The first wave of handheld gaming PCs were impressive engineering and awkward products. Powerful enough to embarrass a console, hot enough to notice, and running desktop software that had no idea it was on a seven-inch screen.
What changed
Mostly the software. The hardware improvements have been steady rather than dramatic, but the layer between the operating system and the games got substantially better: proper suspend and resume, per-game power profiles, controller mapping that works without a manual, and storefronts that behave like console interfaces rather than desktop applications.
That sounds minor. It was the difference between a device enthusiasts tolerated and one an ordinary buyer can use.
Battery life, honestly
Still the weak point, and still oversold. A demanding modern game on maximum settings drains any of these devices in well under two hours. The reason people stopped complaining is that they stopped playing demanding modern games on them.
The actual use pattern is older titles, indies, and anything that runs comfortably at a capped frame rate – where four hours is achievable and the machine stays quiet and cool.
Against a console
A handheld PC costs more than a console and performs worse in raw terms. What it offers instead is a library that includes decades of PC games, no platform lock-in, and the ability to install whatever you want.
For someone whose library is already on PC storefronts, that is compelling. For someone starting fresh, a console is still the better value and will be for the foreseeable future.
The compatibility question
Anti-cheat systems remain the recurring problem. Several major multiplayer games do not run on the compatibility layers these devices depend on, and the decision sits with publishers rather than hardware makers. The list has improved and remains incomplete.
Where the category goes
Towards convergence, probably. The interesting scenario is a device that docks to a screen and functions as a desktop, which several manufacturers are visibly circling. The gap between a handheld and a small living-room machine is now mostly software and thermals, and neither is a hard problem.