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Handheld PCs converge on similar chips, so the marketing leans on watts and teraflops. After a few weeks with any of them, those are not the numbers you think about.
What actually decides it
- Sustained power, not peak. A device that runs at 15 W quietly beats one that spikes to 30 W and then throttles and roars. Look for sustained figures and noise measurements, not the box number.
- Battery at a realistic wattage. Runtime at minimum brightness in a menu is meaningless. Ask for runtime at a playable setting.
- The panel. Resolution matters less than brightness, and an OLED or a good IPS with high brightness is the difference between "great outdoors" and "useless near a window."
- Weight and grip. You are holding this for hours. Fifty grams and the shape of the handles matter more than they sound.
The software layer
This is the real differentiator now. A polished launcher, reliable sleep and resume, per-game power profiles, and quick access to TDP and refresh controls turn a fiddly PC into an appliance. A device with worse specs and better software is usually the one you keep.
How to choose
Pick your ecosystem and your size class first. Then compare sustained performance, battery at a real setting, and panel brightness. Everything else is a tie-breaker.
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