The best gaming handhelds for 2025

Steam Deck OLED – Display: 7.4-inch HDR OLED, 1,280 x 800 resolution, 1,000 nits peak HDR brightness, 600 nits SDR brightness, up to 90Hz | Processor: Custom 6nm AMD APU | RAM: 16GB LPDDR5 6400 MT/s | Storage: 512GB, 1TB SSD | Battery: 50Whr | Dimensions: 11.73 x 4.6 x 1.93 inches | Weight: 1.41 pounds | Wireless: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 | OS: SteamOS

Steam Deck LCD – Display: 7-inch IPS, 1,280 x 800 resolution, 400 nits brightness, 60Hz | Processor: Custom 7nm AMD APU | RAM: 16GB LPDDR5 5500 MT/s | Storage: 256GB SSD | Battery: 40Whr | Dimensions: 11.73 x 4.6 x 1.93 inches | Weight: 1.48 pounds | Wireless: Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0 | OS: SteamOS

Valve’s Steam Deck continues to offer the best balance of price, performance and usability in the gaming handheld market. And the newer Steam Deck OLED is a thorough upgrade over the original. Starting at $549 for 512GB of storage, this model features a 7.4-inch OLED display that’s brighter, faster, slightly bigger and more vivid than the 7-inch IPS panel on the now entry-level model. The higher contrast and richer colors of an OLED screen makes every game look better by default, but this display also supports HDR, with significantly brighter highlights at its peak. The maximum refresh rate jumps from 60Hz to 90Hz as well, which can help many games look smoother.

Due to the less power-hungry display, a more efficient AMD APU and a larger battery, the Steam Deck OLED also lasts longer than before. No handheld can play resource-intensive “AAA” games for too long, but Valve says the OLED model can run for three to 12 hours depending on the game, whereas the LCD model lasts between two and eight. A larger fan keeps things cooler and quieter, and the chassis feels lighter. Performance is roughly the same, though the OLED model’s increased memory bandwidth can help it gain a couple extra frames in certain games.

Still, $549 is a big investment. The entry-level Steam Deck, which uses a more basic IPS LCD display but comes with a 256GB SSD as standard, remains a superb value at $399. The hardware is starting to show its age in either case: Many of the biggest games released over the past year , if they’re supported at all. Issues with Linux and anti-cheat software have rendered live-service games like Destiny 2 and Apex Legends unplayable, too.

Yet both Decks can run hundreds tons of games that just aren’t possible on a Nintendo Switch, from Elden Ring to Baldur’s Gate 3, and they remain a natural home to the mountain of smaller-scale gems littered throughout Steam. (Hello, !) While official game support is limited to a subset of the Steam library, the list of officially verified and still-playable titles is massive, diverse and constantly growing. There are workarounds to access other storefronts as well.

A near-constant stream of updates has turned Valve’s SteamOS into a flexible yet user-friendly platform. You’ll still need to make tweaks every now and then to get a game to run optimally, but the process is usually straightforward. That power, combined with third-party tools like EmuDeck, makes the Deck superb for emulation as well. Some PS3 and original Xbox games can be tricky, but just about everything else works beautifully. You can also cloud stream Xbox games with a little setup.

The Steam Deck’s biggest issue is its size: At two inches thick and nearly a foot long, it stretches the definition of a “handheld” device, even if the OLED model is lighter by comparison. The LCD Deck can get warm and noisy fairly quickly, too, and the d-pad on each device is somewhat mushy. But the contoured grips on the back help offset the bulk, and both versions feel sturdy, with responsive face buttons and triggers, smooth joysticks and useful dual touchpads.

Display: 7-inch IPS, 1080p resolution, 500 nits brightness, 120Hz, VRR | Processor: AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme | RAM: 24GB LPDDR5 7500 MT/s | Storage: 1TB SSD | Battery: 80Whr | Dimensions: 11.02 x 4.37 x 0.97-1.45 inches | Weight: 1.49 pounds | Wireless: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 | OS: Windows 11

If you’re willing to spend extra for more power, you can skip the Steam Deck and buy a Windows-based handheld instead. The ASUS ROG Ally X is the best of those right now, and it’s a decent alternative to Valve’s device if you’re willing to trade some ease of use for a higher performance ceiling. Think of it like a more portable gaming laptop.

The ROG Ally X is an upgraded version of the original ROG Ally, our previous Windows pick. The newer model runs on the same chip (AMD’s Ryzen Z1 Extreme) and has the same display but comes with more RAM, double the storage, a battery that’s twice as large, improved ergonomics and an additional USB-C port. It costs $150 more, so it’s pricey, but it’s a superior piece of hardware in nearly every way.

There are three main reasons to consider the ROG Ally X over the Steam Deck. The first is power: The first ROG Ally was already a bit more consistent at playing graphically intense games at higher frame rates, thanks in large part to a “Turbo mode” that boosts the device’s power draw to 25W, or 30W when plugged in. (The Steam Deck officially tops out at 15W.) In our ROG Ally X review, we found the extra RAM and improved memory bandwidth here helped further this advantage by five to ten percent depending on the title. It’s still not a night-and-day upgrade in certain games when all settings are equal, but it’s usually better, and it has much more overhead both for now and the future. If you mainly want to play demanding “AAA” games, the Ally X is more likely to run them well, and the gap has only become more noticeable over the few months.

On that note, the Ally X’s second major selling point is its variable refresh rate. The 7-inch LCD display here is clearly not as bright or color-rich as that of the Steam Deck OLED, but it’s both sharper (1080p) and faster (120Hz), and VRR support does wonders to keep games looking smooth even when their frame rate fluctuates. It’s a big deal.

The third key advantage is the fact that Windows lets you play games from any PC client, not just a selection of Steam games. If you’ve built up libraries on stores like Epic, GOG or the Xbox app, you can access them here as you would on any other Windows PC, no workarounds required. For Xbox Game Pass games, Epic Games Store exclusives or finicky always-online titles like Destiny 2 that require anti-cheat software, it’s great.

Alas, for all its flexibility, Windows is also the biggest detriment to any Windows handheld. ASUS has made real, genuine strides in turning its Armoury Crate app into a perfectly usable game launcher and settings hub, one that feels snappy and lets you assign custom control profiles and GPU modes on a per-game basis. But it’s still slapping a bandage onto an OS that isn’t designed for this form factor (a sentiment Microsoft itself has acknowledged).

Navigating Windows with your fingers and a controller is still frustratingly inconsistent. (Steam’s Big Picture mode generally works great; Epic’s and especially Xbox’s apps, less so.) Sleep mode doesn’t always stay asleep. Whether a game works smoothly from the jump isn’t constant; sometimes the UI may not scale properly, other times you may have to spend minutes fiddling with graphics settings and key bindings. These are issues with any gaming PC, but they’re more annoying to deal with on a small screen with no mouse handy.

Then there’s the bloat: You don’t need printer drivers, Copilot or Office 365 ads on your gaming handheld. Nobody will confuse a Steam Deck with a Switch, but SteamOS is much easier to just pick up and use — even if it is more closed-off as a result.

The Ally X’s battery life doesn’t always match the Steam Deck either, but it’s much closer than the first Ally ever was. You can expect somewhere around 2-2.5 hours with heavier fare, but well beyond that with less demanding stuff. The giant 80Wh battery does make the chassis slightly heavier than its predecessor, but its more pronounced grips, tighter joysticks, meatier triggers and slightly taller face buttons make it just that extra bit comfier than before. It’ll still fit best in bigger hands, but it’s about a half-inch thinner than Valve’s machine. The overheating issues that plagued the prior model’s microSD card reader should be fixed, too, and the company has at least pledged to improve its RMA process after a raft of complaints.

Ultimately, whether the ROG Ally X is right for you comes down to your tolerance for software jank. If you’re willing to brave some UX sloppiness in order to play high-end games from any client, anywhere you want, it should be worth the price premium.

Display: 5.5-inch OLED, 1080p resolution, 500 nits brightness, 60Hz | Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 | RAM: 8GB LPDDR4x | Storage: 128GB UFS 3.1 | Battery: 5,000mAh | Dimensions: 7.84 x 3.09 x 0.61 inches | Weight: 0.62 pounds | Wireless: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1 | OS: Android 13

The Retroid Pocket 5 is the handheld to get if you mainly want to emulate older consoles. It’s an Android-based device that’s far less powerful than portable PCs like Steam Deck or ROG Ally X, so it can only run PC, PS5 and Xbox games via streaming. But if you want something more compact and are willing to go through the many, many rigors of getting emulators to actually work, it’s an excellent value at $219.

The Pocket 5 runs on a Snapdragon 865 chip (the same one used by flagship phones from 2020) and 8GB of RAM, plus it has a built-in fan you can set to three different modes to gain a little extra performance. This gives it enough power to play most games from the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube, two popular retro consoles that can be tough for mobile handhelds to emulate. With some setup, we were able to play relatively demanding PS2 fare like Gran Turismo 4, ESPN NFL 2K5, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Midnight Club 3 at full speed and 1.5x to 2.5x their native resolution. GameCube games like Super Mario Sunshine, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and F-Zero GX, meanwhile, were rock solid at a 2x or 3x upscale. All of that is fantastic for the money.

Just about everything we tested from consoles below the PS2 and GameCube on the performance totem pole — PSP, Dreamcast, PS1, N64, etc. — ran flawlessly at a 3-5x upscale (which maxes out the display’s resolution). Most Wii and 3DS games we tested were smooth at 720p to 1080p as well, though translating the Wii remote to a handheld is often cumbersome, and the 5.5-inch panel is a bit cramped for viewing two DS screens. You can get some Switch games to work, too, but we discourage that when the Switch is still readily available to buy today. As for modern games, Xbox cloud streaming ran about as well as it does on any other device, while native Android apps like Diablo Immortal, Call of Duty Mobile and Asphalt Legends Unite gave us zero issues at max settings.

Let’s be clear: If you’re new to emulation, you need to go into a device like this expecting to tinker. Even after the laborious process of securing ROM files, downloading the best versions of certain emulators, mapping different control schemes for each console and navigating the menu hell that is RetroArch, some games just won’t work right. 

The Pocket 5 isn’t immune to this. We had to install a third-party GPU driver to avoid visual glitches in games like New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Mario Superstar Baseball. Gran Turismo 4 required us to tweak the display crop to hide overscan-related artifacts. The most popular Sega Saturn emulator for Android is a mess, so we had to point games for that system to a specific RetroArch core (at which point they all ran great). You will have to fiddle with resolution, rendering and active cooling settings to get many games going at their best — and even then, some tricky ones like Star Wars Rogue Squadron II will suffer from debilitating slowdowns. It’s all terribly tedious. But you’d do it because you truly love old games and don’t mind putting in work to enjoy them comfortably, at a decent price.

We wouldn’t call the Pocket 5’s plastic frame “premium,” but it’s clearly sturdier and more substantial than most emulation handhelds from little-known Chinese companies. The 1080p OLED display is the highlight: It makes everything look more vibrant, from the deep blue ocean of The Wind Waker to the green vegetation in Stardew Valley, and it’s sufficiently sharp and bright. There are textured, modestly-sized grips around the back that give your middle fingers a natural place to rest. The face buttons are smooth to press, with a comfortable level of travel. The d-pad is firm and precise enough for us to play Tetris DX without whining. The analog triggers are conveniently wide and flared, while the clicky bumpers are easy to distinguish. The speakers, while not incredibly full-sounding, can get surprisingly loud.

Our main complaint is with the joystick layout, which situates the left stick underneath the d-pad. This is fine on a PS5 controller, but here it can make playing more modern games a (literal) pain, as it invites you to leave your left hand dangling partway off the device. That said, the sticks themselves are neither too loose nor too tight, and they should avoid drifting issues over time thanks to their magnetic Hall effect sensors.

Battery life can vary from three-ish hours with demanding Android games to more than 10 hours when emulating older 8- and 16-bit consoles. That’s solid. The active cooling system keeps the device from ever feeling too hot, though its highest setting is pretty noisy; you wouldn’t want to use it around a sleeping partner. It’s also worth noting that the design won’t actually fit in most pockets, as its name implies, but it certainly won’t hog space in a bag or purse.

Display: 6-inch IPS, 1080p resolution, 60Hz | Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 | RAM: 8GB, 12GB or 16GB LPDDR5x | Storage: 128GB, 256GB or 512GB UFS 4.0 | Battery: 8,000mAh | Dimensions: 8.86 x 3.86 x 0.67 inches | Weight: 0.93 pounds | Wireless: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3 | OS: Android 13

If you have more cash to burn on an emulation-focused machine, the AYN Odin 2 is the absolute best retro gaming handheld you can buy right now. This Android device can play everything the Retroid Pocket 5 can, just smoother and more reliably. That’s mainly due to its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, which is the same chip used by flagship phones from 2023.

The Odin 2 starts at $299 for 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which is expensive when the entry-level Steam Deck can run PC games natively for just $100 more. Still, among more compact mobile handhelds, there isn’t much else that runs this well at this price. It played all PS2 and GameCube games we tested at two to three times their native resolution, while systems like the PS1, N64 and Dreamcast had no problems at a 3-5x upscale. Most 3DS and Wii games had little to no slowdowns at 2-3x, either. It’s better than most with the Sega Saturn, and it can play a wider range of Switch games than the Pocket 5 (though you should just buy a Switch if that’s a major concern). More challenging systems will still require some settings tweaks, but the superior chip means you won’t need to tinker on a game-by-game basis as extensively as you would with lower-cost devices.

It’s not just raw performance, though: The Odin 2 is also a refined piece of hardware. It’s larger than the Pocket 5, but it’s still much less chunky than a portable PC and the curved grips on its back are inviting to hold. The d-pad, face buttons, analog triggers and Hall effect joysticks all feel great; the latter are also offset, which makes the whole thing comfier than the Pocket 5 for streaming recent console and PC games. Other touches like a fingerprint scanner, a dedicated return button, a micro-HDMI out port, two customizable back buttons and clear front-facing speakers are all nice perks.

The 6-inch 1080p touchscreen isn’t as color-rich as the Pocket 5’s OLED panel, but it’s still bright and well-sized for modern games. Battery life is superb: We got more than eight hours of juice emulating systems like the PS2, but that jumped over 20 hours with lighter tasks. The device supports 65W fast charging as well. Cloud streaming and native Android games work as they should, and since the whole thing runs on a lightly modded version of Android, its stock interface should feel familiar to most.

AYN has launched a few different variants of the Odin 2 since our last update, including the PS Vita-esque Odin 2 Mini and the larger, OLED-sporting Odin 2 Portal. These run on the same chipset, so they should be just as powerful. We’d expect both to be more niche, however: The Retroid Pocket 5 gets you most of the way to the Mini for $120 less, while the Odin 2 Portal isn’t far from the Steam Deck’s size but way less versatile on the whole. The base Odin 2 should cast the widest net between the three.

Display: 3.5-inch LCD, 1,600 x 1,440 resolution, VRR 30Hz-62Hz | Chipset: Altera Cyclone V FPGA, Altera Cyclone 10 FPGA | RAM: 3.4MB BRAM, 2x 16MB 16-bit cellular RAM, 64MB 16-bit SDRAM, 256KB 16-bit asynchronous SRAM | Battery: 4,300mAh | Dimensions: 5.86 x 3.46 x 0.86 inches | Weight: 0.61 pounds | OS: Analogue OS

The Analogue Pocket is the ultimate Game Boy. Its vertical design is built like a modernized, premium version of Nintendo’s classic handheld, and it can even work with accessories like the Game Boy Camera. Compared to the original, though, the Pocket adds two extra face buttons, a pair of rear triggers, a microSD slot, a USB-C port and a rechargeable battery rated for six to 10 hours of playtime. Most significantly, it has a gorgeous 3.5-inch display that’s both backlit and incredibly sharp (615 ppi) but can be set to look like an old Game Boy panel with different filter modes. The device can also output to a TV with an optional dock.

Unlike the retro handhelds mentioned above, the Pocket is designed to play actual cartridges, not just ROM files. It works with Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games through its cartridge slot, while games from the Sega Game Gear, TurboGrafx-16, Neo Geo Pocket and Atari Lynx are playable through optional adapters.

Like past Analogue devices, the Pocket uses field-programmable gate array (FPGA) motherboards to mimic its target systems on a hardware level. In practice, this means the Pocket’s “emulation” of older titles is near-perfect, with a level of responsiveness and visual faithfulness that software-based emulation can’t match. Pop in a Game Boy or GBA cartridge and you can essentially play it as intended. That said, thanks to a big post-launch update and an active user community, the Pocket can also run ROMs off a microSD card and thus play systems like the SNES and Sega Genesis.

The Pocket isn’t cheap at $220, and its shoulder buttons aren’t as crisp to press as the excellent d-pad or face buttons. Still, if you have a collection of Game Boy, Game Gear or GBA games, the Pocket is the most elegant way to play them, and it’s only become more versatile over time. Its biggest flaw is that it can be prone to .

The Playdate, from app developer and Untitled Goose Game publisher Panic, is a tiny yellow box with a 2.7-inch monochrome display, two face buttons, a d-pad and a physical crank built into its side. We called it a “cross between a Game Boy and a business card” in our review, and it is indeed incredibly small at roughly three inches tall and 0.18 pounds. It has a dedicated game library that largely consists of oddball indies, most of which focus on one or two core ideas instead of trying to stuff in as many mechanics as possible. A couple dozen of those games are bundled with the device, while others are available via a built-in store or sideloading from shops like Itch.io. The hardware is generally well-built, and its battery life is decent at six to eight hours per charge.

At $199, it’s hard to call the Playdate a great value when it’s only designed to play a selection of niche games. Its display isn’t backlit, either. But in a sea of devices that try to be everything for everyone, the Playdate is admirably focused and low-key. If you’re into smaller-scale fare and have some money to play with, it’ll be a fun toy.

The Miyoo Mini Plus is a highly affordable handheld with a well-built, Game Boy-style form factor that fits nicely with older games. Its 3.5-inch display really pops for something in the $60 to $80 range, its battery lasts as long as it needs to and it can emulate consoles up to the original PlayStation without much issue. It runs Linux, so its software is extensively customizable, though it can require some tinkering to get it working optimally. Since it’s from a smaller Chinese firm and isn’t available at major retailers, however, it can be difficult to actually buy.