A dream shared by PC gamers everywhere has been to take our entire gaming PCs on-the-go. From LAN parties to powerful gaming laptops, we've gotten close to portable gaming nirvana, yet no solution quite as simple as pulling out one of the latest generation of PC gaming handhelds and gaming from near enough anywhere.
We've tested most of today's top gaming handhelds and come away impressed with many of them. However, there's two that stand out among the crowd. The best handheld gaming PC is OneXPlayer's OneXFly, which blends a 7-inch screen with AMD's awesome Ryzen 7 7840U chip. The best budget handheld gaming PC is the Steam Deck, a handheld with all the right credentials for less than most of the competition.
One key difference between the Steam Deck and the other handhelds below is Valve's choice of operating system. It uses a Linux-based OS called SteamOS, which is tailored to the handheld gaming experience and Valve's own storefront, while the rest of them use Windows. Valve's OS is sleek yet a little restrictive on which games you can play due to anti-cheat measures. While Windows is, well, Windows—it'll play anything but it can be a little clunky to use on a touchscreen. Whichever you pick, below you'll find all of our recommendations: from the budget-friendly Steam Deck to more powerful options.
Gaming handhelds haven't been around for long, which means Jacob has had a chance to experience many of them first-hand. From Alienware's short-lived Project UFO and pre-Steam Deck Intel-powered handhelds, which left a lot to be desired, to the wave of modern and extremely adept handhelds we're seeing today—Jacob has tried the lot.
The quick list
The best budget
The Steam Deck is unbeatable in one very important way: it's far cheaper than most of the competition. It's definitely the best value option, and it's a neat gaming device for the money.
The best big screen
The Lenovo Legion Go has a huge 8.8-inch screen, although you'll want to turn down the resolution a tad for the best performance. It also features detachable controllers that really make it stand out.
Recent updates
This guide was updated on April 22, 2024 to check over our recommendations and to do a bit of general house cleaning, but our top picks remain the same.
The best handheld gaming PC
✅ You want portable but with a good sized screen: The 7-inch panel here has a skinny bezel that keeps things compact, and the unit is a fair bit lighter than the Steam Deck too.
✅ You want quiet gaming: Some handhelds can get a bit noisy, but the OneXFly keeps things serene with low amounts of fan noise.
❌ You're looking for cheap: The $739 model is the one we'd plump for, but that's still pretty pricey by anyone's standards.
The best all-round handheld gaming PC has to be the OneXPlayer OneXFly. Blending the best processor with a sleek form factor, it has us mightily impressed.
If you want the screen size of the Steam Deck, but like the idea of a smaller device, the OneXFly is a great middle point between the Deck and the oh-so-tiny Air 1S. It really is a gorgeous machine, with a screen bezel so slight as to make it feel like the central area is almost all panel.
And it's a bright display, too, rocking a 1080p resolution with a 450 nits peak luminance level. It's also matching the 120Hz refresh rate of the ROG Ally, and that makes this one of the best-looking devices of the lot.
So, good screen, a size that will slide into your day-bag, but how does it perform? The handheld's favourite AMD 7840U APU is there, and alongside the 48 Wh battery it can game at an impressive level for a decent amount of time in 30 W trim. With everything at max, the OneXFly delivers 69 minutes of gaming uptime in the PCMark 10 gaming battery test. Use the OneXPlayer software and you can easily drop the TDP down to a manageable 15-20 W and stretch the battery life considerably without seriously diminishing performance.
The Radeon 780M RDNA 3 integrated GPU is surprisingly adept at 1080p gaming, generally on medium game settings. The same was true even when the TDP was lowered to 15 W to play Baldur's Gate 3.
The rest of the specification is fairly standard for the current crop of gaming handhelds—16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD—but it's using faster memory in its LPDDR5X-7500 kit. In practical use, this makes for a very responsive and capable handheld gaming and Windows machine.
While the Steam Deck is still a brilliant machine, and a fair bit cheaper, the OneXPlayer does feel well priced for everything you get here.
A surprisingly sleek gaming handheld, this, and it makes for a portable PC that ticks all the boxes.
Read our full OneXPlayer OneXFly review.
The best budget handheld gaming PC
✅ You're looking for a great handheld PC for a very reasonable price: The Deck ticks many of the boxes you'll be looking for in a great handheld, and it doesn't poke too much of a hole in your finances to boot.
✅ You want build quality: The Steam Deck feels reassuringly solid and professional in the hands, and despite the price is a quality product.
❌ You want super-portable: The build quality may be great, but it's still quite a bulky unit no matter which way you look at it.
❌ You want superb battery life: The 40Whr battery in the Deck is reasonable, but be prepared to engage fps locks and fiddle with the screen brightness to get the most out of it.
The Steam Deck is the best budget handheld gaming PC by something of a country mile. It's the sort of thing that I could only dream of as a child; a compact, cheap gaming PC than can play most of my games and slip inside a backpack. It would've hands-down bested playing on the fold-away screen atop of my Gamecube running off a 12 V cigarette lighter in the back of my dad's car, though I have fond memories of that. In a way, the Steam Deck captures some of that retro gaming feel—it lets you find new time to play games.
I've smashed through many more games with the Steam Deck than I ever would have relying solely on my desktop. That's true of many of these handhelds, but the Steam Deck is a very sleek experience. That's because Valve has commissioned its own Linux OS, SteamOS, to run on the device, and it's built from the ground up for gaming. It plays best with Steam games, but I've loaded the Heroic Games Launcher on it to boot into Epic and GOG games with ease, too.
Performance is measured by playability on the Deck, not so much as we might measure it on desktop by how many frames per second you can get. It's really not a powerful device, with fewer older CUs compared to some handhelds today, but that's alright as it's only pushing an 800p screen. Generally, it gets by just fine in modern games, but you might find you primarily see it as an indie-game machine.
That's how I use my Steam Deck anyways. It's allowed me to find the time to play so many indie and wholesome games I'd never normally get space to play on my desktop PC. Though the Deck is also great for game streaming, if you have a GeForce Now subscription or something similar. That's how I play most demanding games on the device, rather than rendering them locally.
As a value proposition, there's really no beating the Steam Deck. The other handhelds I've been using have it beat in performance, there are some that deliver frame rates and resolutions far in excess of the Steam Deck, but none anywhere near as affordable.
That's the Deck's best feature: it's so much cheaper than any of the other handhelds we've tested. While it doesn't have the sheer performance of the OneXPlayer OneXFly, nor the big screen and trick controls of the Lenovo Legion Go, it's still got plenty of portable punch combined with a decent display, for less cash.
Also if something breaks, you can buy an official part and replace it yourself with relative ease. I have two videos on how to swap out the Steam Deck's SSD and how to swap out the Steam Deck's thumb sticks, if you're interested.
Read our full Steam Deck review.
The best big screen handheld gaming PC
✅ You don't necessarily need ultra-portable: While the Legion Go is still easy enough to throw in your backpack, really its more about getting that big screen down to a portable package. Perfect to take to a friends house, or if portability isn't your primary concern.
✅ You want Switch-like controllers: It's a relaxing experience, freeing your hands from the side of the device and playing kicked back thanks to the, err, kickstand.
❌ You want to play at over 1080p: While the Legion Go technically has a screen capable of more, you'll really want to stay at 1080p in the majority of games to get useable performance.
It's a good looking device, the Legion Go, and a lot of that is due to that gigantic screen. So much so, in fact, that it takes our top pick for the best big screen handheld gaming PC. But don't be fooled by the shiny pixels, as beyond that great display lies a powerful and rather interesting handheld PC.
For a start, it's big. Surprisingly big, and even makes the Steam Deck look like it's been on a diet. However, it's got some features that account for that weight and substantial size, chief among them being the addition of two detachable controllers, in a similar fashion to the Nintendo Switch.
They might be a little clunky to use for certain games, but they give this handheld the distinct advantage of, again, like the Switch, standing on its rear kickstand so you can play with the detached controllers on a table. Perhaps it's not as comfortable as an all-in-one compared to some of the options here, but that party trick sets it very much apart from the crowd.
The good news doesn't stop there either. It's powered by the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme as the Asus ROG Ally, which makes it a great performer, and while like many gaming handhelds it's indie games that show it off at its best, it's still got the grunt to take on something like Baldur's Gate 3 on the go with very little issue.
One thing to note is the screen resolution. While it's big, bright and fast, that 2560 x 1600 resolution is a bit too much for the hardware inside, and you'll likely want to drop down to something more sensible like 1920 x 1200 to really make the most of your experience without significant frame drops.
If you don't need such a dominant display, the little Ayaneo Air 1S might be more up your street, for something you can just about squeeze in a large pocket. You could try with the Legion Go, but I dread to think of what sort of pockets you'd need to accommodate such a large and in charge machine.
Price-wise though, you're really getting a lot for your money here. With the 512 GB model coming in around the $700 mark, it's well placed given the huge screen on offer and the addition of those useful controllers. As Lenovo's first go at a gaming handheld this is quite an impressive effort, and providing you're prepared to turn the resolution down you'll still be enjoying a great experience on a large enough screen to really pull you in to the action, even if the handheld aspect is perhaps a little chunkier than we'd like.
Read our full Lenovo Legion Go review.
The best compact handheld gaming PC
✅ You want ultimate portability: It's teeny-tiny for a gaming PC and, a pretty astonishing achievement given the hardware inside.
✅ You want quiet, comfortable, and discrete: Beyond its small size, the Air S1 is very comfortable in the hand, and runs quiet too.
❌ You're on a budget: Small it may be, but small in cost, less so. Cramming all that hardware into a tiny package comes at a price, much as we wish it weren't so.
❌ You want top performance: With a max TDP of just 25W, the little Air S1 simply doesn't have the power to deliver high-performance like some of it's bigger competition, although it'll do just fine for many indie titles.
Looking for small? As in really, surprisingly small? That'd be the Ayaneo Air 1S then, the best small screen handheld gaming PC we've tested to date.
The Ayaneo Air 1S is incredibly portable. Described as a thin and light handheld, it comes in at just 21.6mm thick and weights only 450 g. You needn't worry about its inclusion in your luggage if you're travelling long distances, as I can attest after recently taking this handheld with me to Malaysia. It comfortable fit in my carry-on luggage, making for a pleasant trip playing Cult of the Lamb.
This device comes with a 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED screen; not the biggest panel for in-depth strategy games or tons of text, but it's generally able to deliver a very crisp overall image. I don't mind its restricted real estate at all. My Steam Deck has become my pathway to playing more indie games than I ever normally would, and the Ayaneo fulfils that role incredibly well.
Point is, it's a handheld gaming PC that feels more like a handheld gaming device of old than any other I've used. It's a powerful GameBoy Advance, and boy, is it powerful.
The Ayaneo Air 1S may look like it needs a downgrade to stuff all its parts into that tiny shell. But, no. It comes with the same AMD Ryzen 7 7840U chip found within the Aokzoe A1 Pro or the OneXPlayer OneXFly. That's a full eight-core, 16-thread Zen 4 processor. I still can't really believe that sort of spec comes in a compact PC at all. It's paired up with a Radeon 780M integrated graphics, powered by 12 RDNA 3 CUs—four more CUs than the Steam Deck's RDNA 2 chip.
The model I have comes with 32 GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 2 TB 2280 NVMe SSD. Yeah, 2280. If you're familiar with the Steam Deck, or really most PC gaming handhelds, you'll know they use the compact 2230 SSD form factor. That's not the case here. This is a full 2280 SSD. Though I do admit that Ayaneo's claims of this making for an easy SSD upgrade didn't go as easily as I'd hoped.
The Ayaneo is stuffing a lot of memory and storage into this machine for not as much money as you'd think, however.
This 2 TB + 32 GB model is still a whole lot more than the price of a Steam Deck, but I would say that for a 32 GB, 2 TB, eight-core Zen 4-powered PC, it's not awfully priced.
Read our full Ayaneo Air 1S review.
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