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Best Handheld Gaming Console 2025 Final | Tom's Guide Handheld Showdown Ep3
Sep 26, 2025
Welcome back to Handheld Showdown, a bracket-style competition series in which our hosts, Paul and Tony, battle it out with the best handheld gaming consoles out now. The votes from final four have been counted, and now, we need YOUR help to determine the WINNER of the entire competition! In this video, we reveal the results of round two and give our takes on which gaming handheld deserves to win it all. Whether you have your favorite picks already or Tony and Paul have convinced you, make sure to vote in the poll in the community tab now!
View Video Transcript
0:00
After combining the votes from YouTube and the Tom's Guide website, I can exclusively reveal
0:05
with 59% of the vote. Come on! Hello and welcome back to Handheld Showdown, our bracket-style competition pitting the
0:17
best handheld gaming consoles available right now in 2025 against each other
0:21
And we've made it to the final. In the last episode, we revealed to you the final four and asked you to vote on which should advance
0:29
And today we've got those results. A big thank you to those who participated
0:33
Once again, thousands of votes have been cast across both Tom's Guide.com and our YouTube channel
0:39
And once we reveal the results today, Paul and I will give our final reasons as to who we think should be crowned
0:45
The 2025 handheld showdown champion. Tony, you've had a week to think about these matchups
0:50
Do you think the right devices made it to the final four? Yeah, I think so. these are the cream of the crop, the best of the best, and I'm really excited to see who makes it
0:58
to the final two. Okay, are you ready to find out who's made it to today's final
1:10
Facing off first in the final four were the Asus ROG Ally X and the MSI Claw 8 AI Plus
1:16
two Windows devices, one from last year, one from this year. Tony, you had to make the case for the
1:21
asus rog ally x but i think in the end we were both in lockstep and think that the msi claw 8
1:27
was the better device but which do you think the audience went with okay even though we did
1:33
say the msi claw is the better device i have a inkling feeling that the rog ally is going to win
1:39
just because everybody loves that handout so much it's it's been around the longest um you know the
1:44
rog ally itself not just the x but the x is a better version of it so i think that's gonna
1:48
possibly squeak out a victory here. Yeah, this is going to be exciting. All right
1:53
After combining the votes from YouTube and the Tom's Guide website, I can exclusively reveal
1:58
with 59% of the vote. Okay, come on, come on, come on
2:04
Come on. The Aces Road Out of Ice defeats the Amazon. I'm not surprised
2:12
Not surprised. Very close, though, but I'm not surprised by that. That's a lot of love for it, bro
2:18
Sorry, I'm a cyclist. We love you. You're actually probably the better handheld, but the people have spoken
2:25
Paul, are you okay? No. You good? No. No? I was not expecting that
2:29
I'm not surprised. But I am surprised by how close. I thought it was going to be like a clean victory
2:35
Really? Yeah. So you thought the assist was going to get even more of a... Yeah, I thought it was going to be like maybe 75 to 25
2:40
Can you give us the breakdown between the website and our YouTube poll
2:45
Yeah. Kind of interestingly, the breakdown as it stood is on YouTube, the MSI Claw took 60% of the vote
2:52
Okay. However, on the website, the Asus Rogue Ally took 77% of the vote
2:58
See, that's what I thought, like, overall. Slightly more votes on the website as well
3:02
Wow, okay. I'm disappointed. You're disappointed? You really, listen, maybe next year, the new version of the MSI Claw
3:09
It's so interesting because, like, if you look at our YouTube comments, I mean, there were a lot of people who were like
3:14
oh, I like the size and core factor of Asus. But then a lot of people are like, oh, you guys are just Asus fanboys
3:21
Like, MSI has, like, the better hardware. It's got the bigger screen. Like, if I'm going to spend that money, why wouldn't I get the best performing one
3:28
And that's where I'm coming from. Yeah, no, I get it. Again, objectively, the MSI Claw is the better one
3:34
I actually recently wrote an article, like, the top three handhelds I recommend
3:38
And for Windows, I chose the MSI Claw. but listen, the people have spoken
3:42
so you just have to just, you know, deal with it. I need to hear back from you guys. I need
3:46
to understand why you voted this one. Yeah, let us know in the comments. So I think the new Claw
3:50
A8, which is going to be its successor, maybe not exactly its successor because it's going to the
3:56
Z2 extreme. Yes, that's right, yeah. So it's almost like it's going to be like an adjacent lineup
4:02
now because it's not the AI class. Yeah, because they're not getting rid of this. We don't know what's going to happen. I don't know if there's going to be an exact successor
4:08
to this right now. I don't know if MSI is going to continue with Intel. I certainly hope they do
4:12
And MSI, if you're listening, please do because I think we've shown, not only from us, but the audience
4:16
is very interested in something like this with similar performance. I think with this, they proved that Intel
4:22
is viable for handheld, so it would be a shame if they just stopped that
4:26
cold Yeah this week alone there was an update to this that brought even better performance and efficiency So it even better than the Z2 Extreme
4:37
Yeah, so even though we're going to have a machine with Z2 Extreme, it would be nice if we have two options
4:42
But if you're waiting for the MSI Claw A8, which is going to have the Z2 Extreme
4:47
so it's going to be more on par with these two a little bit, more of like a direct
4:52
successor to that in a way with the New York hardware. I think that's coming out in the US
4:59
Still, we don't really have an exact timeline. I think it's going to be closer to end of September, maybe early October
5:03
Yeah, something like that. And don't ask about prices. We don't know that either. We don't know that yet. So yeah, MSI Claw, you're great
5:09
but better luck next year, buddy. On to the other side of the bracket
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where we have the battle of the SteamOS devices, the Steam Deck OLED and the Legion Go S with SteamOS
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The Steam Deck is almost a couple years old now compared to the SteamOS version with the Legion Go S
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But with this configuration, the price points are almost $200 different. Tony, you're the champion on the Go S
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so do you think the audience has voted it to the final? Even though I wanted to make it to the final
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I have a feeling that it's going to be the Steam Deck, just like with the ROG Ally
5:42
It's been a round longer. There's a lot of love for it. And as we talked about in the last episode
5:46
It has an OLED display, which could just make it the winner. So very curious to see what you guys decide
5:52
I'm not so sure about that. Let's see about that. Listen, I want the Legion Go S to win, but I think the Steam Deck OLED might be an upset
6:01
So after tallying the votes across the website and YouTube, with a narrow 56% of the vote..
6:09
It's going to be that one. It's going to be that one. the steam deck oled knocks out the lenovo wow wow steam os okay look at that i'm again not
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surprised for two today yeah look at that oh for two no i understand the people man
6:29
i'm not surprised again these are the the longest running handhelds obviously the more the most
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updated version of the handheld so i'm not surprised at all so what do you think has people
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still siding with, you know, older hardware here? Do you think it's the screen, the form factor, the price
6:45
I think it's, the price is obviously a big one, and I think the display is also another one
6:51
And, you know, it's also word of mouth. Like, everybody's heard about Steam Deck
6:55
so it's going to be the first thing they think of. It's kind of like the OG. Yeah. I mean, it is
6:59
It is the OG. It is the OG. It's also, let's just be honest, kind of a popularity contest, you know
7:04
Yeah, the Legion Go S is objectively better in terms of, like, hardware and all that stuff
7:10
but you know it's still new very expensive as we talked about might even be more expensive by the
7:15
time we do this video we don't know with all the crazy prices but you notice with steam deck for
7:19
the most part prices have remained consistently the same that's that is a good point but at the
7:24
same time they've got like the older hardware so maybe they're not as impacted as much
7:28
i got i gotta ask you this so like i would imagine you're happy either way like because
7:34
both of these i mean you know i'm a stand for steam os last time we did one of these you were
7:38
all about the Steam Deck, and now we've got Steam Deck basically 2 with updated hardware
7:44
But if you had to put one of these through, which of the two would you prefer? Yeah, I mean, I personally would have picked a Legion Go S with Steam OS
7:51
It's literally the handheld I've been waiting for, as I talked about. Ryzen Z1 Extreme, Steam OS, perfect combo
7:58
But I kind of know what most people like. Again, like, price in the end kind of determines things, but you're still not really losing out
8:07
You still get a lot of great games to play on it. Very portable, very light
8:10
And that OLED is gorgeous. What was the actual voting breakdown here? On YouTube, the Legion Go S got 65% of the vote
8:19
So our video audience is much more in touch with kind of what you guys are saying
8:24
or particularly you, Tony. But again, on the website, which did get more votes, 69% to the Steam
8:31
Wow. One thing I'm noticing, and I want your thoughts on this
8:36
It seems that YouTube viewers generally want, like, the beefier console, whereas the users on Tom's Guide want the more affordable one
8:49
That's what it seems like to me. I wonder if maybe the Tom's Guide website audience is more mainstream
8:57
Maybe that a way to put it Yeah yeah Yeah because if you watching a handheld video bro you probably pretty hardcore You right about that The Tom Guide readers favored the legacy ones you know the Steam Deck and the SSRG
9:12
Ally, whereas the YouTube comments went with the more recent ones. Very interesting stuff
9:18
But, you know, regardless, thanks to everybody who participated. So even though we love the Legion Go S, it is time to go
9:24
So there it is. it's all come down to this. Representing Windows, we have the number one seed
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the Asus ROG Ally X versus our number two seeded Steam Deck OLED
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running SteamOS. Who could have predicted? Voting for the final is open now
9:37
After this video, head over to the post tab in the Tom's Guide YouTube channel
9:41
to cast your deciding vote for the winner of Handheld Showdown 2025
9:48
Now that we've got our final two handhelds, what more can we say about these devices
9:52
So why don't we instead show you? We've picked out three games that we're going to run benchmarks on head-to-head to see which device performs better
9:59
First up, let's refresh ourselves with the specs of these two configurations. When it comes to design and display, first off, dimensions are very close
10:07
Weight with the ASUS ROG Ally X, we have 1.49 pounds. The OLED's a little bit lighter at 1.4 pounds
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For display, 7-inch full HD, 120 hertz with the ROG Ally X with an IPS display
10:21
on the Steam Deck OLED. We have a 720p display, but it's OLED with antique glare
10:27
so a little bit better outdoors. So inside, we have some differences. While they're both using AMD APUs
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we have the Ryzen Z1 Extreme and ROG Ally X, whereas we have the custom AMD chip of the Steam Deck
10:42
And we also have more RAM inside the ROG LX, 24 gigs versus 16
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Storage is the same, one terabyte, so it can fit a lot of games. And the other big difference, obviously, their operating systems
10:54
We have SteamOS versus Windows 11. And then probably another big design factor is battery life
10:59
So with the Ally X, we're packing a larger 80-watt battery versus just 50 watts on the Steam Deck OLED
11:05
And, of course, pricing, $649 for the Steam Deck OLED, $899 for the Ally X
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So that's pretty substantial right there. So to make things a little bit more fair, obviously, this does have a 1080p display
11:16
So we're going to drop it down to 720p. So it's apples to apples when we're running these
11:21
Up first, we've got Cyberpunk 2077. Benchmarks are a go. So on the RGL IX, looks like we're averaging 48, 50 frames a second
11:31
Sometimes it goes up a little bit. I'm not surprised by this. I'm already disappointed
11:35
I'm barely getting 21, 22. Ooh, that's pretty good. Oh, wait, I had 23 for a second
11:40
Hey, there we go. That is choppy. Yeah. Wow. Not great. What did you get, Paul
11:44
Okay, an average. You want to guess what the average was? The average, maybe 25 frames a second
11:49
24. 24, okay. So on my end, let's see, you want to guess
11:54
42? No, it's 56. 56 as an average? As an average. That's amazing
12:00
But this is the point that we've been trying to prove the whole time. You have extra performance with the newer hardware
12:05
Yeah. Like, if you're playing a lot of AAA games, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot by getting this older system right now
12:11
People like that old. Yeah, if you like a beautiful, choppy graphic, sure
12:15
let's say we we had we kept this at 720p and we put this back up to 1080p i think this would
12:23
probably be slightly above 30 frames a second maybe 40 frames a second it would definitely
12:27
take a hit but i still think it would have performed yeah yeah yeah i would absolutely
12:32
outperformed this this you'd probably even have to drop down to maybe 540 and i mean at that point
12:37
what are we doing yeah what are we doing yeah that's over light can only make the screen look
12:41
so good you know all right let's move on to the next game so again 720p low settings we're playing
12:47
the reckoning level i recently played this game all the way through super fun but one thing i did
12:52
notice is the game is super well optimized yeah like i still think ally x is going to give better
12:57
performance overall things are looking good on my end so far i'm heading consistently an average of
13:01
about 31 frames per second i don't think i've seen it dip below 30 so that's really great yeah
13:06
On my end, I'm getting pretty close to 60. It's like hovering between like 56 right now
13:14
Sometimes it went up 62. Do you see what you're missing out on? Yeah. As I'm looking at this, like things on low settings are not, I mean, it's looking pretty much cheap
13:22
That's the thing. It's a trade-off, right? It like yeah you get the you know the contrast of OLED but if you don get solid frame rates you know What the point Yeah no complaints on my end This is like looking great running fantastically This looks like a game out of 2006 for me right now But the benefit so like we not just talking about okay it 30 frames per second versus 60
13:42
Because you have that extra headroom, you can bump the settings up to medium, maybe even some high, and get those sharper details
13:48
Yeah. You know? Whereas with this, you're at the max that it can do
13:53
You're at the max, yeah. Yeah, it's aging hard. It's already maxed out. We've got the results
13:57
All right, so what did you get? Actually, wait, let me guess. You 30 frames a second
14:04
Almost 35, just under 35 for average. So over here, we got an overall of 65 frames a second, which is really good
14:13
And a max of 142. But average, a little over 60. That's great
14:19
That's fantastic. That is great, yeah. This is an example of a really well-optimized game
14:22
Cyberpunk clearly wasn't, even though that title is also really old. So when it comes to newer AAA games, especially ones that are a little bit more demanding
14:30
you're probably not going to be having a good time on the Steam Deck OLED
14:34
despite how good the screen is. All right, so let's get to the last game. Okay, so we're looking at Dirt 5, an older game, five years, but it's as old as Cyberpunk
14:42
This game is overall pretty well optimized, so I'm going to expect..
14:47
Yeah, I'm almost at 50 now. This is the best performing one so far. I'm at about 45. I'm guessing you're probably at like 65, 70
14:54
Yeah, 75 right here. This is the first title that we've tested where I actually have a little bit of that headroom
15:01
If I wanted to go up to medium, maybe even high, I can, you know, push the graphics a little bit more and still probably maintain closer to 30 frames per second
15:10
Yeah, like on Cyberpunk, you couldn't do that at all. You were already, like, topping it out. When you're playing on a handheld, you know, you would want to maximize it
15:18
Okay, not only are you going to get, like, kind of bad frame rates, but the battery life is going to take a huge toll
15:24
So, you know, when it comes to optimization, what I typically like to do is if it's possible for the game, I like to set that medium graphical settings, 720p
15:33
So I get a good mix of like video quality and performance
15:37
I generally don't like putting it out low because the texture quality starts looking bad
15:41
But generally speaking, medium settings, graphical settings and 720p. But if there's headroom, I will try to bump it up to 1080p if the system supports it
15:50
Okay, impressive. I got an average of 53 with a minimum of just under 30. So that's pretty good
15:58
That's pretty good. Yeah, over here on the Ally X, we got an average of 74, actually almost 75, with a minimum of 49
16:05
Even the minimum is playable. That's great. Yeah, considering that your minimum is almost my average, that says something
16:12
Shows you the power of the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. So with all three benchmarks, the Ally X really puts the Steam Deck to shame in terms of performance
16:20
You're getting nearly twice the frames per second in a lot of these titles. And at the end of the day, that's what an extra $250 gets you
16:27
You have the better performance from the CPU. You have the extra headroom from the 24 gigabytes of RAM versus just 16 gigabytes
16:33
Yes, you do sacrifice the screen quality. But if you're like us and you play primarily AAA games, maybe having a nicer display isn't worth the sacrifice of worse performance
16:44
Yeah. You know, it comes down to what you value most. You value picture quality or performance
16:49
I'm going to say, I would not play Cyberpunk. I would not play Doom on this
16:54
Oh, wow. You couldn't pay me enough to do it. Low settings just don't look great
16:57
And the fact that I'm barely getting 30, I mean, that just feels like a really big sacrifice just to get a nicer display
17:04
Yeah. I'd spend the extra $250. Yeah, I think so, yeah. If you really value performance the way we do, the $250, well worth it
17:12
Well worth it. Okay, so we've been on quite a journey. We've gone from eight devices down to two while giving you every reason why one of these handheld deserves to win this year's competition
17:22
So who's going to be crowned the winner? It's all in your hands. Check out the poll posted in our YouTube channel and at Tom's Guide dot com to vote for which device you want to win Handheld Showdown 2025
17:33
Keep the comments coming as well. Are you as shocked as we are? It's been great to interact with you and see all the discussion happening
17:40
Don't forget to come back to the final episode of Handheld Showdown. But until then, you can find us everywhere at TomSky.com
17:45
And you can follow Paul and I if you want to see some of the cool gaming tech we've been checking out
17:49
That's it for us. We'll see you next time. Later. Oh, Tony, you have to do it from the desktop
18:02
Yeah, because it's Windows, your favorite operating system
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