Lupus
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2006
- Messages
- 88,924
- Reaction score
- 59,639
So I bought this yesterday as I've been looking for a handheld solution to play games anywhere.
First impressions, the build is really good, nice feeling in the hands, buttons a little off compared to a Xbox controller but otherwise fine. Windows 11 is not designed for this, on initial setup it was difficult to navigate the setup with the touch screen.
The joystick on the right becomes the mouse only once everything is up and running, keyboard is OSD and you need to bring it up by clicking the one button on the back and up on the dpad. So finicky, installing steam and Epic took longer cause of this.
Once all of that is installed it's on to gaming, there are 3 modes you can set it to 10w, 15w and 25w on battery when on charge it goes to Turbo 45w mode.
So I tested out 3 games, 1 that gets 140fps on my 3070ti with Ryzen 5600 at high settings no ray trace, one that is really old and simple and the other is normally ram and cpu intense.
1st game Mechwarrior 5 - mid settings 1080p, at 10w unplayable hitting 15 to 20fps, 15w a bit better at 20fps more consistent, 25w 25 to 30fps so for a non twitch shooter this is fine, battery lasts just under 2 hours. 45w comparable to game running on Xbox Series S 40fps roughly. Screen is really nice and controls are natural for an Xbox player.
2nd game Dogfight 1942 old basic game, 10w to 15w ran at 30fps not even a sweat, 25 to 45w was like being on my desktop as I think it's capped and the game ran well, on battery just over 2 hours.
Civ 6, 10w,15w,25w all pretty much run as it's more cpu and ram vs gpu and battery was 2.5 hours on 25w. On 10 and 15w it did take a little longer on turns though. 45w it's perfectly fine.
I will be running more games through it in time
.
So overall, input is finicky at first, as stated windows 11 is not designed around this philosophy maybe the old 8 design would've worked better.
It comes with a big stonking charge 65w nice for my phone as well. It will charge with other quick chargers but it won't switch to turbo mode and if under 20w you'll drain more then you charge.
Sound on such a small device is like wtf good like really. Speakers are on the front facing you. Hands don't cover them as much as I thought.
Weight is okay, can start to get a bit heavy at the 2 hour mark. Screen is good from all angles, colour is good though seems a little off when trying HDR but could've been the game.
Heat is vented up and out from the top no where hands, on full blast you can hear the fan and warm your fingers but it's not really bad.
Lacking a trackpad had me concerned as how do you play rts and such. But things out right stick plus right buttons become a 'mouse'. Just fiddle with sensitivity as it can be out of whack.
I'll also look at getting a dock of sorts at a later date to see it on a bigger screen with keyboard and mouse. As this bring a gaming device on the go it isn't built for some pc games.
There are also some compromises like battery life really isn't great, I mean steam deck is getting 4 maybe 6 hours, this at most I'm getting is 2.5, Asus has said they are looking at that and the latest firmware was supposed to fix some of that, but instead it slowed the cpu down on some.
Am I happy I got this over the steam deck, yeah more storage, cpu/gpu combo are better as well. I'm a gamer and this type of tech has been a dream.
The psp, the psvita all came close but this, this is like what I dreamt of.
First impressions, the build is really good, nice feeling in the hands, buttons a little off compared to a Xbox controller but otherwise fine. Windows 11 is not designed for this, on initial setup it was difficult to navigate the setup with the touch screen.
The joystick on the right becomes the mouse only once everything is up and running, keyboard is OSD and you need to bring it up by clicking the one button on the back and up on the dpad. So finicky, installing steam and Epic took longer cause of this.
Once all of that is installed it's on to gaming, there are 3 modes you can set it to 10w, 15w and 25w on battery when on charge it goes to Turbo 45w mode.
So I tested out 3 games, 1 that gets 140fps on my 3070ti with Ryzen 5600 at high settings no ray trace, one that is really old and simple and the other is normally ram and cpu intense.
1st game Mechwarrior 5 - mid settings 1080p, at 10w unplayable hitting 15 to 20fps, 15w a bit better at 20fps more consistent, 25w 25 to 30fps so for a non twitch shooter this is fine, battery lasts just under 2 hours. 45w comparable to game running on Xbox Series S 40fps roughly. Screen is really nice and controls are natural for an Xbox player.
2nd game Dogfight 1942 old basic game, 10w to 15w ran at 30fps not even a sweat, 25 to 45w was like being on my desktop as I think it's capped and the game ran well, on battery just over 2 hours.
Civ 6, 10w,15w,25w all pretty much run as it's more cpu and ram vs gpu and battery was 2.5 hours on 25w. On 10 and 15w it did take a little longer on turns though. 45w it's perfectly fine.
I will be running more games through it in time
.So overall, input is finicky at first, as stated windows 11 is not designed around this philosophy maybe the old 8 design would've worked better.
It comes with a big stonking charge 65w nice for my phone as well
. It will charge with other quick chargers but it won't switch to turbo mode and if under 20w you'll drain more then you charge.Sound on such a small device is like wtf good like really. Speakers are on the front facing you. Hands don't cover them as much as I thought.
Weight is okay, can start to get a bit heavy at the 2 hour mark
. Screen is good from all angles, colour is good though seems a little off when trying HDR but could've been the game.Heat is vented up and out from the top no where hands, on full blast you can hear the fan and warm your fingers but it's not really bad.
Lacking a trackpad had me concerned as how do you play rts and such. But things out right stick plus right buttons become a 'mouse'. Just fiddle with sensitivity as it can be out of whack.
I'll also look at getting a dock of sorts at a later date to see it on a bigger screen with keyboard and mouse
. As this bring a gaming device on the go it isn't built for some pc games. There are also some compromises like battery life really isn't great, I mean steam deck is getting 4 maybe 6 hours, this at most I'm getting is 2.5, Asus has said they are looking at that and the latest firmware was supposed to fix some of that, but instead it slowed the cpu down on some.
Am I happy I got this over the steam deck, yeah more storage, cpu/gpu combo are better as well. I'm a gamer and this type of tech has been a dream.
The psp, the psvita all came close but this, this is like what I dreamt of.
