With the ROG Xbox Ally launch now less than a month away (where are those prices, Microsoft?!), it’s probably no surprise to see that the Xbox Full Screen Experience has quietly become available in testing form for Windows Insiders.
The Xbox Full Screen Experience, of course, is the name for Xbox’s new handheld UI on the ROG Xbox Ally – a way of ditching the bloat of Windows and providing an easy-to-use interface akin to the Steam Deck’s Big Picture Mode.
Microsoft’s goal with this UI is basically to eliminate the background noise of Windows, meaning a bunch of processes and startup items don’t load unless you specifically ask them to – helping to optimise performance and accessibility.
And, based on these early tests, it seems to be paying off! Yesterday, a ROG Ally fan took to the device’s subreddit to reveal how to access Xbox’s new handheld UI, which involves signing up to the Windows Insider program and downloading a Release Preview version of Windows 11 – and this has sparked a ton of reaction across the web.
Windows Central, for example, has put out a big article (and video, seen above) talking about how the new handheld UI works on the standard ROG Ally, pointing out that they’ve noticed FPS and battery improvements when using it.
However, they say the performance improvements are only really obvious when disabling startup apps:
“In our testing, we did find a noticeable improvement in performance when you are running a game in handheld mode when Windows is set to have all your startup apps disabled. Running the same benchmark tests in desktop mode, with all the startup apps running in the background, does result in worse performance.”
“It’s the same story with battery life. Ideally, battery life should be better in handheld gaming mode, because nothing runs in the background at boot. And yeah, in our testing we got roughly an additional hour of battery life when in handheld mode vs desktop mode with startup apps enabled.”
There are loads of tweets going around about this as well – here’s just a small sample of them:
Now, if you’re planning on trying to install this yourself, you should be warned that Xbox’s handheld UI is obviously in preview form right now, and some of the guide mentions messing around with registry settings and stuff like that – so be prepared for potential issues and make a backup of anything you do, just in case the worst was to happen.
We’d also suggest not judging this as a final product by any means. Xbox will be busy tinkering with the handheld UI right up to the ROG Xbox Ally launch on October 16th (and for many months/years beyond that), so this is just an early glimpse of its potential. It seems like it’s off to a great start, but there’s a lot more to come from it yet!
What are your thoughts on this? Let us know down in the comments section below.
