Discussion – Handheld PC Gaming devices

Rather than drag the steamdeck thread offtopic, I thought a general catchall handheld pc thread would be better.

Ayaneo is the bigger name in this space, along with GPD. Most of these grew out of the handheld linux/android devices running emulators, so when laptop x86 cpus got low power enough this market formed. Unfortunately these were small production run items and the price was in the 1000-2000 dollar range. The primary raison d’etre for these things is windows compatibility and with that the ability to play multiplayer games that require drm.

Valve managed to shave down production costs to the $400-650 range which is what brought all the attention and funding to the space. Other companies like logitech and razor have done products like this but now the bigger names seem to be committing to large production such that microsoft is coming out with a handheld mode for windows.

So that people can be aware of what is out there now, here is a rough breakdown.

The asus ally is the current hotness but other big name oems could jump in.

My main interest is that some of these can run Zelda Breath of the Wild on emulation better than the Switch, dont have noisy fans, and store your gamesaves locally so you can back them up.