Portable Gaming

We’ve been singing the praises of the Nintendo Switch for years, but there are a couple of little things that could use some improvement. Now, a new accessory fills one of those holes – the Genki Covert Dock, a small device that charges the console and lets players plug it into TVs on the go.

Lyra is a handheld games console with a twist. It doesn't come with any games, you put it together yourself (or pay extra to not) and it can double as a personal computer and a Raspberry Pi testbed. It's a quirky offering that could appeal to the classic console fan who loves to tinker.

With the huge success of the Nintendo Switch, it's no surprise to see a variation on the original console making its debut today. The Nintendo Switch Lite is a smaller, cheaper version of the device, made exclusively for handheld use – the Joy-Cons aren't detachable, and there's no big-screen dock.

On the Nintendo Switch games like Super Smash Bros Ultimate are best played with Pro Controllers. Japanese accessory company Hori has now unveiled a new controller that's basically a Pro Controller split in two to slide onto either side of the screen in handheld mode.

Software developer Panic ​is getting into the hardware game with a handheld game console that features a hand crank. Called Playdate, it looks like a Gameboy made for (or by) a Minion, doesn't have a color screen, receives new games weekly like a TV show and has a crank handle on the side.

The gaming phone market is hotting up with models from Razr, Asus and others catching the eye, and now Chinese brand Nubia (part of ZTE) has launched the Red Magic 3 – the first gaming phone we've seen to include a cooling fan actually inside the phone itself.

​We've marveled at the works of Love Hultén a number of times in the past. For his latest creations, he has put his 2015 Pixel Vision pocket gaming system on a strict diet and split it into two versions – one that folds like the original and a one-piece inspired by the Game Boy Pocket​.

Hewlett-Packard today announced a smaller and faster gaming laptop, and a bunch of gaming accessories. Chief among the latter is a pair of gaming headphones that feature active earcup cooling technology.

​Samsung entered the gaming laptop arena last year with two Odyssey models, and has now revealed a the Notebook Odyssey Z. Described as "strikingly thin and light," the Z boasts a multi-core processor, zippy all-solid state storage and an industry-leading cooling system.​

While the Nintendo Switch is a successor to the Wii U​, its portable nature also makes it a logical follow-up to the 3DS. We know the Switch is much more powerful, but let's see how it compares to the 3DS XL​ in other ways.

Are there Apple devotees out there yearning for a way to supercharge their laptops for gaming? Wolfepack and its backers say yes. The company is developing the Kickstarter-funded Wolfe, an external Nvidia GPU, to do just that.

The Poco pocket-sized "supercomputer" is built around a Raspberry Pi compute module, and can be a bike-mounted actioncam, hi-res music player, handheld gaming console or portable web browser.