A new gaming PC is coming through a new crowd-funded campaign. At US$ 799, the GPD Win 3 is a portable gaming PC running Windows 10 with a game pad integrated into the hardware. Under the 5.5-inch 720p screen is a keyboard that’s revealed when the screen slides up. There is also a fully integrated gamepad with two joysticks, four triggers, a directional pad, and four action buttons.
It has intake air vents on the rear, and
an exhaust vent on the top. There’s also a USB-A port, power key, headphone
jack, and built-in microphone. The bottom is where you’ll find the loudspeakers
and a USB-C Thunderbolt 4.0 port. Finally, there are two customizable buttons
on the rear side of the controller grips, which also contain rumble feedback.
The hardware’s design seems to borrow
inspiration from the Sony Vaio VGN-UX series. I’m talking about a Vaio-branded
handheld PC that Sony released to the market in 2006 – a year before the very
first iPhone. It had every feature you could think of including a cellular modem
for internet on the go. The Sony VGN series cost around $2000, ran Windows XP,
and was painfully slow.
The GPD Win3 will, however, be much better
equipped to handle modern PC games. The device will be powered by the latest
11th-generation Intel Core i5 (2.4 - 4.2GHz) or i7 (2.8 – 4.7 GHz) and come
paired with 16GB of LPDDR4 RAM with 1TB of internal PCIe 3.0 SSD storage. It’s
got an Intel Xe GPU and comes with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, and support for a
microSD card. The Win 3 will be powered by a 65W Power Delivery charger.
Battery life is expected to last between 2 to 3 hours when playing heavy games,
or between 6 to 8 hours with moderate use, or 11 hours with light use.
Games can be played on the 720p screen in
handheld mode, or the device can be docked to support a host of I/O
connections. The dock will offer support for an external display via HDMI 2.0b,
1Gbps Ethernet, USB-C X1, USB-A X3. With the integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics
processor, gamers can expect the latest triple-A games to run at 60fps – the
same refresh rate that the display will cap at. Remember, this display is a
720p panel, so even more demanding games will be easier to run with an
integrated graphics setup.
The concept is interesting, and the price
seems reasonable, but given the product is crowd-funded on Indiegogo, it will
be interesting to see how well the final product will be executed
