The list in brief
1. Best overall
2. Best budget
3. Best big screen
4. Best small screen
5. Also tested

A dream shared by PC gamers everywhere has been to take our entire gaming PCs on the go. From LAN parties to powerful gaming laptops, we’ve gotten close to portable gaming nirvana, yet no solution is quite as simple as pulling out one of the latest generation of PC gaming handhelds and gaming from near enough anywhere.

We’ve tested most of today’s top gaming handhelds and come away impressed with many of them. However, there are two that stand out among the crowd. The best handheld gaming PC is the Asus ROG Ally X, with a punchy 7-inch screen, fast AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip, and a massive 80 Wh battery. The best budget handheld gaming PC is the Steam Deck, a handheld with all the right credentials for less than most of the competition.

One key difference between the Steam Deck and the other handhelds below is Valve’s choice of operating system. It uses a Linux-based OS called SteamOS, which is tailored to the handheld gaming experience and Valve’s own storefront, while the rest of them use Windows. Valve’s OS is sleek yet a little restrictive on which games you can play due to anti-cheat measures. While Windows is, well, Windows—it’ll play anything but it can be a little clunky to use on a touchscreen. Whichever you pick, below you’ll find all of our recommendations: from the budget-friendly Steam Deck to more powerful options.

Senior Hardware Editor

The quick list

View at Asus

The best overall

Every flaw in the original ROG Ally has been fixed in the Ally X and with a huge battery, it gives you hours of great gaming in an easy-to-hold format.

Read more below

View at Steam

The best budget

The Steam Deck is unbeatable in one very important way: it’s far cheaper than most of the competition. It’s definitely the best value option, and it’s a neat gaming device for the money.

Read more below

View at Lenovo

The best big screen

The Lenovo Legion Go has a huge 8.8-inch screen, although you’ll want to turn down the resolution a tad for the best performance. It also features detachable controllers that really make it stand out.

Read more below

View at Indiegogo

The best small screen

This handheld is a traveller’s dream. It’s small enough not to think twice about packing it, but it’s still extremely powerful.

Read more below

This guide was updated on July 25, 2024 to update our recommendation for the best handheld gaming PC, look over the other recommendations to ensure they’re still relevant, and do a bit of general house cleaning.

The best handheld gaming PC

The best all-round handheld gaming PC is the Asus ROG Ally X, due to its near-perfect blend of performance, comfort, and portability.

Asus’ first attempt, the original ROG Ally, is a great gaming device but it has many flaws—the battery life is poor, it’s not very comfortable to hold for long, and the hardware overheats too easily. All of that has been fixed in the Ally X but the whole package is now much improved.

Gone are the small battery and SSD, replaced by a huge 80 Wh set of cells and a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 drive as standard. The amount of RAM has been increased from 16 to 24 GB of LPDDR5-6400, which helps games to run smoother. Asus has tweaked the cooling system to prevent components from bouncing off thermal limits and along with the extra memory, it performs a little faster, even though it has the same processor and identical clock speeds.

The extra-long battery life would be for nothing if it wasn’t nice to hold for long periods, but Asus has smoothed off all the edges and it fits nicely in your hands now. It is a little heavier but the additional bulk isn’t noticeable, unlike the better thumbsticks, and shoulder and back buttons which are all more positive in action.

There are multiple little updates and changes across the board: the old ROG XG Mobile port, for attaching an external GPU, has been swapped for a full-speed USB4 port which makes it much easier to add peripherals. The 1 TB SSD is now the PC standard M.2 2280 size, meaning replacements and upgrades are cheaper.

Even things like Asus’ Armory Crate software and the power limits have all been improved, making the ROG Ally X a more capable and more engaging handheld gaming PC. It still runs Windows 11, of course, so it doesn’t have the Steam Deck’s refined software ecosystem but if you can put up with that, then you’re in for a treat.

The Asus ROG Ally X is the new bar for other handheld gaming PCs to reach and it will be interesting to see how the competition responds.

Read our full Asus ROG Ally X review.

The best budget handheld gaming PC

The Steam Deck is the best budget handheld gaming PC by something of a country mile. It’s the sort of thing that I could only dream of as a child; a compact, cheap gaming PC that can play most of my games and slip inside a backpack. It would’ve hands-down bested playing on the fold-away screen atop of my Gamecube running off a 12 V cigarette lighter in the back of my dad’s car, though I have fond memories of that. In a way, the Steam Deck captures some of that retro gaming feel—it lets you find new time to play games.

I’ve smashed through many more games with the Steam Deck than I ever would have relying solely on my desktop. That’s true of many of these handhelds, but the Steam Deck is a very sleek experience. That’s because Valve has commissioned its own Linux OS, SteamOS, to run on the device, and it’s built from the ground up for gaming. It plays best with Steam games, but I’ve loaded the Heroic Games Launcher on it to boot into Epic and GOG games with ease, too.

Performance is measured by playability on the Deck, not so much as we might measure it on desktop by how many frames per second you can get. It’s really not a powerful device, with fewer older CUs compared to some handhelds today, but that’s alright as it’s only pushing an 800p screen. Generally, it gets by just fine in modern games, but you might find you primarily see it as an indie-game machine.

That’s how I use my Steam Deck anyways. It’s allowed me to find the time to play so many indie and wholesome games I’d never normally get space to play on my desktop PC. Though the Deck is also great for game streaming if you have a GeForce Now subscription or something similar. That’s how I play most demanding games on the device, rather than rendering them locally.

As a value proposition, there’s really no beating the Steam Deck. The other handhelds I’ve been using have it beat in performance, there are some that deliver frame rates and resolutions far in excess of the Steam Deck, but none anywhere near as affordable.

That’s the Deck’s best feature: it’s so much cheaper than any of the other handhelds we’ve tested. While it doesn’t have the sheer performance of the OneXPlayer OneXFly, nor the big screen and trick controls of the Lenovo Legion Go, it’s still got plenty of portable punch combined with a decent display, for less cash.

Also if something breaks, you can buy an official part and replace it yourself with relative ease. I have two videos on how to swap out the Steam Deck’s SSD and how to swap out the Steam Deck’s thumb sticks, if you’re interested.

Read our full Steam Deck review.

The best big screen handheld gaming PC

It’s a good-looking device, the Legion Go, and a lot of that is due to that gigantic screen. So much so, in fact, that it takes our top pick for the best big-screen handheld gaming PC. But don’t be fooled by the shiny pixels, as beyond that great display lies a powerful and rather interesting handheld PC.

For a start, it’s big. Surprisingly big, and even makes the Steam Deck look like it’s been on a diet. However, it has some features that account for that weight and substantial size, chief among them being the addition of two detachable controllers, similar to the Nintendo Switch.

They might be a little clunky to use for certain games, but they give this handheld the distinct advantage of, again, like the Switch, standing on its rear kickstand so you can play with the detached controllers on a table. Perhaps it’s not as comfortable as an all-in-one compared to some of the options here, but that party trick sets it very much apart from the crowd.

The good news doesn’t stop there either. It’s powered by the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme as the Asus ROG Ally X, which makes it a great performer, and while like many gaming handhelds, it’s indie games that show it off at its best, it’s still got the grunt to take on something like Baldur’s Gate 3 on the go with very little issue.

One thing to note is the screen resolution. While it’s big, bright and fast, that 2560 x 1600 resolution is a bit too much for the hardware inside, and you’ll likely want to drop down to something more sensible like 1920 x 1200 to really make the most of your experience without significant frame drops.

If you don’t need such a dominant display, the little Ayaneo Air 1S might be more up your street, for something you can just about squeeze in a large pocket. You could try with the Legion Go, but I dread to think of what sort of pockets you’d need to accommodate such a large and in charge machine.

Price-wise though, you’re really getting a lot for your money here. With the 512 GB model coming in around the $700 mark, it’s well placed given the huge screen on offer and the addition of those useful controllers. As Lenovo’s first go at a gaming handheld this is quite an impressive effort, and providing you’re prepared to turn the resolution down you’ll still be enjoying a great experience on a large enough screen to really pull you into the action, even if the handheld aspect is perhaps a little chunkier than we’d like.

Read our full Lenovo Legion Go review.

The best compact handheld gaming PC

Looking for small? As in really, surprisingly small? That’d be the Ayaneo Air 1S then, the best small-screen handheld gaming PC we’ve tested to date.

The Ayaneo Air 1S is incredibly portable. Described as a thin and light handheld, it comes in at just 21.6 mm thick and weighs only 450 g. You needn’t worry about its inclusion in your luggage if you’re travelling long distances, as I can attest after recently taking this handheld with me to Malaysia. It comfortably fits in my carry-on luggage, making for a pleasant trip playing Cult of the Lamb.

This device comes with a 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED screen; not the biggest panel for in-depth strategy games or tons of text, but it’s generally able to deliver a very crisp overall image. I don’t mind its restricted real estate at all. My Steam Deck has become my pathway to playing more indie games than I ever normally would, and the Ayaneo fulfils that role incredibly well.

The point is, it’s a handheld gaming PC that feels more like a handheld gaming device of old than any other I’ve used. It’s a powerful GameBoy Advance, and boy, is it powerful.

The Ayaneo Air 1S may look like it needs a downgrade to stuff all its parts into that tiny shell. But, no. It comes with the sameAMD Ryzen7 7840U chip found within theAokzoe A1 Proor theOneXPlayer OneXFly. That’s a full eight-core, 16-thread Zen 4 processor. I still can’t really believe that sort of spec comes in a compact PC at all. It’s paired up with a Radeon 780M integrated graphics, powered by 12 RDNA 3 CUs—four more CUs than the Steam Deck’s RDNA 2 chip.

The model I have comes with 32 GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 2 TB 2280 NVMe SSD. Yeah, 2280. If you’re familiar with the Steam Deck, or really most PC gaming handhelds, you’ll know they use the compact 2230 SSD form factor. That’s not the case here. This is a full 2280 SSD. However, I do admit that Ayaneo’s claims of this making for an easy SSD upgrade didn’t go as easily as I’d hoped.

The Ayaneo is stuffing a lot of memory and storage into this machine for not as much money as you’d think, however.

This 2 TB + 32 GB model is still a whole lot more than the price of a Steam Deck, but I would say that for a 32 GB, 2 TB, eight-core Zen 4-powered PC, it’s not awfully priced.

Read our full Ayaneo Air 1S review.

Also tested

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