The Best Handheld Gaming Console

If you want to play video games on the go, a handheld gaming console is probably the best way to do it. Gaming laptops need a surface to rest on and require a separate mouse or controller, and they’re often expensive, loud, and heavy. Unlike gaming laptops, handheld gaming consoles don’t have keyboards or trackpads; instead, they have inputs similar to those found on a gaming controller. This makes them great for playing games without a bunch of additional accessories and also makes them small enough to fit easily in just about any bag or backpack.

A good, console-like interface is critical to your overall experience. Our top pick, the Steam Deck LCD, isn’t as powerful or as versatile as other options, but it’s the best for most people in large part because of how easy it is to use, courtesy of manufacturer Valve’s SteamOS. This OS is based on Linux, which allows Valve to customize the software more and provide a tighter, more directed user experience. PC gamers might prefer our Windows pick, the Asus ROG Ally X, which has access to every PC-gaming storefront and service, including Xbox Game Pass and the Epic Game Store. It can also play popular multiplayer titles like Fortnite that the Steam Deck doesn’t support (due to SteamOS’s incompatibility with popular anti-cheat software).

These PC-based gaming handhelds are more fragile than the cheaper gaming handhelds of previous years, and they’re best suited for older kids and adults. For younger kids, or for adults who have absolutely no patience for any PC-related annoyances and just want to play some games on the go, the Nintendo Switch’s interface is easy enough for just about anyone to navigate, and the hardware can take more of a beating. Plus, the Switch is cheaper, even if it is showing its age. For Nintendo fans, the Switch 2 represents the best way to play Nintendo’s games, but at $450, it’s much more expensive than the Switch Lite.

I’ve been reviewing video game consoles and video games since 2009, when I began working at IGN and later Polygon, and I’ve covered gaming hardware at Wirecutter since 2019. I’ve been building gaming PCs since 2002 and reviewing PC hardware professionally since 2008.

For this guide:

• I spent two years handling and testing handheld gaming consoles from a variety of manufacturers, spending the past 18 months playing games on them for hundreds of hours.
• I referenced coverage and testing from other PC-gaming outlets and reviewers.
• Like all Wirecutter journalists, I review and test products with complete editorial independence. I’m never made aware of any business implications of my editorial recommendations. Read more about our editorial standards.

I spent the better part of two years testing handheld gaming consoles in large part because, well, for a long time they just didn’t seem ready for me to recommend to most people. However, each model has seen multiple software updates, and these days our picks offer a good experience—as long as you accept some trade-offs.

Performance: Processor speed, graphics horsepower, and available memory all contribute to how well a gaming handheld plays games, but numbers aren’t everything. In our testing, the handhelds with the best numbers on paper didn’t always yield the most consistent gameplay experiences.

User interface: Although most current gaming handhelds run on Windows to ensure maximum compatibility with multiple decades’ worth of PC games, they all use an additional interface and overlays to manage things in a more game-console-like way. A good gaming handheld user interface should allow you to easily view and play your games, change performance and power settings on the fly, and generally navigate things with a minimum of annoyance.

Battery life: If you’re planning on playing your gaming handheld away from a plug, battery life is particularly important, but if you’re mostly playing near an outlet, it’s less of an issue. Our favorite handhelds allow you to play more demanding games for at least a couple of hours without a charge, and to play less-intense titles for even longer.

Screen quality: Games demand responsive displays to keep the action clear, readable, and free of smearing or ghosting. This is the area where we’ve seen the most variation from device to device—some manufacturers focus on OLED displays and a variety of fixed refresh rates, some shoot for super-high resolution, and some focus on variable-refresh-rate features. Each has its benefits and drawbacks.

Fans: Gaming handhelds are very small PCs, and they require elaborate cooling tech to keep them working properly. The best gaming handhelds manage to stay mostly quiet even under the most demanding situations, but at the very least, they shouldn’t make annoying amounts of noise or have fans that vibrate at distracting frequencies.

Additional features: While every gaming handheld has roughly the same shape, each manufacturer has taken a slightly different approach to the inputs and layouts. Some, like Valve’s Steam Deck and Lenovo’s Legion Go, offer capacitive touchpads for mouselike input in strategy games or for Windows navigation. The Legion Go also features detachable controllers similar to those found on Nintendo’s Switch, one of which can even serve as a kind of mouse. Meanwhile, in our test group, Asus is the only manufacturer whose handhelds include variable-refresh-rate displays.

Comfort: I also considered how each gaming handheld felt in my hands, and I asked people with different hand sizes to try each one.

Sound: Although I also paid attention to each gaming handheld’s speakers and how they performed during gaming, most people are likely to play using headphones or with no sound at all, so sound quality wasn’t a major factor when we were determining our picks. That said, I didn’t hate the sound quality on the Steam Deck or the Asus ROG Ally handhelds.

While I measured each PC gaming handheld’s performance similarly to how we might a gaming laptop—largely by running benchmark tools within some especially demanding games—this process didn’t seem sufficient to properly determine how well each model would do in the real world.

No gaming handheld so far has launched in a state that seemed “finished.” Instead, each has arrived in a kind of beta state, and all of them have received literally dozens of updates. The updates have often brought significant changes to the performance, user interface, stability, operating temperatures, battery life, and noise levels. As a result, we’ve spent the better part of two years evaluating the category and more than a year testing the handhelds against one another. After major updates, we’ve retested them. We’ve played hundreds of hours of games across them all, installed dozens of games, navigated each handheld’s evolving UI, and even gone through the factory-reset process with each manufacturer.

I benchmarked each handheld in the still-demanding Cyberpunk 2077 in three different scenarios: unplugged on its battery-saving mode, unplugged on its performance mode, and plugged in with max performance settings enabled. I also tested other demanding titles in the same areas of each game, including the opening hours of Dead Island 2, Akila City in Starfield, a late Act 2 battle in Baldur’s Gate 3 with around two dozen characters and NPCs on the screen at once, and more. I spent dozens of hours playing games on each of our finalists.

Although I didn’t use temperature-monitoring equipment, I did pay close attention to heat levels on each handheld, watching for any conditions that might make the console uncomfortable to use. I also kept a close ear on noise levels from each handheld in a variety of situations.

I kept an eye on battery usage as well. While precisely measuring battery usage across gaming scenarios is difficult due to variability in the demands for each gaming session, I used our picks over a long enough period of time to gain a clear understanding of how long each handheld could last, and I learned how well each one could remain in standby mode when they weren’t in use.

The Steam Deck LCD is the best handheld gaming console for most people. It’s easy to use and has long battery life, a great user interface, and a comparatively low price. The Steam Deck makes it easy to navigate Steam’s massive library of PC games, and it runs most games from the past few years well enough for on-the-go gameplay. Its battery life tied for the best among all the gaming handhelds we tested, lasting for hours playing demanding games and even longer when playing simpler titles.

The Steam Deck can play only Steam titles (unless you’re willing to jump through an awful lot of hoops and deal with limited compatibility), and a number of popular multiplayer titles just don’t work on it, but it remains one of the best ways to take your big Steam library on the go—or to jump into PC gaming for the first time.

It’s easy to use. Of the PC gaming handhelds we’ve tested, the Steam Deck is the most console-like, so it’s perfect for people who don’t want to navigate Windows on a small screen. Text is large and readable, recent games are easy to find in the home screen, and settings are readily accessible via the Steam overlay button located to the right side of the screen. Hitting this button brings up a menu that allows you to quickly change overall system settings, though to install updates or dive into more granular system preferences, you have to dig deeper into the menus. Regardless, of all the handheld gaming consoles available today, the Steam Deck is easily the most intuitive to navigate. Resetting the Steam Deck to factory settings is easy, and we like that Valve provides tools and instructions for Windows, Mac, and even Linux users to create reinstallation media if you decide to upgrade the internal storage.

The battery life is excellent. One of the main reasons you’d want a handheld gaming console is to play games on the go, sometimes far from a power outlet, and the Steam Deck’s battery life is better than that of most rivals. In my testing, I could spend a few hours playing less demanding 2D games like Have a Nice Death without fully draining the battery, and even when playing more demanding games, the Steam Deck consistently lasted a couple of hours. In this respect the Steam Deck mostly just works—unlike with other handhelds, on the Steam Deck you don’t need to fiddle with performance profiles to get a lot of play time.

Its performance is consistent. The Steam Deck isn’t the most powerful handheld gaming console we tested, but it nonetheless yielded results that were very consistent. This is critical, as steady frame rates are key to making games feel reliably responsive to your inputs. The Steam Deck should reliably play all but the most demanding of games from this year or older, though I suspect that this will change in the coming 12 months, as more demanding games arrive and stretch beyond the capabilities of the Steam Deck’s hardware.

The Steam Deck offers great control options for a variety of PC titles, including strategy games. It has the expected gamepad controls: analog sticks on either side of the screen, a directional pad on the console’s left side, face buttons on the right, and shoulder buttons, all of which map easily to console controllers. But the Steam Deck also has capacitive touchpads that function like a laptop touchpad, which allows for mouse-style control in strategy games such as Civilization VI or Crusader Kings.

Next to the competition, it’s relatively inexpensive. In the recommended configuration, the Steam Deck LCD is much cheaper than every other PC-based gaming handheld we tested. You can spend more money to get a better screen or more storage (though every version has a microSD card slot), but the LCD version of the Steam Deck lets you play tons of games for a far more affordable price in comparison with any other handheld gaming PC or gaming laptop. Plus, it comes with a carrying case, a perk that other console makers sell separately.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Its official support is limited to Steam. There are ways to get around the Deck’s walled Steam garden, but doing so takes a fair bit of digging around in the Desktop mode, which is, well, Linux. You can find a detailed walkthrough for the process of getting Fortnite-maker Epic’s storefront sort-of working on the Steam Deck. Even if you survive such an adventure, there’s still no guarantee that non-Steam software will work on the Deck. And that goes double for Xbox Game Pass, a fantastic game subscription service. PC Game Pass offers hundreds of PC titles, including big day-one releases like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, but Game Pass currently doesn’t work on the Steam Deck, and it’s hard to know if the service ever will. Plus, a number of popular online games like Fortnite and Destiny 2 are explicitly not supported or playable on SteamOS.

On rare occasions, new games may not be completely compatible. Although SteamOS plays nicely with the overwhelming majority of PC games, sometimes new releases aren’t supported right away. The technical reason is that SteamOS is a Linux-based operating system running Windows games using a compatibility tool called Proton. Most Deck owners probably won’t need to think about compatibility often, and most developers and publishers list how well a game will work on the Steam Deck on their Steam store pages—in fact, announcing Steam Deck compatibility is now a common part of prerelease marketing. For games that don’t work initially, Valve and the Proton development community have been quick to sort things out.

It’s less powerful than the competition. The Steam Deck launched in early 2022, which is now long enough ago that some newer games such as this fall’s Silent Hill 2 remake don’t run especially well on it. For games that launched on the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, the Steam Deck is fine, but handhelds such as Asus’s ROG Ally X handily outperform it, providing a much smoother experience in more demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077, Starfield, and Baldur’s Gate 3. The Steam Deck LCD can keep up with many modern titles, but often just barely.

Its screen is only so-so. The Steam Deck LCD’s screen supports a maximum of only 60 Hz (and offers 30 Hz and 40 Hz modes) and is limited to a resolution of 1280×800. The screen is fine to play games on, but it pales in comparison to those of our other picks. It lacks the contrast of the Steam Deck OLED’s screen, and it’s missing the variable-refresh-rate support of the Asus ROG Ally handhelds.

It gets louder than we’d like. When the Steam Deck is working extra hard, its fans can often get louder than we’d prefer. The noise isn’t the worst we’ve heard, and most gaming laptops are much louder, but it’s more than noticeable, especially if you’re sitting next to someone on the couch.

It still seems just a little unfinished. The Steam Deck LCD routinely receives software updates and occasionally has small issues that require restarts or additional patches. These moments are infrequent, but they serve as a reminder that the Steam Deck is a type of device that remains just a bit undercooked here and there (even if it’s still more cooked than the competition).

Valve’s OLED version of the popular Steam Deck has the same great user interface and fantastic battery life as the LCD model. After years of testing, we’ve found that the Steam Deck is the easiest device to navigate and buy games on, and the Steam Deck OLED adds more storage and a great OLED screen. It also has a marginally bigger battery and better cooling tech that results in a slightly quieter handheld under load, plus improved Wi-Fi. But the OLED version’s hardware is considerably less powerful than that of the Asus ROG Ally X, and its Linux-based OS has the same drawbacks as that of the cheaper LCD version. It does come with a nicer carrying case, though, which we like a lot.

It has a vivid OLED screen. Our upgrade pick’s OLED display is worth the higher price over our top pick’s LCD screen, if you can swing it. At 7.4 inches, this screen is slightly larger than the Steam Deck LCD’s 7-inch display, but more importantly, it features the brilliant contrast and deep blacks typical of OLED displays. It’s lower resolution than competing handheld console displays, but that amounts to no meaningful difference in clarity in games on a screen of this size. It also supports a refresh rate of up to 90 Hz, with a 45 Hz mode as well. We’d like to see variable-refresh-rate support on a Steam Deck at some point, since that feature makes games with less stable frame rates play better, but otherwise it’s a beautiful display.

It has more base storage than our top pick, so you can install more games. While you can probably live with the Steam Deck LCD’s base 256 GB of storage, it’s a small amount if you want to play a lot of games. The OLED version of the Steam Deck offers 512 GB of base storage, which is a lot more space for you to install more games to play away from reliable Wi-Fi. You might even want to bump up to the 1 TB version, which costs $100 more (and is the model we’ve been testing).

It’s faster than our top pick in wireless performance. Valve gave the Steam Deck OLED Wi-Fi 6E support, and as a result, the Steam Deck OLED’s wireless performance is more reliable and a bit faster than what you can get from the original Steam Deck’s Wi-Fi 5 hardware. That feature isn’t worth paying more for on its own, but it is an appreciated addition.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It costs a lot more than the LCD version of the Steam Deck but isn’t much better at playing games. The Steam Deck OLED has redesigned cooling tech, a slightly faster processor, and a slightly bigger battery, but its performance is mostly the same as the Steam Deck LCD’s. It offers a few meaningful improvements: It allows you to play more demanding games for slightly longer and provides higher frame rates, and it’s also a little quieter. But it gives you essentially the same experience as the Steam Deck LCD does. For a real performance boost, we recommend the Asus ROG Ally X, our pick for PC gamers.

The Asus ROG Ally X is the best Windows-based gaming handheld you can buy right now. It delivers the best, most consistent frame rates in current video game releases of any gaming handheld we tested, and it has the best battery life, squeaking past the Steam Deck OLED in that regard. It also works with every gaming storefront on Windows, including Steam and the Epic Game Store (the home of Fortnite). In addition, it supports Xbox Game Pass and comes with a three-month subscription to the service. However, the display’s image quality isn’t as good as that of the Steam Deck OLED, the handheld is expensive, and the Armoury Crate software still has some kinks, though it has improved dramatically in the past year.

It plays games better than the competition. Asus’s ROG Ally X is the most technically capable handheld gaming console available from any major manufacturer. Although this model has the same AMD Ryzen Z1 processor as Asus’s older ROG Ally Extreme and Lenovo’s Legion Go, Asus has paired it with much more and faster RAM, in addition to redesigned cooling technology that allows the Ally X to run faster without overheating.

The result is a system that can hit slightly higher peak frame rates. But more importantly, the Ally X can maintain performance in demanding games such as Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora; it was the only handheld we tested that was capable of running that game at playable frame rates. The Ally X also ran Starfield better than any handheld we tested, often hitting and staying at 60 frames per second—and even when it couldn’t manage more than 40 fps, its variable-refresh-rate screen ensured that gameplay remained smooth. Asus’s ROG Ally handhelds are the only models in our test group that support VRR, and we really wish more companies would adopt the feature.

The software is as close as Windows has come to a console-style interface. The Armoury Crate software on the Ally X has seen numerous minor updates and a couple of major revisions, and as of fall 2024 it remains well ahead of the Windows-based handheld competition in ease of use, performance, and useful features. You can activate the Armoury Crate software via two different buttons, each of which brings up a different overlay. A dedicated button on the right side summons the full Armoury UI, which presents you with a library of installed games as well as a secondary tab for different gaming storefronts. You’ll also find pages of settings to tweak to your preference, and a reasonably intuitive update page. It’s absolutely critical to the user experience on a handheld gaming console for the UI to provide a snappy response, and Armoury Crate handily beats similar offerings from MSI and Lenovo in this regard.

The ROG Ally X also provides an overlaid UI that allows you to change multiple settings on the fly, which is especially useful. Its primary use is to change the active power profile of the Ally X, which lets you throttle down the system for less demanding games in order to extend the battery life, but the panel offers plenty of other tools as well. You can force the analog sticks to work as a de facto mouse (which is more helpful than you might think), change the resolution of the screen, limit the refresh rate, force-close a window, trigger airplane mode, reduce brightness, or access numerous other helpful functions.

It has the best battery life of any handheld console we tested. The Ally X has an enormous 80-watt-hour battery, and although Windows simply isn’t quite as battery-efficient as SteamOS seems to be, the Ally X has slightly better battery life than even the impressive Steam Deck OLED. Playing Starfield in Turbo mode (the highest performance option) on an hour-long subway commute, I stepped off the train with approximately 70% battery remaining, and 40 minutes of Dragon Age: The Veilguard left my battery at just under 70%. It helps that Asus’s Armoury Crate overlay provides power-management options, including Silent, Performance, and the aforementioned Turbo, which help to throttle the Ally X’s processor and provide longer battery life for less demanding titles. The Ally X lasts four or five hours when playing smaller and less graphically intense games but only two or so hours when playing bigger releases.

It can sit in a bag for weeks without losing its charge. The software of the Ally X includes a hibernation mode to preserve its battery life that goes above and beyond what I’ve seen on almost every other device I’ve used in the past 10 years. I put the Ally X in my messenger bag, forgot about it for more than two weeks, turned it on, and found the battery at 94%. Although you aren’t likely to forget about the Ally X as long as I did, if you do, it will be waiting for you, still ready to play.

It works seamlessly with Game Pass. Xbox’s Game Pass subscription service is one of the best deals in gaming, and that’s especially true of PC Game Pass. Since the Ally X runs Windows 11, Game Pass just works, which is almost worth the price of admission alone. The Ally X is a fantastic Game Pass machine, and the service integrates fairly well with the Armoury Crate software. Asus also includes a three-month Game Pass subscription with the Ally X.

It’s quiet. The Ally X is the quietest gaming handheld we’ve tested. Although we don’t have an anechoic chamber to fully benchmark the Ally X’s acoustic profile, we have found that it’s noticeably quieter than rival handhelds such as the Lenovo Legion Go or even the Steam Deck OLED. Even under full load, it’s quiet enough that it shouldn’t bother someone sitting next to you on the couch.

It’s full of useful features that make for a better experience. The Ally X has a variety of seemingly minor features that add up to a generally better user experience in comparison with other Windows-based gaming handhelds. It has two USB-C ports, so it can charge and connect to two USB-C devices such as another controller or a monitor at the same time (and in a pinch, the Ally X becomes a fully capable mini-PC when you connect a display, mouse, and keyboard). Its power button includes a Windows Hello–compliant fingerprint reader, which has proven invaluable for secure log-ins and passkey support for websites and Chrome’s password manager. The audio quality is even pretty good.

It has an SD card slot for storage expansion, but notably it also includes a full-size, 2280 M.2 slot for its NVMe storage. If you want to upgrade its storage, its support for full-size desktop-style NVMe drives will allow you to more easily find cheaper, large-capacity options, in contrast to the smaller, 2230-size drives that other handhelds require.

The Ally X also includes a UEFI-based (think BIOS screen) network-recovery tool, which allows you to perform a hardware reset or even install a factory-standard OS on a newly installed NVMe drive without going through the trouble of downloading and installing Asus-approved software to a separate USB key.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It’s expensive. The Asus ROG Ally X is currently the most expensive gaming handheld from a mainstream manufacturer that you can buy. Although you get what you pay for, including 1 TB of storage, you still pay significantly more for this model than you would for even the Steam Deck OLED. The Ally X has already seen some sales and discounts, but they rarely last for long.

It has an LCD screen rather than an OLED display. The Ally X’s variable-refresh-rate support is excellent, and the screen is bright with pretty good color levels, but I would have liked to see an OLED display with HDR support at this price.

Armoury Crate still isn’t as good as SteamOS. Asus has released a slew of impressive improvements to Armoury Crate over the course of the past year and a half, but the software is still subject to some occasional bugs and hiccups. When a gaming device is as expensive as the Ally X is, these moments stick out a little more than they otherwise might.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is out now, but for families or budget-conscious players, the Nintendo Switch Lite still has a fantastic library of exclusive Nintendo-developed games. Plus, it’s cheap enough to give to kids without worrying too much about the cost of fixing or replacing it. But the Switch 2 is now available, so the biggest games aren’t releasing on the Switch Lite anymore.

It has some of the best games. The Nintendo Switch Lite has more than seven years’ worth of fantastic exclusives such as Super Mario Bros. Wonder, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Pikmin 4, and most of them are appropriate for younger children and adults alike. It also has versions of popular legacy titles such as Skyrim, Fortnite, and more. It isn’t the newest handheld gaming console, but you’re unlikely to ever run out of things to play.

It’s affordable. The Nintendo Switch Lite costs less than any other handheld gaming console.

It’s durable. We wouldn’t recommend throwing the Switch Lite against any walls, but it is a durable, sturdy handheld, and it should handle the occasional drop without falling apart.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It’s showing its age. Originally released in 2017, the Nintendo Switch is on its last legs as a console. New releases are slowing down in 2025, and Nintendo’s own big titles are arriving exclusively on the Switch 2. If you’re interested in playing new games, a Switch 2 makes more sense, but it’s much more expensive.

If you want the best Switch: The Nintendo Switch 2 has a more premium build, a bigger screen, and more powerful performance than the original. And while it isn’t as powerful as the latest Xbox and PlayStation, it should be able to play most of the same games as those consoles for years to come. It will get all of Nintendo’s exclusive, first-party software, including the new Mario Kart World, and it will play just about all of the Switch games you own better than the original model. Performance-wise, it often beats out the Steam Deck in the same modern games. However, it’s quite a bit more expensive than the Switch Lite and the original Steam Deck.

If you’re looking for a more powerful Steam-oriented option: The Lenovo Legion Go S Steam OS Edition is the first Steam-based handheld from someone other than Valve, and it mostly delivers an improved experience. It provides a pleasant, textured surface with offset analog sticks and proper grips on the sides of the console, a higher-resolution screen, and much better VRR support than in either Steam Deck version. Although it’s easy to miss the Steam Deck OLED’s incredible contrast and HDR support, for playing games the Legion Go S Steam OS Edition feels just a bit nicer and performs noticeably better. In our tests with Cyberpunk 2077 and Doom: The Dark Ages, we saw significantly higher frame rates on the Legion Go S than on the Steam Deck; as a result, the games were much more playable, with comparable settings and image quality. There is, of course, a catch: a $600 price tag, which makes the Legion Go S more expensive than a Steam Deck OLED. We also expect new, more powerful handhelds this fall, particularly the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X.

In June, Xbox and Asus announced the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X, both of which are expected to launch later in 2025. They are the first Xbox-branded handhelds, complete with an Xbox Guide button on their left side designed to invoke a host of Windows-native handheld settings and navigation options. The Xbox Ally X is also the first gaming handheld to use AMD’s Z2 Extreme APU (the Xbox Ally uses the less powerful Z2 A APU).

However, the bigger changes are on the software side. Both Xbox Ally devices feature a heavily modified version of Windows 11 that loads directly into an Xbox app-based front end. This interface omits unnecessary services and even the Windows desktop (unless you explicitly activate it), and the result is an OS experience that looks and feels more like that of a video game console such as the Xbox Series X or S. But it also loops in other PC-gaming storefronts, including Steam, Battle.net, and the Epic Game Store.

Whereas current ROG Ally handhelds rely on the Armoury Crate suite to navigate the variety of game libraries available to Windows users and to manage various handheld settings such as power profiles, the Xbox Ally platform centralizes all of those features within the Xbox app and the Xbox Game Bar overlay. Both features exist currently on Windows 11 PCs and even on Windows-based handhelds, but Xbox and Asus are set to offer a deeper, more fundamental integration of those services with the hardware. I had the opportunity to spend some time with a preproduction sample of the Xbox Ally X at an event in June, and so far it appears to be working as intended. While playing the upcoming Gears of War: Reloaded, I was able to change the handheld’s power settings using the Guide button and Game Bar, as well as to quickly switch between the Xbox app, running games, and other active programs.

The easiest comparison is, of course, to Valve’s Steam Deck, and in my time with the Xbox Ally X, its OS experience seemed to come close, despite some rough edges. It’s by far the most cohesive and responsive Windows handheld experience, obviating the need to switch between different third-party overlays and to navigate the desktop using a pair of analog sticks, but here and there I noticed minor stutters indicative of the early-version software. That said, the performance on the Xbox Ally X was more clearly impressive, running Gears of War: Reloaded at close to console settings at 60 fps and a resolution of 1080p with performance headroom to spare, a feat that no other handheld I’ve used would likely manage.

The biggest question mark at this point is the price. Xbox and Asus haven’t announced pricing for either the Xbox Ally or the Xbox Ally X. Asus’s current high-end handheld, the ROG Ally X (which has the same amount of storage space and RAM), is currently available for $900. Meanwhile, the Ally Extreme, which is closer to the Xbox Ally’s announced specs and storage, regularly sells for $600 to $650. We’ll know more soon: The Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X are expected this holiday.

At the CES 2025 trade show, Lenovo revealed the Legion Go 2, which will use the new Z2 Extreme processor, but details are light. We really know only that it will retain its detachable controllers and launch later this year—probably sometime in the fall.

Earlier this year, Acer showed off the Nitro Blaze 7, the Nitro Blaze 8, and the gigantic Nitro Blaze 11, which have resolutions of 1080p, 1440p, and 1600p, respectively; all have 144 Hz screens with non-variable refresh rates. However, we’re still waiting for them to arrive in stores, with little information about when that might happen.

MSI announced two new Claw handhelds in late 2024, the 8-inch, $900 Claw 8 AI+ and the 7-inch, $800 Claw 7 AI+. While both handhelds technically launched in December 2024, they were limited to a handful of units sent to a small number of customers, and there’s still no clear information as to when they’ll be available for purchase in the US.

The Asus ROG Ally Extreme is a pretty good gaming handheld with performance that just about always eclipses that of any version of the Steam Deck. Its variable-refresh-rate display ensures that more games look and feel better to play, and it’s quieter under load. But its battery life is comparatively poor—for demanding games, you’re lucky to eke out an hour on a charge—and 512 GB of storage is barely enough room to have Starfield, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Cyberpunk 2077 installed at the same time. Our pick for PC gamers, the Asus Ally X, is more powerful and can play games that just aren’t stable enough to enjoy on the Ally Extreme. You can find the Ally Extreme for a fair bit less than the Ally X on a regular basis, and it’s a great Game Pass device, but it’s hard to recommend over the Ally X or the Steam Deck. We also recommend against buying the non-Extreme version of the Asus ROG Ally, which has considerably weaker graphics hardware than its more powerful siblings.

The Lenovo Legion Go offers some intriguing hardware features, including a huge 1440p display that runs at 144 Hz and detachable controllers that can be used similarly to the Switch’s Joy-Con controllers—the right controller even slots into a plastic harness that allows it to work like a mouse. However, in our tests the Legion Go routinely underperformed in comparison with the Asus ROG Ally X and Ally Extreme, and even when its frame-rate numbers were similar, it just couldn’t manage consistent performance in our Cyberpunk 2077 testing. It’s by far the loudest gaming handheld we tested under load, and the fans’ pitch was pretty irritating when not masked by headphones. The Legion Go’s software also doesn’t feel ready yet, with lots of pauses, hitches, and generally confusing layouts for performance management.

On paper, The Legion Go S offers a lot of what we want out of a gaming handheld, including 32 GB of RAM, 1 TB of storage, and a 120 Hz variable refresh rate display. It’s also far quieter than the original Legion Go, with a gentler, less annoying acoustic profile. Unfortunately, it demonstrates many of the same problems we experienced with the Legion Go—namely inconsistent performance. While the raw numbers in our Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks weren’t terrible, there were frequent, unpredictable performance dips, and the Legion Space software package continues to demonstrate hitching and freezing. Plus, changing settings and navigating an installed library is still more confusing than it should be.

The MSI Claw is the first Intel-powered handheld gaming console we’ve seen, but we excluded it from this round of testing because of poor reviews and bad performance in our hands-on time with it. But the Claw has received a number of updates over the past six months and will certainly get more, and it has improved in that time. If we see continued improvement, we’ll reconsider testing it for a future update to this guide.

This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry and Signe Brewster.