Gaming laptops have long presented a tricky compromise, struggling to perfectly balance portability, raw power, and battery endurance. While newer models are constantly improving, the arrival of powerful gaming handhelds like the Xbox Ally X has truly brought these inherent limitations into sharp focus.
While the Asus Xbox Ally X isn’t the first, nor necessarily the top choice for many (the Steam Deck OLED often reigns supreme), my recent testing of the Xbox Ally X alongside the Razer Blade 14 gaming laptop vividly highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of both categories. It’s clear where traditional gaming laptops are struggling, but also where they still maintain a significant edge over their handheld counterparts.
One standout area where laptops could significantly improve, taking a cue from handhelds, is battery life. During our PCMark 10 gaming tests, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X impressively delivered just under three hours of gameplay. While this might not sound groundbreaking on its own, it’s more than an hour longer than any gaming laptop we’ve put through the same rigorous, standardized test, and nearly three times what most laptops achieve.
Of course, a crucial distinction lies in performance: the Razer Blade 14 boasts a significantly more powerful GPU than even the best gaming handhelds. Its RTX 5070 GPU, designed to draw over 100W, achieves an impressive 97 frames per second on average in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with Ultra settings. In contrast, the Xbox Ally X’s Radeon 890M GPU maxes out at 35W, managing only 49 frames per second at 1080p on medium settings, and relies on FSR upscaling set to balanced, which inherently reduces the base render resolution.
Logically, if gaming laptops featured comparable GPU power, their battery performance would be much closer. Yet, the issue extends beyond gaming; non-gaming battery life also highlights a significant disparity.
For everyday desktop tasks, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X truly shines, achieving an incredible 17 hours and nine minutes in PCMark 10’s Office battery life test. This dwarfs the best gaming laptop result we’ve recorded in the same test – eight hours and 28 minutes from the impressive Razer Blade 16. The more compact Razer Blade 14, by comparison, managed a mere four hours and 24 minutes.
Part of this issue stems from the laptop’s design philosophy. The Razer Blade 14 is impressively thin and light, especially considering it houses a powerful, discrete GPU alongside its 10-core CPU. This compact design necessitates a smaller battery – 61.6Wh compared to the Xbox Ally X’s 80Wh – which naturally impacts its endurance. However, this isn’t unique to ultrathin models; many larger, bulkier gaming laptops, despite their more potent GPUs, still feature only moderately sized batteries. While airline restrictions on battery size might play a role, numerous laptops still fall short of the 160Wh limit.
For the Blade 14 specifically, its overall user experience would be greatly enhanced if Razer embraced a slightly thicker design, adding an extra 100-200g, to accommodate an 80-100Wh battery. This upgrade could potentially double its battery life. Gaming handhelds have already proven that consumers are willing to carry a somewhat bulkier dedicated gaming device if it delivers robust performance. A ‘chonkier’ Blade 14, in my opinion, would be a clear winner. This battery limitation isn’t exclusive to Razer; the comparable Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) also suffered from poor battery life.
Another significant advantage of gaming handhelds over many contemporary gaming laptops is their reliance on integrated graphics, in contrast to the discrete GPUs commonly found in laptops. The Xbox Ally X, for instance, features an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme CPU with an integrated Radeon 890M GPU. Conversely, the Razer Blade 14 combines an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 CPU with a Radeon 880M integrated GPU alongside a separate Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 laptop GPU. This dual-GPU setup enables the Blade 14, and other gaming laptops, to achieve much higher levels of gaming performance, as our benchmarks have clearly shown.
However, extracting maximum power from a discrete GPU while simultaneously optimizing battery life in these gaming laptops involves switching between the discrete and integrated GPUs. This automatic process, handled by Windows when launching a game, often leads to a noticeable, prolonged pause and a blank screen as the system transitions. Moreover, this GPU switching can sometimes cause applications to malfunction, windows to abruptly resize, and generally disrupt the user’s workflow.
Furthermore, for GPU-accelerated applications like Photoshop, or less demanding games that run perfectly fine on integrated graphics, users are often forced to manually configure which GPU to utilize for each application. In stark contrast, systems with a single integrated GPU offer a seamless, ‘it just works’ experience.
Of course, gaming laptops retain their relevance due to numerous advantages, including larger screens, exceptional performance, and the inherent utility of a built-in keyboard and trackpad. Some of their limitations are also rooted in software – the Xbox Ally X, for example, benefits from an optimized Windows version that enhances its battery life. Nevertheless, when viewed purely as dedicated portable gaming devices, they sometimes feel like they’re missing that ‘special something’.
This context makes the upcoming collaboration between Intel and Nvidia, aiming to equip Intel CPUs with integrated Nvidia graphics, incredibly significant. This partnership promises not only to bring Intel’s integrated GPUs into direct performance competition with AMD’s – which currently power the latest Xbox, PlayStation, and many gaming handhelds – but also potentially eliminate the cumbersome GPU switching technology that plagues current gaming laptops.
Developing such powerful integrated chips is no small feat. AMD already offers its own incredibly potent integrated GPU solution, the AMD Ryzen AI 9 390 Max (codenamed Strix Halo), which drives the Asus ROG Flow Z13 (2025). This chip is remarkably capable, delivering over 50 frames per second in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with high detail settings. Yet, the limited number of devices utilizing this chip underscores the significant challenges and costs associated with its production.
Nevertheless, the prospect of an intense competition between AMD and the Intel/Nvidia alliance to develop increasingly powerful integrated GPUs for the next generation of gaming laptops and handhelds paints a very promising picture for both formats. Perhaps, moving forward, we can also anticipate gaming laptops finally incorporating larger, more capable batteries. For current recommendations on portable gaming solutions, explore our comprehensive guides to the best gaming laptops and best gaming handhelds, covering a spectrum of options from budget-friendly to high-end.