The Steam Deck came out more than three years ago now, starting at $399. Even at the time it seemed incredibly affordable for a system that let you play pretty much any PC game you threw at it. But fast forward to 2025, on the eve of a new generation of handheld gaming PCs powered by the AMD Z2 Extreme, and it seems like a downright bargain.
We finally got pricing for one of these new handhelds, the Lenovo Legion Go 2, and that'll start at $1,099. That's already a steep bump from the last-gen version, which started at $699, but it only gets more expensive – if you want it with the Z2 Extreme, you're looking at up to $1,479. That's getting into gaming laptop territory, for a system that almost certainly won't be as fast as a gaming laptop. And while the Legion Go 2 is only a single system, it does signal that the entire category is about to see a massive price bump next month.
The Ally In The Room
We know the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X are coming out October 16, but at the time of writing neither Asus nor Microsoft have revealed the price tag. Hell, you can't even preorder the thing yet, and it comes out in six short weeks. But given that the new Ally's specs line up pretty closely with the $1,049 Legion Go 2, it's really starting to look like the Xbox handheld is going to be a pricey little handheld.
It's possible that Microsoft's involvement means Asus can subsidize the cost of the Xbox Ally a bit, but I don't know if it'll be enough to keep it around the same price as its predecessor, which launched for $599 with the non-extreme AMD Z1. There's a universe where the ROG Xbox Ally costs nearly twice as much as its predecessor.
However, the Legion Go 2 and the ROG Xbox Ally are not the same system. The Legion Go 2 has removable controllers, along with an OLED display – both things that apply a bit of upward pressure on the price. The Xbox Ally, on the other hand, is a single unit with a more traditional LCD screen, even if the weird controller grips make it look quite different. This more traditional design could stop the new Ally X from seeing the same steep price jump as the Legion Go 2 – but only time will tell.
Is It Worth It?
It's easy to look at these new handhelds with their shiny new processors and say the speed justifies the higher price. That's the thing though, we don't actually know how fast the Z2 Extreme will actually end up being. The AMD Z1 Extreme is still a powerful little chip, packing 12 RDNA 3 graphics cores, along with 8 Zen 4 CPU cores. The Z2 Extreme does upgrade that, but only updates the GPU to RDNA 3.5, rather than just going all-in with RDNA 4.
What RDNA 3.5 is especially good at is graphics performance in low-power packages, like, well, the Z2 Extreme. It should greatly improve efficiency, leading to longer battery life, which is definitely something this first generation of Z-powered handhelds has struggled with. However, even though the Z2 Extreme does pack 4 extra graphics cores, it probably won't improve gaming performance that much – at least not enough to justify nearly doubling the price.
I'll ultimately have to wait until I get either the Legion Go 2 or the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X in the lab, but I expect the gen-on-gen difference to be the most pronounced when it comes to battery life. At the end of the day, these handheld gaming systems are probably going to struggle with high-end AAA games in the same way their predecessors did.
Whether the extra battery life is worth the cost is up to you ultimately, but if handheld gaming PCs are going to cost as much as a budget-to-mid-range gaming laptop, it's going to be harder to recommend them to just anyone. I'm definitely still in that niche audience, but the rising price is only going to narrow the appeal.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
