Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and more: all the news about the handheld PC gaming revolution – The Verge

The Lenovo Legion Go S is RAMageddon’s latest victim

2026-04-20T19:17:42-04:00

You can still find the Asus Xbox Ally X and the MSI Claw 8 AI Plus for $999 and $1,049 respectively, but Lenovo's Legion Go S has seemingly given up the fight. The best version of Lenovo's 8-inch handheld now costs nearly double what it did at launch - originally $829.99 last summer, the SteamOS version with Z1 Extreme chip now costs a staggering $1,579.99 at Best Buy.

That's an even bigger price hike than with Lenovo's flagship Legion Go 2, which saw up to a $650 price hike early this month.

Not every Legion Go S model costs nearly double what it did before, but none are anywhere near what they originally cost. The Windows Z1 Extreme mo …

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Lenovo Legion Go 2 suddenly costs $650 more as RAMageddon lays waste to gaming hardware

2026-04-03T16:36:15-04:00

The Legion Go 2’s mouse mode, unique among Windows handhelds. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Remember when we thought the Legion Go 2 was expensive at $1,099 and up? Those were the days - Best Buy is now listing Lenovo's handheld for $1,499 with a Ryzen Z2 or $1,999 with a Z2 Extreme. The latter originally cost $1,349, so that's a $650 jump in just six months.

And yes, that means Lenovo's flagship may now cost twice as much as a $999 Microsoft/Asus Xbox Ally X with the same AMD chip, as much as a far more powerful GPD Win 5 with AMD Strix Halo cost last year. But the way things are going, it's probably only a matter of time till Microsoft hikes its handheld Xbox price too. (For now, Asus rep Anthony Spence tells me there's "no pric …

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Valve’s huge SteamOS 3.8 update adds long-awaited features — and supports Steam Machine

2026-03-19T21:16:18-04:00

Valve has just released SteamOS 3.8.0 in preview, and it's a doozy.

Not only is it the first release to support the upcoming Steam Machine living room gaming PC, it comes with long-awaited features for Valve's handhelds and more support for other companies' handhelds than we've seen to date - including Microsoft and Asus' Xbox Ally series, the Lenovo Legion Go 2, the OneXPlayer X1, and additional support for MSI, GPD, Anbernic, OrangePi, and Zotac.

The one that excites me most: Valve is adding genuine hibernation and "memory power down" modes to the Steam Deck - though just the LCD model to start - which should help extend battery life w …

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Qualcomm won’t be announcing Windows gaming handhelds at GDC after all

2026-02-26T16:28:06-05:00

In January, Qualcomm hinted to The Verge that it might finally bring its powerful Arm-based Snapdragon processors to Windows gaming handhelds at the 2026 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco - just in time to challenge Nvidia's own first Arm gaming CPU and Intel's first dedicated handheld gaming chips.

But plans have shifted, Qualcomm now tells me. It won't announce any updates to its Snapdragon G Series gaming chips there, nor offer the recently announced updates to the Snapdragon X line for journalists to try or benchmark.

"Snapdragon X Series and Snapdragon G Series processors are pushing the PC, desktop, and handheld gaming dev …

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Valve’s Steam Deck OLED will be ‘intermittently’ out of stock because of the RAM crisis

2026-02-16T22:13:04-05:00

Valve has updated the Steam Deck website to say that the Steam Deck OLED may be out of stock "intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages." The PC gaming handheld has been out of stock in the US and other parts of the world for a few days, and thanks to this update, we now know why.

The update comes shortly after Valve delayed the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller from a planned shipping window of early 2026 because of the memory and storage crunch. "We have work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates that we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around bot …

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The two things AMD subtly revealed at CES that actually excite me

2026-01-16T18:56:44-05:00

As we predicted, the world's biggest consumer electronics show was a bit of a bust for gamers this year! CES 2026 brought us several neat gamepads, but barely any handhelds and no new desktop GPUs - not from Nvidia, not from Intel, and not from AMD.

But if you dig deep, AMD said two things at this year's show that are worthy of attention. Did you catch that the company's about to make socketed mobile chips again? Or that its answer to Intel is to lower the price of its monster Strix Halo silicon?

Publicly, AMD barely acknowledged consumers at the Consumer Electronics Show. "AMD failed us," decried Gamers Nexus, pointing out that the compa …

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Intel is planning a custom Panther Lake CPU for handheld PCs

2026-01-07T05:58:28-05:00

Intel announced yesterday that it's developing an entire "handheld gaming platform" powered by its new Panther Lake chips and joining an increasingly competitive field. Qualcomm is hinting about potential Windows gaming handhelds showing up at the Game Developers Conference in March, and AMD's new Strix Halo chips could lead to more powerful handhelds.

According to IGN and TechCrunch, sources say Intel is going to compete by developing a custom Intel Core G3 "variant or variants" just for handhelds that could outperform the Arc B390 GPU on the chips it just announced. IGN reports that by using the new 18A process, Intel can cut different di …

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Lenovo’s second SteamOS handheld is the Legion Go 2

2026-01-08T04:32:01-05:00

The Legion Go 2 with SteamOS. | Image: Lenovo

One year ago, Lenovo became the first company besides Valve to announce a handheld with SteamOS instead of Windows. The result was the Legion Go S with SteamOS; no Steam Deck killer due to price and battery life, but a big step forward in performance and pick-up-and-play portability.

Now, Lenovo's doing it again - it's bringing SteamOS to the Legion Go 2, its flagship handheld with detachable Nintendo Switch-like controllers and the most advanced screen in a handheld yet. Lenovo plans to begin selling a SteamOS version in June starting at $1,199, the company just announced at CES 2026 in Las Vegas. Specs are otherwise the same.

Yes, that i …

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AMD heard you like powerful gaming portables — so here are new Strix Halo chips

2026-01-05T22:37:52-05:00

The GPD Win 5.

AMD's Strix Halo, aka "Ryzen AI Max," is a hugely expensive chip that includes some of the most powerful integrated graphics ever made. Though AMD initially marketed it more to AI workloads with its tremendous complement of up to 128GB of RAM, it's also inspired some unprecedented gaming designs - by far the most powerful handheld, the Framework Desktop, and this monster Asus tablet.

But all those machines cost around $2,000, even before today's global RAM shortages. Maybe that'll change now that AMD's announcing two lower-end Ryzen AI Max Plus parts with full-fat graphics but fewer CPU cores, specifically aimed at gaming devices.

They sti …

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What happened to Acer’s giant Nitro Blaze 11 gaming handheld?

2026-01-05T18:22:21-05:00

I held this beast a year ago, and we haven’t heard a peep from Acer since.

Acer made a big splash at CES 2025 with the announcement of its surfboard-sized Nitro Blaze 11 gaming handheld, but its targeted second-quarter release came and went long ago. There's been no word of the chunky 11-inch Blaze or its smaller siblings. I was initially hyped enough to try such an oversized handheld that I turned Asus' gaming tablet into one.

So when I met with Acer reps to go over its new offerings for CES 2026, I asked about this absence.

Lisa Emard of Acer America Corporation told The Verge, "When we announced those products it was just ahead of the tariffs situation. We wound up just focusing on our core products, on laptop …

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