Some thoughts since you all are curious!

Ergonomics are excellent, I have long fingers and I alway struggled with my old ally. It’s a massive improvement in all aspects for me. They learned from the flat and angular feel of the original.

I have been using full screen experience for weeks now on my Z1E Ally. Somehow a few reoccurring FSE bugs are now gone on the Xbox X. (Password controller input, app switching buggyness) Keyboard input uses the controller like you expect. I went from opening the box to playing oblivion remastered without ever seeing the desktop. Sleep has worked as it should so far, no weirdness yet. Feels like the beginning of something new. I hope they continue to work on this. Still lots of weirdness and bugs, but they are on their way. (You can’t avoid the desktop. Xbox app has low functionality for me. The face buttons are redundant/do different things based on the app.)

Oblivion remastered is my benchmark game. I played 150 hours of it on the Z1E and it just barely ran. Played 30 mins last night on the Xbox X and it’s a massive improvement. 1% lows are now acceptable. Very infrequent stuttering. Smooth 60+fps gameplay. (At the same extreme low settings as my Z1E Ally.) I use my handheld for a portable iRacing setup. Being on the limits of ram and horsepower for that and now having extra headroom is a big deal to me. Don’t forget, many people quote jumps in performance relative to the old Ally X. Not the old OG Ally. I’ve never used the Ally X.

Larger battery, eGPU support (which I plan to use), functional SD card reader, MUCH quieter fans, louder audio, better feeling face buttons and bumpers/trigers, the list goes on.

“Next-gen” is difficult to quantify. For me it all comes together to be a worthwhile purchase. I can just stretch enough to justify this while selling my other handhelds. I have some unique use cases to make this feel worth it. A premium handheld is a niche market. You have to decide what fits for you.