There are a whole host of ‘if only’ features of the OneXPlayer X1 that could have turned this interesting take on the market into a truly great portable gaming PC. If only the Meteor Lake silicon was efficient enough to deliver a breakthrough level of handheld battery life. If only the Xe GPU architecture was more reliable at achieving consistent gaming framerates across the board. If only those controllers weren’t so hollow and confidence-inspiring and didn’t get in the damn way. If only it wasn’t designed to work with a magnetic keyboard.
Whatever the case, I still have a genuine affection for it, although I honestly don’t think I’ll ever use it as anything other than the cool tablet PC it actually is. While there’s no way around that, it’s a vaguely ridiculous-looking device once you have the keyboard and elephant ear controllers attached.
Because OneXPlayer presents the X1 as a three-in-one device: a tablet PC, a laptop and a gaming handheld. And as soon as I see that in a marketing slide, I instinctively think, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” And you’d almost run out of money.
“Almost,” because not only does it not excel in any of these form factors, it often isn’t Good not at all. It’s not even a ‘jack’. Perhaps strangely, it’s at its worst as a portable gaming PC, and that’s all down to the controller peripherals, which took a while to finish and deliver before this review. I hate to think about what the original prototypes felt like in the hand if this is what we end up with.
X1 specifications
CPU: Intel Core 7 Ultra 155H
cores: 16
Subjects: 22
GPU: Intel arc
Memory: 32GB LPDDR5x-7467
Screen size: 11-in
Original resolution: 2560×1600
Refresh rate: 120Hz
Storage: 1TB SSD
Battery: 65 Wh
IO: 1x Oculink (PCIe 4.0 x 4), 2x USB 4 Type-C, 1x USB 3.2 Type-A, 1x 3.5mm audio, 1x TF Card 4.0
Dimensions: 252 x 163 x 13mm
Weight: ~789 g
Price: $1,100
I’ve had the OneXPlayer And that has become a disappointment.
Before that, as a chunky Meteor Lake tablet, I really enjoyed having an 11-inch device with a pretty nice 120Hz 1600p screen on it, one that lets me play Football Manager in bed. The Core Ultra CPU and iGPU are more than capable of delivering excellent frame rates at that level and do so almost silently. However, I must say that even after quite a few Arc driver updates, I still get some strange graphical artifacts when playing the game on battery power. That’s the way Intel graphics work these days…
By comparison, when I play FM on my Framework 13, with the Ryzen 7 7840U chip in it, the damn thing sounds like it wants to take off, like the turbine whine of its fans. The fact that I can get the same essential performance without any audible noise is an absolute win for the X1.
So yeah, there’s that: the OneXPlayer is quiet and the OneXConsole software is the same as on its previous AMD-powered handhelds, giving you a huge amount of control over the device’s power consumption and fan curve. It helps you balance performance and battery charge with a simple interface.
And like I said, that screen is beautiful. It’s bright, sharp, large, has a high resolution (which is decent on the desktop, though perhaps less so with the GPU demands in-game), and comes with a 120Hz refresh rate, making it feel smooth . I love it and it’s probably the reason I use it again and again.
However, this is as good as it gets.
This is not a good form factor for a laptop-like device.
The laptop experience is, well, not that of a laptop. The device comes with a leather-like back that doubles as a folding stand, and this allows you to operate it in a pale imitation of a laptop, in a sort of Microsoft Surface-esque way. Granted, the magnetically attached keyboard is larger and more usable than the awful keyboard you can use with the OneXPlayer 2 Pro, with longer keys and a larger trackpad. It will certainly work if you are pushed to use it as your only possible way to laptop, but it wouldn’t be my preference at all.
However, the keys don’t feel bad to type on and there’s enough space between and around them to not make typing a very unpleasant experience. Considering what a miss the ickle keeb on the 2 Pro was, that’s a definite improvement. Even the trackpad is impressively responsive.
It’s just not a good form factor for a laptop-like device. The keyboard flips up happily, but there’s nothing holding it in place, so it happily flips back down with enough force to disengage, sending it flying in the air. That action of fluttering will also wake up a sleeping X1, which won’t do anything good for battery life.
Connecting the controllers to the side of the device also does not apply. Not because they’re particularly draining per se, but because they completely prevent the X1 from going into sleep mode for more than three seconds at a time before the screen turns back on.
When you’re trying to use it as a portable gaming PC, you’ll want to be able to travel around with it and pause your game at will and come back later. The fact that this is not possible is a huge mistake. And honestly probably one of the things that makes it next to impossible to recommend in that mode.
That’s completely separate from the feel of the controllers themselves, which move a lot in their positions on either side of the screen and the buttons don’t quite connect properly to the device. They also feel too light, but worst of all, the decision to shift the thumbsticks here renders the right stick largely useless in the game. Normally I prefer an offset layout of the Xbox controller, but here you have to twist your thumb too much to use both the stick and the trigger/shoulder buttons comfortably.
The controllers and keyboard also have a huge impact on the I/O of the device. There are two USB Type-C ports on the left and a Type-A and SD card slot on the right. You also get an Oculink connection at the top. But because of that keyboard provision, there’s no charging port on the bottom, and when you plug in the controllers you essentially lose access to one of the Type-C ports and the opposing SD card slot. And if something is plugged into the second Type-C port, it becomes annoying to have to fight with it to press the shoulder button on that side.
If you were to consider the 3DMark scores individually, this would be the most powerful gaming handheld on the market.
And then we get to the internals and the actual gaming performance. One of the reasons, controllers aside, that I haven’t tested the OneXPlayer X1 yet is that it’s not finished yet, and that’s mainly because of the Intel drivers.
The Meteor Lake CPU has a relatively powerful iGPU at its heart. Theoretically. And if you were to consider the 3DMark scores individually, this seems like the most powerful gaming handheld on the market. Unfortunately, Intel’s Alchemist GPU architecture still can’t be relied on to deliver consistently high performance across a range of games. Sometimes it will be about on par with the Radeon 780M in the Ryzen 7 7840U/Z1 Extreme chips, other times it will fall far behind.
And that’s not a good thing for a gaming device that costs so much, right?
If there was a redeeming feature in using the Meteor Lake chip, there wouldn’t be such a big problem. I could deal with the fact that sometimes I could get a 10% drop in gaming performance if I got a huge chunk of battery life. But the Intel chips are just not that much more efficient, even when running at the same TDP, compared to the competing AMD processors. I still only get an hour and 15 minutes in the PCMark 10 gaming life test at full power, while the Ayaneo Kun (now with a fixed d-pad after an RMA, no less) is just 60 seconds shy of two hours.
Obviously, game uptime varies depending on settings and the game you’re playing, but it certainly doesn’t beat AMD-powered devices on the important metrics that count for gamers.
Buy as…
✅ You want a solid Windows tablet: Essentially, the X1 is an 11-inch Windows tablet that can deliver generally good 1080p gaming performance in touch-friendly PC titles.
Don’t buy if…
❌ You want a gaming handheld with a big screen: At first glance, that lovely screen and elephant ear controllers might seem like a great solution, but the reality is that the connections are weak, the controls unreliable and the ergonomics frustratingly uncomfortable.
❌ You were hoping for epic battery life from Meteor Lake: For all of Intel’s efficiency claims, the Meteor Lake chip in the X1 doesn’t deliver anything special when it comes to battery life.
This probably explains why OneXPlayer created the new X1 Mini and switched to the newer Ryzen 7 8840U chip instead of using another Intel processor. And I don’t see OneXPlayer going back. Maybe I’d be more accepting if this big boi X1 had a Ryzen chip, because we wouldn’t have any graphical weirdness or inconsistent performance. But I would still take issue with the three-in-one form factor and its limited usability.
I haven’t even mentioned the price outside the specs box above – it would have to be a serious budget option to have any hope of a recommendation from me, and that’s clearly not the case. It’s a similar story with all OneXPlayer and Ayaneo devices; they’re a lot more expensive than Asus’s and Lenovo’s more mass-market handhelds.
But in any case, they are both devices that are good at what they do. This X1 costs $1,100 for the standard bundle with the controllers and magnetic keyboard. You could buy a real laptop, with consistently better gaming performance, And a Steam Deck for that money.
Ultimately, I just don’t find myself wanting to use the OneXPlayer And only then for Football Manager in bed, graphical issues and all.