Since Valve's watershed Steam Deck release in 2022, a lot has happened in the world of handheld gaming PCs.
There's now an array of competitors like the ROG Ally and MSI's Claw; there's a rich ecosystem of Windows-based and Android devices; heck, even Microsoft is readying itself to get into the game with an Xbox handheld that may arrive later this year.
If it feels like handheld gaming PCs are going mainstream, well... they kind of are. And like anything that gets cool, they've also (paradoxically) hurtled toward a different fate — they've gotten a little boring.
And in some ways, it's time to get boring — refinement is how any good gadget gets great. But why wait for things to get stale? If you're asking me, I think it's actually time for things to get a lot weirder.
Everyone wants a piece of the handheld gaming pie
Let me backtrack a little.
When I say "boring," I don't mean that recent devices aren't great. While handheld gaming PCs might look the same, companies are expanding boundaries in other directions.
Since the Steam Deck, competitors have pushed the envelope on performance, battery life, and displays, which have made for better, more efficient, devices.
Those are all critically important areas to making any device better, but especially so for handheld gaming PCs which face demanding constraints when it comes to the ever-stressful size-to-performance ratio.
It would be easy to look out at all the new handheld gaming PCs and behold a sea of sameness.
But as important as those facets are, it would be easy to look out at all the new handheld gaming PCs and behold a sea of sameness.
And if you disagree, I ask you this: Can you tell me, off the top of your head, what the difference is between Asus' ROG Ally, Lenovo's Legion Go, Or MSI's Claw? And even if you could rattle some off, how many are there really?
If you couldn't rattle off the differences, then maybe it's time to start getting weird. Luckily, some players in the space are on it.
Experimentation is upon us
Even if lots of handheld gaming PCs are following the same thread, there are some outliers that are starting to mix things up.
One recent example is OneXPlayer, which just took the wraps off a handheld that I can only describe as a beefed-up Nintendo DS.
Sure, it's not quite a Steam Deck — this thing runs Android and uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 chip — but it's a solid step towards making an Android handheld that broaches the workload of Windows and Linux-based counterparts.
Limitations with operating system aside, OneXPlayer's handheld, dubbed the OneXSugar, pushes the boundaries of form factor, bringing in the DS' iconic dual-screen setup.
And OneXPlayer isn't alone in its endeavor. Bigger players like Samsung are also pushing the boundaries of form factor, though on a more conceptual level.
At this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC), Samsung unveiled the Flip Gaming handheld concept which leverages the company's expertise in folding displays to envision a Switch-like gaming handheld that folds in half. Theoretically a handheld with that form factor could make the category a lot more portable.
Laptop Mag got a look at the Flip Gaming handheld and it's still quite a ways off from reality — and has more than a few kinks to work out — but the message is clear: there's room for experimentation, and increasingly bigger names are on the case.
No time like the present
While it might be easy to make the case that handhelds should focus on refinement before getting weird, there's also a case to be made that now is the time to mix things up.
Just take a look at phones, for example. While folding displays have presented a major shakeup in terms of form factor, the category has been mostly stagnant, thanks to the perfection of glass slabs.
And don't get me wrong — glass slabs just work. With that said, that refinement has all but killed what used to be a vibrant ecosystem of phones from various companies that offered all sorts of different form factors and features.
That was what internet-enabled phones were like in their infancy, and in a lot of ways that was the only time phones had the wiggle room to get weird.
Similarly, handheld gaming PCs are going through a parallel rise in popularity which means now might be the only moment that hardware makers actually have the creative license to try something out.
And who knows — a lot of that experimentation could be a flop, but some of it could lead to that new, exciting, twist we've all been waiting for.
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