Though 2025’s been a big year for gaming handhelds, the year isn’t over yet. One of the most anticipated gaming devices of the year is the Xbox handheld we’ve been hearing rumors about for years. In June 2025, Microsoft confirmed a partnership with ROG to create the Xbox Ally and introduced two new products: the ROG Xbox Ally and the ROG Xbox Ally X. Besides confirming the products and that the gaming handhelds would work with PC game stores, both companies went incredibly light on the details.

Today, Microsoft and Asus are officially opening preorders for the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X at $599 and $999 respectively in the US. They’re $799 CAD and $1299 CAD in Canada, €599 and €899 in Europe, £499 and £799 in the UK, and $799 AUD and $1599 AUD in Australia. They both ship October 16th.(In the United States, the Xbox Ally X will be exclusive to Best Buy, the Asus Shop, and Microsoft; the Xbox Ally is going wider at Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Microsoft, the Asus Shop, and Ant Online.)There’s a few different ways to look at those prices. If you’re used to console pricing, Microsoft’s first Xbox handhelds are not cheap! Even the vanilla white Xbox Ally costs $150 more than a Switch 2, which was itself criticized for price, and it costs $100 more than a far more powerful Xbox Series X did at launch in the US, Microsoft’s new Xbox price hike notwithstanding. In Europe and the UK, the weaker of the two Allys costs the same as an Xbox Series X. But you can’t play that Xbox in a passenger seat. And if you’re a PC gamer, or want to be, things look a bit rosier. These “Xbox” handhelds will be the first with a new build of Windows that hides the desktop and Explorer shell, frees up gobs of memory for your games, and (hopefully) lets you navigate solely by controller. Handhelds have unfortunately been getting pricier and pricier anyhow, to the point flagship ones now cost as much as gaming laptops. At $999, the Xbox Ally X might compare well to the $999 MSI Claw 8 AI Plus or the $1,349 Lenovo Legion Go 2 that offers the same AMD Z2 Extreme chip you’ll find here — particularly because my colleagues and I agree the new Allys have one of the most comfortable designs we’ve held. (In summary: Prongs rock.)Just know you’re getting a wildcard if you opt for the $599 Ally, as it contains a never-before-seen Ryzen Z2 A processor that’s much more like the chip in the Steam Deck. Instead of 8 Zen 5 CPU cores and 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores designed to run between 15 and 35 watt TDP, you’re getting 4 Zen 2 CPU cores and 8 RDNA 2 GPU cores designed to run between 6 and 20 watts for lower performance gaming.We’re planning to have reviews of the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X in the coming weeks. Microsoft says they’ll be available in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam — and will additionally come to Brazil China, India, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Philippines and Switzerland.

Well, it's finally here. Microsoft had hinted at its desire to enter the world of portable PC gaming on numerous occasions in the past. While I expected the company to create its own hardware, it made sense for Microsoft to leverage the expertise that ROG already possessed. As such, we saw the first peek into the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X a little while ago, and it was shaping up to be a very interesting product at the time.

It’s a nerd’s dream to have all sorts of devices at home, and I can say that my home is definitely leaning that way. My family isn’t locked to one single ecosystem — we have a MacBook, Windows machines, Android flagships, and iPhones. This varied mix is quite liberating, giving everyone the freedom to go about the way they prefer. However, that’s also a bit of a headache for me since, instead of replicating a single workflow on all the devices, I have to create separate ones for every device make.

It was challenging for me to manage different wired and wireless devices on my home network. I had a tough time identifying a rogue device or bandwidth-guzzling culprit. Since I was still teething with VLANs, I decided to start small and only separate the devices without over-segmenting them. Also, I learned the hard way that well-structured firewall rules are crucial when using VLANs. To keep things simple for my home network, I have only segmented them into wired and wireless categories. Here are some reasons why I prefer my VLANs on separate wired devices from wireless ones.

Squeezing an AI onto a Raspberry Pi is an interesting feat. In an ideal world, the Pi comes with enough hardware to run any model you throw at it, but the truth is, it's quite limited as to what it can do. In fact, someone created an art project that illustrates just how limited it can be. Of course, the Raspberry Pi community, being the tinkerers they are, saw this as a challenge rather than a limitation and got to work creating lighter versions of AI models that can run on the SBC. It's not as lightning-fast as ChatGPT or an NPU-hosted model, but it can still do the job.

Sometimes, when you're digging through Steam looking for the latest deals, you find a pretty steep discount on a game you've never heard of with overwhelmingly positive reviews. Those are always the best ones, because not only can you save a ton of money, but you get to check out a new game you didn't even know existed until today.

Meta is bringing its “pay or consent” ad model to the UK after months of wrangling with regulators over the controversial policy. The update will force Instagram and Facebook users to pick between being served up personalized ads or shelling out for monthly subscriptions to ad-free versions. Subscriptions start at £2.99 a month, around $4, for users logging in over the web, Meta said. Android and iOS users face steeper charges of £3.99 a month, around $5.33. Meta blames this on “the fees that Apple and Google charge.” It’s an all or nothing approach, with users forced to either subscribe on all accounts or none. Each additional account garners another fee of either £2 or £3 a month.Meta was forced to walk back a similar model in Europe after regulators there slammed the “binary choice” it offered users. Meta warned users they faced a “materially worse” experience as a result. The fees were significantly more expensive there than in the UK, starting at €9.99 per month when purchased on the web or €12.99 per month if purchased through Google’s or Apple’s app stores, around $11.67 and $15.17, respectively.

One of the main things I use my iPad for is bullet journaling and planning. I’ve tried out a variety of journaling and note-taking apps on iPadOS over the years, but up until recently, the only one I stuck with was Notability. With iPadOS 26, which launched earlier this month, Notability has some new competition: Apple’s Journal app.

If you've been looking for a new mechanical keyboard with a little flair that isn't going to hurt your wallet, the EPOMAKER RT 100 should be one to look out for. The brand dubs this keyboard as having a retro style, and even offers it in different colors. For the most part, we like the look.

If you've ever wanted to show off your GPU vertically or convert a spare PCIe slot into M.2 slots, you probably know about PCIe riser cables. These PCIe extenders bring added flexibility to your PC, but they do so with some unavoidable complications. To make matters worse, the PCIe risers on the affordable end of the spectrum often make matters worse instead of improving functionality. You not only risk BSODs and glitches on the GPU side, but also data corruption on the storage side. Here's how to pick the right PCIe riser for your system.

Windows 10 will lose general support on October 14th, but that doesn't mean it will never see updates ever again. If you're signed up for the extended security program (or if you're in Europe), you can get another year of security-only updates. This is great for keeping Windows 10 usable in the modern era, but it does mean the operating system will get no more security-critical bug fixes or new features.