Better ergonomics, no need to drain phone battery or get interrupted with notifications, bigger screen at a native aspect ratio, dual sense haptics. Also, easier pick up and play with no need to hook up your phone and put it in the controller. That last one may seem minor but when you only get 5-10 spurts to game in between family/motherly/fatherly duties, it matters. Considering the backbone is $100, I place a value of $100 more for those upgrades. It’s fine if others don’t, but that’s my reasoning on why I bought it and why I like it.

I have an iPhone mini. I can’t see remote play very well with it. My tablet is a larger iPad Pro, which is great for looking at, but terrible to play in bed when playing with a controller. Instead, I use a Retroid Pocket 3+ for remote play, which is more ideal than both, but is still small and un-ergonomic enough to cause strain and discomfort with longer sessions.

I was already looking at something like the Odin2 to get more screen space and a little more comfort from remote play, but then the Portal was announced for $100 less with a far bigger screen and probably the most ergonomic form of any handheld. (Not to mention full dualsense features.) For me the only real trade-off is that I would have to stick to my RP3+ for retro gaming, which already isn’t too bad. The Odin2 didn’t seem as such a good deal anymore, unless I specifically wanted to play more PS2 era games.

But when the Deck OLED got announced and the reviews came out, it immediately jumped to the top of my list. It has the screen size and comfort I need, but can also do everything my RP3+ can do waaaay better. The price is a bitter pill, but it’s not as high as other handheld PCs, and as someone who’s never had a gaming pc of any sort, I’m probably going to get a lot more value out of it than others.