Latest news with #handheldPC
Digital Trends
a day ago
- Digital Trends
If the leaks are true, ROG Xbox Ally's price could be anything but an ally
There's still a lot we don't know about the ROG Xbox Ally, but a potential price has leaked that shatters any hope of it being affordable. First seen by 3djuegos on the ASUS Store, the ROG Xbox Ally was listed at 599 Euro (roughly $700 USD) while the ROG Xbox Ally X was listed for $899 Euro (roughly $1,050 USD). The listing appears to have been created by accident, but those price points raise eyebrows. ASUS prices its own handheld PCs around that same price, with the 2023 ROG Ally landing at $500 and $650, depending on the version. While that's a reasonable price point compared to other handhelds on the market (like the $1,000 MSI Claw 8 AI+), it's still significantly more than a base-level Steam Deck. Recommended Videos But with that in mind, an entry-level Steam Deck is somewhat lacking in power compared to more recent options, and the ROG Xbox Ally's Ryzen Z2 A chipset is only slightly more powerful. In a market that grows increasingly crowded with each day, the ROG Xbox Ally will need to offer either outstanding performance or an outstanding price if it wants to stand out. The promised capabilities of the device (especially its ability to handle basically any storefront) will make it a solid pick for folks with larger budgets, but anyone hoping for a more cost-effective portable handheld could be out of luck. Of course, this is all speculation. Until ASUS makes an official announcement about the price, it's best to take this with a grain of salt. With luck, the ROG Xbox Ally will be closer to a $500 price than a $1,000 price. Its price is also likely going to be affected by global conditions, including the ongoing trade war and the possibility of higher tariffs. The launch of the handheld is still several months away, assuming it makes its fall 2025 target, so only time will tell.
Gizmodo
28-06-2025
- Gizmodo
Lenovo's Legion Go S With SteamOS Is the Only Real Alternative to a Steam Deck
For the last several years, most of us thinking about buying a handheld PC have heard the refrain 'just get a Steam Deck.' The reasons are two-fold: one, the OLED version at $550 is the cheapest of its class, and two, it's so damned easy to use thanks to SteamOS. No other company has come close to offering similar bang for the buck—until now. At $600, Lenovo's Legion Go S with SteamOS is a superior handheld for on-the-go gaming compared to the Windows version released earlier this year, which felt compromised because of Microsoft's desktop operating system. Lenovo also sells an $830 model with a better chip that may seem more enticing, but as you'll see in this review, you shouldn't feel bad about choosing to go cheaper. Lenovo Legion Go S with SteamOS The Lenovo Legion Go S is the only other handheld that comes with SteamOS out of the box, and it's so much better for it. Pros Cons The Legion Go S is a side-grade from the Lenovo Legion Go from 2023. It still has an 8-inch display, but it's a single-body design that doesn't sport the Legion Go's two detachable controllers ala the Nintendo Switch 2. As comfortable as it was, Windows combined with poor performance drastically hampered what it could be. I could tell from the jump that, at $730, it was relatively overpriced and underpowered—a real 'just get a Steam Deck' device. The new version is cheaper and comes with SteamOS, the same small screen-friendly Linux-based operating system made by Valve. I tested the $600 Legion Go S with SteamOS in a beautiful deep 'nebula nocturne' purple color that reminds me of the goth kid I wish I was in high school. It comes with a Ryzen Z2 Go processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. That's $50 more than a Steam Deck OLED with the same 512 GB storage capacity. Valve's $400 Steam Deck LCD is the cheapest of its kind, though it comes with only 256GB of storage. The more powerful Legion Go S with SteamOS, powered by an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor and 32GB of LPDDR5X-6400 RAM, is close to what you might pay for an Asus ROG Ally X, which boasts a better battery life though slightly worse ergonomics. I have not tested this model, though. For shits and giggles, I grabbed the $730 white Windows-powered Legion Go S sent to me earlier this year and installed SteamOS on it to see what happens when you add more RAM to the mix, but I didn't experience a significant jump in performance between games. The Ryzen Z2 Go is the lower-power APU, or 'accelerated processing unit,' designed specifically for the cheaper-end Legion Go S models. Both the Ryzen Z1 Extreme and Z2 Go are a type of processor that combines the capabilities of a CPU and a GPU, or graphics processor. The Z2 Go is running on AMD's older Zen 3+ microarchitecture and has half the number of cores as the Z1 Extreme running on Zen 4. Either way, all Legion Go S models share the same IPS LCD display with a max resolution of 1,920×1,200. It doesn't support the deep blacks and contrast of the OLED panel on a Steam Deck, but it's still bright enough for playing indoors or outside. The larger display resolution can eat into performance with fewer GPU cores and less RAM. Few gamers want to drop their resolution specs lower than their display's max for the sake of performance, so the juggling act of in-game performance settings becomes that much more finicky. The important thing is whether the device can achieve a happy medium between playable frame rates and pretty graphics. In my experience, the Z2 Go with SteamOS can achieve a good equilibrium to play some intensive games, and it's so much better thanks to the Valve-made operating system. I conducted multiple rounds of tests with each Legion Go S plugged in and running at 30W. I set games to the max resolution they could. Both devices can hit 40W of TDP, aka thermal design power, which provides more power to the chip to help them eke out more frames from each game. Still, you likely won't play with higher power unless you plan to keep close to an electrical outlet. Overall, the Legion Go S with a Z2 Go outperformed the same hardware with Windows. Across games like Control and Baldur's Gate III, I saw a performance increase of close to 10 fps after I installed SteamOS. Cyberpunk 2077 at 1200p went from hitting 27 fps in benchmarks to netting nearly 40 fps. Windows introduces a host of background tasks that slow down performance, whereas svelte SteamOS doesn't have that problem. See at Best Buy Comparing the Legion Go S to the Steam Deck's custom AMD APU, Lenovo's SteamOS-powered device has an easy edge thanks to its wider range of TDP beyond the max 15W on Valve's device. With the higher degree of versatility, I could hit the same frame rates at 1200p versus 800p on the Steam Deck across several games, whether they were older, less intensive titles like Weird West or Hades II. In Monster Hunter Wilds benchmarks, the Legion Go S with Z2 Go at 1200p and 30 TDP managed to top the Steam Deck at 800p by a few frames. Of course, doubling the wattage will also affect battery life. If you want to play your games at their best, at the max resolution and graphics setting the system can handle, you'll get less than two hours of playtime. That's not much less than a Steam Deck at half the TDP, but the end result is that you'll need to have a charger handy or else limit your play sessions. SteamOS offers better frame rates than Windows, and if that wasn't enough, it's so much easier to use. Games are easier to download and faster to load, especially when they're built for Steam Deck and limit the number of extra launchers you need to click through. Unfortunately, the experience between playing on Steam Deck and SteamOS on third-party devices is not one-to-one. The big difference is how Valve calculates whether a game is 'SteamOS Compatible' versus 'Steam Deck Verified.' While Valve will determine whether a game can run at playable frame rates on a Steam Deck, it will only label whether a game is technically compatible on the Legion Go S. That means you may install a game expecting it to run well but find you can't even control it with thumbsticks. I managed to install my go-to apps on Steam Deck to the Legion Go S. This included Decky Loader for plugins like Junk Store, which offers easier access to my Epic Games library than going through the trouble of installing Heroic Launcher. I also managed to get EmuDeck operational, which means I could port all my retro games to the new system without any fuss. Did I miss access to apps like Razer Cortex as my preferred way to do PC-to-handheld streaming? Yes, but I would trade access to every Windows app for a clean UI without a second thought. When I'm not worried about popups asking me to sign in to OneDrive or dreading what will happen when I dare put the device to sleep while in-game, I can instead focus on playing my games at their best. In every way, the Legion Go S can become a Steam Deck, but there are still some major considerations if you're trying to decide between the two. For one, the Steam Deck OLED is lighter at 640g, or 1.41 pounds, versus Lenovo's 740g, or 1.6 pounds. That doesn't sound like much until you're feeling the strain in your arms after an extended play session sprawled out on your bed. The Legion Go S has slightly better ergonomics, but either device conforms to the hands better than most other similar devices on the market. What is missing from Lenovo's design are the Steam Deck's two trackpads. Those haptic trackpads add a surprising amount of versatility in some games, especially in CRPGs or strategy games like Tactical Breach Wizards. The minuscule trackpad on the Legion Go S didn't even seem to work out of the box. I had such a bad experience with it on the Windows version—with it vibrating like a rabbit dipped into a freezing-cold lake—I wasn't keen to fix it. I would also give the edge in audio quality to the Steam Deck for clear sound, but the Legion Go S' twin 2W speakers offer enough clarity that I didn't immediately feel the need to reach for a pair of headphones. I did experience odd audio bugs with my review unit that led to crackling when in-game, though it was inconsistent, and it wasn't present on the older model even after I installed SteamOS. The real distinction between Lenovo's and Valve's handhelds is the screen. You get close to 8 inches of real estate on the Legion Go S and a higher max resolution, but it's still LCD. If I have both screens sitting side-by-side, I can't help but gravitate toward the device with better contrast and those ever-touted 'inky' blacks. So the Legion Go S is currently your only out-of-the-box Steam Deck alternative, and that alone makes it worth your time, especially if you don't feel like loading an OS other than Windows. That being said, this year's future slate of handhelds is getting more interesting. We've yet to see any devices launch with AMD's Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip, but we know they're coming from companies like MSI, Asus, and Lenovo themselves. The other big consideration is how Microsoft can finally make its OS workable on a 7-inch display with the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally. That upcoming handheld will potentially mark a turning point with Windows gaming, not just in performance but overall usability. If you want a handheld now, go with either the Legion Go S or Steam Deck. Either would serve you well. If you're still on the fence, you should wait to see what the future holds. See at Best Buy
Gizmodo
21-05-2025
- Gizmodo
MSI's Lime-Colored Claw A8 Will Make You Forget About the Missing Xbox Handheld
Without any sign of that rumored Xbox handheld, the Computex computing conference in Taipei, Taiwan has been missing out on what's now one of the best avenues for gaming on the go—handheld PCs. MSI is now posing as the lone figure promoting a whole new class of handhelds with the Claw A8. It's a device that looks very, very close to what we've seen before—even in blinding lime green—but it may offer a glimpse of what's in store for handhelds beyond the Nintendo Switch 2, even though we still don't know how much it will cost. The Claw A8 comes in two colors—a white and a very, very green hue. The shell looks familiar if you've seen MSI's other handhelds, and if you didn't know the device contained an 8-inch 120Hz IPS display with variable refresh rate, you may have assumed it was the original Asus ROG Ally or even a white version of the Claw 7 A1M. Unlike last year's Claw 8 AI+, the new handheld includes more severe, squared-off edges. That doesn't necessarily mean it's uncomfortable. MSI said it designed the device's underside grips to make it easier to hold while still letting your fingers reach the front thumbsticks and face buttons. The Claw A8's controls include Hall effect joysticks, which should make the device last longer without the usual fear of stick drift. The other big difference between this device and last year's iteration is the CPU. The Claw A8 is one of the few of its kind confirmed to house an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme. That chip is a sequel to the Ryzen Z1, one of the most-used handheld CPUs from the last two years. The new CPU is built on the chipmaker's Zen 5 microarchitecture, bringing it in line with AMD's latest family of Strix Point laptop CPUs. It's also supposed to offer far better graphics potential than its predecessor. We've seen the chip running with a few games on an early version of the Lenovo Legion Go 2, but without our own tests, we can only speculate on just how much better it will be over similar devices you can buy today. MSI's Claw A8 is a confusing name if you've heard of the company's previous flagship handheld, the Claw 8 AI+. That device was a beast in terms of performance, not the least because it contained an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, a full laptop CPU that used Intel's Arc 140V graphics. That meant the device was far more hefty than the competition, but it offered solid performance for its $1,000 price (the cost has gone up since release, but you'll be lucky to find it available anyway). The Claw 8 AI+ also holds the edge in memory compared to the A8. The new handheld has a max of 24GB of RAM with a slower 8,000MHz speed compared to the 8 AI+'s 8,533MHz. At least the squatter handheld will weigh a little less than the last generation's bulky frame. MSI moving to AMD It seems less a betrayal and more an acknowledgement that there's a benefit to a dedicated gaming CPU designed specifically for a device of this size. A laptop chip is simply built to handle more productivity tasks. Intel also seems to know it's missing out on this space. The chipmaker recently told Laptop Mag it was working on handheld-specific CPUs. PC-class gaming, now in your hands. Pre-order the new Lenovo Legion Go S with Steam OS at — Lenovo Legion (@LenovoLegion) March 28, 2025 There hasn't been too much news about gaming handhelds in the months following CES 2025 in January. Lenovo opened up the year with the Legion Go S, a lower-powered handheld with Windows 11, and the still-unreleased Legion Go 2 with the Ryzen Z2 Extreme. That device with its brand-specific AMD Ryzen Z2 Go chip didn't knock our socks off, especially for its price, but we have a feeling a lower price that edges closer to the $550 Steam Deck OLED, combined with the console-like experience of SteamOS, will make it a much better handheld experience. That Legion Go S with SteamOS should be available May 25 for $600 with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The gaming elephant still stomping around this crowded room is the Nintendo Switch 2. Those who want to get into Nintendo's sequel system for $450 may not want to drop even more money on a separate handheld. Nintendo's impending June 5 release date seems like a good excuse for both Asus and Lenovo to hold off on a more expensive, more powerful console until later. We should hear more about pricing in the following months. By that time, we'll be so overwhelmed with handhelds we'll need to grow more hands to try them all.
