Portable consoles: what to take on vacation for games | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

The vaca­tion peri­od for a gamer is flour. The melan­choly of the air­port ter­mi­nal, the bor­ing life in the train car — time with­out games flows unbear­ably long. Smart­phones solve the prob­lem only par­tial­ly. Portable con­soles with a larg­er bat­tery, con­trol but­tons and dozens of games on board will cap­ti­vate for hours. We chose three inter­est­ing mod­els for gamers-hol­i­days.

On vaca­tion, the size and sim­plic­i­ty of a gam­ing con­sole are impor­tant fac­tors. Pho­to: bestproducts.com

Nin­ten­do Switch

Valve Steam Deck

GPD Win 2

Results

Nintendo Switch

The leg­endary PlaySta­tion Vita has been aban­doned by Sony. The place of the Vita was firm­ly tak­en by the Nin­ten­do Switch. Pho­to: gq.ru

The Nin­ten­do Switch portable con­sole is 5 years old, but it does not give up its posi­tions. 1868 games released for the device! The choice is huge: from exclu­sive Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Ani­mal Cross­ing: New Hori­zons and hun­dreds of fun arcade games to major titles in the gam­ing indus­try. The cult shoot­er DOOM 2016, the canon­i­cal open-world RPG Skyrim, and the furi­ous Wolfen­stein II: The New Colos­sus have already been trans­ferred to Switch.

Killing mon­sters on Switch is just as fun as it is on PC. Pho­to: gamerbay.ru

The Switch is tech­ni­cal­ly a small tablet with attach­able Joy-Con joy­sticks. The con­troller has respon­sive con­trols and round­ed edges for a com­fort­able grip. Two Joy-Con ele­ments are insert­ed into the grooves of the dis­play — and you’re done.

An alter­na­tive way is to con­nect the Joy-Con to a brand­ed hold­er. Get a clas­sic two-hand­ed joy­stick. In this for­mat, the Switch screen can be placed on a sur­face or mount­ed on a stand.

Switch is con­ve­nient in all designs. Pho­to: nintendo.ru

The hybrid form fac­tor wins over com­peti­tors with vari­abil­i­ty. When your vaca­tion is over, you can eas­i­ly con­nect the Switch to your home TV or mon­i­tor with an HDMI cable. Res­o­lu­tion will increase from 720p to 1080p — you can play com­fort­ably on the big screen.

The mod­el has three USB ports for con­nect­ing acces­sories, includ­ing a USB Type‑C port. To charge the device on the road, Nin­ten­do rec­om­mends a pro­pri­etary charg­er. In prac­tice, there are no prob­lems with a USB Type‑C cable and any charg­er with a volt­age of 1.5 V and a cur­rent of 1.2 to 2.6 A.

Pecu­liar­i­ties:

• aver­age bat­tery life — 9 hours;
• screen size — 6.2 inch­es. At a res­o­lu­tion of 1280 x 720, the pic­ture is dis­played with good detail, the game inter­face is rec­og­nized with­out eye strain;
• with Joy-Con attached, the size of the device is 102 x 239 x 13.9 mm, and the weight does not exceed 400 g. The Switch will fit in any trav­el bag (hand lug­gage, brief­case, etc.);
• built-in mem­o­ry — 32 GB. This vol­ume is enough for dozens of arcade and brand­ed games from Nin­ten­do. To down­load resource-inten­sive, high-pro­file game titles, you can install a microSD card: the con­sole sup­ports mod­els up to 2 TB.

Nin­ten­do also released an updat­ed ver­sion of the Switch — Switch OLED. The amount of built-in mem­o­ry has grown to 64 GB, the screen size is up to 7 inch­es. Oth­er­wise, the OLED mod­el does not dif­fer from the basic ver­sion.

Valve Steam Deck

The world’s first portable Steam com­put­er. Pho­to: store.steampowered.com

Steam Deck is a portable gam­ing sta­tion (com­put­er) from Valve with its own oper­at­ing sys­tem Steam OS. The mean­ing is in the name: games from the well-known online ser­vice Steam are launched on the con­sole. Steam Deck — the abil­i­ty to play pop­u­lar titles on the go. Con­di­tion­al Mario and sim­ple arcade games will also be launched, but the con­cept of the device is a game of resource-inten­sive and high-bud­get projects.

The sta­tion from Valve has enough pow­er and per­for­mance for such an ambi­tious task. The con­sole is equipped with a Zen 2 proces­sor from AMD, RDNA 2 graph­ics. The amount of RAM is 16 GB. Thanks to the fill­ing, Steam Deck launch­es games at a res­o­lu­tion of 1280x800 with­out brakes even at 60 FPS. The pic­ture is smooth and pleas­ing to the eye.

On Steam Deck it is equal­ly pleas­ant to pass RPG, shoot­ers, quests. Pho­to: forbes.com

Struc­tural­ly, the Valve Steam Deck is sim­i­lar to a large gamepad that divides a 7‑inch LCD dis­play into two parts. Sticks and but­tons are placed in the upper areas of each “half”. Peo­ple with tiny hands will have to get used to the ergonom­ics.

Valve Steam Deck is a pow­er­ful and pro­duc­tive device, but not 100% adapt­ed to all games of the online ser­vice. As of June 2022, approx­i­mate­ly 25% of the games in the Steam Library are con­sole-opti­mized, with anoth­er 25% in Playable con­di­tion. The remain­ing 50% are labeled with “No Sup­port” or “Not Test­ed” hints. But the sit­u­a­tion is chang­ing. Valve has offi­cial­ly chal­lenged pro­gram­mers to bring the lev­el of opti­mized games to 100%.

All games on the con­sole are host­ed in the Steam cat­a­log. The library is syn­chro­nized with the PC ver­sion of the ser­vice. Pho­to: vgtimes.ru

You can con­nect a mouse, USB hub, or key­board to your lap­top using the USB Type‑C port. After the release of the pro­pri­etary dock­ing sta­tion, the list of periph­er­als will expand. The device has three vari­a­tions: with 64, 256 and 512 GB of mem­o­ry. The 512 GB SSD ver­sion speeds up the oper­at­ing sys­tem and appli­ca­tions.

Pecu­liar­i­ties:

• open plat­form. You can rein­stall the OS (replace Steam OS with Win­dows). This requires skill and expe­ri­ence, but solves the prob­lem of game com­pat­i­bil­i­ty;
• device size — 298 x 117 x 49 mm, weight — 669 g. Portable, but heavy and large design. Teenagers and frag­ile girls may expe­ri­ence dis­com­fort;
• aver­age bat­tery life — from 2 to 8 hours depend­ing on the load (resource con­sump­tion of the game);
• the device heats up dur­ing oper­a­tion, removes warm air from the radi­a­tor;
• stereo speak­ers for immer­sion in the atmos­phere of the game;
• run any adapt­ed game on high set­tings.

The Valve Steam Deck is avail­able for pre-order in lim­it­ed quan­ti­ties. The price of a portable gam­ing com­put­er depends on the coun­try of res­i­dence, ver­sion (the amount of built-in mem­o­ry), stock bal­ances.

GPD Win 2

Lap­top, con­sole, gamepad, Win­dows OS — GPD Win 2 is unri­valed in the hybrid gam­ing niche. Pho­to: akket.com

The GPD Win 2 com­bines the fea­tures of a hand­held con­sole with the form fac­tor of a mini lap­top. The device runs on Win­dows 10 and sur­pris­es with the fill­ing. 8 GB of RAM, inte­grat­ed graph­ics and a 128 GB SSD are enough to play shoot­ers, races, strate­gies with­out brakes. The Witch­er, GTA V, Fall­out 4 and oth­er icon­ic releas­es of the gam­ing world are launched on GPD Win 2.

Fans of old games will be able to play their favorite con­sole titles (PS1, PS2) through the emu­la­tor. The 6‑inch, 1280 x 720 res­o­lu­tion IPS dis­play does­n’t need to strain your eyes. Win­dows shell, brows­er, appli­ca­tions, game inter­face — every­thing is dis­played clear­ly and read­ably.

The device pro­duces from 30–40 fps in good games — enough to enjoy. Pho­to: akket.com

There are sev­er­al con­trols in GPD Win 2:

• QWERTY key­board;
• clas­sic D‑pad;
• ana­log sticks with vibra­tion motors;
• mouse.

Vari­abil­i­ty gives free­dom of choice in games. Gamers cus­tomize the con­trols for them­selves, depend­ing on the genre or habits.

On the body of the device there are USB 3.0 Type‑C and USB 3.0 Type‑A ports for con­nect­ing periph­er­als and dri­ves. You can increase the amount of inter­nal mem­o­ry with com­pat­i­ble SSDs (Tran­scend’s mod­els have shown them­selves well). Head­phones are con­nect­ed via a 3.5 mm jack to the GPD Win 2.

Pecu­liar­i­ties:

• game con­sole and mini-com­put­er with Win­dows — two-in-one for­mat;
• weight — only 460 g, size — 166 x 99 x 25 mm. Fits in a jack­et pock­et.
• built-in Wi-Fi mod­ule for con­nect­ing to the Inter­net;
• smart cool­ing sys­tem. The con­sole will not over­heat even when work­ing with heavy appli­ca­tions;
• you can charge your smart­phone or oth­er device from the GPD Win 2 bat­tery;
• the aver­age bat­tery life in games is up to 5–6 hours. When surf­ing the Inter­net, the indi­ca­tor will increase at least 1.5–2 times.

Results

The choice of a portable game con­sole depends on the vaca­tion for­mat and expec­ta­tions from the device. Light­weight and com­pact, the Nin­ten­do Switch will keep you enter­tained at the air­port or hotel with­out com­pli­cat­ed setups. Valve Steam Deck — for those who like to immerse them­selves in the pas­sage of top titles (and at the same time skip a cou­ple of excur­sions). GPD Win 2 will not let you for­get about the cult games of recent years and will delight you with the famil­iar Win­dows shell. The main thing is that the con­sole com­ple­ments the rest, and does not inter­fere with it.