This is the brand new Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, and I tried to do the one thing I immediately wanted to do after using it for a week: make it feel like a Steam Deck. The hardware is genuinely great—AMD’s new handheld APU, 24GB of fast memory, a 1080p 120Hz screen (sadly not OLED), and the best ergonomics I’ve felt on a handheld. The grips are clearly Xbox-controller inspired, and it’s miles more comfortable than a Switch and even comfier than a Steam Deck. The speakers are also properly loud and clear. But the big deal breaker for me isn’t just the gut-wrenching price—it’s Windows 11 on a handheld. I’m not even a Windows hater, but on an 8-inch touchscreen with controller input, it’s a nightmare. Between the endless setup updates, the Xbox app layer, and ASUS’ Armory Crate layer, it often feels like you’re running three operating systems at once, and half your inputs either take forever or get ignored. So I installed Bazzite (basically SteamOS) and set it up as a dual-boot after disabling Windows drive encryption. Bazzite made the Ally X feel instantly more responsive—like I “decalcified its brain”—but I lost a ton of functionality and ran into flaky controller behavior. Performance results were mixed: Cyberpunk looked like a big jump but had weird resolution reporting, while Shadow of Mordor matched Windows at 1080p. In the end, it’s promising, but not something I’d call a clean Steam Deck-style solution yet.