HANDHELD GAMING PCs

In lieu of more powerful processors, handhelds are getting weirder

- Jacob Ridley

We’ve experienced a new form factor take hold of PC gaming over the past few years: the handheld gaming PC. Advancements in onboard graphics chips and chip manufacturing technologies means we now have the low power, high performance processors required to make a fully-fledge gaming PC able to fit inside the pockets of a man with very sizeable pockets. That’s progress.

It all kicked off with the Steam Deck. There were a handful (get it?) that arrived prior to that, except they weren’t very good. Nowadays a smorgasbord of Windows-based handhelds are available thanks to the performance offered by AMD’s Ryzen 7 7740HS and Ryzen Z1 Extreme – effectively the same chip – powered by the 780M iGPU. But where do manufacturers go next?

New and improved Ryzen AI chips are only available in a small number of laptops currently. In the meantime, handhelds have gotten weirder and more wonderful. OLED screens, compact designs, beefy tablets and even a PC equivalent of the Nintendo DS – you needn’t stick with a simple screen and a couple of analogue sticks these days.

Steam Deck OLED

VALVE £569

O-O-O-OLED