DS/3DS is only part of equation. Sure, that's their primary appeal, if you don't care for that there are other solutions - but, for me at least, it's that, plus convenience of clamshell design. I'm in situation where I don't get to play much at home and only in brief bursts during the whole day, so I need device that will cover a lot of things, PC games included (those things run lot of lighter Steam games as well, especially given that I have crapload of 2D indie games in my backlog).

If I'm honest, AYANEO Flip DS is actually what would serve me the best, being actual dual screen clamshell PC, but that's US$1140  device and that's way too rich for what I need it for.

I tend to carry my laptop and tablet while I travel, so those bases are covered.

Wouldn't mind getting a Rog Ally X at some point though... Which I might use to replace my laptop with... Got a USB C dock at work so I can turn it into my laptop/desktop workstation.

3DS is just hard to pass up for the dual screen gaming -and- 3D displays, it's a unique device.

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.

Phawx did great review of it, he always benchmarks at different wattages:

It's not really a 15W device - I mean, you can run it at that wattage and still have gains over Ally X, but it's sweet spot seems to be around 25-30W...unless you have battery pack(s) to replace, so you can drive it harder.

That said, yeah, it's not exactly handheld SoC - you can obviously make successful design with 395+, but it is really more of "because we can" approach, and there's, at least it seems, nothing til 2027 from AMD that will be based on RDNA5, so they figured there's market for it anyway.

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.

Unfortunately, it seems not. Gorgon Point for 2026 is still RDNA3.5, Medusa Point in 2027 is probably first with something (hopefully RDNA5) more advanced.

Hopefully, AMD at least releases official FSR4 INT8 for RDNA3/3.5

Anbernic RG DS was listed on AliExpress, supposedly by anbernic themselves. Presumably accidentally.


Main and Secondary Displays: 4-inch IPS / 640 x 480
Processor: RockChip RK3568
GPU: Mali-G52 2EE
RAM: 3GB
Storage: 32GB + microSD
Battery: 4000mAh (~6 hours)
Charging: 5V/1.6A (~3.5 hours)
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 2.4GHz/5GHz
Extras: Hall Magnetic Switch, Quick Switch Key, Six-Axis Gyroscope
Colors: Turquoise Blue / Red Black / White
Software: Android 14

About what I expected. Just the chip I didn't know what they'd use. I think it was a bit unrealistic to expect a better chip in a sub $100 dual screen device. It will run Drastic but MelonDS maybe not.

https://retrohandhelds.gg/surprise-anbernic-rg-ds-shows-up-early-on-aliexpress/

Yeah. That ARM SoC is hot garbage... Built on the 22nm node and using ARM A55 cores... It will likely struggle with 3DS titles.

It's unfortunate.

By then we will be on UDNA/RDNA5...

But RDNA4 is a huge leap, especially once you start talking FSR4 and RT.

@Zippy6

Yeah, I was not sure about SoC, but I thought maybe they'll manage to cram T618 inside, since they used it before in lot of their stuff, tough they are all above $100...but, and there's but:

- AYANEO pretty much surprised everyone with AYANEO Pocket Air Mini - that thing has SoC that is more powerful than T618 (along with 1280x960 60Hz screen, 2+32GB, Hall Effect sticks+triggers), and it's $70 currently on Indiegogo (it will be $90).

So I was hoping that T618 will go inside, given that screens in Anbernic DS are just 640x480, which might've made up for additional screen not to push it above $100.

Now, both T618 and MediaTek G90T will not run 3DS flawlessly, but this Rockchip RK3568, given that's just slightly refreshed RK3566, will probably run only lighter 3DS games.

- list of handhelds with RK3566, from low to high price (3DS is red, not suited much for it):

Not terribly disappointing really, not sure if anyone was really expecting 3DS on it anyway, it was more of a "will they surprise?" situation.