Will Gigabyte Make A Gaming Handheld? Here's What The CEO Had To Say
It sure sounds like Gigabyte is planning to release a gaming handheld at some point, according to comments CEO Eddie Lin made at CES, though exactly when and what differentiating features it will have are, for now, a mystery. Not just to you and us, but also to Gigabyte, which is mulling how it could separate its own brand gaming handheld from what's become a fleshed out market.
Gigabyte's absence from the gaming handheld market up to this point isn't really curious, though eventually it could be. It took Valve releasing the Steam Deck to really kick things into high gear on the PC gaming side, and since then, the field of options has really blossomed.
To wit, Lenovo has released multiple Legion Go handsets and is readying a version of the Legion Go 2 with SteamOS, MSI has jumped on board with its Claw handhelds, and ASUS has enter the market with multiple Ally models, including ones built in collaboration with Microsoft, to name some of the bigger players.
Then there are the various Ayaneo models and handhelds from other manufacturers, all of which add up to an increasingly fleshed out market. So, will Gigabyte enter the fray?
Adam Murray at PCWorld asked Lin that very question, who confirmed that Gigabyte is thinking about it. Lin said that building a gaming handheld is the easy part, but the challenge lies in making something that's not a 'me-too' product.
Lin talked about wanting to have some kind of differentiation from all of the other handhelds that are currently available. One thing Lin may underestimate is that having the Gigabyte brand, along with its Aorus division, is differentiation in and of itself. But to his point, there's the risk of getting lost in the shuffle.
It's not clear how much different Lin would want a Gigabyte handheld to be from all of the rest. While not mentioned, one possibility that comes to our mind is being one of the first, to incorporate Intel's Panther Lake chips into a handheld. This is the approach MSI took with its Claw—embracing Intel chips when most of the other handhelds on the market are based on AMD silicon.
Intel has gone on record saying that Panther Lake will find its way into gaming handhelds, so it's certainly within the realm of possibility for Gigabyte to go that route. Whether that would be different enough, only Lin and the other decision makers at Gigabyte can say for sure.
In any event, you can check out the full 11-minute interview on YouTube, in which Lin discusses motherboard pricing, OLED monitors, and a few other interesting topics.
Top image AI generated with Microsoft Copilot
