Pc Gamer Hardware Awards: The Best Gaming Handheld Of 2025

It's been a varied year for handhelds, with all three of the top models being from different manufacturers.

Check out more of the year's best tech in our PC Gamer Hardware Awards 2025 coverage.

This year has been a bit of a weird one for gaming handhelds. AMD's mighty Strix Halo chip launched at CES, yet it's too power hungry and hot to see its inclusion in anything we can actually use right now. AMD's Z Extreme range is still going strong, though, with the Z1 Extreme making for a good mid-range handheld, and the new Z2 Extreme powering the surprisingly capable Asus ROG Xbox Ally X.

The Xbox Ally X had to do an awful lot to justify the very premium price point, but smart software, a comfortable fit, and excellent performance make it a standout choice for the 1% of the gaming world.

Despite its latest range of desktop chips being a bit of a letdown, Intel managed to put out some fierce mobile chips, too. The Core Ultra 7 258V powering the MSI Claw 8 AI+ seems to be one of the standouts, giving excellent performance. However, the chip isn't the only thing that makes a device, and our favourite gaming handhelds of this year pack a punch in the look, feel, and battery life departments.

We didn't see any new iterations from Valve in the hardware department this year, but other companies getting access to Steam OS means more bespoke Windows-less devices also made their way to market. Lenovo's SteamOS-powered Legion Go S offers great performance, despite being on the older Z1 Extreme chip.

We saw companies like Ayaneo throw their hat in the ring with the Strix Point Ayaneo 3. This handheld comes with a very neat but odd modular control system that didn't fully win our hearts over. Though not a PC, the implementation of smart DLSS in the Nintendo Switch 2 certainly bridges the performance gap, even if Nintendo is consistently its biggest selling point and its worst enemy.

As they say, cream rises to the top, and we've nominated the three creamiest best gaming handhelds of 2025, and we'll announce which one takes the gold on New Year's Eve.

Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOSOur Jacob said this Legion Go S was "almost exactly" what he was looking for in a handheld gaming PC. We still know that the Z1 Extreme is a bit of a banging chip, even if it's getting on in age, and native SteamOS support means you can get even better performance out of it when compared to Windows. The one downside of SteamOS is not getting built-in support for some multiplayer titles, as Linux

Source: PC Gamer