Begun the DS/3DS Clone War has

[Pemalite]

Zippy6 said:

HoloDust said:

I guess I would probably use laptop if I traveled and needed to game, but this is more like 15-20 minute bursts in taxi, breaks and that kind of things - for which I find small clamshell handheld perfect fit. As I said, one that can also can run lighter PC games from Steam, along with pretty much everything up to and including Switch, is for me just a perfect fit.

If I was in actual market for portables, I would go with GPD Win 5 - I actually like detachable battery design, so you can just swap out another one. OneXPlayer is making 395+ based handheld as well, with detachable liquid cooling no less, which can actually run at up to full 120W...on a battery of 85W, which is pointless, but hey, they're doing it anyway. AYANEO is still to reveal its 395+ based handheld.

I think I'll wait for AMD to make a proper handheld chip that's a good jump over the Z1E. The 395+ is very impressive but not something I want in a handheld. If you are going to use it docked regularly as well and want a decently powered desktop experience I guess it's a good fit. It's performance is still pretty good at 28w, It's a 36% jump over the Win4 8840u in 3dmark with both running at 28w. But I imagine it drops off very hard the lower you go and could end up in a situation like what happens to the Z1E when you drop it to 15w and lower, where efficiency drops off a cliff and steam deck can start outperforming it. Also I'm not in the market for a $1.5k+ device lol.

Personally I think I'm in for a long wait before something comes along that makes me want to upgrade my Z1E ROG Ally.

Yeah. I think that's half the issue.
The 395+ is a fine chip, but it's power hungry, expensive and large.

...And like the Z1 and Z2... They are still based on RDNA 2/3 and not the much more potent RDNA4 with FSR4.

We have already seen some impressive performance gains by "forcing" FSR4 on the Steamdeck, which lets it compete with the Switch 2, but it's definitely the less efficient and quality route.
Hopefully next year AMD upgrades the Graphics to something more modern.

I hate A.I upscaling, but in a handheld with the smaller display and a battery, it definitely makes more sense.