The One Upgrade All Handheld Gaming PCs Need

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As the handheld PC gaming wars continue to heat up, it’s starting to feel like some of the competitors don’t quite understand the market.

With MSI, Lenovo, Asus and Valve all in the handheld gaming business, we’re seeing what some of their gen-2 devices look like. Unfortunately, the second-generation handhelds seem to focus mainly on iterative changes to hardware, such as controls, battery size, and chips. All of these are important, but that’s not why the Steam Deck is still the best device on the market.

AMD gave us (most) of the chips. But until Microsoft steps up with either a complete overhaul of Windows for these devices (unlikely) or a robust, seamless recreation of the Xbox app (likely), the UI is wil continue to holdi these devices back.

The Steam Deck’s biggest strength is Steam, not the device itself. It feels like a console experience. You turn it on, and a store shows you what will work on the device.

It could be better- and I’m sure it will be. It could, for instance, do a better job of tweaking settings through a profile for a game before you launch it so it runs optimally on the device. But in general, it’s a smooth experience. That seamlessness comes with its major flaw: You have to sideload anything not on Steam, and it’s a pain.

But all of the other devices on the market feel like what they are, running a game on a Windows PC without much or any handholding when it comes to optimization. Heck, ASUS regularly publishes lengthy stories that detail the settings for specific games. It’s super helpful, but imagine if the settings were created as some sort of pre-saved profile on the system instead.

All of this reminds me of the iPhone. The iPhone isn’t the best at anything. It’s just really convenient, and, let’s face it, convenience often wins out.
The Steam Deck hasn’t entirely nailed that approach down, but it’s much closer than anything else on the market, so it’s winning.

Hopefully, Microsoft will start to talk about its solution to this problem in the coming months. After all, this is always what Microsoft wanted: Windows in your everything.

Two cents from a guy who is sort of obsessed with handhelds.