If you told me five years ago that we would have a cost-effective way to play PC games on a compact handheld without compromise I never would have believed you. While it was technically possible to take your titles with you, these machines were usually incredibly pricey and only available in niche quantities (usually crowdfunded) making them not ideal for a wider market. In 2024, however, the opposite problem is true as more hardware manufacturers are vying for an increasingly slight slice of the handheld PC pie.
What brought the handheld PC gaming scene to the mainstream most was Valve’s Steam Deck which was first announced in August 2021. Unlike pricier rivals from companies like OneXPlayer, Ayaneo and Ayn, three of the larger boutique manufacturers, Valve aimed to keep the price down at the cost of resolution and raw gaming power. For reference, we gave it 85% in our Steam Deck review from early 2022 and praised its versatility despite a weak screen and a less-than-stellar battery life. Its widespread commercial and critical success opened the floodgates for competition to surface.
