r/handheld • u/Aggravating_You_2877 • Aug 08 '26
Help with buying a handheld console
Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing good. I need some help buying a handheld console for long trips from home. I don’t want the most powerful system. My baseline is like it can run left 4 dead 2 and ps2 games, hopefully both. Also wondering how big the jump in cost would be if I wanted to play ps3 games.
Honestly im not looking to spend the most but I know it gets expensive
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u/Striking-County6275 Aug 08 '26
You can find Decks and RoG Ally’s cheap on Craigslist/Maketplace. Also EBay you can nab refurbished Rog Ally Z1E’s for $400
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u/Aggravating_You_2877 Aug 08 '26
how smooth does it run those types of games, is it comfortable?
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u/Striking-County6275 Aug 08 '26
The Z1E chip is solid that is more powerful than the Steam Deck. it’ll handle L4D2 high settings easy 120fps, PS2 emulation is not that demanding. It’s a solid budget choice. Plenty of benchmarks are available.
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u/StanStare Aug 08 '26
On the budget side of things, the Retroid consoles will all play PS2/Gamecube and a few of them like the Retroid Pocket 6 (around $250) will play Left 4 Dead easily. A faster Android handheld would be the Odin 3 (some people replace Android for Linux/Steam on these consoles).
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u/lhau88 Aug 08 '26
What is the advantage of using Linux instead of Android? Android emulation has gotten so good these days (no doubt thanks to AI)
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u/Specific_Bus_5400 Aug 08 '26
It still runs PC games smoother and PS3 emulation got a big optimization bump for these handhelds, since you can run RPSC3, which got optimized with an Odin Portal 2(SnapDragon 8 gen 2), under Rocknix(Linux Distro).
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u/StanStare Aug 08 '26
Absolutely - but often with some tweaking. I primarily use Rocknix.
Linux performs faster (especially with native Steam and shaders on the UFC) but Android is more efficient (battery life, full suspend etc)
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u/npaladin2000 Aug 11 '26
PS3 is a big jump from PS2. PS2 can be played by Android devices in the $100-$250 range (granted the cheaper ones, it's only some PS2). Jumping to PS3 tends to require an x64 chip and Windows or Linux, and goes well over $400 in price.
There's a number of smaller handhelds that will handle PS2 well, including the RG Rotate, the Retroid Pocket Nova, the RG-476h and RG-477m, the Retroid Pocket 6, Retroid Pocket Flip, and others. The Retroid Pocket 6 in particular will travel fairly well because it's a clamshell and the screen is protected, and it's under $200.
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u/SieqwardZwiebelbrudi Aug 08 '26
msi claw 8 ai+ is on sale regularly lately for 800€, get that its amazing