With that new steam dock handheld being announced, I am wondering what other devices are currently out there in that space.

Requirements:
* Must be designed to be held in the hands. (In particular, laptops don't count, as they tend to be designed to be used on a flat surface.)
* Must have gaming controls.
* Must allow the user to install their own software without hacking the device. (Handhelds made by companies like Nintendo and Sony don't meet this requirement.) Bonus points if the OS can be re-written with a custom one.
* Preferred if the handheld can run games made for x86 computers, to allow for playing games legally acquired from sites like gog.com.

So, what options are out there?

Edit: A couple other things to mention:
* The device must actually be available for purchase.
* The x86 requirement is less important, provided that the device is cheap and fanless. (Note that I said "preferred", not "required", up above.)

Good luck. ARM CPUs seem to be the pioneers, here. Way, way easier to stick an ARM on something than an x86, so your best bet is to take one of those "minimal computers" that fit in your pocket or something and create some sort of adapter and screen, throw some controls on it. Frankly, the open-source community isn't interested, for the most part, in supporting closed source games that were designed for a closed source operating system, and these open-devices are mostly supported by them. This means, they go the ARM way.

I could be wrong though, as I haven't checked in a long, long time, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. People tend to try to run with raspberry pis, specifically, and that's ARM, not x86. It's not like you can't run your own show, though, but ou'll have to do the wiring. Not that hard, though, but that's the boat you're most likely in.

why not just google it?

From what I saw at last search just to see (last year), about the same place as a truly open source phone: technically available, quite kludgy, and hugely overcosted. The most successful-seeming of them [handhelds, not phones] appeared to be pi-shells (thus ARM).

GPD Win3, OneGx 1 Pro, and DragonBox Pyra come to mind. But I don't know anything about them to comment further.

Apparently Steam Deck meets all your requirements.

I'm explicitly asking what *else* is out there.

Also, one drawback of that Steam Deck is that it isn't actually available at the moment. Doesn't appear to be available at this time. (Only option is to pre-order.)

Yet your phrasing is fuzzy and it DOES fit ALL your requirements (how often can that be said of any of your threads like this?).

You would be better off rephrasing the OP and using it as the benchmark for everything else tbh. :/

Just wanted to say: one would think these two go without saying, given the title and allMaybe this one, as well.

Only one I am familiar with is the GPD Win 2 as I own one, it’s a great little thing. Clamshell approach, windows based, includes controller in the shell and you can switch between m+k and controller at flick of a button. So far it has run everything I put on it, mostly platformer like shantae or dusk. Had it running emulators like dolphin and retro arch fine. The downsides are, battery doesn’t last that long hard gaming, probably a couple of hours. The other thing is it can get a bit hot on the exhaust. Oh, and it’s pricey when compared to switches and what not, however it’s functioanlity in being a tiny laptop outweighs that as it can do all games and emulators plays function as a laptop with video out and usb 3 port. Very happy with mine. They have changed the style for the 3rd incarnation, am looking at them, hard to get though. Slide screen up to reveal keyboard. Don’t know if I will upgrade yet.

Chinese retro handhelds seem to be increasingly popular. Anbernic handhelds in particular but there are a whole bunch of them.

Here is a video from May going over recent models:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdvSwJ0RZpY


I'd rather use a Nintendo/ Sony handheld with custom firmware myself. PC style games IMHO really need a mouse to be worthwhile which precludes the handheld from factor.

I had an abernic, rg350. It was good, some rooms didn’t work, but mostly ok. If you just want some to run old roms, but it doesn’t do anything else. As for mouse the gpd win has a usb3 port for that, though a large amount of games don’t need mouse. Platformer, driving, fighting etc. So you get a wider variety with something which can run pc games, and it can do out to tellies and screens and run all windows apps.