Andy Edser, hardware writer
This month I’ve been: Testing the Steam Machine, and trying to get my head around its price tag. Also, I’ve suddenly found myself surrounded by refreshed gaming laptops. A nice problem to have, ey?
I like handheld gaming PCs. Note that I’ve carefully used the word “like,” rather than love. In all honesty, I wish they were faster. Or more portable. Concessions need to be made if you want to play demanding games on the go, it’s true. But, in recent months, it’s the price that’s really put the tin lid on the whole handheld gaming affair for me.
The Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS, a handheld we fell in love with last year at its $830 MSRP, is now listed for $1,332. Or how about the MSI Claw 8 AI+, a mega handheld I personally gave a 90% score to (while admitting it was rather expensive) at $900? Now you’ll be lucky to find one for under $1,200. Its recently-announced, Panther Lake-powered successor? That’ll rack you up $1,799 at pre-order prices.
I know, I know. It’s another article from me complaining about pricing, and I realise I probably sound like a stuck record. But I cannot think of a PC gaming hardware category more screwed by the memory crisis than the handheld market right now. I update our handheld gaming PC deals every week, and recently I had to make an admission:
The Asus ROG Ally Xbox X, a machine we rightly criticised for having a “super-high price tag” on its release just eight months ago, is now what I’d call the best value proposition on the market. For one thousand smackeroonies. A cool grand. Serious cash.
That’s the price of a budget, yet soul-affirming, weeklong beachside holiday for two. And yet, if I were to recommend you buy any gaming handheld under today’s ridiculous pricing conditions, it’d be this one.
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It’s properly fast, for a start. With an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU furnished with RDNA 3.5 graphics tech and 24 GB of LPDDR5x-8000, it’s got a specs sheet that allows it to monster pretty much every other handheld we’ve ever tested.
You get a 1 TB SSD as well, which should allow room for plenty of modern games. There’s also the ROG Xbox Ally (non-X) to consider at $600, but the Ryzen Z2 A chip at its core feels a little underpowered—although it’s still worth some thought at that price.
Compare and contrast either with the Steam Deck OLED, which now runs you $949 for the 1 TB model. Sure, it’s got a nicer screen. But the now-aging internals simply don’t make any sense for this sort of money. A bit like the Steam Machine, now I come to think of it—although I digress.
Plus, the ROG Xbox Ally X’s Windows Xbox full screen experience (what a horrible mash-up of terms) is pretty darn good. It’s no SteamOS, but it’s nevertheless a pretty seamless way of interacting with the system via the medium of thumbsticks. And Steam’s Big Picture Mode is still an option for sorting through your games library, of course.
It’s quiet, comfortable, and—again I can’t believe I’m saying this—reasonably priced given what you receive compared to the competition. Somehow, the Xbox handheld has managed to place itself within the market at the right price, at almost the right time.
Which makes me wonder how much longer it’ll be before that MSRP jumps. Given the state of *gestures wildly* everything else in the consumer electronics industry right now, I’d imagine that within the next few months, this column will become defunct.
I’m kind of astonished that the ROG Xbox Ally X is still sitting at its $1,000 MSRP as we speak, and something deep in my bones tells me that won’t be the case for much longer.
I wonder whether handhelds will survive as anything other than boutique devices for the very well-heeled.
This isn’t a call to action, I should stress. Honestly, if I was curious about buying a gaming handheld right now and already owned a PC, I would probably save my money instead.
But if you’re dead set on buying a portable gaming machine to shove in your shoulder bag for your next flight, this is the one that makes the most sense in the current market.
And that’s a wild state of affairs. With reports indicating that the memory crisis, and the associated tech price increases will continue (and likely worsen) throughout 2027, and possibly 2028 as well, I genuinely can’t fathom what sort of price/performance metrics I’ll be using to write handheld reviews over the next couple of years.
How do I score what are essentially hobbyist devices, pleasurable adult frivolities, when they all command such eye-popping amounts of cash? How do I square any real concept of “value” with devices that I know damn well would cost much, much less, if it wasn’t for AI holding us all over a barrel?
Gaming is already an expensive hobby. Even more so when you want handheld convenience combined with high performance. But pricing seems to be rising at such a rapid rate, I wonder whether handhelds will survive as anything other than boutique devices for the very well-heeled.
They’re very difficult to wholeheartedly recommend in 2026, I’ll tell you that much for free.
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