The GPD Win 2: A Gaming Device Worth Considering

In this article, we'll delve into the world of the GPD Win 2, a handheld gaming device that has garnered attention for its impressive performance and portability. Our reviewer decided to put the device through its paces, testing it with various games and settings to see how well it holds up.

One of the first things our reviewer did was test the device's graphics settings. With vsync on and scaling turned down just a bit, they noticed some heavy dips in performance. However, by turning vsync on and adjusting the scaling, they were able to achieve a pretty decent 30 FPS in most games. This is impressive, considering the device's handheld nature.

The reviewer then moved on to test Overwatch at 720p with low settings. Display scaling was set to 50%, and while there were some stutters in character movements due to internet connectivity issues, overall performance was great. Next up was Doom, which ran smoothly at 720p using the Vulcan API. Finally, Rocket League was tested at 720p with all low settings, where turning vsync on resulted in a constant 60 FPS.

For their final test, our reviewer tried Crisis, a game notorious for its sound issues on certain systems. Unfortunately, they encountered similar problems here, but were still able to enjoy the gameplay at 720p with both low and medium settings. The reviewer also decided to showcase PS2 emulation using PC sx2 version 1.5, which was impressive.

While the GPD Win 2 is a powerful device, our reviewer notes that it's not without its drawbacks. With a price tag of around $400, it may be considered overpriced for what you're getting. However, as they mention, if you've been saving up to buy your first laptop or desktop for gaming, this could be a great secondary option.

One important consideration is the device's performance compared to established gaming PCs and laptops. While the GPD Win 2 is capable of playing some older titles at full speed, it may not outperform these devices in terms of raw processing power. However, as our reviewer notes, if you already have an established gaming PC or laptop, this could be a great secondary handheld device.

In conclusion, the GPD Win 2 is a unique and powerful gaming device that's worth considering for those looking for a portable option. While it may not be perfect, its impressive performance and portability make it a compelling choice for gamers on-the-go. If you're interested in learning more about this device or have any questions, our reviewer leaves Amazon links to the GPD Win 2 in the description below.

The Device's Portability

One of the standout features of the GPD Win 2 is its portability. Weighing just over a pound and measuring only 3.9 inches tall, it's small enough to fit in a pocket or bag. This makes it an ideal device for traveling or taking on-the-go.

The reviewer notes that while they could build a gaming machine with similar performance capabilities for less money, the GPD Win 2 is still a powerful device that can handle demanding games. However, when considering cost-effectiveness, our reviewer mentions that building a gaming PC or laptop may be a more affordable option in the long run.

A Comparison to Other Devices

For comparison's sake, our reviewer also mentions their existing gaming setup – a Dell Inspiron with an i5 and a 1050 TI. This device is capable of playing older titles at full speed, and the reviewer notes that it can walk all over the GPD Win 2 in terms of raw performance.

However, as they mention, the GPD Win 2 has some advantages when it comes to portability. The reviewer notes that while their existing gaming PC may be a better performer overall, the GPD Win 2 is compact and easy to carry around. This makes it an ideal device for gamers who want a portable option.

The Possibility of Future Upgrades

As our reviewer mentions in future videos, they plan on testing more PC games running on the GPD Win 2. They also aim to do some experimenting with low-end PC mods for this device.

It's worth noting that while we don't have all the details about these upcoming tests, it's clear that our reviewer is passionate about pushing the limits of what the GPD Win 2 can do. With their expertise and dedication, they're likely to uncover some impressive performance boosts and capabilities in future videos.

Emulation on the Device

The GPD Win 2 also has the capability for PS2 emulation using PC sx2 version 1.5. This is an impressive feature that showcases the device's potential as a retro gaming console.

As our reviewer notes, they're excited to explore more emulators and test out different games on this device. With its powerful performance and portability, it's clear that the GPD Win 2 has a lot of potential for emulation and retro gaming enthusiasts.

The Device's Potential

In conclusion, the GPD Win 2 is a powerful and portable gaming device that's worth considering for gamers looking for a unique experience. While it may not be perfect, its impressive performance and portability make it an attractive option for those who want to take their gaming on-the-go.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's going on guys this is ETA Prime back here again today I finally received my GPD win 2 and I want to take a look at this thing there's been a lot of Buzz about the win 2 out there I should have got a hold of one earlier but I really didn't want to Fork out the cash now we're going to take a look at this I'm going to go over the specs and then we're going to test some Steam games or PC games I'm gonna make a few other videos on this unit because it's really interesting definitely want to dive into a lot of emulation with this because in my opinion this could very well be the best emulation portable out there so if you take a look on Amazon you can pick one of these up for 815 dollars I know that's why I didn't want to buy one in the first place it's pretty expensive for what you're getting but it's all about portability here it's all about small components the smaller you go the more it costs the base unit does come pre-loaded with 128 gigabyte SSD I upgraded to a 512 plus I threw a 256 gigabyte SD card in here because I want as much storage as possible I've also ordered a very small 256 gigabyte USB 3.0 pin drive so after it's all said and done I'll be really close to one terabyte of storage on this thing so around back here we have six trigger buttons these are going to act as your mouse buttons your left and right Mouse click it's also going to act as your L1 L2 and L3 on the right hand side R1 R2 and R3 USB type c for charging it is using a quick charge system and they claim within 45 minutes you can bring it to zero to fifty percent and then it's going to be kind of a slow charge there we also get a 3.5 millimeter audio jack a full-size USB 3.0 Port micro SD card slot and a micro HDMI out in case you want to hook it up to an external monitor or television the onboard controller layout is really awesome it will take you a few playthroughs to get used to it it shows up as X input it's pretty much going to be recognized as an Xbox 360 or an Xbox One controller in applications right in the middle there's a little mode switch it'll switch between Mouse mode and keyboard mode so you can start up an application in Mouse mode from your desktop Slide the switch over to game controller mode and if the game supports game pads it'll be detected As an X input controller the GamePad feels great you're gonna have to get used to it because it's laid out in a weird orientation but other than that I haven't had any trouble now we're going to go over the specs for the CPU we have an Intel Core M3 7y30 at one gigahertz but it does turbo up to 2.6 this is a dual core CPU with four threads the GPU is a built-in Intel HD 615 it will boost up to 900 megahertz when needed as for Ram we get 8 gigabytes of LP DDR3 at 1866 megahertz now this is soldered to the board you cannot upgrade it like I mentioned the storage can be upgraded but it comes with a 128 gigabyte m.2 drive it uses a 2242 m.2 SSD we also have a micro SD card slot now I don't know the storage capacity on this all I have is a 256 gigabyte card and it works fine you can also use external storage using the USB 3.0 Port the screen itself looks amazing even though it's 720p because cause it's so condensed it looks really really good even if you put your games on low which you will have to with higher end titles it looks great for being a handheld uses a 6 inch 1280 by 720 hips display with 10 points of touch it has some really good Wi-Fi built in 802.11 aacbgn plus Bluetooth 4.2 now there's some other features in here if you're really interested in every single spec that this thing has to offer there is a Wikipedia page or you can go to their website I'll leave links in the description now it's time to see how this thing performs because that's what I'm really interested in here I'm going to be testing some PC games here and at the end I'm just going to run one emulator but expect more videos to come after this if you have any requests let me know in the comments below all right guys so here it is as you can see I mean it's not a super huge chunky unit it's a little bigger than a normal like GPD XD it's a little thicker than that but overall it feels good in the hand one thing I forgot to mention in the specs the battery capacity on this is close to 9 800 milliamp hours depending on what you're doing with the unit it will last anywhere from two hours to six hours so if you're browse on the web watching YouTube you can get six hours out of it if you're playing a very demanding game like GTA 5 that's just using as much CPU and GPU as possible you're going to get two hours I was originally just gonna play it here in front of the camera for you but what I'm going to do is set up my camera first I'm going to hook an Xbox One controller up to it so I'm not moving the screen around while I'm trying to play some games I do want you guys to get a feel for how good this tiny screen looks even at 720p in low settings on some games after I do this little demo here I'm gonna plug in my game capture to it so we're not going to be messing around with the screen it's going to be going directly to a 32-inch television being captured right out of the micro HDMI on the back I'm not really sure how good it's going to look at 720p on a big screen but we're going to go ahead and do it anyway all right so here we are GTA 5 this is installed to my 512 gigabyte SSD I do have frame lock on I'm trying to get a constant 30 FPS out of this we're on normal settings which is pretty much low for GTA 5. it looks great on this little screen and we're almost at a constant 30 FPS now inside of houses and things like that it will go up to 50 but in the open world it does struggle a bit it still amazes me to see this running natively on the GPD win 2 at 30 FPS even if we're at 720p this is pretty awesome there's also some config files out there that you can download and some mods to install with GTA 5 to make it run better on a lower end system I think if I went through here and messed around with it for a few hours downloaded some packs I could get at least 40 out of it all right so with that out of the way I've connected my game capture card that way we can see everything very clearly here I'm at Max performance 98 battery this is going to be running completely off of battery for all of these tests here I also have the resolution set at 720p because a lot of people are going to be plugging this into their TV to play their games this is a handheld unit I want to keep it as close as possible to the screen that's in the unit itself I also want you to keep in mind that this is going to look a lot cleaner on the built-in screen it's a very condensed 720p screen and it looks crystal clear I can really see the difference here I have this plugged into the micro HDMI on the GPD when it's connected to a 1080p Samsung television at 720p doesn't look as good as it does on the built-in screen first game I want to test this way is GTA 5 once again this is kind of advertised on all of the spec pages that I see they claim it runs GTA 5 well now with the correct settings we can get a constant 30 FPS I do have afterburner running so up in the top left hand corner we can see the memory usage the GPU usage the RAM usage and the FPS I won't bore you with the settings in any other game I just want to show you guys that I am set to the lowest we can go here going all the way down the list here and even in advanced Graphics I do have the scaling turned down just a bit so we're not at one to one scale excuse me all right so like this I do notice some heavy dips what I'm going to do is go ahead and turn vsync on and bring the scaling down just a bit we should get a pretty decent 30 FPS now we will notice some drops here and there but overall for a handheld device this is pretty cool I do want to come back to this game in a later video I want to do some experimenting with some low end PC mods for this thing I know there's a ton of config files out there like I mentioned this is stock straight from Steam I just turned the settings down a bit oh yeah next up we got OverWatch 720p all low settings display scaling is set to 50 I'm actually very impressed with this now you will notice some stutters in characters every once in a while that's due to my internet connection right now I've been having trouble all day you'll notice a couple characters popping in and out but overall performance is great foreign here we have Doom all low settings 720p using the Vulcan API the game's running really good for being on a handheld right now please you know I had to test out some rocket League all low settings 720p if you turn vsync on with this one you're going to get a constant 60 FPS I haven't seen it drop below where somewhere in the range between 70 and 100 FPS depending on what's going on I don't normally play this game I actually bought it just for testing and I know these guys get so mad at me because I just run around the map I usually knock the ball in her own goal and for my final PC game test here will it run crisis now this is Crisis one for some reason I can never get the sound working on certain systems even on my main gaming machine I know this is an older game and it has something to do with it I've just always run into this issue with no sound this is a mix of low and medium settings at 720p you should have a really good experience playing crisis on the GPD win too and before we get out of here I just want to show you a little bit of PS2 emulation now I have more emulator videos coming if you're watching this later on down the road check the description down below because I'm going to be testing pretty much everything this is PC sx2 version 1.5 we're at 2x resolution foreign so far I am very impressed with the GPD win too now could you build a better gaming machine for the same price yes you could of course you could you could build an awesome gaming machine for half the price if you go use Parts you could probably build something that will outperform this for a quarter of the price but it won't be portable and that's the main draw here I will be doing some more testing expect a few more videos this week I want to test out some more emulators here and there if you guys have any requests for more PC games running on the GPD win too let me know in the comments below even though I really enjoy this device it's actually one of the coolest devices I've ever got my hands on I still think it's overpriced for what you're getting here so I'm not into laptops whatsoever but I do own one Dell Inspiron with an i5 and a 1050 TI in it I purchased it from my local Best Buy it was on sale for 599 600 bucks and it will walk all over this unit here but it's not as portable as the GPD when N2 this will fit in my back pocket I can pretty much carry it anywhere I want to and it plays everything I need older valve titles are going to run at full speed as you saw we can get GTA 5 to run at 30 FPS and I think we can do even better than that so watch out for a video bottom line here awesome device little overpriced you can get better performance for less money if you've been saving up to buy your first laptop or your first desktop for gaming don't even look at the GPD win too I would not want this to be my primary computer if you already have an established gaming PC or a nice laptop and you've been looking for a secondary handheld device the GPD win 2 is perfect for you really appreciate you guys watching if you want to check these out I'm going to leave Amazon links in the description keep an eye on the channel because I got a lot more coming on this thing and like always thanks for watchingwhat's going on guys this is ETA Prime back here again today I finally received my GPD win 2 and I want to take a look at this thing there's been a lot of Buzz about the win 2 out there I should have got a hold of one earlier but I really didn't want to Fork out the cash now we're going to take a look at this I'm going to go over the specs and then we're going to test some Steam games or PC games I'm gonna make a few other videos on this unit because it's really interesting definitely want to dive into a lot of emulation with this because in my opinion this could very well be the best emulation portable out there so if you take a look on Amazon you can pick one of these up for 815 dollars I know that's why I didn't want to buy one in the first place it's pretty expensive for what you're getting but it's all about portability here it's all about small components the smaller you go the more it costs the base unit does come pre-loaded with 128 gigabyte SSD I upgraded to a 512 plus I threw a 256 gigabyte SD card in here because I want as much storage as possible I've also ordered a very small 256 gigabyte USB 3.0 pin drive so after it's all said and done I'll be really close to one terabyte of storage on this thing so around back here we have six trigger buttons these are going to act as your mouse buttons your left and right Mouse click it's also going to act as your L1 L2 and L3 on the right hand side R1 R2 and R3 USB type c for charging it is using a quick charge system and they claim within 45 minutes you can bring it to zero to fifty percent and then it's going to be kind of a slow charge there we also get a 3.5 millimeter audio jack a full-size USB 3.0 Port micro SD card slot and a micro HDMI out in case you want to hook it up to an external monitor or television the onboard controller layout is really awesome it will take you a few playthroughs to get used to it it shows up as X input it's pretty much going to be recognized as an Xbox 360 or an Xbox One controller in applications right in the middle there's a little mode switch it'll switch between Mouse mode and keyboard mode so you can start up an application in Mouse mode from your desktop Slide the switch over to game controller mode and if the game supports game pads it'll be detected As an X input controller the GamePad feels great you're gonna have to get used to it because it's laid out in a weird orientation but other than that I haven't had any trouble now we're going to go over the specs for the CPU we have an Intel Core M3 7y30 at one gigahertz but it does turbo up to 2.6 this is a dual core CPU with four threads the GPU is a built-in Intel HD 615 it will boost up to 900 megahertz when needed as for Ram we get 8 gigabytes of LP DDR3 at 1866 megahertz now this is soldered to the board you cannot upgrade it like I mentioned the storage can be upgraded but it comes with a 128 gigabyte m.2 drive it uses a 2242 m.2 SSD we also have a micro SD card slot now I don't know the storage capacity on this all I have is a 256 gigabyte card and it works fine you can also use external storage using the USB 3.0 Port the screen itself looks amazing even though it's 720p because cause it's so condensed it looks really really good even if you put your games on low which you will have to with higher end titles it looks great for being a handheld uses a 6 inch 1280 by 720 hips display with 10 points of touch it has some really good Wi-Fi built in 802.11 aacbgn plus Bluetooth 4.2 now there's some other features in here if you're really interested in every single spec that this thing has to offer there is a Wikipedia page or you can go to their website I'll leave links in the description now it's time to see how this thing performs because that's what I'm really interested in here I'm going to be testing some PC games here and at the end I'm just going to run one emulator but expect more videos to come after this if you have any requests let me know in the comments below all right guys so here it is as you can see I mean it's not a super huge chunky unit it's a little bigger than a normal like GPD XD it's a little thicker than that but overall it feels good in the hand one thing I forgot to mention in the specs the battery capacity on this is close to 9 800 milliamp hours depending on what you're doing with the unit it will last anywhere from two hours to six hours so if you're browse on the web watching YouTube you can get six hours out of it if you're playing a very demanding game like GTA 5 that's just using as much CPU and GPU as possible you're going to get two hours I was originally just gonna play it here in front of the camera for you but what I'm going to do is set up my camera first I'm going to hook an Xbox One controller up to it so I'm not moving the screen around while I'm trying to play some games I do want you guys to get a feel for how good this tiny screen looks even at 720p in low settings on some games after I do this little demo here I'm gonna plug in my game capture to it so we're not going to be messing around with the screen it's going to be going directly to a 32-inch television being captured right out of the micro HDMI on the back I'm not really sure how good it's going to look at 720p on a big screen but we're going to go ahead and do it anyway all right so here we are GTA 5 this is installed to my 512 gigabyte SSD I do have frame lock on I'm trying to get a constant 30 FPS out of this we're on normal settings which is pretty much low for GTA 5. it looks great on this little screen and we're almost at a constant 30 FPS now inside of houses and things like that it will go up to 50 but in the open world it does struggle a bit it still amazes me to see this running natively on the GPD win 2 at 30 FPS even if we're at 720p this is pretty awesome there's also some config files out there that you can download and some mods to install with GTA 5 to make it run better on a lower end system I think if I went through here and messed around with it for a few hours downloaded some packs I could get at least 40 out of it all right so with that out of the way I've connected my game capture card that way we can see everything very clearly here I'm at Max performance 98 battery this is going to be running completely off of battery for all of these tests here I also have the resolution set at 720p because a lot of people are going to be plugging this into their TV to play their games this is a handheld unit I want to keep it as close as possible to the screen that's in the unit itself I also want you to keep in mind that this is going to look a lot cleaner on the built-in screen it's a very condensed 720p screen and it looks crystal clear I can really see the difference here I have this plugged into the micro HDMI on the GPD when it's connected to a 1080p Samsung television at 720p doesn't look as good as it does on the built-in screen first game I want to test this way is GTA 5 once again this is kind of advertised on all of the spec pages that I see they claim it runs GTA 5 well now with the correct settings we can get a constant 30 FPS I do have afterburner running so up in the top left hand corner we can see the memory usage the GPU usage the RAM usage and the FPS I won't bore you with the settings in any other game I just want to show you guys that I am set to the lowest we can go here going all the way down the list here and even in advanced Graphics I do have the scaling turned down just a bit so we're not at one to one scale excuse me all right so like this I do notice some heavy dips what I'm going to do is go ahead and turn vsync on and bring the scaling down just a bit we should get a pretty decent 30 FPS now we will notice some drops here and there but overall for a handheld device this is pretty cool I do want to come back to this game in a later video I want to do some experimenting with some low end PC mods for this thing I know there's a ton of config files out there like I mentioned this is stock straight from Steam I just turned the settings down a bit oh yeah next up we got OverWatch 720p all low settings display scaling is set to 50 I'm actually very impressed with this now you will notice some stutters in characters every once in a while that's due to my internet connection right now I've been having trouble all day you'll notice a couple characters popping in and out but overall performance is great foreign here we have Doom all low settings 720p using the Vulcan API the game's running really good for being on a handheld right now please you know I had to test out some rocket League all low settings 720p if you turn vsync on with this one you're going to get a constant 60 FPS I haven't seen it drop below where somewhere in the range between 70 and 100 FPS depending on what's going on I don't normally play this game I actually bought it just for testing and I know these guys get so mad at me because I just run around the map I usually knock the ball in her own goal and for my final PC game test here will it run crisis now this is Crisis one for some reason I can never get the sound working on certain systems even on my main gaming machine I know this is an older game and it has something to do with it I've just always run into this issue with no sound this is a mix of low and medium settings at 720p you should have a really good experience playing crisis on the GPD win too and before we get out of here I just want to show you a little bit of PS2 emulation now I have more emulator videos coming if you're watching this later on down the road check the description down below because I'm going to be testing pretty much everything this is PC sx2 version 1.5 we're at 2x resolution foreign so far I am very impressed with the GPD win too now could you build a better gaming machine for the same price yes you could of course you could you could build an awesome gaming machine for half the price if you go use Parts you could probably build something that will outperform this for a quarter of the price but it won't be portable and that's the main draw here I will be doing some more testing expect a few more videos this week I want to test out some more emulators here and there if you guys have any requests for more PC games running on the GPD win too let me know in the comments below even though I really enjoy this device it's actually one of the coolest devices I've ever got my hands on I still think it's overpriced for what you're getting here so I'm not into laptops whatsoever but I do own one Dell Inspiron with an i5 and a 1050 TI in it I purchased it from my local Best Buy it was on sale for 599 600 bucks and it will walk all over this unit here but it's not as portable as the GPD when N2 this will fit in my back pocket I can pretty much carry it anywhere I want to and it plays everything I need older valve titles are going to run at full speed as you saw we can get GTA 5 to run at 30 FPS and I think we can do even better than that so watch out for a video bottom line here awesome device little overpriced you can get better performance for less money if you've been saving up to buy your first laptop or your first desktop for gaming don't even look at the GPD win too I would not want this to be my primary computer if you already have an established gaming PC or a nice laptop and you've been looking for a secondary handheld device the GPD win 2 is perfect for you really appreciate you guys watching if you want to check these out I'm going to leave Amazon links in the description keep an eye on the channel because I got a lot more coming on this thing and like always thanks for watching\n"