Latest News From Handheld Gaming

The Legion Go model, an ultra-fast SSD specifically made for handhelds, and a new Challenger from an unexpected place are about to shake up the entire handheld space.
 
According to Windows Central, Lenovo is working on a new version of the Legion Go called the Legion Go Light. 
 
That's just speculation; judging by what Nintendo did with the Switch, we can probably guess that it will be a more budget-friendly option that will cut some corners. which means it will likely have the Z1 non-extreme APU, which is used in a cheaper ROG Ally, and it will also likely cut corners in other areas like the size and resolution of the display. It will also probably drop the detachable joy-con design for a smaller, more uniform body similar to that of the steam deck and ROG Ally.
 
It's really interesting to me how Asus and Lenovo's strategies differ so dramatically. Asus is working on an enthusiast refresh with the ROG Ally X, and Lenovo is working on a budget-friendly device with the Legion Go Light.
There are some possible specs from ROG Ally X that got leaked.
Leaked Specs
• 7-inch 1080p 120 HZ IPS display
• AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme
• 24 GB of LPDDR5 RAM (7500 MHz)
• 1 TB of storage
• 80w/h battery
The battery is double the size of the vanilla ROG Ally battery, which I consider to be the rogg Allies biggest Achilles heel.
 
If the Ally X has doubled the battery life, it will likely be a huge selling point for the device. It also has a new black shell that is more comfortable to hold and also implements USB Type 4 for external GPAS.
But anyway, at least now they fixed that, and they're going to allow anyone to use any EGPU with this device.
 
However, we still don't know the price of the RGX, but many speculate that it would be around $799 USD. You won't have to wait long to find out because it will be revealed this coming week.
 
While the ROG Ally X may not have an upgraded processor, AMD is in fact rumored to be launching STIX-point APUs for Min PCs in August. 
 
Although not directly associated with handhelds, these apus are rumored to have insanely good gaming performance, and having Stix points show up in Min PCs will give us a good benchmark of what to expect and how well they could fair in gaming handhelds.
regardless, though I believe that Strix Point or a customized version of it will show up in future iterations of gaming handhelds down the line. hopefully sooner rather than later.
 
 
IRDM Launches a Super-Fast SSD for Handhelds 

In the meantime, if you are looking for performance, you can upgrade the handle. If you currently own one, you are in luck because IRDM just announced an insanely fast 7.3 GB read speed and 6 GB/s write speed M.2.2230 SSD called the Nano Pro, specifically designed for gaming handles. IRDM claims that its performance is unmatched, including the SSD that comes standard in your current handheld. Whether or not that boosted speed is actually noticeable in real-world situations is very unclear.
 
However, the release date of the Nano Pro is also unclear at the moment, but when it does launch, it will be available in Strix and range from 512 GB up to 2 TB, making it perfect for upgrading your current handheld.
 
MSI Claw is now 26% faster than ROG Ally.

Speaking of speed, MSI has been updating the performance of the MSI claw, and MSI claims that the MSI claw is now 26% faster than the ROG Ally, which sounds absurd. Until you realize they're probably comparing it to the Z1 non-extreme ROG Ally, which you can usually find for $400. 
 
Though I'd hope that it would be faster than a product that's half its price and is typically considered a budget handheld, regardless, any and all improvements to the MSI claw are welcome, as it really needs them. We're hoping that MSI and Intel continue to upgrade the performance of The Claw because we could definitely use some competition in the handheld space for AMD. 
 
New Handheld from ADATA?!
 
There's also some new competition coming to the handheld space, but it's coming from a completely unexpected and expected place. ADATA, a company mostly known for SSDs and memory, is apparently set to debut its new gaming console called the XPG NIA at Computex.
 
New OLED Handheld the Zotac Zone
While we didn't get an OLED screen upgrade with the ROG Ally X, we might be getting our OLED handheld fixed with the Zotac Zone gaming handheld.
 
If you haven't heard of Zotac, they are a pretty well-known GPU AIB. in this handheld, considering how much I enjoy the screen on my steam deck OLED.
Confirmed Specs
• AMD Ryzen 7 8440U APU
• AMD Radeon 780M Graphics (15W Default, 28W Max)
• 16 GB LPDDR5X/512 GB M.2 NVMe.