Chinese electronics company GPD has released fascinating stream of handheld PCs over the past few years. The GPD Pocket line of computers are basically miniature laptops that ship with Windows 10. The GPD MicroPC is a more affordable device with additional ports, a thumb keyboard, and no touchscreen display.

But the company’s first Windows-powered device was the GPD Win, a handheld gaming computer with a thumb keyboard, game controller buttons, and clamshell design that lets you fold the device up and slide it into a pocket (if you have large pockets).

Last year the company released a follow-up called the GPD Win 2, with a more powerful processor, more RAM, and faster storage, among other things.

So what’s next? There’s a GPD Win 3 on the way… but we probably won’t see it until next year. But the company does have something to tide us over — a GPD Win 2 Max is coming sometime in 2019.

Update 4/19/2019: GPD has dropped the “2” and the new model will be called the GPD Win Max. It will most likely feature an AMD Ryzen Embedded processor. 

GPD Win 2

That’s… about all we know at this point. And even the name is a little iffy.

GPD is certainly planning to launch a new or upgraded handheld gaming PC this year. An employee of the company sort of made that announcement when announcing a contest that will let folks with an existing GPD Win 2 compete for a chance to get into the upcoming beta program for the Win 2 Max.

As for the contest, Win 2 owners can enter by uploading a video to YouTube showing them playing a game on the little computer, posting a link in the GPD Devices discord channel, and alerting @YYang.

Note that the folks who win the contest will get a chance to buy a pre-production GPD Win 2 Max. It’ll be available for a discounted price and GPD will ship it months before the final production units are ready to go.

As for what exactly it is that you’ll get? That’s kind of anybody’s guess at this point — GPD hasn’t officially announced any specs or other details for the Win 2 Max, and the name could also be changed before the device is released.

But it’s a slow news day, so I figured I might as well tell you what I know about the next handheld gaming PC from GPD… which isn’t very much.

visit /r/GPDWin if you want to see more discussion without wading through discord

Update: Someone has been posting leaked details about the Win 2 Max on reddit for a few weeks, The Phawx has kinda/sorta confirmed the details in a YouTube video.

It sounds like the Win 2 Max will have a 1280 x 800 pixel display, a 25 watt AMD processor (which can also be set to run at 15 watts or 35 watts depending on whether you want to prioritize battery life or performance), and a GPD Pocket-style keyboard for a better typing experience.

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16 replies on “GPD Win Max handheld game console coming this year”

  1. Smach Z, whatever chances you had, GPD now has beaten you to the punch. This is fantastic news. Finally! An AMD handheld gaming system!

  2. At my place….PC gaming isn’t very popular..

    I would like to play the Age of Empire game series on Android..

  3. I’m not sure what GPD is doing in that supposed leaked photo. If you zoom in on the PCB on the bottom right, it’s clearly an oval cutout from another PCB. The edges are jagged and some components are clearly cut in half.

    If they’re going for an initial look, a 3D model/render would be more useful.

  4. is the new Win 3 looking at the new intel tiny chip, an are the integrated graphics looking at rays from Nvidia?

    1. For some reason, I don’t think the price will be that much cheaper. And the AMD processor will compromise on both the performance and the battery life.

      To have a competitive AMD SoC in a GPD Win device, you kind of have to wait for four things:
      – 7nm lithography
      – Zen2/Ryzen v3 microarchitecture
      – AMD Navi Mobile graphics
      – Optimisation package for the above three

      ….but I’m crossing my fingers that happens sooner than later!

      1. your points are straight out of the buldozer era of amd. APUs are more than competitive in terms of CPU grunt and especially GPU grunt. Also my comment might have mislead you. I didn’t mean to hint at the price being cheaper vis a vis AMD, just that I might be able to swallow the high cost for an AMD apu equipped model. As an aside, Smach better come out with the Z before this drops, their only claim to fame in the use of an AMD APU, if it is a choice between the 2 GPD has a longer and better track history.

        1. Well, if you look at the industry there still are plenty of Bulldozer APU’s.
          The few Ryzen Mobile APU’s have barely trickled into the market, and for a good reason, they have not been properly tweaked yet. I don’t blame them, AMD is short on cash and resources to do full-scale R&D on all product lineups.

          I’m just saying, Intel has been in this field for a long time. They have squeezed out all the battery life and performance they can from their lithography and microarchitecture; which is why the original GPD Win is good, the GPD Win 2 is great, and the likes of the Core i7-8650U is awesome.

          AMD needs their new microarchitecture (Zen2), their new graphics solution (Mobile Navi), their new lithography stage (TSMC 7nm), and some Optimisations to give Intel a proper competition. But more importantly (to me), to provide a worthy alternative inside a GPD Win 3 handheld console.

          1. Zen+ was already clock for clock equal with Intel at the same power point cpu wise.
            They didn’t have low tdp mobile apus for market reasons, intel has contracts with the majority of laptop manufacturers. They said as much when they showed off concept laptops they cant get the market slice.
            Zen2/ryzen3000 is looking for an almost SandyBridge level IPC gain and clock boost at the same tdp. Sandy bridge was HUGE from the previous gen and that gain hadn’t been seen since 1998 when processors were capable of doubling caching on 16bit pipelines because the limit was data that could be cached in L1 and L2.
            L3 changed a lot.
            Zen2 is far beyond intels road map till 2021

  8. Ditto Richarda
    Please add a optical Mouse along with the joysticks. This will make an unbeatable machine.

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