As I see it there have been three epochs of PC handhelds. Firstly, the initial wave of prototype and underpowered devices testing the waters. I tried a good few of these early handhelds, and they all seemed fatally flawed in their own way. Not to worry, next came the big bang of the Steam Deck. This is when Valve figured out a winning formula and handhelds suddenly made sense to your average gamer.
Today, we’re in another epoch, one of rapidly evolving designs. We went from barely one good handheld last year to being unable to decide between them which ones will make it into our best handheld gaming PC guide.
Just this year we’ve seen the release of heaps of handhelds including the ROG Ally, OneXPlayer OneXFly, OneXPlayer 2 Pro, Ayaneo Air 1S, Ayaneo 2S, Lenovo Legion Go, Aokzoe A1 Pro, and the Valve Steam Deck OLED. There are a host of other designs in the pre-order stage, and I’m sure I’m missing a few other crowd-funded ones, too.
There’s a good reason why we’ve so many handheld gaming PCs to choose from. It’s mostly thanks to one particularly impressive AMD processor: the Ryzen 7 7840U. This chip powers just about every device on that list, either as the 7840U or in its semi-custom guise, the Z1. It’s only Valve opting for another chip, and that’s still an AMD semi-custom job.
We had a tough time trying to whittle down this year’s handhelds to just three nominations. But myself, and the wider PC Gamer Hardware team, think we have come up with a solid list. Here goes:
Best handheld gaming PC 2023: the nominees
The winner of the PC Gamer Hardware Award for the best handheld gaming PC will be announced on New Year’s Eve. All three of these handhelds are in with a shot of taking home the big prize, so tune in to find out which one it’ll be.
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