Latest Onexplayer X1 Air Review

Proving once again the tablet-as-a-handheld device doesn't work, the X1 Air suffers from a level of jank that is far from endearing despite impressive performance from the Intel chip and a lovely screen.

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This is a gaming tablet that makes itself hard to love, and yet there are definitely things I like about OneXPlayer's latest Intel-based gaming tablet. Lunar Lake in tablet form does very, very well, and its Arc 140V GPU is seriously impressive when it comes to gaming performance. And then there's that gorgeous, bright 11-inch display.

But it's also flaky as all hell with strange bugs and, despite the whole reason for its existence being that it's supposedly a versatile 3-in-1 device, it resolutely fails to convince in pretty much any of those formats.

Like the older, Meteor Lake-powered OneXPlayer X1, this is a device designed to operate as a standard (although very thick) PC tablet, with a laptop-esque form thanks to its magnetically attaching keyboard and touchpad, and as a handheld gaming PC with a pair of clip-on controllers. And, inevitably, that desire for flexibility hobbles each option in different ways.

I was genuinely hoping that things would be different this time around, but it feels like OneXPlayer has not learned the lessons from the original device and is determined to make the same mistakes. Though maybe that quest for versatility means avoiding those mistakes is just not possible. Either way, I don't love it.

2x USB4, 1x USB-A 3.2, 1x 3.5 mm audio, 1x TF 4.0 slot, 1x Mini SSD slot

✅ You really need a powerful tablet and have a high tolerance for jank: The Lunar Lake chip inside the X1 Air is a great mobile processor, and the screen is glorious, but the experience of the device is lacking and requires a lot of effort on the part of the user.

❌ You DON'T have a high tolerance for jank: There are numerous inconsistencies with the experience of using the X1 Air, from strange boot and charging issues, to missing gyro support, and flaky software updates.

The OneXPlayer X1 Air is probably at its best when used as an 11-inch laptop with its attached keyboard. Though the form factor inevitably makes it slightly less useful than an actual 11-inch laptop would be. As ever with such things—think Microsoft's Surface tablets—the issue is the fact

Source: PC Gamer