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Best Handheld Gaming Console 2025 WINNER Revealed | Tom's Guide Handheld Showdown Ep4
Sep 30, 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 are in and the winner is ready to be announced! Who will be crowned Handheld Showdown 2025 champion? In this video, we reveal the results of the final and give our takes on which gaming handheld deserves to win it all. Whether your favorite wins or not, let us know in the comments who you want next year!
View Video Transcript
0:00
The votes have been counted and verified, and I can now reveal that the winner of Tom's Guy's Handheld Showdown 2025 is..
0:11
Welcome back to Handheld Showdown, our bracket-style competition pitting the best gaming consoles available right now in 2025 against each other
0:19
And we have finally made it. That's right. Today we are going to announce this year's winner, and I could not be more excited
0:26
In the last episode, we revealed that the Asus RG Ally X would take on the Steam Deck OLED in the final and asked you to vote on who will be crowned champion
0:35
And once again, another massive thank you to those who participated. Thousands more votes were cast across both TomSky.com and our YouTube channel
0:42
Tony, I'm still really salty that the MSI Claw did not make it to the final, but how's it been coping with the GO-S getting knocked out
0:49
Well, Paul, I'm very upset about that. I'm still thinking about it. But, you know, the cream of the crop has risen and we finally have our final two handhelds
0:57
And I can be more excited to see the results. I'm also a little scared, too, but we'll see what happens
1:02
So before we reveal the winner, let's take a look back across the bracket to remind ourselves how we got here
1:08
We began with eight consoles. Welcome to the very first episode of Tom's Guide's Handheld Showdown
1:14
our bracket-style competition to see which one is crowned the ultimate handheld gaming console
1:19
Tony and I clashed from the very start. What? Let's go! Yeah
1:25
The field was thin to four. Come on! Oh my God. Whoa
1:30
Our favorites were mercilessly cut down. What? Arguments got heated. I'm not happy
1:38
Shots got personal. Well, you finally got a win, Paul. Standing tall at the end
1:42
I have an inkling feeling that the RG ally is going to win. I think it's going to be the OLED
1:49
We have the best YouTube viewers out there. Yes. So there it is
2:05
It's all come down to this moment. So if you've liked what you've seen so far, don't forget to subscribe to the channel
2:10
We cover everything you need to know when it comes to tech. But most importantly
2:14
we will be checking out the brand new RG, Xbox Ally X and Legion go to when they drop stick around at the end of the video for more of our thoughts on those devices
2:23
Now back to the main event in this envelope We have the results
2:28
Will it be the one-seeded Asus ROG Ally X Or the two-seeded
2:36
Steam Deck OLED The votes have been counted And verified and I can now reveal
2:44
That the winner of Tom's guys handheld showdown 2025 is the asus ROG at
2:53
well they got confetti we're in a war zone. Oh wow. That's a
2:58
lot That that I I actually surprised by that result Wow Like I thought the the steam back was gonna win but you know what I guess power is what people look for and look at that I still surprised by this Holy crap
3:15
I'm not saying I'm upset you know like this is a great system but Tony look what we got
3:19
Hey we got a crown too. Look at that. Very nice. The thing is like both
3:26
systems are great you were you are not really gonna be losing with either so
3:30
like even though I disagree you disagree I disagree yeah now I'm see I'm being
3:35
diplomatic about it so you honestly think there's diplomacy here yeah we've
3:39
got a king you got a king all right fair enough both handhelds our handhelds one
3:45
was great one is currently okay was this one is very good yeah I'm just upset by
3:53
how this whole bracket turned out, I'll be honest. Yeah, but you love the ROG Ally
3:58
I love the original ROG Ally. I think it's just, for me, the price
4:02
Again, I think it's just you're paying a lot of money for a barely updated handheld
4:09
You can still get the original one for half the price, and you're still getting basically the same performance
4:13
That's where I stand. That was my opinion day one, and here we are on the last
4:20
And I'm still siding with the original Ally there. Fair enough, although I still am, you know, if we're going to be honest here, I am still a little upset that the Legion GO-S didn't win
4:29
I still think that is, even though it is expensive, it's the best one overall has steamed OS, you know, the form factor
4:36
But, you know, it wasn't up to me, it was up to the fans, and I'm glad they chose what they believe was the best handheld
4:43
I can tell you from my experience, like, as far as what I've seen in the wild, and this is why I thought maybe the Steam Deck had a chance to win
4:50
Yeah. I've only seen the Steam Deck. Out in the wild, right? Like, as far as, like, anytime I've traveled, like, internationally or even here on the subway, like, I've seen the Steam Deck, like, maybe five times
4:59
Never seen the Ally. Never seen any of these other ones except for the Switch, but not the Switch
5:04
Seen the Switch. Yeah. You know, you're right about that. I've seen, I'm not going to say a lot of Steam Decks, but I've seen some
5:10
And the only time I saw an Ally X in the wild was at a press event
5:14
So, that doesn't count because it's a bunch of tech nerds anyway. But currently, we're talking about now, right
5:19
Not the past. Yeah, the Ally X is just on everybody's lips, especially with the new Xbox version coming out
5:25
And people still love it. Even the original one that you love so much, we will still talk highly about it
5:30
So I can't say I'm surprised that people chose the better version of that system
5:36
That makes sense. So as the confetti settles around us and the Ally X is taking a victory lap
5:42
we wanted to take a look forward to the coming months and talk about what's coming next
5:46
Let's start by looking at the Xbox Ally and the Xbox Ally X
5:50
Our pal Jason, A. Jason, actually just got their first hands-on with it
5:54
and I think he sent us a little video. Well, well, well. If it isn't Jason England showing up like a special character at the end of a Marvel film credits
6:03
I've been going hands-on with the ROG Xbox Ally and the ROG Xbox Ally X
6:07
But with all the dust settled and with the Ally X now winning this showdown should you get it or should you wait for this one There three key differences going on here Number one it much
6:20
more comfortable in the hand with a design that's inspired by the Xbox controller. Number two
6:25
there's a pretty decent uplift in performance with the Ryzen Z2 AI Extreme chipset inside
6:31
On raw specs, you're looking at about a 15-20% bump in performance. Given the chipset and the
6:37
RAM inside these systems, so much more headroom to run games super smoothly
6:42
Like we're talking Doom the Dark Ages at over 80 frames per second here on a handheld
6:48
Number three is where it gets more interesting because Microsoft has finally fixed Windows 11
6:53
on gaming handhelds. No more dealing with the mess that is a Windows 11 desktop on a seven
6:59
inch touchscreen. What you're getting instead is your boot straight into the Xbox UI so you're not
7:05
actually loading any of the background processors of Windows 11. So the ultimate question is
7:10
should you wait until October 16th? Well, there's a big question mark over the price
7:16
which I'll be honest, does make me slightly nervous. I'm setting up a prayer circle that
7:21
the price is reasonable on these two things, but we'll see. Back to you guys. Pricing is obviously
7:27
going to be one of the bigger questions right now. Leaks right now have it at $549 for the Xbox
7:33
ally and the x at $899 yeah remember that's not official yet that's not official so still expensive
7:39
but i think compared to what we're anticipating for other upcoming handhelds still a little bit
7:44
cheaper and i'm wondering if they really are claiming this is an xbox are they doing the
7:48
same thing that they've been doing with xbox for the past few years subsidizing the consoles
7:52
anticipating that they're going to be making up for the cost with game sales do you think that's
7:57
what's happening it's possible i know xbox said that they've partnered with a bunch of their like
8:02
you know studios and all that to you know optimize games for the system so it's possible
8:08
they could like be working with asus to subsidize things um very interesting but regarding this
8:14
console when i when it was originally announced i kind of dismissed it i'm like okay so it's just an
8:18
x it's just an rg ally with like xbox handles but you know everything i've seen from you know
8:24
jason's preview to other things i've read i'm like there's actually a kind of intriguing console
8:28
So it seems like the launcher will be more streamlined for this system
8:33
And I like the fact that you're not going to have Xbox ROG Ally verified games, kind of like what Steam Deck does
8:42
So that's not going to say that every game that's verified works 100%, but at least they're going to ensure the basics that, you know, you get controls
8:48
You know, the controls are going to be right. It's going to be legible. You know, sometimes you can't see stuff on the screen
8:52
I think that alone is a good thing. And they're also gonna have like updated
8:57
like FSR type of, you know, features and stuff upscaling. That's gonna come later next year, they said
9:04
But I like the fact that they're already thinking about that. So again, I was very skeptical about this console
9:09
but I'm actually kind of excited about it. So you brought up the new game launchers
9:13
Let say in a perfect world that is how it ends up Do you think that would make SteamOS os less relevant would you not see the appeal to steam os anymore i still think steam os it been around so long
9:24
people know how to use it but if this could be as easy to use as steam if i could literally i could
9:29
start it up out of the box five minutes i'm ready to play right if they could do that bro that'll
9:35
be a real challenge to steam os for sure and if all else was equal i'll give you two reasons
9:40
you can't play games with anti-cheat software on Linux. So the new Battlefield 6 that's coming out, you can't play it on here
9:48
Even if this could run it, like if it had the performance to, which it definitely doesn't, it can't run it
9:53
And the other thing, the one that is huge to me, the thing that I ran into immediately once I tried to play my games on here
10:00
is that you can't play your Xbox Game Pass titles. You can only stream them
10:04
It's only available on Windows devices, which makes sense. They want you to have a Windows device. And I've always said that
10:09
And it's like with SteamOS, it's just easier to start up. But you have a lot of limitations to deal with when it comes to your game library
10:15
So the Xbox RG Ally could be the best of like all worlds, bro
10:20
It's really exciting. Also coming out very soon, Tony, is the Legion Go 2
10:25
What are we expecting to get with this one? So I actually went hands on with it at CS
10:30
And it's basically like a better version of the Legion Go that we have now
10:34
Detachable controllers. It's going to have OLED. It's been confirmed that it's going to have the latest chips from AMD, Z2 and all that
10:43
We don't know the price, obviously. I think the OLED is going to be a big selling point for that and the power it promises
10:52
So what do you think about it? I mean, you said big. It's big. It's huge. Yeah, it's big. Yeah, it's very big
10:56
That was the first thing I noticed when I got it in my hand. This thing is too big. Yeah. No, I get it
10:59
It is big. You have to use the kickstand if you want to use it on the desk comfortably
11:04
but a lot of people like our friend Ryan Epps, he's like, that OLED is going to sell me, bro
11:09
So, you know, that'll be a big one for people. And, you know, based on what I saw at CS, it looks really cool
11:15
And right now it's expected to be unveiled at IFA in a couple of weeks, which I'm heading out to
11:19
So if you want to see our coverage, just stay tuned. We've got a lot of cool videos coming out then. You may see something awesome there
11:25
What a journey. We've gone all the way from eight devices and now we have our winner
11:30
Can the ASUS ROG Ally X hold on to the top spot next year
11:34
You'll have to tune back in to find out. In the meantime, keep the comments coming
11:38
Do you think the Steam Deck was robbed? Who else is coming for the crown? And what are you most excited to see in the coming year
11:43
It's been great to interact with you and see all the discussion happening on here. Yeah, I mean, it was great seeing, like, all the support for the handhelds I was supporting
11:51
as well as, like, just seeing how crazy some people could get about their fandom
11:55
Yeah, people get very militant about this stuff, but I love it, man. I love the passion
11:59
So you can find us everywhere at Tom's Guide, and you can follow Tony and me to see what other gaming and tech we're checking out
12:06
This has been an awesome experience, so thank you all for participating. Until the next one, we'll catch you later
12:18
Hold on, let's just clean you up a little bit. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Can't have me looking stupid on camera
12:24
Not stupid
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