Xbox has a pricing problem, and that’s not changing with the company’s first officially branded handheld. Microsoft and Asus’ ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X are set to launch on Oct. 16, and after weeks and weeks of making everyone wait, we finally know how much they will cost. If you’re planning on buying one, do it at launch before tariffs force Microsoft to jack up prices like it has with Xbox consoles.
Xbox Ally preorders started later Thursday, Sept. 25. The regular Xbox Ally will sell for $600. It comes at base with an AMD Ryzen Z2A processor, with specs that hint it could be equivalent to Valve’s $550 Steam Deck OLED in performance. It also packs 16GB of RAM and a 60Wh battery with a 7-inch IPS LCD display. At that price, Asus and Xbox are trying to claim some small part of the PC handheld market dominated by Valve’s handheld, even if it lacks the prettier OLED display. The Xbox Ally is a bit larger than a Steam Deck, though it feels more ergonomic thanks to its controller-like grips.
The one you actually want, the Xbox Ally X, will demand $1,000 from your already-stretched wallet. The darker handheld contains an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme, the long-awaited SoC—or system on a chip—that should have better performance in games compared to handheld PCs from the last two years. How much more powerful is a question with a big red “to be determined” sign hanging over it, but earlier leaks have suggested it won’t be too much better than before running at the highest possible power settings. It may do better at lower power, so you may be able to game for longer at a stable frame rate. The more expensive Xbox Ally also comes with 24GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and an 80Wh battery—equivalent to last year’s $900 ROG Ally X. The more powerful handheld will only be available through Best Buy.
Trump tariffs have caused havoc with PC and gaming prices. Last week, Microsoft hiked prices of all its Xbox Series S and Series X consoles. Now, if you want the Xbox with a disc drive, it will set you back $650. The Galaxy Black version with 2TB of storage now costs a whopping $800. This year, Asus hiked the cost of its Ally X by $100, up to $900. Lenovo raised prices on its Legion Go S handheld PCs with SteamOS to $650 at base. Lenovo originally cited $550 back when it announced the handheld back during CES 2025. The Legion Go 2, with its 8.8-inch OLED display and a Ryzen Z2 Extreme, starts at $1,350. If you want a handheld PC that can run some AAA games at somewhat stable frame rates, you’ll end up paying through the nose for it.
Asus and Xbox stalled out in August and refused to share the preorder date and price. I’ve wrapped my hands around the handheld’s comfortable Xbox controller-like grips, but it wasn’t nearly enough time to say if the handheld is worth the money. The new Xbox Ally devices will sport Microsoft’s new version of Windows 11 built specifically for handhelds. Compared to other handheld PCs running the OS, the new version will make selecting games across your various distribution platforms easier. It may also finally fix the aggravating issues when putting these devices to sleep. Most importantly, they should increase performance by nixing background tasks.
Some users have managed to get a version of the Xbox handheld experience working on other Windows devices. We still have to see how the final version shakes out. In the end, SteamOS may still prove to be a much cleaner, console-like experience thanks to three years of updates from Valve, plus an active developer community. The Steam Deck hardware is looking a little long in the tooth, but it’s still the cheapest handheld around—at least until Valve inevitably hikes prices just like every other company.
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.PNG?ssl=1 "The Tovala Oven and Meal Kit Is Like a Robot Chef of Future PastA garlic-herb salmon with risotto was probably the best among the family meals I tried. The chopped asparagus was less than visually appealing when drizzled in garlic butter, but still tasty and a bit crisp. The salmon was tender and flaky. And the sweet pea risotto had no choice but to be delicious. There was so much cheese, butter, and lemon it was pretty much a concert of fats and acid.That chicken parm was likewise a mountain of cheese and salt. It reminded me, pleasantly, of countless family meals I had as a child in the 1980s: cheese-topped chicken, garlic bread, shells stuffed with ricotta and topped with even more cheese. The big difference is that there is simply no way my mother would have cooked this meal without a vegetable.Toval app via Matthew KorfhageAnd nutrition is where Toval runs aground a little. The nutritional notes on that chicken parm meal betray 2,300 milligrams of sodium per serving, pretty much the entire daily allowance for an adult human. This is also on par with comparable servings of Stouffer’s meat lasagna. The Tovala meal also carried about 10 times the cholesterol as Stouffer’s.Many other meals followed a similar pattern, loading up on fats and salt in order to make meals tasty. The net effect is that it’s a lot more like rich restaurant food than what most people prepare at home. Whether this is a good or a bad quality is up to you.Only one meal of the seven I tried failed utterly: I flagged a teriyaki chicken dinner to my editor as a possible cultural crime against Japan. The meal was sweet soy drenching pale and steaming chicken, with an implausible side of thick egg rolls and some loose, unseasoned broccoli. It felt like the “Japanese” food you’d get at a mall food court in the ’90s. But again, this was a rare major misstep.A more pernicious issue, in meals designed for the whole family, is the near-universal high-fat, cholesterol, and sodium content. Many with the income and inclination to eat hearty, low-effort meals like the ones from Tovala are either parents with children, or people in the retirement bracket. Each has their own reason to desire a little more nutrition, and less fat and salt.By the end of a couple of weeks of testing recipes, I’ll admit I felt a little relieved. I was grateful to feel my arteries slowly reopen. Tovala’s culinary model makes a lot of sense to me, as a smart way of splitting the difference between prepared meals and fresh food. And the company has proven it can cook well. It might be nice if they’d also cook a diet that felt more sustainable.Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting that’s too important to ignore. Includes unlimited digital access and exclusive subscriber-only content. Subscribe Today.#Tovala #Oven #Meal #Kit #Robot #Chef #Futurekitchen,food and drink,cooking,review,meal kits,shopping")
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