The AMD FSR 3.1 is a significant development in the world of handheld gaming. This latest version of AMD's open-scaling technology includes frame generation, which means that extra AI-generated frames are created to improve performance without placing additional demands on the hardware. This can result in an extra performance upgrade for gamers, making it a highly desirable feature.

For those looking to stream games from their handheld device, options like GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming offer a convenient way to access a wide range of titles. However, a fast and reliable internet connection is necessary to ensure smooth gameplay. The manufacturer's assertion that they "hauled ass" out through the kitchen wouldn't be here otherwise suggests that internet connectivity was an issue.

The speakers on the LAX are notable for their loudness and punchiness. While this is certainly a plus, it's worth noting that headphones may still be the better choice in certain situations. In some cases, even at high frame rates, the sound can become choppy or stutter. However, these issues do not seem to detract from the overall gaming experience.

A significant point of contention surrounding handheld devices is the presence of Windows 11 as the underlying operating system. This has led to both praise and criticism. On the one hand, access to the full library of games available on PC is a major draw. On the other hand, this means that users can expect bugs, crashes, and occasional frustrations with the Windows interface.

One notable example of Asus's efforts to improve the user experience is the Armory Crate software, which provides a streamlined interface for managing game libraries. The UI boots up quickly, allows for logging in, and even has its own dedicated shortcut button. While this can be an advantage, it also means that users may occasionally find themselves switching between different interfaces or facing technical issues.

A notable point of controversy surrounding handheld devices is the treatment of SD cards. Specifically, there was a issue with some units of the original Ally where circuitry was not ideal, leading to potential damage to SD cards. However, Asus has addressed this issue, and it does not appear to be present in the LAX or its successor.

In terms of temperature management, the LAX's screen can become hot after extended use. Measuring around 42°C after a few minutes using it in 25W mode, this is certainly a concern for some users. However, as the device is often not used extensively, this issue may be less significant than expected.

The final point to consider when evaluating the LAX is its price. At $800, it is certainly a significant investment. While it offers several refinements and improvements over its predecessor, including a longer battery life and more refined design, it is also fundamentally similar to the original Li. For many users, this may be enough, but others may find the price too steep.

In conclusion, the LAX is undoubtedly an excellent choice for those seeking a Windows-based handheld gaming device. Its refinement of the user experience, improvements in hardware and software, and robust feature set make it a top contender in its class. However, as with any major purchase, there are factors to consider beyond mere performance. The price, while not unreasonable by itself, may be a deterrent for some users.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys I'm Tom Tag Chap and this is the r Lix it runs faster it has a longer battery life it's uh cooler and quieter it's more refined but it's also a little bit thicker a little bit heavier it's more expensive and of course it still runs Windows 11 so you may have seen some unboxings and first looks at this but this is my full review benchmarks and battery life and all that good stuff and also I'll be comparing it to the OG Ally and some of its Rivals although make sure you do stick around and subscribe because I will have a full handheld gaming bind guide coming very soon uh with well all these guys it's going to be a big one so last year they introduced the first gen Ally and I liked it a lot I really did but battery life was pretty rubbish there were lots of niggling issues with Windows and the Armory crate software the 512 gigs of storage felt pretty tight and obviously we had issues around the SD cards although that was quickly fixed it was good if perhaps falling short of great but it was first gen so here we are with the Ally X which is more of a midlife ref fresh an Ali 1.5 rather than a 2.0 if you will kind of like the steam Deco led to the original deck and there is only one Ali X instead of the two models that we had with the OG Alli now I must admit when I first got my hands on this and I saw the spec sheet I was a little bit disappointed that there was no change to the screen or the processor two pretty fundamental aspects of a gaming handheld the X shares the same 7in 1080p 120 HZ vrr IPS display and the same ryzen Z1 extreme processor as the highest original Ally no sign of any next gem processors but pretty much everything else has been upgraded with the most important one by far being the battery they have doubled the size from 40 WS to 80 it does mean it's a little bit thicker and heavier we'll talk about the design in a second but they've doubled the battery uh which makes it by far the biggest battery uh in terms of gaming handhelds and IT addresses the biggest issue I think most of us had with the original allly does it mean we get double the battery yes in some situations but we'll come to all the performance bench marks in a second plus you can increase the power limit for a higher FPS and still get a better battery life overall it's a genuine Game Changer or should I say game lengthener they've also doubled the storage we now have 1 terabyte built in here plus of course you can expand it via micro SD and the internal SSD is now a standard sized 2280 PCI 4m2 drive so you have way more and a lot cheaper upgrade options including up to 8 terab there's also extra Ram 24 GB of the stuff up from 16 which is also about 16% faster plus there's a new usb4 type-c port for fast transfers for connecting to external monitors and of course for external graphics cards although that is still a very expensive option and you will have a lot of bottlenecks here but it is more practical than the old XG mobile Port that I'm pretty sure no one really used plus the front firing speakers are louder charging is up from 65 W to 100 WS although you'll need a 100 wat compatible charger and new fans improve the air flow and make the LAX up to 24% quieter as for the design well again it's an evolution of the original Ally very familiar but a few tweaks and refinements I do like this new stealth black look it's definitely going to get less grubby uh than the original white Ally would have been nice if it came in both options they are still selling this by the way you don't have to go for the new Ali X because it is a bit more expensive although at the same time it does now look a bit Anonymous amongst the other chunky black rectangular handhelds I mean holding them side by side the X does feel a little bit chunkier uh and slightly but you can't really tell unless you are holding them like this it doesn't change how portable this is and certainly next to the legion go it is still uh pretty compact the grips are comfortable but still a bit shallow so your hold isn't as secure as on some of the others also the two Aura RGB thumb sticks now have a more weighted more resistive feel which helps gauge your movements more accurately and there's a sort of narrower but deeper indent with a thicker textured Edge grip which does keep your thumm a little bit more securely sensed Ed and apparently they're now waed for 5 million new Cycles up from 2 million on the old one there's also just way more feedback from the face buttons thanks to a longer travel you really do feel the click now and also the matte finish on the d-pad makes it grippier than the glossy one from before and the triggers are a bit chunkier and easier to use as well altogether then a nice refinement it does feel and look a bit more premium than before although still no touchpad which I know a lot of people do love especially for games that work well with a mouse something we do get on the steam Deco Leed and Legion go the headphon Jack and also the previously Troublesome micro SD card reader have swapped to the right hand side plus there's the double USB C's one is the faster USB 4 and the other is a slightly slower USB 3.2 Gen 2 like all handhelds though it is still you know plasticky and not the most premium thing in the whole world but let's talk about battery life because that is by far the biggest reason to pick up an Alli X because a bigger battery gives you options you can either play your games for longer but it's also the ability to dial up to 25 turbo mode or even a higher custom setting and not worry that it's going to be all out of juice in under an hour so the power presets give a Target TDP for example the 17 wat performance mode on the X but once you factor in all the other system power drawers it's actually running at over 30 wats and the topend 30 wat turbo mode actually draws over 40 wats and with the 40w hour battery in the old Li that meant maybe an hour of gaming at most so the big question is how much longer does this last well I fired up F1 23 uh because for some reason iPhone 24 didn't actually work initially on this although I'm sure we'll get updat soon and running at 720p with 50% brightness and using the more frugal but still very capable 17 wat performance mode the Lix lasted a full 3 hours which is over twice as long as the original Ally even though that was using a lower 15 watt TDP mode the steam Deco lead lasted 2 hours 15 the MSI claw 2 hours and the legion go from Lenovo lasted an hour 45 so the all X is way out ahead and if you're playing in the 13 watt silent mode in less demanding games you can easily get 4 to 5 hours and setting the FPS limiter to 30 45 or 60 FPS is a great way to extend the battery life so big thumbs up for the battery life well done Asus but let's talk about this screen uh which shouldn't take too long because as I say it's exactly the same as the original Alli 7 in full HD 16x9 display and the jumping image Clarity playing at t0p versus the 800p on the steam deck is quite significant it's noticeably sharper that said the up to, 1600p on the legion go feels like an even bigger jump although you can only get playable frame rates at that resolution in much less demanding games also maxing out the 120 HZ display can be a bit tricky with this processor running highend games but again if you're running simpler games like Minecraft then if you can play at 10tp and get 120 HZ it looks amazing and like before one of the big selling points of the Ali is it's the only mainstream handheld to have vrr or a variable refresh rate especially demanding games which have more fluctuating frame rates feel a lot smoother to play and it means you don't have to lock your frame rate to 30 or 60 to get a more consistent experience although for an IPS level screen the viewing angles aren't particularly great nothing like as good as the steam dech OLED screen would I have liked an OLED screen yes would I have taken OLED uh and given up vrr that's a tougher one and the 500 ins of brightness is fine although it would have been nice to go a little bit higher for gaming Outdoors while nothing's really changed here in terms of the screen and the competitors do offer different advantages like the legion go is 144 HZ and high resolution whereas the steam deck is OLED I think this combination of TTP this size having vrr is still a very nice option and I suspect Asos are holding some upgrades back for a possible Ali 2 next year okay so as I fire up cyber Punk here let's talk about the performance because as I say this is using the same zed1 extreme chip as the higher end model of the original Ally no new ryzen architecture here unfortunately I think maybe we'll see that on the next gen version uh so in terms of the processor we shouldn't be seeing much improvement in performance but we do have more and faster Ram which should translate to a slightly improved performance or at least a smoother performance overall in the Armory create menu you have three power presets you've got the 13 wat silence 17 wat performance and the 25 wat turbo although this jumps to 30 Watts when it's plugged in and there's also custom modes for tweaking now in cyber Punk using the steam deck preset running at 720p I got around 21 FPS using the 131 mode 35 FPS at 17 watts and a 45 FPS average at 25 watt turbo so the turbo mode is definitely The Sweet Spot for playing more demanding games like this and I think with that bigger battery I do feel more comfortable running and playing at this knowing that I'm going to get you know a couple of hours of battery rather than under an hour and that's the big deal it's kind of the whole point of this LAX because it's changed my relationship with the performance of the handheld completely playing games like this at these settings with this wattage on any other handheld feels like you're asking to kill the battery life and the bump up to 24 gigs of faster RAM and some other optimizations gives us a boost of around 1 to 5% in most games is not significant although there was some outliers but this is more about the original Ally being slow in most games I tested though the Alx is appreciably faster than the steam deck OLED and like the other windows handhelds lets you take advantage of the higher resolution and the higher refresh rates oh and just a quick mention of amd's FSR 3.1 which is a pretty big deal for handheld because with this latest version of their op scaling Tech it also now includes frame generation meaning extra AI generated frames to improve your FPS but without being more demanding for the hardware it's kind of like a free performance upgrade and I hope more games will implement it soon and remember you can always use your handheld for streaming games from in the likes of GeForce now or Xbox cloud gaming or even streaming from your PlayStation although you will need a fast and reliable internet connection we hauled ass out through the kitchen wouldn't be here otherwise I must admit I'm also quite impressed by the speakers they are definitely louder and punchier than the original Ali I'd still recommend a pair of headphones though and sometimes I've noticed when the frame rate can still get a bit choppy the sound can also stutter a little bit but with all that said as nice as this is and with all the refinements it is still a Windows 11 based handheld which of course they all are except for the steam deck and it's a bit of a love hate relationship I mean it's got a little bit better there are slightly fewer bugs than when the first generation of these handhelds came out a year or so ago but it's still a full fat Windows 11 PC running with asus's r Armory crate software on top and while on the plus side of course it gives you access to all the game libraries uh you know not just steam uh it does also mean you're going to get crashes and bugs and you're going to have to fiddle around with the silly little Windows keyboard and things like that luckily the Armory create UI boots up have login and also gets it own dedicated shortcut button so most of the time you'll be in here or one of the other game libraries and hopefully avoiding the Windows desktop the good news though is that it is only getting better over time there was quite a big update for the Armory crate which launched with the all X and also came to the original Alli so it's good to see them supporting both devices sometimes you'll be using this and want to pull your hair out and be like why is it done that has it crashed and you have to sort of go down to the home start menu and long press on icon and go back to it because it's running the background but gone to a black screen so I have to oh let's do it now go back to that it is frustrating sometimes but that's a Windows issue really and Asus like the other companies with the other handhelds have done their best to make the UI on top and everything else they can possibly do to make this the most streamlined experience possible and most of the time it works fine we do have to talk about SD card gate though the controversy around uh SD cards essentially not quite melting but being destroyed in the original Ally it didn't happen to everyone but there were enough cases that it became a bit of a well issue now I've spoken to isus directly about this their internal technical marketing team and I've been told that a few units of the original Ally there was an issue with the circuitry not ideal now this was rectified I was told a few months after launch fairly quickly and so this is no longer a current issue with allies and so I'm pretty confident that it's not going to be an issue with the allly X either the screen did get pretty hot though I measured around 42° C after a few minutes using it in 25 wat tuo mode and it's hotter than I'd like although most of the time you're not really using the screen so it's not the end of the world so that is the r Alli X and for me this is by far the most complete Windows gaming handheld you can buy mostly because of that bigger battery but it is just a nice refinement all around but it is also $800 it's quite a lot of money and fundamentally yes while it will last a little bit longer and it's a bit nicer to use and a bit cooler a bit quieter and easy to upgrade the storage it's not fundamentally different from the original Li and I think for most people still the steam deck is probably the better option mostly just down to the software it's also a bit cheaper I do kind of like this less glossy OLED screen either way if you do buy yourself an LAX you're going to have a great time and I will do a full comparison a full round up of all the options in my big buying Guy videos so make sure you've hit that subscribe button if You' got any questions about the LAX drop a comment below let me know what you make of this thank you very much for watching guys and see you next time right here on the tech chat and it's frozen can't do anything greathey guys I'm Tom Tag Chap and this is the r Lix it runs faster it has a longer battery life it's uh cooler and quieter it's more refined but it's also a little bit thicker a little bit heavier it's more expensive and of course it still runs Windows 11 so you may have seen some unboxings and first looks at this but this is my full review benchmarks and battery life and all that good stuff and also I'll be comparing it to the OG Ally and some of its Rivals although make sure you do stick around and subscribe because I will have a full handheld gaming bind guide coming very soon uh with well all these guys it's going to be a big one so last year they introduced the first gen Ally and I liked it a lot I really did but battery life was pretty rubbish there were lots of niggling issues with Windows and the Armory crate software the 512 gigs of storage felt pretty tight and obviously we had issues around the SD cards although that was quickly fixed it was good if perhaps falling short of great but it was first gen so here we are with the Ally X which is more of a midlife ref fresh an Ali 1.5 rather than a 2.0 if you will kind of like the steam Deco led to the original deck and there is only one Ali X instead of the two models that we had with the OG Alli now I must admit when I first got my hands on this and I saw the spec sheet I was a little bit disappointed that there was no change to the screen or the processor two pretty fundamental aspects of a gaming handheld the X shares the same 7in 1080p 120 HZ vrr IPS display and the same ryzen Z1 extreme processor as the highest original Ally no sign of any next gem processors but pretty much everything else has been upgraded with the most important one by far being the battery they have doubled the size from 40 WS to 80 it does mean it's a little bit thicker and heavier we'll talk about the design in a second but they've doubled the battery uh which makes it by far the biggest battery uh in terms of gaming handhelds and IT addresses the biggest issue I think most of us had with the original allly does it mean we get double the battery yes in some situations but we'll come to all the performance bench marks in a second plus you can increase the power limit for a higher FPS and still get a better battery life overall it's a genuine Game Changer or should I say game lengthener they've also doubled the storage we now have 1 terabyte built in here plus of course you can expand it via micro SD and the internal SSD is now a standard sized 2280 PCI 4m2 drive so you have way more and a lot cheaper upgrade options including up to 8 terab there's also extra Ram 24 GB of the stuff up from 16 which is also about 16% faster plus there's a new usb4 type-c port for fast transfers for connecting to external monitors and of course for external graphics cards although that is still a very expensive option and you will have a lot of bottlenecks here but it is more practical than the old XG mobile Port that I'm pretty sure no one really used plus the front firing speakers are louder charging is up from 65 W to 100 WS although you'll need a 100 wat compatible charger and new fans improve the air flow and make the LAX up to 24% quieter as for the design well again it's an evolution of the original Ally very familiar but a few tweaks and refinements I do like this new stealth black look it's definitely going to get less grubby uh than the original white Ally would have been nice if it came in both options they are still selling this by the way you don't have to go for the new Ali X because it is a bit more expensive although at the same time it does now look a bit Anonymous amongst the other chunky black rectangular handhelds I mean holding them side by side the X does feel a little bit chunkier uh and slightly but you can't really tell unless you are holding them like this it doesn't change how portable this is and certainly next to the legion go it is still uh pretty compact the grips are comfortable but still a bit shallow so your hold isn't as secure as on some of the others also the two Aura RGB thumb sticks now have a more weighted more resistive feel which helps gauge your movements more accurately and there's a sort of narrower but deeper indent with a thicker textured Edge grip which does keep your thumm a little bit more securely sensed Ed and apparently they're now waed for 5 million new Cycles up from 2 million on the old one there's also just way more feedback from the face buttons thanks to a longer travel you really do feel the click now and also the matte finish on the d-pad makes it grippier than the glossy one from before and the triggers are a bit chunkier and easier to use as well altogether then a nice refinement it does feel and look a bit more premium than before although still no touchpad which I know a lot of people do love especially for games that work well with a mouse something we do get on the steam Deco Leed and Legion go the headphon Jack and also the previously Troublesome micro SD card reader have swapped to the right hand side plus there's the double USB C's one is the faster USB 4 and the other is a slightly slower USB 3.2 Gen 2 like all handhelds though it is still you know plasticky and not the most premium thing in the whole world but let's talk about battery life because that is by far the biggest reason to pick up an Alli X because a bigger battery gives you options you can either play your games for longer but it's also the ability to dial up to 25 turbo mode or even a higher custom setting and not worry that it's going to be all out of juice in under an hour so the power presets give a Target TDP for example the 17 wat performance mode on the X but once you factor in all the other system power drawers it's actually running at over 30 wats and the topend 30 wat turbo mode actually draws over 40 wats and with the 40w hour battery in the old Li that meant maybe an hour of gaming at most so the big question is how much longer does this last well I fired up F1 23 uh because for some reason iPhone 24 didn't actually work initially on this although I'm sure we'll get updat soon and running at 720p with 50% brightness and using the more frugal but still very capable 17 wat performance mode the Lix lasted a full 3 hours which is over twice as long as the original Ally even though that was using a lower 15 watt TDP mode the steam Deco lead lasted 2 hours 15 the MSI claw 2 hours and the legion go from Lenovo lasted an hour 45 so the all X is way out ahead and if you're playing in the 13 watt silent mode in less demanding games you can easily get 4 to 5 hours and setting the FPS limiter to 30 45 or 60 FPS is a great way to extend the battery life so big thumbs up for the battery life well done Asus but let's talk about this screen uh which shouldn't take too long because as I say it's exactly the same as the original Alli 7 in full HD 16x9 display and the jumping image Clarity playing at t0p versus the 800p on the steam deck is quite significant it's noticeably sharper that said the up to, 1600p on the legion go feels like an even bigger jump although you can only get playable frame rates at that resolution in much less demanding games also maxing out the 120 HZ display can be a bit tricky with this processor running highend games but again if you're running simpler games like Minecraft then if you can play at 10tp and get 120 HZ it looks amazing and like before one of the big selling points of the Ali is it's the only mainstream handheld to have vrr or a variable refresh rate especially demanding games which have more fluctuating frame rates feel a lot smoother to play and it means you don't have to lock your frame rate to 30 or 60 to get a more consistent experience although for an IPS level screen the viewing angles aren't particularly great nothing like as good as the steam dech OLED screen would I have liked an OLED screen yes would I have taken OLED uh and given up vrr that's a tougher one and the 500 ins of brightness is fine although it would have been nice to go a little bit higher for gaming Outdoors while nothing's really changed here in terms of the screen and the competitors do offer different advantages like the legion go is 144 HZ and high resolution whereas the steam deck is OLED I think this combination of TTP this size having vrr is still a very nice option and I suspect Asos are holding some upgrades back for a possible Ali 2 next year okay so as I fire up cyber Punk here let's talk about the performance because as I say this is using the same zed1 extreme chip as the higher end model of the original Ally no new ryzen architecture here unfortunately I think maybe we'll see that on the next gen version uh so in terms of the processor we shouldn't be seeing much improvement in performance but we do have more and faster Ram which should translate to a slightly improved performance or at least a smoother performance overall in the Armory create menu you have three power presets you've got the 13 wat silence 17 wat performance and the 25 wat turbo although this jumps to 30 Watts when it's plugged in and there's also custom modes for tweaking now in cyber Punk using the steam deck preset running at 720p I got around 21 FPS using the 131 mode 35 FPS at 17 watts and a 45 FPS average at 25 watt turbo so the turbo mode is definitely The Sweet Spot for playing more demanding games like this and I think with that bigger battery I do feel more comfortable running and playing at this knowing that I'm going to get you know a couple of hours of battery rather than under an hour and that's the big deal it's kind of the whole point of this LAX because it's changed my relationship with the performance of the handheld completely playing games like this at these settings with this wattage on any other handheld feels like you're asking to kill the battery life and the bump up to 24 gigs of faster RAM and some other optimizations gives us a boost of around 1 to 5% in most games is not significant although there was some outliers but this is more about the original Ally being slow in most games I tested though the Alx is appreciably faster than the steam deck OLED and like the other windows handhelds lets you take advantage of the higher resolution and the higher refresh rates oh and just a quick mention of amd's FSR 3.1 which is a pretty big deal for handheld because with this latest version of their op scaling Tech it also now includes frame generation meaning extra AI generated frames to improve your FPS but without being more demanding for the hardware it's kind of like a free performance upgrade and I hope more games will implement it soon and remember you can always use your handheld for streaming games from in the likes of GeForce now or Xbox cloud gaming or even streaming from your PlayStation although you will need a fast and reliable internet connection we hauled ass out through the kitchen wouldn't be here otherwise I must admit I'm also quite impressed by the speakers they are definitely louder and punchier than the original Ali I'd still recommend a pair of headphones though and sometimes I've noticed when the frame rate can still get a bit choppy the sound can also stutter a little bit but with all that said as nice as this is and with all the refinements it is still a Windows 11 based handheld which of course they all are except for the steam deck and it's a bit of a love hate relationship I mean it's got a little bit better there are slightly fewer bugs than when the first generation of these handhelds came out a year or so ago but it's still a full fat Windows 11 PC running with asus's r Armory crate software on top and while on the plus side of course it gives you access to all the game libraries uh you know not just steam uh it does also mean you're going to get crashes and bugs and you're going to have to fiddle around with the silly little Windows keyboard and things like that luckily the Armory create UI boots up have login and also gets it own dedicated shortcut button so most of the time you'll be in here or one of the other game libraries and hopefully avoiding the Windows desktop the good news though is that it is only getting better over time there was quite a big update for the Armory crate which launched with the all X and also came to the original Alli so it's good to see them supporting both devices sometimes you'll be using this and want to pull your hair out and be like why is it done that has it crashed and you have to sort of go down to the home start menu and long press on icon and go back to it because it's running the background but gone to a black screen so I have to oh let's do it now go back to that it is frustrating sometimes but that's a Windows issue really and Asus like the other companies with the other handhelds have done their best to make the UI on top and everything else they can possibly do to make this the most streamlined experience possible and most of the time it works fine we do have to talk about SD card gate though the controversy around uh SD cards essentially not quite melting but being destroyed in the original Ally it didn't happen to everyone but there were enough cases that it became a bit of a well issue now I've spoken to isus directly about this their internal technical marketing team and I've been told that a few units of the original Ally there was an issue with the circuitry not ideal now this was rectified I was told a few months after launch fairly quickly and so this is no longer a current issue with allies and so I'm pretty confident that it's not going to be an issue with the allly X either the screen did get pretty hot though I measured around 42° C after a few minutes using it in 25 wat tuo mode and it's hotter than I'd like although most of the time you're not really using the screen so it's not the end of the world so that is the r Alli X and for me this is by far the most complete Windows gaming handheld you can buy mostly because of that bigger battery but it is just a nice refinement all around but it is also $800 it's quite a lot of money and fundamentally yes while it will last a little bit longer and it's a bit nicer to use and a bit cooler a bit quieter and easy to upgrade the storage it's not fundamentally different from the original Li and I think for most people still the steam deck is probably the better option mostly just down to the software it's also a bit cheaper I do kind of like this less glossy OLED screen either way if you do buy yourself an LAX you're going to have a great time and I will do a full comparison a full round up of all the options in my big buying Guy videos so make sure you've hit that subscribe button if You' got any questions about the LAX drop a comment below let me know what you make of this thank you very much for watching guys and see you next time right here on the tech chat and it's frozen can't do anything great\n"