Best PC gaming handhelds in 2025

We've tested all the best PC gaming handhelds, and weighed the selections based on their performance, design, battery life, and price. Whether you are looking for a powerful machine that can handle the latest AAA titles or a budget-friendly option for playing the newest indie games, there is something for you.

Valve's Steam Deck was our favorite PC gaming handheld of 2022 and was one of the first PC gaming handhelds to truly revolutionize the PC gaming industry. In 2024, however, Valve faces fierce competition from various companies that have begun making their own handhelds. Valve is keeping up with the competition, though, and recently released an even better version of the original Steam Deck called the Steam Deck OLED.

The Steam Deck OLED, as the name implies, features an upgraded OLED display with HDR support alongside upgraded Wi-Fi 6E, slightly faster LPDDR5 RAM, and it now supports up to 1TB of storage space. Valve didn't change too much else under the hood, opting to keep the same 6nm AMD Zen 2-based processor with a base clock speed of 2.4GHz that can be overclocked to 3.5GHz. While you could play most of your Steam games in the original version thanks in part to the Linux-based SteamOS, they'll now look better and run smoother for longer.

If you had been waiting for a new Steam Deck to come out before committing to a purchase, there is no greater time to pick one up. It's not a reinvention of the Steam Deck, which was an already great PC gaming handheld, but it offers improvements in the areas where the Steam Deck needed it most, particularly the display and wireless standard speeds. And with those changes, the Steam Deck OLED takes our top spot.

Asus took our ROG Ally 2 wishlist and brought many of the changes and feature requests we asked for to the Asus ROG Ally X. It's a larger, beefier, more expensive PC gaming handheld that's great for people who want the absolute best gaming compatibility and experience. Although the ROG Ally X has the same AMD Z1 Extreme chipset as the ROG Ally — making it a tough sell for owners of the original — it's better in just about every other way.

The changes start with the battery. This handheld has an 80Wh battery that's double the size of the battery pack inside the regular ROG Ally, and in our real-world battery life tests, that actually translated to double the gameplay time on a single charge. The ROG Ally X has a thicker chassis as a result, but this makes it more comfortable and ergonomic to hold. It also comes in a sleek black colorway that'll hold up better over time than the white ROG Ally.

That Z1 Extreme system-on-a-chip is paired with 24GB of RAM now, and there's now full-size SSD support for easier upgrades. The handheld's thermals are improved, too. Throw all those upgrades together, and we noticed a significant improvement in average frame rates while playing intensive games like Cyberpunk: 2077 on the Asus ROG Ally X. When it's time to connect to peripherals or power, there are now two USB-C ports for more versatile expansion.

As long as you can deal with the high price of the ROG Ally X and Windows 11, this is a fantastic handheld.

If you are interested in handheld gaming but don't want to spend $550 on the base configuration of the Steam Deck OLED, you can still pick up the original Steam Deck for a starting price of $399. The original Steam Deck features many of the same specs as the upgraded Steam Deck OLED, but it comes at a more affordable price and doesn't pack the same kind of punch for the display.

The Steam Deck has a 7-inch LCD panel, up to 512GB of NVMe storage space, and the same AMD Zen 2 APU CPU found in the Steam Deck OLED. Performance-wise, the Steam Deck excels at handling most games from your library. In our review, our colleague Adam Conway could play games such as Grand Theft Auto V and Metro 2033: Remastered at 60FPS, but he did note that battery life suffered in AAA at 60FPS.

Where the original Steam Deck really shines now that the Steam Deck OLED has been released is as a device for emulation or to play the large selection of indie games from the Steam Library. The battery life won't be as good as on the OLED and visuals won't look as vivid, but otherwise, you'll get the same great system, with SteamOS and Proton running the show.

The GPD Win 4 is a PC gaming handheld that combines portability, performance, and versatility. The handheld has a 6-inch IPS display with ultra-narrow bezels, providing a native resolution of 1920x1080, and there's support for a 10-point touch and active stylus, although you have to buy the pen separately. The display features a maximum brightness of 400 nits, making it one of the brighter displays on the handheld market.

The most unique feature of the GPD Win Max 2 is the full keyboard that sits underneath the display, in addition to the dual analog sticks, mappable back buttons, and analog triggers. It's easy to switch between the keyboard and controller, and there's even a dedicated button that switches between gamepad and keyboard support. Design-wise, the GPD Win 4 looks nearly identical to Sony's PS Vita.

Otherwise, the GPD Win 4 features up to an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U APU processor with AMD Radeon 760M integrated graphics, up to 64GB of LPDDR5x RAM, and up to 4TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD storage, which you can expand thanks to an easily accessible M.2 2280 slot on the underside of the machine. There's even support for an external GPU via the Max 2's Oculink port or the USB4 port for even more gaming power.

The GPD Win 4 is a powerful, versatile handheld that can handle AAA games, emulators, productivity apps, and more. It's the ultimate device for gamers who want to enjoy their favorite games on the go while also having the option to get some business done without needing a large laptop. It's not a laptop, but it does feature an optional 4G LTE module, a full-sized PCIe, and is one of the most powerful slide-out handhelds on the market.

The Asus ROG Ally is a portable handheld that differs from the Steam Deck because it runs on Windows 11 and, as such, features support for Steam, Xbox Game Pass, Epic, and just about every other game library. The ROG Ally features a 7-inch touchscreen with a 120Hz refresh rate, 465 nits of peak brightness, and AMD FreeSync Premium support to deliver smooth visuals and gameplay. Additionally, the ROG Ally is powered by a Ryzen Z1 or Z1 Extreme processor, 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and a 512GB PCIe4 SSD to give you the ultimate portable gaming experience.

The ROG Ally is designed to be used from anywhere, whether you want to play solo or with friends. It features a lightweight and durable body that weighs only 608 grams, making it lighter than the Steam Deck. The controls are customizable and allow you to create your own control mapping, while there's also support for Asus' Aura Sync lighting system and ROG Armoury Crate SE software for game management.

The largest downside to the ROG Ally is how Windows 11 functions on the device. In our review of the ROG Ally, we noted that Windows doesn't work well on touchscreen devices like the ROG Ally. However, ASUS has updated the BIOS towards the end of 2023. While many of these issues have been corrected, Windows 11 still doesn't offer the best experience in handheld gaming.

The Lenovo Legion Go is a handheld gaming PC with up to an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor with 8 cores and 16 threads of processing power alongside AMD RDNA 3 Graphics for high-performance gaming. The Legion Go from Lenovo will be comfortable for anyone who has gamed on a Nintendo Switch before, thanks to its detachable controllers.

Thanks to the AMD Z1 Extreme processor, the Legion Go utilizes AMD RDNA graphics, providing excellent, smooth visuals and high framerates even in AAA titles. There's also support for DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan, and OpenGL 4.6, so this is a handheld that can handle various games and applications with ease. This is a handheld that is able to compete with the Steam Deck thanks to a more powerful processor and GPU. Games also look great thanks to the 16:10 aspect ratio complementing the 8.8-inch display.

It's 8.8-inch display looms large over other portable handhelds such as the Steam Deck and ASUS Rog Ally, and it offers one of the fastest screens on the market, with a 144Hz refresh rate, compared to the 120Hz refresh rate found on the Steam Deck OLED. It's by no means a perfect device, with performance issues noted in our review. However, Lenovo has been steadily making software-based improvements to the Legion Go, and with a great suite of hardware, it's still a great purchase for anyone looking for a fast, responsive, and high-resolution screen.

The Ayaneo Slide is another premium handheld gaming system that runs on Windows 11 and can play your favorite PC games on a 6-inch 1080p Full HD display. It's powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U processor with integrated AMD Radeon graphics and starts with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD for storage space. It comes with a standard controller layout on the face of the device featuring two joysticks, a d-pad, and four d-pad buttons, in addition to haptic triggers on the back. In our review of the Ayaneo Slide, our Lead Technical Editor, Adam Conway, noted that while the Ayaneo Slide feels like a well-built device, the sliding mechanism does feel a bit cheap overall.

When you slide open the Slide, there's a full QWERTY keyboard. The design is reminiscent of the T-Mobile Sidekick cellphone from the early 2000's, but with a full controller on the sides. The ultimate feature of the Ayaneo Slide is how many configurations of the device you can purchase. Ayaneo always offers a lot of configurations for their portables, and the Slide is no different, with a top configuration that offers 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD.

The Ayaneo Slide is designed to offer a smooth gaming experience for AAA titles and emulators, and is nearly identical in performance when compared to the ASUS ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go. In our review, we noted that the Ayaneo Slide offered an exceptional experience when playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.

The GPD Win Mini is a handheld gaming PC that combines the power of a laptop with the portability of a smartphone. This is a truly compact handheld that features a 7-inch display that supports a 10-point touch and a native resolution of 1920x1080 with up to a 120 Hz refresh rate. Underneath the display, though, is the highlight feature: a full QWERTY keyboard that folds out, and the face of the device features a built-in gamepad with analog sticks and buttons.

The GPD Win Mini runs on Windows 11 and can play most PC games at high settings thanks to the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U processor and integrated Radeon 780M graphics. It ships with up to 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, making it an efficient device when it comes to gaming, and you can purchase the GPD Win Mini with up to 2TB of SSD storage space.

The GPD Win Mini is designed for gamers who want to enjoy their favorite PC titles on the go. Whether you're playing games from Steam, the Epic Games Store, or GOG, GPD Win 3 can do it all thanks to Windows 11 support.

The final say

The Steam Deck OLED is one of our favorite handhelds, and for most people, it's the best handheld to buy. It features a beautiful 7-inch OLED display, a custom AMD APU, and a full-fledged Linux-based operating system called SteamOS, which was developed by Valve and optimized for the Steam Deck. It offers a portable and versatile gaming experience and has the ability to play thousands of titles from Steam's library, as well as other platforms and services. There's also a wide range of accessories available for the Steam Deck.

With that being said, if you want the absolute best game compatibility and performance, the Asus ROG Ally or ROG Ally X are fantastic alternatives. Really, you can't go wrong with any of the picks on this list.