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Mobile gaming has come a long way, but it still can’t match the quality and immersion of a dedicated handheld console. Nintendo dominates the handheld console space with its Switch console which is still going strong in its seventh year on the market. But the Switch is far from the only portable gaming console you can buy. In fact, in recent months, Valve, Asus and even Sony have all ventured into portable gaming. These devices are small enough to fit in your pocket yet also powerful enough to deliver a satisfying gaming experience at the same time. Here’s a look at some of the best gaming handhelds.
The Legion Go has it all to be an ideal gaming companion – an 8.8-inch QHD+ LCD with a 144Hz refresh rate, detachable controllers, a kickstand, and a controller base module that doubles as a mouse. You can enjoy amazing performance with AMD’s Ryzen Z1 series chipsets with RDNA 3 graphics, up to 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD, 16GB LPDDR5x RAM and a liquid polymer blade fan for cooling. The Legion Go also comes with Windows 11 Home with a special overlay called Legion Space and a free three-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. The device is launching for $699 in November, although there’s no word on an Indian debut.
An excellent alternative to the Legion Go, Asus’s ROG Ally is similar to the Lenovo handheld in more than one way. It runs on the same platform (AMD’s 4nm Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor with 8 cores and AMD’s Radeon RDNA 3 GPU) and is even priced similarly. This device has a 7-inch 1080p 120Hz display and is notably lighter and smaller than the Steam Deck (more on it later). The only downside is that the battery life is not that great – as we found in our review – so you might want to bring a charger with you. This device is available officially in India for Rs 69,990.
Not exactly a new launch, but it has managed to make headlines thanks to an upcoming special edition featuring Mario’s zesty signature colour. Dubbed the Nintendo Switch OLED: Mario Red Edition, the new edition of the Switch is splashed with bright red, including the console, dock, and Joy-Con controllers. Besides the fresh coat of paint, the Switch OLED retains the specifications of the original – there’s a 7.0 inch OLED screen with a resolution of 1280×720 pixels on the front and an Nvidia Tegra processor under the hood.
Credited with starting the PC gaming handheld trend, the Steam Deck was released in early 2022. While it’s fully capable of running your favourite PC games including Forza Horizon 5, the device doesn’t run Windows – it actually boots a customised Linux distribution named SteamOS with a Windows-compatibility layer atop. Being older, the Steam Deck falls a bit short performance-wise compared to the ROG Ally and the Legion Go, but is no slouch either. It’s powered by an AMD Zen 2 CPU with 4 cores and 8 threads and an 8-core AMD RDNA 2 graphics CPU with 1 GB video memory. The display is sized 7 inches with a resolution of 1280×800 and a 60Hz refresh rate.
We admit that the PlayStation Portal doesn’t quite fit this list as it isn’t standalone and requires a PS5 console to run, but, hey, it’s still a gaming handheld that lets you play AAA titles on an 8-inch LCD screen. The device connects to your PS5 console via Wi-Fi and borrows some of the features from a DualSense controller, such as haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. The 8-inch screen runs games at a crisp resolution of 1080p at 60fps. Costing (just?) $199.99, the Portal is now up for pre-orders in a handful of countries and is expected to launch later this year. It’s not the PSP resurrection we hoped for, but at least it’s something.
