cross-posted from: lemmygrad.ml/post/9298177

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I’ve been closely following handheld PCs ever since Valve announced the Steam Deck. In the years since, they’ve only gotten more expensive without offering meaningful performance improvements. Worse still, it looks like every new PC handheld is bigger than the previous one. What gives?

The Price Is Not Right

As a handheld PC buff and the resident handheld PC reviewer over at TechPowerUp, I’ve seen and used my fair share of PC gaming handhelds. Aside from the Steam Deck LCD, the common feature they all share is the high price of admission.

Even the Steam Deck OLED and the ASUS ROG Ally, the two “affordable” options on the market, will set you back $550 and $650, respectively, which is a pretty penny.

Virtually every Windows PC handheld, including popular options from big-name brands such as ASUS, Lenovo, and MSI, can be considered a luxury commodity made for hardcore PC gamers ready to pay the premium for a handheld capable of running all their favorite PC games.

Instead of more competition driving prices down, the average price you need to pay for a PC handheld has been steadily on the rise ever since the Steam Deck made them part of the mainstream gaming milieu. I had hoped big-name vendors would one-up Chinese boutique brands and their overtly expensive offerings, but the reality tells a different story.

For example, devices powered by AMD’s Z1 Extreme chip entered the market at about $700, the MSRP of both the original ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go. The ROG Ally X, a souped-up version of the original, debuted at $800, but now costs $900 thanks to the tariffs.

The Legion Go S, which Lenovo touts as the company’s “more affordable [PC handheld] option,” retails for $600 for the SteamOS version with the Z2 Go that’s a bit more powerful than the chip powering the Deck. The SteamOS version coupled with the Z1 Extreme, comparable in power to the ROG Ally X, sells for $830.

Handhelds powered by AMD’s Z2 Extreme chip are even costlier. The most affordable Z2 Extreme version of the Legion Go 2 is priced at an eye-watering $1,350, while the Z2 version (comparable in performance to the Z1 Extreme) coupled with a meager 16GB of RAM, will sell for $1,050! Even without the tariffs, these prices are not right.

The only Lunar Lake handheld you can buy at the moment, the excellent but also pricey MSI Claw 8, will set you back $1,000, while its cousin, the Z2 Extreme-powered Claw A8, is selling for €999 over in the EU, which means it too will break the four digit barrier once it finally lands in the US.

You can bet that the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X from ASUS and Microsoft will also sport a similar price, showing that, as time goes by, PC handhelds are only shooting up in price instead of the other way around.

Instead of getting more affordable over time, the recent crop of “affordable” handhelds sport the same prices as high-end ones did just a few years ago, while the high-end options cost as much as budget gaming laptops, without offering worthwhile performance improvements.

Pricier, Without Worthwhile Performance Improvements

New PC handheld devices being prohibitively expensive wouldn’t be such an issue if they brought worthwhile performance improvements.

But the reality isn’t as rosy. Credit where credit’s due, the Z2 Extreme does deliver impressive performance gains at low power (anything from about 40% at 15W to impressive 2x performance jumps at 10W and below), but at 20W and above, the gains are quite slim. We’re talking around 20% improvement, with some games seeing even slimmer gains.

This is not enough to justify the exorbitant prices of Z2 Extreme handhelds, and it looks like AMD is the main culprit here, not vendors. I mean, AMD flat-out said that “We charge more for our CPUs than our competitor does,” with that competitor being Intel.

Case in point are two MSI handhelds that offer very similar gaming performance. The MSI Claw 8 powered by Intel’s Lunar Lake platform, which I reviewed, is built like a tank, made of high-quality materials, and has an impressive cooling setup consisting of two fans and two massive heat pipes.

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On the flip side, the Z2 Extreme-powered MSI Claw A8 costs the same as the Claw 8, but features a shell made of lower tier plastic, its cooling setup packs louder fans and only one heat pipe, and you’re only getting 24GB of RAM instead of 32GB, as found on the Lunar Lake model.

Personally, I think AMD made a mistake keeping the Z2 Extreme on the now dated RDNA 3.5 architecture. The chip didn’t bring worthwhile performance improvements; it’s still stuck with temporal upscaling (FSR 4, reserved for RDNA 4 GPUs, is machine learning-based just like DLSS), while costing much more than the Z1 Extreme.

Since we won’t see RDNA 4 GPUs in mobile APUs, and with rumors saying AMD won’t make Z3 chips anytime soon (if ever), it looks like mainstream PC handhelds won’t get noteworthy performance gains for at least a few more years, which is grim news for PC handhelds fans.

Intel could come to the rescue with its upcoming Panther Lake series of mobile chips, but as of this writing it looks like we won’t get a low-power chip coupled with a beefy iGPU like we did with Lunar Lake.

Truth be told, Chinese brands such as GPD and Ayaneo are working on handhelds powered by AMD’s high-end Ryzen AI Max 385 and Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU (also known as Strix Halo) that should offer performance similar to the laptop version of the RTX 4060. But the catch is that these two APUs are designed to run at very high power envelopes. Their optimal TDP is set at 55W, which is bonkers for a handheld PC!

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GPD and Ayaneo have also had to compromise the design of their upcoming handhelds to make Strix Halo APUs work in a handheld form factor. For instance, the GPD Win 5 doesn’t even have a built-in battery; you have to use an external battery (included with the device) that connects to the handheld via cable. Lastly, they will be super expensive; the most affordable version of the GPD Win 5, featuring the Ryzen AI Max 385, costs around $1,220, and that’s the preorder price for the Chinese market. You can bet the regular prices for markets outside China will be notably higher.

It seems like PC handhelds are hitting a wall regarding gaming performance, a wall they won’t surmount for at least a couple more years. Sure, we will get devices powered by AMD’s Strix Halo, but these will be exotic, luxury devices aimed towards well-off enthusiasts and not your average PC gamer who’d like a taste of that sweet handheld gaming PC life.

When a Handheld Is Too Big to Be Called Handheld

There’s another handheld PC trend I’m not very fond of: the average handheld PC is getting bigger and bigger.

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My How-To Geek colleague Bertel King has already written about this and I tend to agree with him: PC handhelds are getting too large.

The first mainstream PC handheld, the Steam Deck, made a 7-inch screen the standard. Then the 8.8-inch Lenovo Legion Go arrived and broke every record size-wise. Nowadays, it looks like 8-inch screens are becoming the sweet spot.

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Now, honestly, I’m fine with an 8-inch handheld as long as it has as good weight distribution and ergonomics as the MSI Claw 8. But even that size is pushing it. As someone with medium-sized hands, I had a hard time reaching the bumpers on the Claw 8 while testing it, and had to remap the bumpers to the two bottom buttons.

The Legion Go 2 is even worse in this regard with its humongous 8.8-inch display and weight of more than 2lbs, making it heavier than many thin and light laptops. Other behemoths include the 8.4-inch Ayaneo Kun, the missing-in-action 10.95-inch Acer Nitro Blaze 11, and the upcoming 11-inch Abxylute 3D One.

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Worse still, even Nintendo and Sony have embraced this trend of supersizing. The Switch 2 is humongous compared to its predecessor, thanks to its 7.9-inch screen and weight of 1.18lbs, which is getting dangerously close to the PC handheld territory. The PlayStation Portal isn’t as heavy, but its 8-inch screen does make it quite large compared to PlayStation handhelds of yore.

Can the PC Handheld Market Be Turned Around?

PC handhelds are getting more and more expensive and larger without offering worthwhile performance improvements. Can the PC handheld market recover? Performance-wise, I don’t see the trend of drip-fed performance improvements dying out anytime soon.

Sure, creating a bespoke APU design that pairs a relatively humble CPU with a beefy GPU and high-bandwidth memory would be possible in principle, but PC gaming handhelds aren’t popular enough for AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA to work with vendors in creating such a chip.

The first PC handheld that could come with a semi-custom solution is the Steam Deck 2, but that one’s years away.

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I reckon that the rumored PlayStation handheld will boast quite a beefy bespoke APU made by AMD that will likely put most PC handhelds to shame. If we’re lucky, and the handheld PlayStation ends up selling like hotcakes, perhaps AMD will ultimately offer something similar to PC handheld vendors.

When it comes to the ever-increasing prices, I can see them stabilizing, but I don’t think any other PC handheld will come close to the Steam Deck LCD anytime soon.

The reason is simple: Valve earns money from selling games with the Steam Deck being a sort of vessel for selling Steam games, allowing the company to offer it for only $399.

Luckily, if you aren’t interested in playing the latest and greatest PC games, you can pick between buckets of various retro handhelds, some of which (like the upcoming AYN Odin 3) pack powerful mobile chips capable of running many PC games via Android apps such as Winlator.

Or you can simply get a Switch 2. It’s not a handheld PC, but it’s still an awesome portable gaming machine. You can also opt for a preowned Steam Deck or ROG Ally, both of which can be found at attractive, “budget” price points over at eBay and Facebook Marketplace.

I believe we will get a proper budget PC handheld that isn’t a Steam Deck once the market matures, more players enter the fray (HP, Alienware, Razer, and so on), and we start seeing some real competition. The downside here is that this likely won’t happen anytime soon.

Lastly, while the sizing-up trend is in full swing, there are still options catering to PC gamers that prefer more compact handhelds. You’ve got devices such as the ROG Ally X, the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X, and the MSI Claw 7, each packing more compact, 7-inch screens.

What I would like to see next is more devices featuring 6-inch or smaller screens. Unfortunately, the majority of PC handheld buyers prefer larger, less portable devices. I don’t think big-name brands will offer something as portable as the Ayaneo Air 1S or the GPD Win Mini. That’s a shame, because I’d love to see a Steam Deck Mini.

At the end of the day, I’m still excited about the upcoming PC handhelds. But I don’t like this trend of ever-rising prices coupled with disappointing performance improvements, which will hamper the steady adoption growth PC handhelds have enjoyed since the release of the Steam Deck.

Honestly, I somewhat like some of these trends, such as the bigger screens and yet… there are drawbacks and the prices are ridiculous.

I prefer some of the Chinese brands such as the Sugar handhelds because they’re at least kinda wacky and different as well as powerful.

Your thoughts?___