Topic: The Rise of PC Gaming Handhelds

These seem to be getting more and more common with quite a few options nowadays. Yes they are a tiny niche of the PC gaming market but seem to be getting more important. There has been 6 million or more steam decks sold and I guess perhaps in total only about 15 million PC gaming handhelds have been sold with all the variations because the steam deck takes a big chunk of the overall market at least in Europe and US. However there are 2 billion PC gamers on the planet which puts it very much into perspective. I guess 100s of millions game on laptops.

What do you think about these PC gaming handhelds?

I personally think they will become a much bigger sector of PC gaming. Perhaps doubling every 2-3 years in size. However perhaps a new Steam Deck model could accelerate this growth and also cheaper brands coming in with lower price options for people to consider. It seems like Linux is the operating system of choice for such devices nowadays like Steam OS or Bazzite.

Of course many people also game on their phones and tablets too nowadays. Perhaps android gaming devices will become more common with a similar configuration. Those have been available for a long time with decent pricing but not much power either.

As a Steamdeck Owner (256GB, original LCD) - I think it proved to be a great 'bridging unit' whilst awaiting Switch2.

The tinkering and adjusting can be a little cumbersome at times (vs Nintendo 'plug in and play').... but the emulation scope and potential is amazing for legacy game.

I'm interested to see how the new ROG Ally X will land... especially in its consolidation of storefronts, and adoption of Gamepass etc. The price point might derail me, but Gamepass is a huge value-add I think

Windows first needs to be simplified and optimized for PC handhelds in order for this sector to take off, imo.

Steam OS does seem to be working brilliantly well on the Steam deck and some other PC handhelds. I'll admit that because I'm familiar with Windows and Linux is new to me I do feel more comfortable with Windows but nowadays Windows is just chock a block with bloatware and nonsense most people don't need and Microsoft seems to make most of its money with selling personal data and advertising on its operating systems which really slows down their operating systems plus it has the worst security so needs constant security updates which is annoying.

@BonzoBanana 100% agree on Steam OS. I am not a 'tech-head' by any stretch, but SteamOS made the deck so much more manageable in terms of operation/UI. It gives you all the basic tools very easily, and then encourages experimentation and plugins the more comfortable you get

I've not used Steam OS myself but have used Linux both Ubuntu and Mint and I struggled with it because I didn't really understand it that well but Linux seems to be the future. Pretty much the whole of the internet backbone is Linux, servers etc and its gradually becoming the obvious choice for desktops etc. Microsoft is trying to force people with older computers to replace them as not offering Windows 11 on many computer systems and many who have perfectly good computers are turning to Linux rather than upgrading their PCs. Steam OS is a brilliant reason to go with Linux too. I feel like I need to get more into Linux.

IMO, as a Deck owner, it's not going to be that much more than a novelty while NVidia and ARM aren't in the picture, while Windows remains where it is and while Linux remains a niche option. Deck brute forced it's way to relevance by giving you a huge battery and a bespoke OS. It was a great stop-gap while Nintendo, the only one of the three major players taking the portable space seriously, was a decade behind on spec

But now the Switch 2 is out the merits of it just tanked. Because despite what the people with their heads in the sand might emote, Switch 2 is the best portable gaming device on the market right now. It just gives a better output for games ported to it. Especially docked

I'm hopeful that things will improve. I want to see them improve. But I don't really have much faith that Microsoft is going to fix Windows or that NVidia will actually mend the burnt bridges in terms of Linux driver support. Maybe in 5 years or so it's in a different spot but I'm not holding my breath

In the meantime my Deck OLED is a great emulation machine and a great way to access my backlog of Steam purchases. Even if it mostly just gets used as a Balatro playing device

I would say the opposite is true many PC hardware companies are investing heavily in PC gaming handhelds with many new models announced and a large increase in sales. It is still a niche market in pc gaming but the point is it is pc gaming and so you have access to pretty much everything on that format. At the moment it seems like they can get away with a fairly high margin on PC gaming handhelds but those prices will come down and the market will expand even more.

The Switch 2 represents a great platform for Nintendo exclusive games but it represents a terrible platform for multi-platform games, its weak hardware, the games are hugely expensive and there aren't many of them. On this forum I've already seen many Switch 2 owners say they will not be buying multi-platform games on Switch 2 because of such terrible value. The Switch 2 has a low capacity battery and a pretty awful display. I'm sure a later Switch 2 revision may sort this but for the moment its a rubbish platform in that regard. It's also rubbish for multi-platform games because it lacks analogue triggers and other functionality and you have to pay for online too.

No one is going to suggest a Switch 2 to someone who loves pc gaming but wants to play their PC games on the move. I've got 100s of titles on PC being it steam, gog and epic and I can play them all on a PC gaming handheld with no additional purchases.

There is some small amount of crossover between a pc gaming handheld and Switch 2 but not much to be honest. Yes Switch 2 will have a handful of exclusive Nintendo titles you can't get on a PC gaming handheld but lets not forget there are 1000s of amazing PC titles that will never be on Switch 2. Most of my favourite games are older PC titles or available on PC via emulation. Some of the more powerful PC gaming handhelds are emulating PS3 at full speed which amazes me as its such a complicated console and has more CPU resources than PS4 with all the cell processors. The Switch 2 struggles a bit to offer full speed Gamecube emulation, it has horrible input lag and other issues. The weakest nastiest pc gaming handheld has no problem offering far superior gamecube emulation with less input lag. People shouldn't confuse fixed platform optimisations with real performance. Virtuos compared the Switch 2 to the original PS4 in CPU resources stating just a little bit faster so maybe between PS4 and PS4 Pro in CPU resources. This means every game on Switch 2 needs to be heavily optimised to get good performance out of it and many future games will be heavily compromised to run on Switch 2. It's a weak platform with low CPU resources. Switch 2 has convinced me I need a PC gaming handheld due to its low performance level and the terrible value of it currently both for hardware and software. I'll still buy a Switch 2 though but when there are half a dozen exclusives I really want to play and can't play elsewhere.

Ok I originally wasn't going to really reply here but like... Switch 2 has low performance level and so terrible value??? Have you... have you seen the prices?

Like yeah, other handheld PCs are stronger but they are also like, twice the price. The only reason they came close to Switch 2 prices is sales after many months / years, OR second hand. And at that point that's kinda unfair, and imo, the same as someone who had argued with me how PS5 + Portal is cheaper choice because you can buy them 2ndhand.

For example, the thing with the closest price to Switch is... Steamdeck OLED. I can only get it 2nd hand, if I want it to be comparable in price to Switch 2. That's the only time, otherwise I will have to add on extra 120 usd or more to it. :V

(Also have to consider the weight and sizes too... mluh. Switch 2 is pretty close with Steamdeck once you add in grip or extra powerbank so Switch 2 lasts crazy long though)

So in the end it's always depending on how much income you have, and how invested you are? :') Like I legit want a handheld PC one of these days but they are either too much (far closer to a flagship phone price) if I want something pretty good and last me quite long, or it's comparable to Switch 2 while also have worse software experience. Yeaaaah.

@BonzoBanana
I'm talking about how things are now. The Switch 2 is far cheaper than most of these PC portables except the Deck where the price aligns relatively well (Deck OLED costs more, LCD less). And compared to the Deck I personally would take the Switch 2 if given the option. Even for multiplatform games when they exist on Switch 2. I like having both, both is good, but if I had to pick one to sell I'd sell the Deck

Where it gets a bit shaky for Switch 2 for me is for games I might want to stretch BEYOND the specs of these two portables. Games I might want to play on something more capable. In those cases? Sure, I'll get it on PC instead and have the option to play on Deck. But that was already the case for Switch and, frankly, this is me talking about the benefits of a full PC at this point not the Deck. Literally the only thing that has changed is that the power gap closed. Now I'm not thinking will I want the extra power of Deck over Switch, I'm thinking do I want to play it on my TV or not

And obviously yes, the library is deeper on PC. Of course. But the library is deeper on PC than any console. It's certainly deeper than any new console. But again, in this regard the Switch 2 BC is fairly strong and the Switch library was deep. Of course that doesn't close the gap entirely vs what PC has.... but it does close it considerably

I don't know about other countries but in the UK the Switch 2 price wise is up against PC gaming handhelds. There are models around 300-400 pounds.

I've seen the Lenovo Legion Go S at about 300 pounds on offer but below 400 easily. That is based on the Ryzen Z2 Go chipset so not as powerful as the Z1 Extreme but decent and certainly far more capable than Switch 2. I guess its the budget option chipset. The Switch 2 is sold here for around 400 pounds or 430 with Mario Kart. So I don't think its unfair to say comparable prices and of course no online costs for the Legion and game software pricing much, much lower in price. The chipset doesn't have as much CPU performance as the Z1 Extreme but its GPU performance isn't much lower at about 4.2 Teraflops which compares well with the 2.2 Teraflops of the Switch 2 docked or 1.3 Teraflops in portable mode. These are figures from Geekerwan's analysis of the Switch 2. I don't believe the GPU has upscaling technology comparable to the Nvidia chipset in the Switch 2 but does have access to the weaker FSR technologies and also XeSS. I would guess in a similar class regarding upscaling as the Steamdeck although not sure it might be slightly better. However overall still much more powerful than Switch 2 especially in CPU performance where the Switch 2 is very weak indeed.

@BonzoBanana Yeah I think that's kinda a fluke UK has, which is... well, good for you I think? XD

Because American price... Switch 2 is 450 USD, while Legion Go S starts at 730 USD, so that's kind of... 280 USD pricier. Like, on that price, it's a bit hard to really lean toward Legion Go S, even.

Be careful with these kinds of architecture comparisons. Not every FLOP is created equal and despite the "fake frames/pixels" bit some push it can't be understated how far ahead of the pack DLSS is. Without an NVidia portable the PC portable space is fighting with one hand tied behind its back. There's a reason why NVidia GPUs are dominant in the PC space even with NVidia being as disliked as they are

Also, at some point you kinda have to ask yourself if you're getting this hardware to play games or run benchmarks. Like sure, the Switch 2 has a generally slower CPU. But how many games are CPU bound at this spec? It's also probably not good enough on the GPU side to push much beyond 1080p/60 in more modern titles. But is that so bad? Especially on a portable screen

Also the elephant in the room is that Windows sucks as a console OS. Which can't be ignored

Edit: and as @darkfenrir said, the price isn't really the same. The Legion Go S is $900AU here in Australia. Switch 2 is $700AU, $770AU when bundled with a game

Is that due to tariff confusion/issues? I'm fairly sure across Europe there is similar prices to the UK and in China prices can be much, much lower than UK. However of course there is supply and demand so if these PC gaming handhelds are not selling well here they are forced to discount. Maybe they have been more successful in the US and able to maintain their price point better. I've just bought a pc gaming handheld at auction on ebay and it has cost me about 200 pounds delivered or just under if I get any cashback. I guess about the same price as a used OLED Switch with a couple of games. I've only just received it so haven't really checked it out much but my journey of owning a PC gaming handheld begins.

Benchmarks are useful for comparing the performance level of gaming hardware but ultimately of course its about the games. DLSS is fantastic but it has issues on faster moving games with artifacts and strangely Nintendo themselves haven't be using it themselves on their titles in fact when Digital Foundry analysed I think the Donkey Kong game it has acknowledgements to FSR in the credits which I guess is inferior but requires far less CPU resources. It seems DLSS overall (I realise there are different versions) seems to sit between FSR and XeSS in its CPU resources demands. Yes Nvidia is hugely successful in the PC hardware graphic card sector often with high prices and reduced performance compared to other cards when reviewed but it does seem to be the brand of choice. Looking at the steam survey. 1 in 20 PC systems in their survey are laptops with a RTX 4060 mobile chipset which is around 11 Teraflops of performance.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

However this survey is about usage not ownership so seems to indicate people who spend more on their PC use them more rather than indicate what percentage of hardware is out there which is an important distinction as there are many that use Steam to game occasionally on weaker hardware that could be more common. It's not normal for very expensive equipment to have the highest sales level. The RTX 4060 is up to 8GB of dedicated memory and the 11 Teraflop performance is for the peak TDP version of 115W with the lower wattage variants being well below 10 Teraflop. It doesn't take much working out to realise such a laptop is pretty much never detached from its power pack to have such high usage figures so not really a portable device at all. The price vs performance level for such a laptop just seems rubbish to me but it definitely seems like people are getting their use out of such laptops although they probably sound like a jumbo jet taking off most of the time like most gaming laptops.

You were so close

Stepping back and actually addressing my broader point here rather than getting stuck into the weeds of a forum argument. I appreciate the enthusiasm being expressed, blind to criticism as it might be, but I have zero interest in the pedantry of a forum argument.

I want to see portable PCs become a significant part of the gaming landscape. I've wanted this for years. I've watched with interest and cheered on devices like the early GPD Win portables and the Nvidia Shield Portable. I was one of the few who were bullish about the Steam Machine push years ago. I was also one of those people who was on board for Netbooks back in the late 00s because the concept of super compact PCs is something I've always been into. I was one of those people evangelising SSDs in the mid 00s as game changers in part because of what it meant for more compact, durable and performant devices. I've always been bullish about this stuff even when nobody cared. So I got a Steam Deck the day it became officially available in Australia, in part because because I wanted to put my money where my mouth was on this

But I'm also realistic about where it's sitting right now and what challenges it faces. And maybe that rubs some the wrong way but, it's just how it is. PC gaming still isn't ready for the living room. Steam OS gives it a good crack but, it's still not there. And Windows is a bit of a disaster for gaming even on desktop so it really doesn't work well at all away from a KB/Mouse. So there are software kinks here that the direct competition to any of these devices, aka Switch 2, has already worked out

Even with really simple stuff. Like the other week I booted up my Steam Deck and noticed it had a download for Street Fighter 6 queued so, I said why not you know? Start the download and do the usual thing I do on my Deck if I want a download to run and just.... sit it on the table with downloads open while the download finishes because donwloads don't run while in sleep mode. And it's not just a few MB update. So I'm sitting here with my Deck downloading this update while playing TotK on my Switch 2 and it just hits me how much Steam is still living in Desktop land when it comes to download management

It's stuff like that, little things. They just pile up you know? And when you combine it with the fact that you're trying to squash down an architecture that's not a particular good fit down into a small size rather than, you know, starting with an architecture best suited for the job? It makes sense why this is where PC portables are and this is where they have to start. But they're just so far behind what a company like Nintendo can just effortlessly release without any of that baggage

Valve in particular has pushed things along substantially in the last few years. I love what they've been doing, I love that they've been dragging a bunch of others to this place kicking and screaming. It's where I want everything to be going. But..... Nintendo still has the edge.... they just do. And short of maybe Apple throwing their hat into the ring I can't really see anyone unseating them. If Sony couldn't with the PSP when the landscape was much easier then I can't see someone else coming in and doing the same. Not until the two fundamental issues are addressed

1. Efficiency
2. OS

And yes, I'm also a fan of Nintendo's hardware and software. For different reasons. For their hardware, minor screen issues on the Switch 2 and them dragging their feet to improve performance over the Switch generation excluded? Their hardware and OS has largely been the device I want to see. For all the reasons I listed above. And their games.... there are largely three major gaming companies that have gobbled up most of the other publishers. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. I don't think I'm alone in thinking their software output is the more interesting of the three

The current deal on the LCD Steamdeck seems great value for the overall spec for £279 here in the UK. I've also noticed the budget version of the new Rog Alley Xbox handheld has the same chipset except it doesn't have the quad channel memory bandwidth of the steam deck (but does have a higher resolution screen that is 120Hz compatible). However really for the performance level of the chipset and size of the panel 800p is ideal. Anyway that is 500 pounds in the UK getting on twice the price. The steamdeck really does look a fantastic deal compared to that. Steam OS so much better than Windows 11 too.