 Steam Deck's been delayed, now what am I gonna do to play games on the go? Gamepad Digital's got the answer, the GPD XP. It's an Android device that promises to be everything modern gaming phones can be at a significantly lower price of entry. But it's not phone, and it's got a parlor trick that Valve never thought to pull. It's got swappable controls. But unlike the Steam Deck, it's not a mini PC, so what can you do with it, and does it deserve a spot on your wishlist? Thanks to NZXT for sponsoring today's video. NZXT wants to make building a custom PC easier. With NZXT Build, just set a budget, see how the computer performs with your favorite games, and Build takes care of the rest. Use the link down below to get your own custom PC today. Intro This thing is basically half-switch, half-phone, with swappable controls and, bizarrely, dual 4G SIM card slots. At first glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's like the ROG phone, but no. Only the right section comes off. The left section is part of the chassis, so thankfully it doesn't do voice calls, or we'd be one step away from a Nokia N-Gage taco phone situation. Data access does make sense, since GPD is marketing this as a way to play mobile games, including first-person shooters. To achieve that, the removal of controls aren't just for show. The right side can either be blanked off to become a great asser to lead your team to victory in mobile games, fitted with a traditional thumbstick and button controls for emulators in streamed console games, or replaced with a five-button hotkey cluster that GPD says is ideal for first-person shooters. That might not look too intuitive, but the idea is that you can aim with your thumb on the touchscreen and use these buttons for utility features. The buttons feel characteristically good for a GPD product, and compared to smaller handhelds like the Retroid Pocket 2 and Ambranic RG351M, the sticks are much nicer feeling. They're the same as the GPD Win 3. True to GPD's roots, all controller modules can switch between Xbox mode or touch simulator mode via a dedicated button next to the thumbstick. But enough about controls. The device itself is running Android 11 with GPD's very not inspired by Microsoft's Metro UI. And yes, they actually call it Metro. That's a lot newer than the Android 6 you'll find on the Retroid Pocket 2 or Android 7 on the previous gen GPD XD+, and helps to make it relevant for more than just retro gamers. And that's why it's so strange that GPD chose a MediaTek Helio G95 SoC, which is well below upcoming competitors like the Ayn Oden and KTR-1, which both sport the far more capable Snapdragon 845. It's going to have the drive of a 60Hz 1080p tall IPS display, which they call Sunshine Screen. It's not super premium, and it has a lot of IPS glow, but it's reasonably bright and wouldn't be out of place on a mid-range smartphone. Unlike one of those, it's got an integrated active cooling fan that should helpfully prevent throttling over longer sessions. And with that very mid-range SoC, the chonky 7,000 mAh battery just might give it some serious endurance. The biggest flagship smartphones typically ship with 5,000 mAh or less, with brighter screens and much more power-hungry SoCs. In fact, it dropped less than 20% from full over an hour of gameplay in Super Mario Sunshine. There's 128GB of UFS storage on board with the ability to swap one of the NanoSims for a MicroSD card. You could theoretically expand it even further with the USB Type-C port, if it could be relied upon to grip the cable. It falls right out. Thankfully, you definitely won't be filling up your storage using the hole-punch camera. At 5 megapixels, it's primarily marketed for video calls, which it's better than nothing for, I guess. You'd probably prefer to use a real smartphone for that, but I'm not your mom. If I was, I'd tell you to buy a water bottle from LTVStore.com and stay hydrated more easily with the new caps. I won't be around to take care of you forever. The speakers would normally be unremarkable on a handheld like this, but these are supplied by AAC Technologies, a Chinese company who happens to be the supplier that Apple uses, and these are, in fact, double-coil speakers. And, well, they're remarkably clear, but on an iPhone, this is not. There's no bass, just mids and treble. Great for phone calls, but none of the included arcade titles are being done justice here. You'd think there'd be more space for resident chambers in here. Hmm. Let's take it apart and see for ourselves. The screws are all Phillips and all the same size, that is to say, quite tiny. There's a few clips, too, but once it's off, check out the size of that battery. There's the active cooler, and hey, the stick's on a separate PCB, just like the Steam Deck. Get subscribed, by the way, because if it's not clear by now, we're definitely doing more content on the Steam Deck, and you won't want to miss it. Down here are the speakers. They're not tiny, but they're not huge either. There's definitely enough room in here for larger residence chambers if they tried. Oh, well. Let's button it back up and play some games. The built-in Neo Geo games seem to work pretty well, although that's to be expected. Input lag seems pretty low as well, and the controls feel responsive as we come to expect from GPD devices, even in the games that don't ship with the console. While the Dolphin GameCube emulator is one of the pre-installed apps, it's not quite running at full speed. You will get the full 30 FPS most of the time in Super Mario Sunshine, for example, but shader compilation and some special effects will bring the game's FPS down to the high single digits to say nothing of more complex titles. What's worse, the version of Dolphin included with the device doesn't make use of the controllers, so you need to map the touch inputs manually. The PSP emulator, on the other hand, does work with controller natively and runs reliably at 2x upscale, often even at the native 1080p resolution of the handheld, although it does drop frames here and there if you do that. But this isn't primarily marketed for emulation. The Ambronix and Retroids of the World are much cheaper and already do a good job of that. GPD spins this as a console for modern mobile games, and PUBG Mobile and Minecraft are good candidates for the additional controllers. But while setting up the touch control simulator isn't difficult for these, and there's very little if any delay, frame rates aren't great. We're getting 30 or 40 FPS in PUBG at best, and in Minecraft's default settings, frame rate fluctuates between 60 and what looks like somewhere in the 30s depending on what you're looking at, regardless of the graphics settings. If you're willing to reduce the draw distance below the default of 20, you might actually be able to get a solid 60 FPS. Speaking of FPS woes, the FPS module bizarrely places the trigger lower down on the grip than a standard controller, which will take some getting used to. It's kind of like if a Dreamcast controller also had shoulder buttons, but there's less to grip. Nobody knows what that is. But I do. The traditional controller grip, while comfortable, is already a little bit on the smaller side, so the FPS module ends up being painful for me to use for any length of time. And that's not the only issue here. The flat cap, let me grab this real quick to kind of show you what's going on here. Normally these controls, what they do is slide directly on and off of this rail here. It takes a fair bit of force to get that off, by the way. This flat cap is exactly what it sounds like. It is flat and it just flops on there like that with the magnets. There's nothing here. Normally there's like something like this here, covers this, but there's nothing there. And so visually and like in terms of feel, this is really distracting to me. Not only that, but these grips are not easy to align. Normally what I want to do, when I'm putting this together, is like kind of get it in like that to kind of get it into the hole properly, then slide it into place. But if you do that, what's going to happen is you're going to have a little bit of a lip on the console itself between the controller and the console. And that actually makes it more difficult to take this off. What you're supposed to do is line it up very carefully so that the tabs get into those rails and then push it together. And even then sometimes you'll get mixed results. This time I got it 100%, but your mileage may vary very dramatically here. Oh, and while we're talking about weird control issues, the hardware Android buttons are in fact labeled backwards. Oops. Which encapsulates the overall experience pretty well. You're losing a more powerful SoC for a big battery. You're losing a cohesive experience like you'd get with an Ambranic for a more versatile Android UI. You're gaining bulk for swappable controls. And while the build quality is solid, you're going to pay a premium for it over those other devices. Is it worth it to be able to play mobile games on a secondary device? As someone who doesn't play competitive mobile games, I can't say. But as someone who daily drove a PSP for years and years, I can say that the emulation capabilities are promising. But at around $350, it's not a big leap to $399 for an entry level Steam Deck, a handheld that can do all this and run PC games, albeit with lower battery life. When that console finally launches, these premium Android handhelds may not be able to compete unless pwning players with smartphones is your jam. Our sponsors always compete for these segways, though. Micro Center is one of the best places to shop for all your technology needs. You get the best prices and selection on computer hardware and everything else tech at any of Micro Center's 25 locations across the US. Their new Super Micro PC builder makes it easier than ever to spec out the server or workstation of your dreams. Just choose your base system, add in upgrades to fit your needs like storage, memory, networking or graphics, and you can even arrange same day in store pickup to get your perfect PC as soon as possible. Go check out Micro Center's Super Micro PC builder at the link down below. And also linked below is an offer to receive a free 240 gig SSD if you're a new customer, valid in store only, no purchase necessary. Thanks for watching, guys. You're probably hoping for more Steam Deck content and um this wasn't it. So go check out our reaction to the Steam Deck tier down to see just what this boy's got to contend with going forward.