This Steam Deck competitor is also a tiny laptop

It's a good time to be a fan of portable gaming PCs. The concept of handheld PC gaming has been around for years, but the arrival of the Steam Deck has caused a Cambrian explosion in designs for this form factor. Take the OneXPlayer 2 Pro, for example: This awkwardly-named handheld looks like a typical Steam Deck competitor. But in just a few seconds you can snap off the side controllers, a la the Nintendo Switch, and add a fold-down keyboard to turn it into a tiny Surface-style tablet or laptop.

One-Netbook

The idea appears to be giving the handheld form factor more conventional utility. The physical design is mostly inherited from the previous model, the OneXPlayer 2 (sans Pro), which super-sized the usual portable design with an 8.4-inch, 2560×1600 screen and room for more powerful components like a full 80mm-long M.2 SSD. That larger screen also makes the keyboard size closer to the mini-laptop form factor that's popular in Asia, though it's still far smaller than standard key sizes. With the controllers removed, the design can function as a small tablet with stylus input or dock to a television and let you play with a controller bracket, again, very much like the Nintendo Switch.

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The upgraded Pro model is really taking no prisoners in terms of specs. It's using a Ryzen 7 7840U as its basis, which (as Liliputing notes) is very similar to the beefed-up RDNA 3 chip in the Asus ROG Ally. It can also be configured with up to 64GB of RAM and 4TB of storage space — specs that would make a top-of-the-line gaming desktop green with envy.

Oh, and if A Cruel Angel's Thesis is running through your head right now, don't worry. The green-on-orange color scheme of the OneXPlayer 2 Pro is indeed licensed with the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime and is fashioned after the EVA-01 mech unit. There's no price or launch date for the OneXPlayer 2 Pro attached to its announcement. But you can make an educated guess as to the eventual MSRP since the previous Ryzen 6000-based OneXPlayer 2 starts at $1249 (now on sale for $999).

Michael is a former graphic designer who's been building and tweaking desktop computers for longer than he cares to admit. His interests include folk music, football, science fiction, and salsa verde, in no particular order.