Linus was Wrong GPD Win 3

 - Hello, and welcome . Austin, have you ever hated the fact that you have to have a big bulky PC and just wanna game on the go

but laptops are still too big and bulky. So instead, you have to come up with alternatives. But a switch can't play.- PS Vita? - Vita's been dead for years. - Smartphone? - Who has smartphones these days? - Tablet?- Tablet? Never heard of it. Instead we have the GPD Win 3. 

So this is a pre-production unit. They have sent us many pre-production units in the past. Take a look at it before it comes out, right? So, all of our videos on the GPD devices have to be given with a grain of salt. That this is not final hardware, not final software, developing, et cetera, right? So some of the business has to be accepted. This though, in my limited time with it, has been more than a little buggy and I have some real concerns about it. So the idea, as Matt so eloquently put, is that this is a full gaming PC in something that's the size of a Switch Lite. Mind you it is much thicker and heavier, - [Matt] Yes, it is- [Austin] Than a Switch Lite. - heavy AF. - Yup. - Which, at first I kinda liked. - [Austin] No, it's way- And then after about five minutes of holding it, I'm like, "Oh God, no." - So the main claim to fame here is that this is a full Windows PC and it has a sliding mechanism. So you have not only a keyboard, which to be fair is a touch keyboard. It is not a physical clicking keyboard, which is unfortunate, in my opinion. - Let's talk about the keyboard for a second. Because with GOD, I don't think we've ever seen the same keyboard twice. - 'Cause they all suck. 

Every one of these keyboards sucks. So this is a pure touch display, right? - [Matt] Yeah.- So it is lit. But it is not good, right? I mean it works, but it is not something thatI would wanna use regularly. Even though this is a PC. And to be fair, the controls that they have included are actually pretty nice. You have the R2, the L2, You have the actual clicking sticks. D pad is nice, like X, Y, A, B. Like all the buttons for gaming feel good. But the thing is, this is a PC. And when you have to use the actual keyboard, I find it to be very annoying. I usually use the onscreen keyboard, which is not what I should say about something like this. - Yes.- You just, there's no feedback. And especially when it comes to like pressing the shift button, and seeing if you can actually type. It's very strange. - I don't have particularly big hands, but like, I can't comfortably even like, I ha, like,(coughing) if you look here, if I'm holding the thing like I should be. - How did you not stop? I almost died. (somber music) Tea went down the wrong hole. - So like when you're tryna type with caps, all right, shift on one side. But like, if I have to do like a capital A, like my last name, shift and then I actually like, - Yeah- Yeah. - It's bad.- It's not a good layout. - I'll give them a little bit of credit because obviously this keyboard is a fraction of the size of a real laptop. Let's, for a minute. There are certainly some issues with this that we're gonna talk about in a minute. 

But let's talk about some of the good stuff because there are some interesting things here. - Best thing about it, analog triggers. - [Austin] Yes, so the triggers are actually fully analog, which is especially important if you're playing like a racing game or something. There's a lot of other things. So, this is relatively powerful. So it is based on the 11thgen Core i5 and i7 processors. More than powerful enough for gaming. In fact, actually, I would say this is almost slightly overpowered for the 720p 60 display, right? This is, I would say slightly below average panel and 720p is a very low resolution. But you've got plenty of game power. And importantly, it also has a Thunderbolt 4 port, which means that you can plug it into an external GPU. - But does it? - Yeah, of course it does, Matt. But how would you not know that? - All right. So in doing some testing with this, I tested out the Thunderbolt port. And plugging it into just a regular Thunderbolt dock. So this was not a GPU, this was just, you know, monitor, mouse,keyboard, whatever. It worked fine, great, good. - Okay. - 

So, we try to install drivers for Nvidia, and, we got that, it just straight up won't work. So at, so first things would say, "These drivers are not compatible with this version of Windows," which was unfortunate. But, then just tryna doeven the G-Force experience, it actually dis, likehard-disabled the touch screen. And we had to- Pre-production, I guess. - It's, look I.- okay. - 'Cause, going along the lines of ports. So it's got the Thunderbolt4 port and one USB-A port. - Which is very nice to have. - (laughs) Again. We were gonna, we were plugging the capture card to get some game footage of this. Plugging in the capture card,freaked out the keyboard. And so it was just auto typing a bunch of numbers, as long as anything was plugged into that USB-A port. - Okay, I hear you there. There are certainly things that hopefully will be ironed out by the time this actually ships and when it goes on sale and whatnot. But, there are still good things here, right? So it's got a pretty chunky battery. - [Matt] So they say it's about two to three hours of gaming. - [Austin] Oh, it's only two to three hours, really? - [Matt] Yeah, so.- Ooh, that's actually not great. Now I know you can turn the TDP down to the chip. Okay, look, here's the deal, right? This is a good idea. This is probably one of the better GPDWin devices we've tried. It still feels like it misses in a few ways. 

This is not super comfortable, right? So while yes, it fits decently in my hand, the weight is extreme. So for reference, this is what an Xbox series Xcontroller weighs, 287 grams. This is what the GDP weighs. 559 grams. It is well over double the weight of a controller, which I think is pretty comfortable to use for a daily sort of basis. There are laptops the way almost as much as this, right? And this is tiny. Like, it is so dense. I don't like the way that the grips are either. It feels like it's not quite like, - [Matt] It's not- [Austin] My hands have to wrap a little bit.- [Matt] Yeah, it's not fully ergonomic. I love that GOD keeps trying and refining. I love everything that GOD is doing. But I'm hoping to take the feedback that we give of saying this is too heavy, this is, or these ergonomics. And they continue it like, 'cause, I have the Two. - Yeah.- The Two, this is miles better than the Two. - The good thing is this is probably their better design. Right, the sliding mechanism feels good. - But it looks very similar - All right.- To one of our favorite devices of all time. - [Austin] The Vaio. This is from what, 2004, I believe? Almost the same thing, Windows XP, will give you a good sense for how old this thing is. - [Matt] Squeeze these side by side. - Very similar, very similar. - [Matt] I mean, just look at that. - Well, I think the concept for the GPD, is that this is one device that you can use while you're out and about, you're playing your games,you're doing your thing. You come home, you drop it on your dock, you plug it into your monitor, your mouse, your keyboard,whatever the case is. And boom, you've got yourself a gaming PC. 

Keep in mind, that this is a really quite powerful device, right? Out of all the issues we have with it, power is not one. This is again- This is more powerful than a lot of your PCs. - One issue though, that I Will say with all this power, can you hear this? - That's the quietest I've ever heard it. - It is literally just about to load the game. - It gets.- It's loud and hot. - Yes, so I played a little bit of "MinecraftDungeons" on this now again, not a super demanding game. And after about 10 minutes, it was uncomfortable to hold with how hot it was. - Yeah. Here's the thing, right? We're gonna continue playing with this. We're gonna, you know? We'll get updates and the final hardware will be better, et cetera. Like if you put a lot of that stuff away, who is this for, right? Because it is a decent,portable gaming PC. But decent, I think, it still has some pretty major compromises. - Yeah, and so I was playing through "Overwatch," which it played, okay, at low settings. That's a pretty low bar. And then on top of that, you hear it, the fan ramping up. It still gets warm. It's only two, three hours of battery life on it. There's a, like, my overall thought of this is it's a really cool device. - Yeah.- And you know what? I would probably use this like crazy to play, like, emulate a Game Boy game,or something like that. - But you can do that on your phone. - I could do that on my phone.- Yeah. - But I like the physical buttons. - Yeah, it's just.- It's like, is it better to get like aRazer Kishi, on your phone? I don't know, like again, I love that GPDis doing these things. But right now with what we have here, this is the best version of something like this that we've ever seen. But I just don't think.- I actually disagree. We've seen better versions of this. In fact, we saw it at last year's CES. Dell brought out a thing- [Matt] Yeah. - [Austin] Or it was an Alienware concept.

 That was similar to this,except it was thinner. It had like detachable, likeSwitch like controllers. The problem is a concept, right? Other companies have dabbled with this because the idea of the Core i5's and the Ryzens of the world, you can get them in low enough wattages that they will fit in a form factor like this. They're always gonna be warm, right? But if you maybe put a little bit more R and D behind it, you might be able to get something which is a little bit thinner, a little bit more kinda custom tailored. And with that, you can actually do real gaming. You have Thunderbolt, you have a lot of the expansion options. But, you gotta like... - [Matt] Lenovo has one that just, they just not released, but like they showed off for CES. Same thing though, it's a concept. And, obviously Dell and Lenovo are much bigger companies than GDP. So like this, I like, I truly think that this is the best that they can do with a company of their size. - Yeah. - And I think they've done an amazing job getting to this point. It's more a matter of, is the technology ready to be in this form factor? - That's a great question. The thing is it's too heavy, too loud, too hot. And honestly, not incredibly comfortable to play as a portable console, right? Which is really the only advantage, the only thing like real claim to fame here. Now, if it were one or two of those things, that would be fine, right? If it's really loud,I'll put headphones on. And to be fair, you can turn the TDP down if you don't mind sacrificing some performance, - But.- Which on the display is fine - If you're at 720 low, how much lower can you actually get? - It's just, it's a product that, like, has a clear market. There's a lot of people who would like something like this. 

You look at this, you look at the photos, you look at the articles,you look at the specs, it seems great. But the thing is, you put all that together in a real package, and pre-production or not, I think there are major limitations. And I don't wanna come off as too harsh. But when a product is so single-minded in its purpose, and it does not deliver well on that purpose, it is a very hard recommendation. - And, yeah and so again, I don't think GOD did anything wrong here. I just, I don't, I think that. - Well, it's too thick and too loud and too heavy. So there's a single fan in the back. My fingers literally cover the actual events. - So like this, that's just the problem, there is just physical space. So, when you have something that powerful, you need to like, obviously this, even the Switch gets hot. So, like and that's the Switch is how much, how many factors less powerful than this? - Significantly, yeah of course. - I'm just realizing something. What settings is this running at? 720p medium. You know what? For as hot and as loud as this thing is, the performance actually isn't what I had expected. Like, I don't know if you can see on the actual feed. Look how blurry the wheel is. Look how blurry--- [Matt] Yeah, it's, that's it's all being reconstructed. And that's why, like, it was fine with "Overwatch" which already has kinda cartoony. - [Austin] Look at that, look at the car, look, the car literally looks like it's - [Matt] It's blurry, yeah. - [Austin] It's like 240p.- [Austin] It's like Vaseline on the--- You can see it stifling. Look, I 'm not there. This ain't it, chief. - Again, I like it, and it's funny because Linus loved it. - Yeah.- And, I don't know whether he lies,he just loves the idea of it. - Yeah. - 

But it's, I mean, having played with it for a little while, I just like, I love the idea. I want more of these. I want GOD to keep doing what they're doing, but it's hard, I mean, again, we can't, we can't really say go buythis. for nine out of 10 people. I would say even 99 out of 100 people, we can't say this for it. - It's just tough to recommend. But I'm very curious, what do you think about the GPD Win 3. And what do you think about these very portable gaming PCs that try to do everything? Let us know in the comments below. As always, make sure to subscribe.