The Best Handheld Gaming Consoles, From Nintendo to Steam Deck

Gaming has changed a lot since the ’80s, while handheld gaming remains as popular as ever today

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If you’re of a certain age, you probably have fond memories of handheld video game systems. The technology has changed a lot, but handheld gaming consoles remain as popular as ever — thanks to both a wave of nostalgia and an increased demand for portable play.

Nintendo has dominated the handheld console market since 1989, when the Game Boy was first released, and the gaming company continued with a number of updates to the Game Boy family until the gaming line was discontinued in 2003.

At a Glance: The Best Handheld Gaming Consoles in 2025

These days, a new generation of gamers are taking their gaming on the go. We’ve rounded up some of our favorite handheld gaming consoles from top brands that we’ve tested and played. Here are our top picks below.

In This Article

What Are the Best Handheld Gaming Consoles?

If you’re looking to pick up a new handheld gaming console, here are nine of the best handheld devices to get, based on hands-on use, graphics, portability, and variety of games to play.

Priced at $449 at Walmart, the Nintendo Switch 2 is the gaming company’s latest handheld, but it comes with a twist. The Switch can be connected to a 4K TV via its dock that comes with the system, so it’s a hybrid between a portable system and traditional home console.

Games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza are staples, the Nintendo Switch 2 comes with 256GB of internal storage which is enough to hold a dozen or so games — even some original Switch titles, like Super Mario Bros. Wonder, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and others.

The Joy-Con 2 controllers are detachable, and the Switch 2 has a mighty kickstand, so you can mitigate hand and arm fatigue by propping it up on a table and playing with one controller on each hand. Nintendo has a more traditional gaming controller called the Switch 2 Pro Controller, which we can’t recommend highly enough.

The Switch 2 lets you play full-sized console games portability on a 7.9-inch 1080p LCD display. It’s by far the coolest handheld gaming console released in 2025.

The ASUS ROG Ally X — which is priced at $799.99 — is a handheld gaming PC that’s surprisingly lightweight with a premium feel in the hand, especially when it comes to its clicky inputs. But don’t let its portable size fool you. This thing is a beast with a powerful and speedy AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme Processor, 7-inch touchscreen display, 24GB of memory paired with up to 1TB of on-board storage (expandable with microSD card), four action buttons, two analog sticks, four trigger buttons, two back buttons and more.

It even runs the full version of Windows 11 for multiple gaming platforms, such as Steam, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Epic, RetroArch and much more. Now you can play just about any PC or Xbox game on-the-go.

Take a blast from the past with the ModRetro Chromatic. It’s a handheld gaming device that has a wide range of indie games, as well as being fully compatible with Nintendo Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges. If you have old Game Boy games laying around your home, then is the best handheld gaming console for you. It’s a modern take on the classic gaming console.

At $199.99, the ModRetro Chromatic comes in a two display types, sapphire and gorilla, while it comes in seven fun colors, such as cloud, bubblegum, wave, inferno and others. It even comes with the iconic puzzle game Tetris for hours of gameplay. Learn more about the ModRetro Chromatic here.

Starting at $759.99, the Lenovo Legion Go S is a massive handheld PC gaming console with a gigantic 8-inch FHD touchscreen display — by far the biggest handheld on this list. It runs full Windows 11, so you pretty much have access to any gaming platform, like Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Nvidia GeForce Now, Steam, and much more. The handheld is powered with the AMD Ryzen Z2 Go with AMD RDNA 2 graphics chip with 32GB of RAM paired with up to 1TB of on-board storage.

One of the firsts to market is still one of the best. The Valve Steam Deck OLED is designed for the Steam platform of PC games. On board, you’ll find a 1TB solid-state drive with pristine 7.4-inch OLED display with up to 90Hz refresh rate for smooth performance and experience. It has up to 12 hours of battery life, which is quite impressive for a portable PC. The Steam Deck even comes a carrying case for easier portability.

Priced at $299.99, Logitech G Cloud is a wallet-friendly handheld PC gaming console that can run Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Nvidia GeForce Now, Steam and various Android mobile games and emulators. And thanks to its sharp 7-inch Full HD 1080p touchscreen display with 60Hz refresh rate and up to 12 hours of battery life per charge, you’ll have no problems playing your favorite games just about anywhere you’d like — especially since the handheld weighs in at just about one pound.

Some portable gaming consoles run Windows 11 and a number of them just have the operating system in its purest form. While Windows 11 is great for laptops, it’s not the best for navigating on a 8-inch touchscreen with a D-pad, analog sticks, and action buttons.

However, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ has a clean and intuitive menu interface that makes gaming across multiple platforms — including Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Steam, Ubisoft, Epic, and others — a breeze. Menus are big, bold, and colorful, while they’re easy to read and understand. The MSI Claw is ideal for switching back and forth between your favorite games, even if they’re from different apps.

You might not realize it, but you’re probably using a great handheld gaming system right now: Your smartphone. Whether you’re using an Apple iPhone or Android device, both the App Store and Play Store are full of incredible games. Some games are even ports (a gaming term for version) of games available on dedicated gaming hardware.

The problem is that gaming on your phone’s touch screen doesn’t offer the same fidelity as a traditional controller, but you’re in luck. Both Apple and Android phones let you pair your phone with the Backbone One Mobile Gaming Controller — which goes for $99.99 — over Bluetooth.

Yes, this requires you to carry an additional accessory with you, which is a little more annoying than hitting the power button on a dedicated handheld, but you already have the major piece of hardware. Smartphones have a lot of storage, huge digital game libraries and excellent battery life. You’ll burn more power playing games, but you’ll get a comparable amount of play time per charge.

It’s designed for gamers, so it’s ergonomic, and feels comfortable to hold for extended periods of time. Just slide in your iPhone or Android smartphone, connect via USB-C, and pair with Bluetooth to get gaming. It runs off the power from the mobile device itself, so it will last as long as your phone will let it. However, it does have power pass though, so you can plug it into a wall outlet and game at the same time, while also charging your phone too.

Buying Guide; How to Pick a Handheld Video Game Console

There are many factors to think about when choosing the right handheld game system for you; below are the most important ones, which we considered while we were researching this list.

Size: The term handheld is objective because everyone’s hands are different, so what we mean is that these game systems are totally portable, and can run on battery power. We took ergonomics into consideration, and have solutions if we feel like the picks we chose could get fatiguing to play over time.

Game library: You’re buying a game system to play, well, games. Our picks all have huge libraries, so you’ll be satisfied whether you like first-person shooters, platformers, role playing games, or all of the above.

Storage: Modern handheld gaming consoles can all download games from digital storefronts, but if you’re building up a big library, you’ll need space to store those games. We took a handheld’s internal storage capacity into consideration when creating this guide, but also picked systems with storage that can be upgraded after you get it.

Battery life: One of the perils of handheld gaming in the modern era is that portable game systems run on rechargeable batteries. That’s great for the environment, and convenient for us, but it means it’s hard to charge your device on a trip. We’ve offered solutions where applicable, but our advice is to keep your device fully charged before your next adventure.