Gaming handheld prices are out of control, except for the Steam Deck

The gaming handheld market is booming, with more devices than ever currently available, and an enthusiastic community eagerly awaiting the next big advancements in portable gaming. In fact, PC handhelds are so popular that a large portion of the narrative I saw in the lead-up to the release of the Switch 2 was whether people should buy it or a Steam Deck.

While I stand firmly on team Steam Deck, I found it curious that so many people even made this comparison. I even wrote about my feelings at the time, as the constant comparison between the Steam Deck and Switch 2, and which one was ultimately the best gaming handheld, felt like a moot point when both served different audiences. One of the reasons why it was such an easy comparison for everyone to make, however, is that they are fairly similarly priced, which got me thinking about the state of PC handheld pricing in general.

While I don't yet think we are sitting on a bubble where one wrong move would see manufacturers pull out of the market and public interest massively cool off, it can't be ignored that there is a somewhat cavernous difference in the price of the Steam Deck compared to its competitors. This is understandably in part due to the aging hardware inside the Steam Deck, which by 2025 standards is quite limited, yet the Deck has only just started to struggle consistently with triple-A games. Still, some developers will go out of their way to ensure their latest games run on the Deck, as we saw with the demanding Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Instead, what we're seeing from the likes of Asus, MSI, Ayaneo, AOKZOE, OneXPlayer, and others is a race to stuff a handheld with the most power possible and get it to market ASAP. This includes selecting powerful AMD chips like the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, typically seen in mini gaming PCs, and using them for handhelds instead.

A good way to gauge just how the pricing has accelerated in the gaming handheld market is to look at the original Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme, which had an MSRP of $699 back when it was announced in June 2023, while the regular Z1 model was priced at $599.

By this time, the Steam Deck LCD had already been on the market for almost 18 months, starting from $399 for the 64GB model, with the OLED following in November 2023 for $549. This meant that all the mainstream handhelds on the market in the 2023 holiday season were quite competitively priced.

Fewer than two years later, Asus is preparing to launch an Xbox-themed Xbox Ally X for a rumored price of $999, MSI is shipping the Claw 8 AI+ for $999, you can grab the Ayanneo 3 OLED model for around $999, and there is even a GPD Win 5 on the way with an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 that's sure to come with an eye-watering cost. Meanwhile, the Steam Deck can still be purchased for $399, only the model at this price is now the 256GB LCD model, with some OG models having been discontinued with the introduction of the OLED version.

This means the gap between the top and bottom of the mainstream market has widened from $300 to at least $600, and even though there is a case to make for the improved power of these new handhelds being worth the jump in hardware power, especially with some of the ones I've tested so far, it's still a tough pill to swallow.

In terms of power increases over the last three years, we've rarely seen handhelds use a custom APU like the Steam Deck, with the AMD Ryzen Z1 range instead chosen by most mainstream handhelds. This developed into some manufacturers then using the aforementioned AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, while we wait for the impending arrival of the AMD Ryzen Z2 range of chips. Now, we already have confirmation of the first Strix Halo handheld in the aforementioned GPD Win 5, which uses the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395.

It feels as though the gaming handheld market has perhaps fallen for the same power-chasing ethos that plagues the smartphone market, where fans eagerly await the next top-spec Android phone, ready to drop their cash on the shiny new model, even if the upgrades aren't game-changing. This feels slightly inauthentic compared to the fairly humble beginnings of PC handhelds just a few years ago, and without any sales data to analyze, it's also hard to say just how many of these pricey handhelds are selling, and what the manufacturers consider a success.

Ultimately, what makes the Steam Deck so popular isn't its power; it's the cheap price and just how easy SteamOS is to use. When you boot a Steam Deck, you are propelled right into a version of SteamOS that will have you playing your installed games in a matter of seconds. The same can't be said for Windows handhelds yet, although the Xbox Ally models are looking to change this situation.

Another huge advantage for the Steam Deck is its ratings system, which is used to display whether or not a game works on the Deck. It's far from perfect, but it's a system that developers actively boast about when they achieve "Verification" status, so it clearly carries considerable weight. In some cases, developers even make Steam Deck-specific graphics profiles available, as seen in CD Projekt Red games Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3.

Perhaps the lesson we learn from the current handheld landscape is that gamers don't necessarily want the most powerful handheld if it ignores the core fundamentals of what makes a handheld so good. This is especially pertinent when these handhelds then cost as much as 2.5x that of the Steam Deck.

Amid all this pricing chaos, we're also yet to see or hear anything from Valve regarding the Steam Deck 2. While it's reasonable to expect it will come with a considerable upgrade over the current models, it may still fall short of being the most powerful handheld on the market, because it doesn't need that power to sell units.

The next 12 months in the gaming handheld market are set to be especially exciting, and we can't wait to follow along for the ride. If you want to chat about handhelds or even general PC hardware with some like-minded folks, you can join our Discord server.