There's one thing gaming laptops need to learn from Valve, Lenovo, and Ayaneo handhelds: Trust us

HardwareGaming LaptopsThere’s one thing gaming laptops need to learn from Valve, Lenovo, and Ayaneo handhelds: Trust usWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Future)

Ayaneo Kun handheld gaming PC

Gaming laptops have long perpetuated the myth that they’re designed for ‘gaming on the go’ but the reality is very different: gaming battery life is generally measured in minutes rather than hours. That means you’re unlikely to be spending long thrashing aroundBaldur’s Gate 3away from a plug socket when your high-end notebook’s GPU is sucking all the juice from the battery between dice rolls.

Yet if the manufacturers of gaming laptops trusted their users to the same extent you see in the burgeoning handheld PC market, things could be very different. And maybe even a lot quieter.

Yeah, gaming laptops are LOUD.

It’s all down to the software at play. While you could argue the granularity of control on offer with the Steam Deck’s OS is down to the fact that Valve controls both the hardware as well as the Linux-based operating system inside theSteam Deck, the truth is that a host of third-party manufacturers have done similar things with Windows-based handhelds, too.

Hell, evenAsuswith itsROG Allyand Lenovo with itsLegion Gohave dabbled in opening up the performance levers for the hardware at the heart of their handhelds, all with a view to squeezing out the ultimate balance of performance and battery life in the respective systems.

My favourite, however, is Ayaneo. I adore the software Ayaneo has created for its swathe of handheld gaming PCs; from theAir 1Sthat Jacob loved to the huge, and rather beautifulAyaneo KunI’ve been testing recently, the AYASpace app gives you so much easy control over the device that it’s sorely missed when I switch over to a laptop.

It’s been of vital importance for handhelds since the beginning. They’re running with relatively weak hardware, which necessitates some compromise over performance. And users are willing to tweak their mobile devices to manage the balance between frame rate and power draw in order to eke out the uptime of their machines.

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That imperative doesn’t seem to be of particular interest to most gaming laptop makers. The received wisdom is that gamers will plug their systems in if they want to play ‘proper’ PC games.

For the most part, the only control you have over your standard PC—unless you start digging around in your laptop’s BIOS maybe—lies within the limited power settings of Windows. And those are generally just a toggle between Best performance, Balanced, and Best efficiency, with some legacy menus which allow you to get alittledeeper into those power plans. But that’s all a long way from the easily accessible and far more granular options of a modern handheld.

(Image credit: Future)

Windows 11 power plan settings

You can choose how much strain you want to put on your battery at any point, and keep the noise to a minimum, too.

With the Kun, for example, I’ve got a host of different presets I can access, all editable so I can switch between hugely varied power modes in just a couple of button presses. And those power modes can be set anywhere from 5W all the way up to 54W for theAMD Ryzen 7 7840Uchip at its heart. But, not only can I set a TDP limit on the APU, I can also individually lock the clock speed of both the CPU and GPU components, too.

I can specifically allocate an amount of VRAM dedicated to the 780M graphics chip in there as well. Obviously, it’s not going to act like the super close to the metal VRAM that you get on actual graphics cards, but it means there’s an allocation out of system memory that’s always available to the GPU.

But it’s more about being able to define how much power you want to use at any given moment than about getting the absolute most gaming performance you can squeeze out of the system. That means you can choose how much strain you want to put on your battery at any point and keep the noise to a minimum, too. And it’s all accessible via a simple performance overlay, with an even more granular settings screen available if you want to dig deeper.

Image1of2(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)

Image1of2

(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)

(Image credit: Future)

Ayaneo Kun handheld gaming PC

(Image credit: Future)

Ayaneo Kun handheld gaming PC

I’ve certainly yet to find a unified piece of software that offers anywhere near the functionality and ease of use something like AYASpace delivers.

More on the Steam Deck(Image credit: Future)Steam Deck OLED review: Our verdict on Valve’s handheld.Best Steam Deck accessories: Get decked out.Steam Deck battery life: What’s the real battery life?Best handheld gaming PC: What’s the best travel buddy?

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