OneXPlayer Mini Pro Handheld Gaming PC Brings Out The Big Guns To Challenge Steam Deck
by
Zak Killian
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Tuesday, September 20, 2022, 05:34 PM EDT
If you haven't gotten a chance to put hands on one, Valve's Steam Deck is a pretty cool gaming device that has become wildly popular. It has its faults, though—its haptics rumble is weak, its display is lack-luster, and there's only one USB port on board. As such, OneXPlayer likely hopes that you may find those shortcomings enough to consider its new Mini Pro instead.
Just like the Steam Deck, GPD Win, AyaNeo, and various other devices, the new OneXPlayer Mini Pro is a handheld PC meant for gaming. However, it's quite a bit more powerful, at least on paper. Its Ryzen 7 6800U CPU sports eight Zen 3+ CPU cores that can boost up to 4.7 GHz, and its RDNA 2 GPU is 50% bigger than the Steam Deck's—nevermind that it can boost to nearly twice the clock speed, at 2.2 GHz.
The kind of game performance you can expect from the Mini Pro, according to OneXPlayer.
Performance benefits over the Steam Deck don't stop there. The memory on the OneXPlayer Mini Pro is your choice of either 16 or 32 GB of LPDDR5 at 6400 MT/s—much faster than the deck's 5500 MT/s. For storage, you get a full M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD slot, and and the baseline option is a 512GB SSD, but you can instead purchase the machine with a 1TB or 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD.
The stand-out specifications are the ones that really show up the Steam Deck. That includes the screen, which is a 7" IPS LCD in 1920×1200 resolution with 100% sRGB coverage, and the external connectivity: a pair of USB4 ports and a single USB 3.0 Type-A connection. Having that boxy Type-A port on the machine is very convenient for connecting flash drives and similar devices.
There's also the presence of rumble that should outperform the Deck's weak haptics thanks to compact HD linear motors. OneXPlayer also addressed complaints about the quality of its analog sticks on previous models by replacing the sticks on the current model with Hall-effect joysticks that should offer improved accuracy and reliability.
It does have RGB LED lighting, because of course it does.
You do miss out on the touch pads compared to the Steam Deck, and OneXPlayer doesn't mention touch functionality on its screen, either. There's also all the fancy SteamOS 3.0 features that the Deck offers—although there's probably nothing stopping you from installing SteamOS 3.0 (or a customized build, like holoiso) on your OneXPlayer considering that the hardware is very similar.
Awkward cropping job courtesy of OneXPlayer, not us.
The real downsides are the battery life and the price. Owing to its more svelte dimensions, the OneXPlayer Mini Pro only packs a 48-Whr battery—bigger than the Nintendo Switch, but still smaller than the Steam Deck's. OneXPlayer says that the battery will last for "10 hours video, 2.5h full load gaming," but that will surely depend heavily on exactly what game you're playing.
Pricing chart for the OneXPlayer Mini Pro.
Pre-ordering gets you some cool accessories, at least.
As far as its price tag goes, you're looking at $1199 for the base model with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for storage. That's a pretty hefty premium over Steam Deck, which starts at $400. However, if you're excited about the machine, you can pre-order one with a $50 deposit starting tomorrow, until October 7th. That'll get you a final price of $919, knocking $200 off the total, and it'll earn you the pre-order bundle gifts, pictured above. Orders will be fulfilled on October 15th, according to the manufacturer.
