But right in the headline comes the „mais pas son prix" after it. The Frandroid team sees not only the display, but also a more fundamental problem: the improvements are coming „peut-être un peu trop tard" – perhaps just a little too late. What exactly that means remains open in the source's teaser; but the direction is clear: anyone who's been waiting a long time for an OLED handheld from Asus is wondering why it took so long – and why the entry into this generation is so expensive.

€1,400: Dream display at a dream price?

The number is the sticking point. Asus is asking €1,400 for the X20, according to Numerama – and that's a significant jump compared to classic handhelds in this class. For comparison: a Steam Deck OLED sits noticeably below, depending on the variant, and so does a standard ROG Ally. What you're paying here, concretely, is the OLED premium plus the anniversary edition markup.

If you already have a gaming PC and just want a handheld for the couch or travel, the math is quick: is the upcharge over an OLED-less predecessor worth it for you? It depends on how much the better screen is worth to you and whether you'll actually use the other "many expected improvements" in everyday life.

What you can take away from the sources: the X20 is technically the most well-rounded ROG handheld to date (Numerama), but on price it's a shaky candidate (Frandroid). Neither magazine gives you a clear "buy" or "skip" in their teasers – that assessment is best drawn from the detailed reviews by both outlets.