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.