All articles tagged with #handheld gaming consoles
The gaming handheld market is experiencing a resurgence with new, powerful, and expensive devices from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, including the Nintendo Switch 2, Steam Deck, Xbox ROG Ally, and PlayStation Portal, catering to different gaming preferences and budgets, while retro handhelds appeal to nostalgia enthusiasts.
The article compares three next-gen gaming handhelds for 2025—the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, Lenovo Legion Go 2, and MSI Claw A8—highlighting their design, display, performance, and battery life to help consumers decide which device best suits their gaming needs, with the ROG Xbox Ally X potentially leading due to its optimized software and performance.
The Chinese company Orange Pi is set to enter the gaming handheld market with the Orange Pi Neo, featuring an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U APU with 8 Zen4 cores and 12 RDNA3 Compute Units, a 7-inch FHD+ screen, 16GB or 32GB LPDDR5 memory, and 512GB or 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD storage. The handheld is being demoed at FOSDEM 2024 and is expected to run on the Manjaro operating system. Comparisons with other gaming handhelds like ASUS ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go are also provided.
The era of dedicated gaming smartphones appears to be over, as the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro marks a shift towards creating a high-performance phone that is also suitable for everyday use. Other gaming smartphone brands like Black Shark, Lenovo, Xiaomi, and Nubia have either ceased production or shifted focus to gaming accessories and other products. The decline in demand for dedicated gaming smartphones may be attributed to the rise of powerful flagship phones, handheld gaming consoles, and a preference for playing PC or console games on the go. While the traditional gaming smartphone may be dead, there is now a variety of handheld gaming consoles, everyday phones catering to mobile gamers, and mainstream flagship phones suitable for casual gaming.
AYANEO Kun is a premium handheld gaming console featuring an 8.4-inch 2.5K display, a Ryzen 7 7840U APU with up to 54W power, and a 75Wh battery. It aims to compete with high-end handhelds like the ASUS ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go. The device offers similar APU power to a Mini-PC but with reduced battery life. The pricing ranges from $999 to $1949, with crowdfunding involved.
Chinese company AOKZOE has launched the A1 Pro, the first handheld gaming console to feature AMD's Ryzen 7 7840U "Phoenix" APU. The console features an 8-inch 1200p screen and up to 64GB of memory, with storage options including 512GB and 1TB, and a 2TB option for the most powerful variant. The A1 Pro will be available for $799 as a Super Early Bird reward, with the retail price expected to be $999 for the most basic model. The ASUS ROG Ally is expected to cost $699 for the Z1 Extreme console, making it a cheaper alternative.
AMD has released the Ryzen Z1 series of high-performance processors for handheld gaming consoles, featuring Zen 4 cores and RDNA 3 graphics. The Ryzen Z1 series is being introduced with two SKUs, the top-tier Ryzen Z1 Extreme has eight Zen 4 CPU cores and 12 RDNA 3 architecture compute units, while the vanilla Ryzen Z1 cuts that down to six CPU cores and four CUs enabled. The Ryzen Z1 series chips will support a maximum TDP of 30 Watts and will be used in Asus' upcoming ROG Alloy handheld gaming console.