Preface: my history of buying Windows handhelds The first Windows handheld I bought was probably back in 2015 — also the industry’s first Windows handheld, the first-generation GPD Win. I backed it on Indiegogo. Honestly, I knew it was made by a company in Shenzhen, China, but I had no idea it would later go on sale in the domestic market. I paid in converted USD, and the shipping date was half a year out. What happened next a lot of people probably know already: GPD brought the machine into mainland China, put it up for preorder on JD.com, created a Discord group, and kicked off all kinds of shameless marketing. I was in the first batch of people to join the Discord group, and I even added the two founders on Discord — one was “Wangcai,” the other “Lao Zhu.” I told them I was an Indiegogo backer but physically in mainland China, so could they just ship domestically. Lao Zhu said no problem, and sent it by SF Express. The machine arrived quickly and I wrote a short review. I was actually fairly satisfied with it — mainly because it was small and had everything you’d expect. There were some QC issues, but nothing major. What dissatisfied me most was the screen’s severe color shift, basically no calibration, and the low resolution — a lot of Galgame couldn’t show the full picture. Later I backed the first-generation GPD Pocket. That product’s build quality was far better than the Win’s: all-metal body, genuinely nice to use as a tiny computer. But I have to say, for performance’s sake GPD set very aggressive power limits on many of its products, which made battery life pretty poor. After that I went on to buy GPD Pocket 2 MAX, Chuwi minibook, GPD Pocket 3, and recently even picked up an Ayaneo Air Plus at a low price… So I’ve used a fair number of portable Windows devices, and they always had something unsatisfying. Even with the GPD Win, I never actually finished a single game on it — too hot, battery life too bad, and too much fiddling required. Many times I’d spend a whole day getting one game to run, and by the time it worked I’d lost interest in playing. There was a time I thought Windows handhelds — or X86 handhelds in general — would just always be like this. Then I met the Steam Deck, and it got me to finish several AAA titles, even got me willing to spend a decent chunk of money buying games on Steam. It also cemented one belief and opinion of mine: The Steam Deck is currently the only X86 handheld worth buying.

Everyone knows the “handheld market” is hot right now. On top of the old crop of “open-source handhelds,” we’re drowning in “high-performance handhelds.” Plenty of people are chomping at the bit for these things, but most of them are “playing with the machine, not the games”—buying one after another, testing for a bit, then stopping cold. Some call this “electronic impotence.” I don’t buy it. I just think most of today’s “handhelds” don’t deserve the name. They’re more like a “giant desktop PC you can cradle in both hands.” Whether it’s Aya or GPD, each new machine is bigger than the last, and heavy too. I basically have no desire to take them out anymore—you need a dedicated shoulder bag just to carry one. And that’s not even the main issue. The most awkward part is that battery life on these handhelds tops out at two hours. Good luck getting enough playtime out of one on a trip. Aya even showed off a concept machine called the Next 2 that ditches the battery entirely and has you play plugged in. Which is basically an admission that this thing isn’t a “portable handheld” anymore—it’s just a mini desktop you can hold in your hands. If that’s the case, why not just use the TV at home?

As someone who loves portable devices, I was actually pretty interested in the Steam Deck. But earlier this year, the Steam Deck was terrifyingly expensive and basically impossible to buy. The few Chinese handheld makers that bothered to show up were all just drawing pies in the sky. Then Maxzhou, Brother Zhou, released a Windows handheld: the Anbernic Win600. Not only was it in stock, it was the cheapest thing from a legitimate manufacturer on the market… Most importantly, before launch they advertised it as: made in cooperation with Valve, supports Steam OS, and they even showed some demo videos. So I got carried away. Couldn’t afford the expensive one, bought the cheap one.

For the whole of last year my eroge machine was the Chuwi Minibook. It’s got plenty of small problems, but I thought it was fine — good enough for playing games. Then at the start of this year I lost my laptop bag, and the Chuwi Minibook went with it, so I started thinking about getting a new machine. My requirements were pretty clear by then: A good screen. The Chuwi Minibook uses PWM dimming, which is a pain over long sessions. Good battery life. A galgame machine doesn’t need much power, but the battery has to be biiiig. Enough cooling. The Chuwi Minibook got scorching hot when I ran it, and the fan sounded like a plane taking off. Expandable storage, at least NVMe. 16GB of RAM. I like leaving a ton of stuff open in the background. USB-C for docks and charging. After shopping around, the only thing that fit was the GPD P2 MAX, so I grabbed one on Taobao.

The ODROID-GO Advance is the follow-up to that ODROID-GO handheld. Better performance, plus a stick and shoulder buttons. From what I gathered reading various foreign reviews, the performance is supposedly monstrous and it has a huge future ahead of it… So I bought one. It actually arrived a while ago; I just never had time to put it together, and only recently dug it out and got to work. Recording it here.

I’ve been tinkering with open-source handhelds for a long time. The last one was probably the Retro Game 97 — I reflashed its firmware several times and even swapped the conductive pads. It worked well enough, but I always felt it wasn’t perfect and still had a lot of problems. So a while back I was browsing the forums and found that a successor to the Retro Game 97, the Retro Game 350, had been released. The price seemed acceptable, so I bought one to check it out.

I bought a Retro Game handheld a while back and it felt pretty good, but something was always missing. Even after updating to the foreign custom firmware, plenty of rough edges remained — short standby time, an ugly look, that sort of thing. The guy behind that firmware has released a new build, possibly the true final version this time. Flashed it and it’s actually decent. Also took the chance to dress the thing up a bit, and I’m liking it more and more.

The Odroid Go is a handheld project built around a dev board that you assemble yourself. In theory it’s open source, and you could put one together entirely by hand. Of course, someone also sells you a finished kit, and I happened to catch it on sale, so I ordered one.

I had a PSP 3000 lying around, and I did play some visual novels on it back in the day. A few days ago I dug it out and found the battery swollen, the paint flaking off, and the thing generally dead. Still, I’m attached to it, so let’s save it. I bought some parts on Taobao — pretty cheap, too — and figured I’d just refurbish it.

The Nintendo Switch finally arrived before my birthday. Honestly, after buying a 2DS I already felt like the Switch was inevitable, and after thinking it over I went ahead and bought one. I bought it locally in Zhengzhou, picked it up in person to avoid unnecessary hassle. When I checked it over at pickup, it turned out the three serial numbers all matched, so it should be fine. I picked up Breath of the Wild and Splatoon 2, and I’m currently playing Breath of the Wild. Most of the time I use it as a handheld. I haven’t run into any of those weird problems people complain about online, so I’m pretty happy with it.