GPD Win Max 2 review: a surprisingly competent tiny laptop that doubles as a gaming handheld

Since Neuromancer took the sci-fi world by storm in 1984, computing nerds have pined for a “cyberdeck” — the ultimate in personal, portable PCs for surfing and hacking the world. Usually, they’re DIY affairs. But the 10-inch GPD Win Max 2 is the closest I’ve seen to an off-the-shelf cyberdeck worth buying.

It’s far from the best laptop or gaming handheld. It’s an ergonomic compromise in five ways, and the webcam is trash! It’s also a portable computing dream. It doubles as a gaming handheld, with joysticks and buttons smuggled away in hidden compartments. It optionally triples as a desktop gaming PC, with a rare Oculink port that lets you plug in a beefy eGPU. It has more full-size ports than most small laptops can dream of, twin SSD slots, and a minimum 32GB of RAM.

Perhaps most importantly, it has the most competent keyboard I’ve used on a computer this small, with near-zero learning curve. I’m writing every word you’re reading right now, at my normal speed, on the Win Max 2. I’ve spent many full days working from this 10-inch notebook, and it’s tackled everything. I even edited a recent Today I’m Toying With video on this tiny PC.

GPD’s been building tiny laptops for around a decade, and this one’s tantalizingly close to something I might actually pay for — if I could only convince the company to change a few key things.

On paper, the GPD Win Max 2 seems like it should be in the upper echelon of handhelds. You get your choice of AMD’s HX 370 “Strix Point” or its Ryzen 7 8840U chip, up to 64GB of memory, up to 4TB of storage, a high-res 2,560 x 1,600 IPS screen covered in Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5 for durability, and a larger-than-average 67 watt-hour battery to power the whole thing.

But using it on the couch, in bed, and on flights to and from Japan, gaming was more awkward than I expected.

For once, I’m not talking about how terrible Windows can be! With a large 10.1-inch touchscreen and a full keyboard, it’s the rare handheld where Microsoft’s OS is easy to manage, easy to tap touchscreen buttons and drag windows around. (It does still struggle with sleep.)

Nor am I talking about the 2.2-pound weight — while my arms do get tired holding it like a Nintendo Switch, I can usually just open the laptop’s hinge, prop it up on my chest, or plop it on my lap for a bit.

Even the game pad controls are decent, as awkward as they might look! You get two analog sticks that feel nigh-identical to Nintendo Switch, save the drift-resistant Hall effect sensors underneath. The PSP-style translucent D-pad is responsive, as are the tiny ABXY face buttons. You get clicky microswitches under each bumper. Only the triggers feel a little weak.

No, the main problem is that to hold those game pad controls, you have to grip the laptop’s rigid aluminum and resin chassis, which has no real dampening to isolate my hands from the handheld’s grumbling guts. I can feel every fan vibration traveling through my fingers, up into my wrists. It feels indescribably weird and bad! I’ve asked GPD, but the company’s suggested fan adjustments haven’t fixed it. A replacement unit had the same issue.

The second pain point is the screen. 2560×1600 is far too many pixels for AMD’s portable chips to push in even moderately intensive games — and because GPD chose a fixed 60Hz screen nothing feels as smooth as on 90Hz and 120Hz VRR handhelds like the Steam Deck OLED, Asus ROG Ally X, or Ayaneo 3. It’s a good display for productivity or watching movies, particularly considering the Win Max 2’s decent DTS:X digital sound enhancements, but I will no longer buy a gaming handheld with a 60Hz fixed refresh screen.

And, at least with the $1,100 AMD 8840U and 32GB model I tested, it’s not always faster in games than the $800 Asus ROG Ally X. While it does seem to have a performance advantage at 15W, battery life is still meh, as it has a smaller battery within.

With the Ally X, I got over eight hours of magic poker game Balatro, my best-case-scenario test for these handhelds since it’s non-intensive; the Win Max 2 managed only five hours and 22 minutes on a charge. I also saw just two hours of Armored Core 6, on par with the Steam Deck, but the Ally X can get nearly three hours. Plus, you can drain the Win Max 2’s battery in an hour and a half with more intense games if you try.

Unlike other handhelds, though, you can play flat on a tray table, like I did on my flights. The joysticks and buttons are still accessible, plus a whole keyboard. Over the past month, I’ve nearly beaten Lorelei and the Laser Eyes playing exclusively on the Win Max 2, transitioning between laptop and handheld, cordless and corded modes.

And that’s before you consider that you can genuinely plug an RTX 5090 external graphics card dock into this thing. Just know that Oculink products, unlike USB-C ones, aren’t made to be hot-swapped. They have to be fully powered down before you yank the cable, or you risk damage.

So that’s the Win Max 2 as a gaming machine. As a laptop, it’s largely the same story: uniquely intriguing until you bump into ugly shortcomings.

Don’t even think about buying a Win Max 2 for your Zoom and Teams calls, as it has one of the worst webcams I’ve had the displeasure of using — and I say that having suffered years with the nosehair webcam on a Dell XPS 15. (We wrote an entire story when Dell fixed that mistake.) The Win Max 2’s hinge-cam is angled so low that typing appears to your colleagues as GIANT SPIDER FINGERS invading the conference call.

Plus, the camera’s optics are just bad. “You are a lovely person, but it is actively unpleasant to view you through this webcam,” said one colleague; another called the microphone “shit.”

If you plan to fix that with an external webcam, you might also add a travel mouse to fix the other big shortcoming. The touchpad is just 2.7 inches (70mm) wide and 1.6 inches (40mm) deep, and awkwardly placed above the keyboard rather than below, making me stretch for it every time. It does physically click, but it’s terrible at click-and-drag. I’ve never met a laptop that needed a ThinkPad nub more.

The good news: the Win Max 2 has plenty of ports for practically any peripheral you’d care to add.

Should GPD have sacrificed some of those ports to make the stout Win Max 2 thinner? I don’t think so, though you should know it won’t fit neatly into many laptop sleeves. But GPD could ditch the modular SSD and modem bays for extra battery capacity. I’m only getting 5–6 hours of work done on a charge, not enough for a full workday, but a larger battery feels possible with some design tweaks.

So: Battery, webcam, better mousing, vibration dampening, and a variable refresh rate screen. Then, GPD might have a tiny computer I can wholeheartedly recommend.

Photography and videography by Sean Hollister / The Verge