what is the best gaming handheld so far in 2023 this is a question that I find myself
asking more and more as portable handhelds keep springing up on the market like daisies
while consumer desire for smaller yet better marches forward better battery life better
performance ease of use and the list goes on for this video we'll be taking a close look
at the io Neo 2 6800u which is one of the latest and greatest in the gaming handheld
space today but how does it compare to the very well established Nintendo switch and the rising
star in the space that goes by steam deck and ultimately which of these is best for
you today to better answer that question I'll be highlighting the pros cons and pitfalls for
each device we'll look at AAA performance as well as emulation across virtual systems such as NES
Super NES Wii PS2 PS3 and more and when it's all said and done we'll take a step back and
try to project into the future could the switch in the steam deck be in trouble down the road
foreign [Music] has a vastly different design from the Ionia Air Pro that I
reviewed a few months back and manned it look and feel infinitely better the entire front
face is literally made of glass from corner to corner with the exception of the button areas
ayaneo asserts that this is a very high grade material that is both scratch and impact
resistant there are zero exposed screws on this device adding to the sleek and modern Aesthetics
enhanced by the rounded off corners and the large 7-inch bezel-less display making it one of the
most stylish and futuristic looking handhelds that I've honestly ever seen a couple of things on this
unit has been reversed since the Ionia Air Pro the power button which also doubles as a fingerprint
reader has been relocated to the left while the heat vent and fan have been repositioned to the
right side of the body the hall since triggers and the thumb sticks have also been carried over from
the air pro which I was glad to see the micro SD slot has also been repositioned to the right side
of the body but the speakers are unfortunately down firing as well as with the eye near Air Pro
nevertheless I would say that the sound production on the eye Neo 2 is Leaps and Bounds above the air
pro mids and lows are a lot more crisp versus the pro which sounded a bit on the muffle side
if I had to draw a comparison I sit at the Ionia 2 external speakers sound a lot like the Nintendo
switch OLED decent highs and mids but definitely lacking in the lows department so it still stands
today that the steam deck has the best sounding speakers of any handheld that I've ever used when
it comes to haptics the switch Joy Cons with HD Rumble soar right to the front followed by the
Dex motorized track pads placing the eye Neo devices on the back end however the eye Neo 2
has one of the sharpest displays on any handheld ever made with a resolution of 1920x1200p with
a brightness of 400 nits and though it's not an OLED as with the switch in the air pro the Ionia
2 IPS comes awfully close in a lot of situations because of how nicely saturated the image is in
the impressive RGB color accuracy the screen is able to produce we all know the deck's display pan
is its primary Achilles heel from both the resolution and color standpoint but placing
the audio tube beside it with its Ultra HD High color gamut and bezel-less Screen makes the deck
shortcomings in that department even more apparent I have the decky vibrant plug-in set to 145 and
the discrepancy between the two is still night and day and if I disable the plug-in altogether
Bringing Down the vibrancy to 100 well I'll let you guys be the judge the one major positive for
me though for the deck's display is how well it dims in brightness for late night gaming sessions
now when we move over to ergonomics the io neo2 is surprisingly more comfortable than I expected
I anneal caused this aggressively curved sway back design the baby sleeping position and the
device really does just kind of rest in your hands with your fingers more extended the steam deck
by comparison provides a much more traditional console controller like feel but that doesn't stop
the ironyo 2 from feeling surprisingly ergonomic in its own right external differences aside out
of the entire group The ironyo 2 has the most impressive internal a hardware spec lineup with
a 50 watt hour battery ryzen 7 6800u processor and rdna 2 680m graphics with an 8 cores 16 thread CPU
and this unit comes equipped with that one two but three USBC type ports which may seem overkill
on the surface but two of these USBC ports are actually 4.0 allowing for a physical connection
of an external GPU to boost Graphics even further and that makes this device an amazing proposition
for someone who's looking for a truly viable all-in-one solution I really like the Ionia
went this route because I think that this has the potential to make the eye neo2 even more future
proof than something like the steam deck on top of the fact that it uses an m.2 2280 interface
that can support storage upgrades well beyond the two terabyte limits of the Dex 2230 when the steam
deck 2 comes I really hope their valve goes this direction as well because as it stands now the
deck is extraordinarily reliant on hubs with eye Neo you can get a lot more done on the Fly Li the
ionio 2 dedicated dock is awesome but in a lot of cases you won't even need it with three very
capable USBC ports but that's a quick rundown on the specs in the performance section we'll
dive deeper into how these internal components translate to real world performance cyberpunk 2077
this game is so vast and graphically demanding that I just had to test this one again we're going
to kick things off with a TDP of 8 watts 720p resolution Graphics low I'll fast forward through
most of this so you don't have to sit through the entire Benchmark long story short the deck
puts out an average of 29.7 frames per second and an 8 watt TDP again Graphics were set to low but
that is very very impressive at the 8 watt Mark we'll run the very same Benchmark for the Ionia
2 all things consistent a Watts 720p Graphics low and will get an overall average of 12.2 FPS that's
less than half of the output that the deck was able to generate at the same TDP level for the
next run I bumped the TDP up to 10 watts and the graphics to medium but I kept the resolution at
720p frames dropped a little bit on the deck as it pulls in an average of 24 frames per second
identical Benchmark same parameters for the eye neo2 and we get an average FPS of 18.9 so
far the deck is simply destroying the Audio 2 at these lower TDP levels pushing TDP up to 15
watts on the deck keeping Graphics at medium and the resolution at 720p we're seeing an overall
average of 28.45 FPS same parameters for I neo2 at 15 watts and we start to see a substantial jump in
frames which Nets out to be an overall average of 38.4 frames per second for cyberpunk 2077 which is
beyond unreal for a gaming handheld so we know the deck caps out at 15 watts but just for fun
let's boost the ironyo 2 up to the 33 TDP Cap all things consistent guys we end up with an average
FPS and medium settings 720p of 53.8 frames per second which is mind-blowing now it took the
ironyo a while to get going but once we started cranking up the juice the system really took
off the interesting thing is that you actually don't have have to Max things out to get similar
results at a TDP of 20 watts and up I actually saw a very similar performance for this game all
things considered for the next test we'll take a look at shadow of the Tomb Raider I used the same
scene across the board early on in the beginning when Laura is walking through a Street Market in
Cozumel Mexico I saw an average FPS of 34.4 on the steam deck at 8 watts and only 13.7 on the eye
neo2 medium settings at 10 watts 37.4 on the steam deck and an average of 22 FPS on IO neo2 pushing
Graphics to high at a TDP of 15 watts the deck actually inches out the eye neo2 with an average
FPS of 45.2 versus 43.9 for ionio 2. however when I set TDP to 22 watts and above I saw the largest
FPS average of any of the test runs for the Audio 2 at 52.2 frames per second I performed a lot of
other test runs off camera with various other titles but the overall results are very clear
the steam deck is able to do a lot more with less wattage going into the system however when the
ionil 6800u isn't starved of power it outperforms the steam deck each and every time I'm going to
wrap this section up for now but don't worry we're going to talk more on this in the final verdict
laughs [Music] console emulation is by no stretch of the imagination new but with the
rise of PC handheld popularity emulation as a whole is becoming more feasible and for a lot
of seasoned retro Gamers handheld emulation is reigniting the passion there's just something
about reliving childhood memories in handheld form on the couch and bed on a train ride on a
flight Nostalgia is always a click away I for one have had some stumbles along the way with setting
up emulation on both the steam deck and IO neo2 but I definitely learned a lot along the way for
one is that I absolutely prefer front ends that aggregate all of the Retro system emulators into
a single user interface versus setting them up one by one mudek was by far the easiest of
the two to initialize largely because of the community backing rarely did I ever run into
any major issues that I couldn't quickly find tips to troubleshoot though I'm still fighting
to get Xbox 360 games to boot correctly for the ironyo 2 I went with the best mu deck equivalent
for Windows that I could find which ended up being retro bad a front end that has a
lot more bells and whistles such as being able to redress the entire UI unlike the emulation
station Hub that's a lot more Bare Bones from what I've read battle Sarah is pretty much the
Linux equivalent of retro bad for Windows if you want a similar UI look and feel though
it requires loading the OS separately on an SD card and then booting out of the Steam OS
every time you want to revisit your games which I'm honestly not a huge fan of outside of the
nuances surrounding the setup for Windows versus Linux emulation performance from NES all the
way up to PS2 there really wasn't a single game that either of these units can handle thank you
for some Wii games however you do need to configure the controller for retrobat to
imitate the motion input which can be pretty time consuming Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 are great examples
on the deck I simply pulled down pre-configure controller profiles and was Off to the Races in
the deck track pads offer a significantly better experience for both of these Galaxy games this
is something that the deck doesn't get enough credit for and what still sets it apart from
the vast majority of PC handhelds popping up on the market the trackpads while you may not use
them for every game the trackpads unlock full PC compatibility for point-and-click titles
and for cases where greater Mouse Precision is required that level of precision is just
harder to replicate with thumbsticks this is one of the reasons I got excited when I saw the Ionia
next 2 prototype which has physical track pads along with the fact that it's rumored to have
an AMD 7000 processor and discrete graphics at any rate PS3 is where emulation on these
PC handhelds starts to become a little hit and miss as a lot of these games are extraordinarily
large and taxing and it seems that the rpcs3 emulator is forever a work in progress while
God of War 1 and 2 from the PS3 collector's edition run incredible on both the steam deck
and the eye neo2 God of War 3 and the Uncharted series present a serious challenge God of War
3 crashes immediately on the deck following the opening cut scene in Uncharted 2 and 3 I couldn't
even get past the main menu however I was able to get God of War 3 to run on the eye Neo 2 as well
as Drake's Fortune without a ton of stuttering and frame drops as on the steam deck PS3 games
that have had great consistent performance with for both handhelds include drinking guard 3.
Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions Lollipop Chainsaw which I hear is getting a remake
bleach Soul Resurrection wet and Dante's Inferno now I'm going to stop at PS3 for
this video leaving off Wii U and the Nintendo switch but I'll say that emulation on that end
is very possible and it works very well though as with any emulator you're not going to get the
Flawless experience on PC as you will on the original console and by that I mean in terms
of games booting correctly 100 of the time and not having to tweak with the controller configurations
the Nintendo switch is an incredible console and a revolutionary device in the gaming industry as
far as I'm concerned however that versatility is confined within the garden of Nintendo in
the Nvidia Tegra X1 chip that powers it is even older than the six-year-old device itself and
with a less than fully comprehensive Classics Library available with their online subscription
excluding older deteriorating console systems emulation Remains the primary if not the only
method to enjoy some of Nintendo's classic games devices like the eye of Neo 2 and the steam deck
do not fundamentally replace the Nintendo switch in my eyes but do I look at handheld gaming
differently with their introduction to the market and are these two PC handhelds significantly more
powerful and serviceable across a wider variety of console systems absolutely and today if I wanted
to take a single gaming handheld with me for an extended trip to maximize software versatility it
would probably be the steam deck if weight wasn't an issue or the eye neo2 if I was forced to pack
a little lighter and that's assuming that I have a sitter because if the kids are tagging along
I'd probably still take the switch regardless for the most seamless Co-op experience but if I could
only take one gaming handheld on that trip why would I go with the steam deck if space wasn't
an issue well largely due to the fact that the steam deck is an absolute beast at lower TDP
levels across the board and that will most likely contribute to longer battery life when I'm on
that imaginary Beach or poolside the Dex GPU is fundamentally more efficient when we're talking
frames versus power usage up until about 10 to 12 TDP but once that threshold is reached however the
ironyo 2 Will Blast Off like a rocket through the atmosphere the 6800u requires a lot of juice but
when power constraints are of no issue that is if you're predominantly playing at home on the couch
or in bed with something like this u-green 140 watt PD charger that can deliver a Max of 70 watts
per Port the ion EO 2 offers an extraordinary unrivaled PC handheld experience higher frame
rates and moderate graphics and resolution very solid frames at 1080P or even 1200p in
many scenarios in addition to a quantifiable performance boost you'll get an infinitely
looking better display on the eye neo2 making AAA games at higher resolutions a true Wonder
to Marvel at nevertheless you're gonna have to really ante up for that luxury though and there's
no way around it it's a tough pill to swallow However the fact that the eye Neo 2 utilizes
an m.2280 versus the 2230 SSD used for the steam deck means that it can support internal storage
upgrades Beyond two terabyte this particular model can even support double-sided ssds up to
8 terabyte that's four nvme terabytes beyond the limits of the PS5 let that sink in if that isn't
future proofing I don't know what is and again the device can support an external GPU to beef
up graphics for Monitor and TV docking together these factors put the io neo2 in a prime position
to have a potentially very long shelf life we all know that the steam deck is Untouchable
from an MSRP standpoint and that the Dex custom GPU is more than adequate right now but a couple
of years down the road if there is no steam deck too readily available just yet will we still feel
the same a hypothetical situation yes but these are things that I wonder about when I lie awake
at night before I rap I really want to know what you honestly think about the ironyo 2 and in your
humble opinion what is the best overall gaming handheld so far in 2023 and why do you feel that
way there are no wrong answers to this question because everybody has different wants and needs
also on the emulation front what systems are you playing right now and what are some of your
all-time favorite retro Classics this is my first official video of 2023 and I want to thank you
guys for watching and supporting the channel as we continue on this journey together foreign [Music]