Since this blog is about me writing about things I am up to or interested in, I keep coming back to the phenomenon of handheld PCs. Last year was a brutal time for handheld enthusiasts, and I severely over-indulged. In 2025 I had in my possession the OG Steam Deck OLED, the Legion Go S (SteamOS edition), an OG Rog Ally, Legion Go 1, and a Rog Ally X which I gave to my wife. I subsequently sold the OG Rog Ally and Legion Go 1 (which both went to good homes with sensible people still using the two devices), to make room for an MSI Claw 8 AI+, Legion Go 2, Xbox Rog Ally regular edition and then to top it off an Xbox Rog Ally X. I tried to pawn one off on to my son but he has associated obsession with handheld PC gaming as a Gen X dad thing and would have none of it; real PC Master Race gamers use laptops, keyboard and mice, and I have fallen far from the PC Master Race tree, apparently....so my son remains pure. Also, Gen Alpha/Z are super into retro analog gaming (not modern retro handelds, but the actual deal) so he will still drag around an old GameBoy Advance he found as well as his original Nintendo 3DS.
Take note that this means that by January 2026 I had 6 handheld gaming PCs in my possession. That is 5 more than any sane enthusiast probably needs to have. We won't talk about retro handheld consoles, which are a different and equally vexing bag of cats.
Anyway, cut to the rest of 2026, and I have sort of juggled between these handhelds, partially regretting the excessive spend, while also appreciating that I have gotten to know and understand these devices far better than I would have without owning and using them. I also was happy that I did buy at least the Legion Go 2 when it came out at the original MSRP of $1349 because that sucker shot up to $1999 MSRP just a few months later. It's a great handheld but not $2,000 great.
Now, here we are approaching the new holiday season and there is a new generation of next-gen machines popping up: the Intel G3 powered MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, the Acer Atlus Predator 8, and the somewhat less exciting last-gen powered X20 edition of the Asus Rog Ally X. The last one is an easy "no" as I already have the cheaper and older version, and the new one really only adds a slightly larger OLED screen and some cosmetic shine. If I could sell off my old one for about what I paid for it ($999) then I might consider getting the upgrade for the $300 difference.....but naw, not really; I have since acquired my first OneXPlayer and for various reasons that has hammered home to me that anything with less than an 8 inch screen ain't worth it.
For 2026 I have only added one new serious handheld PC: The OneXPlayer 2 Air, which I got on a decent sale price. This is my first OneXPlayer, which has historically been the place you can see prestige, overpriced handheld consoles and not a competitor for the larger market until quite recently. With the shift in the market for big players such as Asus, Acer, Lenovo and MSI leaning to the more expensive, the OneXPlayer prices have remained relatively unchanged, and sometimes are even cheaper; as a result some of their devices are now looking competitive, relatively, to the bigger competition.
The OneXPlayer 2 Air is a 3 in 1 handheld, a devices that functions like a 10.95 inch screen PC tablet, to which you can attach a keyboard to turn it into a laptop-like experience (sort of, it does not, in fact, work well on your lap and still benefits from a flat surface), or you can attach joycon-like side controllers to holding brackets on the side and hold the thing like a massive-screened handheld. This actually works, surprisingly well, despite being the heaviest handheld form factor I have.
The OneXPlayer 2 Air basically functions with the same specs as the MSI Claw 8 AI+, which runs on Intel Core 7 and Arc integrated graphic processor chips, but the form factor of it working as a tablet that can convert to a laptop and handheld hybrid experience makes the versatility stand out, and the nearly 11 inch screen is actually what made me realize that the screen size really matters.
Now I'm ordering an MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, which is a sign of my appreciation both for the MSI Claw design (I have used my other MSI Claw more than any of the handhelds so far), and also to the Intel chips...I am very interested to see how much of a difference in performance the new G3 chips provide, so I will talk about that one soon enough once it arrives.
This does put me in a quandry, though. I don't need all these handhelds, and the current crop are a bit too expensive to just hand off or sell for cheap. I may look back to ebay, or maybe I will gift them out to friends and relatives; I think I have at least one niece who would apprciate the Legion Go 2, for example. Either way....if I can narrow down my collection to just the two MSI Claws and the OneXPlayer I think I can call it a year for 2026 and hope that I get through this expensive hobby of mine next year, when I suspect the price of devices will be driven even higher by the post-AI scarcity of memory chips and processors.
