Gaming laptops have all the time type of sucked. They make for an enormous compromise between portability, energy, and battery life, with one or different of those elements almost all the time arising brief, even when the most recent fashions are getting ever nearer to balancing all three. Nevertheless, this has seldom been highlighted extra clearly than with the arrival of gaming handhelds such because the Xbox Ally X.
Certain, the Asus Xbox Ally X is way from the primary gaming handheld, nor even the most effective gaming handheld for many – the Steam Deck OLED nonetheless holds that crown – however writing my Asus ROG Xbox Ally X assessment alongside testing the Razer Blade 14 gaming laptop computer over the past week or two has actually introduced house simply the place gaming laptops are arising brief, and the place they nonetheless far outperform gaming handhelds too.
The obvious space the place laptops can be taught from handhelds is battery life. In my battery benchmarks for the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, it delivered slightly below three hours of sport time within the PCMark 10 gaming take a look at, which can not sound all that spectacular, nevertheless it’s over an hour longer than any gaming laptop computer we have examined beneath the identical circumstances (you will get longer life from each by tweaking sure settings, however that is our standardized take a look at), and is sort of triple what most laptops handle.
Now, clearly, the massive caveat right here is that the Razer Blade 14 has a far sooner GPU than even probably the most {powerful} gaming handhelds – as do most gaming laptops. The Blade 14’s RTX 5070 GPU is rated to attract over 100W of energy, and it could actually ship a 97fps common at 1080p with Extremely element settings in Cyberpunk 2077. The Xbox Ally X’s Radeon 890M GPU, in the meantime, tops out at 35W and might solely obtain 49fps at 1080p with medium element settings, whereas additionally needing to depend on FSR upscaling (set to balanced), which drastically reduces the preliminary render decision.
As such, with a equally {powerful} GPU, you’d anticipate a gaming laptop computer to be much more aggressive. Nevertheless, the issue right here is not simply gaming battery life, however non-gaming battery use too.
Generally desktop duties, as measured by PCMark 10’s Workplace battery life take a look at, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X lasted a ridiculous 17 hours and 9 minutes. The most effective consequence we have had from a gaming laptop computer in the identical take a look at is eight hours and 28 minutes, which was achieved by the actually wonderful Razer Blade 16. The smaller Razer Blade 14 (assessment coming very quickly btw) lasted simply 4 hours and 24 minutes.
A few of this particular concern is to do with this fashion of laptop computer. The Razer Blade 14 is extremely skinny and lightweight for a laptop computer that additionally accommodates a strong, separate GPU alongside its 10-core CPU. The truth is, to permit for this compactness, it has a a lot smaller battery than the Xbox Ally X, at simply 61.6Wh in comparison with 80Wh – it is no surprise its battery life suffers. Nevertheless, loads of a lot larger, chunkier gaming laptops (that admittedly have much more {powerful} GPUs) nonetheless solely have modestly sized batteries. A few of this could possibly be all the way down to restrictions on taking bigger batteries on flights, however many laptops do not max out the 160Wh restrict.
Within the case of the Blade 14, what would actually elevate the general expertise of this laptop computer would simply be for Razer so as to add somewhat further thickness and one other 100g-200g or so of weight to pack a 80-100Wh battery into this machine and double its battery life. Gaming handhelds have proven that individuals do not thoughts carting round a reasonably cumbersome devoted gaming gadget, if it truly will get them good efficiency, and a chonkster model of the Blade 14 can be an absolute winner in my eyes. It is not an issue unique to Razer both. The same Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) had horrible battery life too.
The opposite huge issue that basically elevates gaming handhelds above most gaming laptops proper now could be that a lot of the latter use separate GPUs, whereas handhelds use built-in graphics. Contained in the Xbox Ally X is the AMD Ryzen Z2 Excessive CPU, which homes a Radeon 890M GPU. In the meantime, contained in the Razer Blade 14 is an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 CPU with a Radeon 880M built-in GPU and a separate Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 laptop computer GPU. This mix permits the Blade 14 – and different gaming laptops – to unleash far greater ranges of game-processing energy, as demonstrated within the sport benchmarks talked about above.
Nevertheless, to get each the ability of a devoted GPU whereas attempting to maximise battery life, these gaming laptops swap from their second GPU to the built-in GPU, and it is on this course of that the usability of those laptops leaves so much to be desired.
Home windows takes care of the switching robotically, so whenever you load a sport, the precise GPU is used, however this swap causes a chronic pause when you wait in your system to reply, with the display screen typically going clean. Switching also can trigger some packages to complain, trigger home windows to resize, and simply usually mess with what you are doing.
In the meantime, in case you use apps akin to Photoshop, which might profit from GPU acceleration, or there are particular video games that do not want the ability of the second GPU and might run high quality on the built-in graphics, you need to manually kind via all these cases to inform your system which GPU to make use of for which apps. In distinction, with a single built-in GPU, all of it simply works.
There are clearly many different elements that imply gaming laptops nonetheless have their place, due to a lot bigger screens, implausible efficiency, and the final usefulness of together with a keyboard and trackpad. A few of their limitations are additionally software-based – the Xbox Ally X’s optimized model of Home windows helps battery life. It is simply that, as pure moveable gaming machines, they in the end can lack somewhat one thing.
All that is why the Intel x Nvidia deal that may quickly see Intel CPUs being kitted out with built-in Nvidia graphics is such a giant deal. Not solely will it imply Intel may have built-in GPUs that truly compete for efficiency with AMD’s ones – there is a purpose AMD chips energy the most recent Xbox and PlayStation, and most gaming handhelds – nevertheless it means we may lastly see gaming laptops having the ability to put off the awkward GPU switching tech.
Not that creating such {powerful} chips is simple. AMD already has its personal super-powerful built-in GPU chip, within the form of the AMD Ryzen AI 9 390 Max (codenamed Strix Halo) that powers the Asus ROG Circulation Z13 (2025). This extremely {powerful} chip can churn out 50fps+ in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with excessive element settings. Nevertheless, there are valuable few units round that truly use this chip, which hints on the issue and value of constructing them.
Nonetheless, if we’re set to see a giant battle between AMD and Intel/Nvidia to create ever extra {powerful} built-in GPUs that may energy the subsequent era of gaming laptops and gaming handhelds, the long run is trying shiny for each codecs. Simply let’s embrace some larger batteries on these laptops subsequent time, yeah?
For our present suggestions for each gaming handhelds and laptops, take a look at our greatest gaming laptop computer information and finest gaming handheld information, which embrace a variety of units from funds to huge funds.
