The GPD Win 2 is handheld computer that looks like a cross between a tiny laptop and a Nintendo DS. It’s a clamshell device that’s a bit larger than a chunky phone, and which features a 6 inch touchscreen display, a QWERTY keyboard and built-in game controller buttons.

GPD raised more than $2.7 million for the Win 2 through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign earlier this year, and now the company has announced that the first 1200 or so units will ship to backers of that campaign by May 15th.

Another 7,000 units will ship later this month, and it’s likely the GPD Win 2 will be available through retail channels in the coming months for folks who missed out on the crowdfunding campaign.

I got a chance to review a pre-release GPD Win 2 earlier this year, and I was pretty impressed with the tiny computer. It’s an upgrade from the first-gen GPD Win in almost every way… but with a $699 list price, it’s still kind of a hard device to justify unless you really want to play PC games on a handheld device.

With an Intel Core M3-7Y30 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD, the device is reasonably powerful. It also gets decent battery life, with up to 10 hours of run time (or less if you’re using it to play resource-intensive games).

But the small screen and keyboard make it difficult to treat the Win 2 as a full-fledged laptop replacement. It’s a portable gaming PC that you could use for other activities like watching movies, surfing the web, or even coding. But I wouldn’t recommend it as a primary PC for anyone that does a lot of typing or who needs a large display for editing photos, videos or other content. It’s basically in its own category: a portable gaming PC that you’d buy in addition to a laptop, phone, and tablet, not as a replacement for any of those things.

GPD Win 2 handheld gaming PC preview

Anyway, I’m still kind of amazed that this thing exists… although I’m not surprised that GPD was able to meet its estimated ship date.

A lot of individuals and startups use crowdfunding as a way to raise money to complete their research, development, and manufacturing. But GPD is already a well-established company that’s been shipping portable game devices for years. GPD tends to use crowdfunding campaigns as a sort of pre-order system that also helps generate buzz rather than as a funding mechanism to help turn an idea into reality.

via /r/gpdwin

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12 replies on “GPD starts shipping the Win 2 handheld gaming PC”

  1. GPD WIN 2 is the pocketable computer of our dreams. Now what?! Where do we go from here?

      1. Why the downvote? Guess we have an Intel fanboy in these parts…

  2. This would have been really cool when I was younger and had better eyesight. But now I have trouble reading screens smaller than 13.3 inches without glasses. Even with glasses, 8 inch screens are the smallest I can comfortably use. Now if it had an 8.9 or 10.1 inch screen like a Netbook, I’d probably buy one.

    1. Look at Xiaomi Air 12 models. I bought one for 700$, it’s 12″ screen, but it’s really light, aprox 1kg.
      + it can be “docked” via USB-C.

    2. Funny, I am actually reading this on an old EeePC Netbook (1001P). I would love something that looked exactly the same with the same dimensions as this netbook but with more RAM, a higher resolution screen, and a faster processor. Pretty much any modern x86 processor would do. Even running a lightweight linux keeps the old Atom processor pegged at 100% much of the time. Tablets with keyboards are not the same.

      1. Gemini Lake Atoms seem like a really decent step up in terms of performance.
        If I am not mistaken, they are on the Core M level, maybe even higher in some cases (more cores).
        I personally can’t wait to see what devices with Gemini will appear on the market.

        1. Almost…the best gemini lake processor, J5005 aka Pentium silver is 2980 on the Passmark benchmark score.

          The latest Core M3, which is 7th gen, is 3500 Passmark score.

          But the gemini lake chip is 10 Watts vs 4-6 for the core M3, but the gemini lake costs 8-10 times less

          1. Actually the J5005 is a desktop SoC and wouldn’t be used in laptops or tablets. The best gemini lake SoC for mobile devices is the N5000 (also Pentium Silver) and it has a 6W TDP which is only slightly higher than the Core M3. It’s also only about half the cost of the Core m3 7Y32 which is probably the best Core m3 you can get right now. CPU performance is probably comparable but what makes the Core m3 better and more expensive is its version of Intel HD Graphics which has more execution units and higher clock speeds than the Gemini Lake version.

  3. This, plus a usb 3 dock station connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, could be all some people need.

    1. I use the Win 1 in a similar manner, when I know I won’t need the horsepower of a full laptop. Also on a vacation, where I don’t even want to have a full laptop on me in case I get the silly idea to work while on vacation.

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