GPD, one of the more well-known Chinese handheld PC manufacturers, officially revealed its GPD Win Mini 2024 handheld refresh earlier today on X. Among the first major points of information revealed is that the GPD Win Mini 2024 will use the same display as the Asus ROG Ally, which means it will boast 1080p 120 Hz support, and more importantly for this handheld form factor, FreeSync Premium and a variable refresh rate (VRR).
You see, over on Steam Deck, you don't actually have VRR. functionality. To compensate, Steam OS has some truly superb built-in toggles for Refresh Rate and Frame Rate capping to achieve visual smoothness even when running below 60 frames per second, so long as you find the right cap. With Variable Refresh Rate tech, you don't need to worry nearly as much— as long as you are within the VRR range, your game should look pretty smooth.
FreeSync Premium is a particularly good VRR solution as well, since it has Low Frame Rate Compensation— functionality that duplicates frames as necessary when you dip beneath the minimum supported VRR range, ensuring your motion fidelity is kept in all but the most horrific of scenarios. For the limited power of a handheld, this is essential and should help save some power, too.
The inclusion of good VRR also makes this a competitive clamshell form factor handheld. The other major entry we've seen in that space Ayaneo Flip DS, which features a second screen that not everyone may want. The non-DS Flip, the Flip KB, with a keyboard will need to offer a great price to compete, since the Win Mini 2024 offers nearly all the same features with a much better screen.
On the new Win Mini, the OCuLink port has been replaced with a regular USB-A port. While onboard USB4 40 Gbps is still available (roughly equivalent to Thunderbolt 3), even GPD's own testing (embedded below) shows it to be a suboptimal eGPU solution compared to OCuLink (though admittedly, Thunderbolt is far more common)
Besides that, the GPD Win Mini's specs are pretty standard for Ryzen 7 8840U handhelds in this range, including the ability to order it with up to 2 TB of NVMe Gen 4 SSD storage (minimum 512 GB). It also ships with 32 GB of LPDDR5 6400 MT/s RAM by default, which should give plenty of room for both the CPU and the iGPU that has to share RAM with it to breathe.
Finally, GPD boasts hall-effect, drift-resistant analog sticks, a recessed D-Pad that at least looks pretty nice, and linear full-analog triggers. Plus, it threw in some attachable handles that the company claims are inspired by the DualSense design, which should make this a more comfortable device for extended gaming. There's a full mini keyboard and touchpad there, for those of us who miss having mini keyboards to type on instead of touchscreens galore.
The GPD Win Mini 2024 is currently available for crowdfunding/preorder on Indiegogo, though, as usual, use your judgment about putting down money on a product before it's been released and tested.
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Christopher Harper
Freelance News Writer
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