Handheld gaming has gone through many different iterations over the past several decades. These days, on-the-go gaming has made some massive strides in popularity with many different devices vying for your mobile gaming attention. Enter the growing technology company Pimax, that aims to push the boundaries with their latest offering, the Pimax Portal. This handheld device is not just another gaming console; it's a hybrid VR gaming system that brings high-resolution Android gaming and cloud gaming to the palm of your hand.
Pimax is well known to VR enthusiasts as a company that builds quality VR sets with cutting edge resolution and visual quality. We see the forethought of visual fidelity in The Pimax Portal, as it touts the world's first 4K LCD screen gaming console, aiming to offer unparalleled visual fidelity for handheld. The Portal comes in three variants: the 8+128G, 8+256G, and the Portal QLED 8+256G, with prices starting from $369. Each variant offers a unique set of features, catering to different gaming needs. In this preview, we were provided a QLED 8+256 Portal, which has several upgrades, including WiGig support and a more visually appealing and energy efficient QLED+ Mini LED screen. Here are the specifications for the base model:
Specifications
- Device: Pimax Portal
- Price: $369 - Base Model (Pimax Store)
- Processor: Snapdragon XR2 (more or less equivalent to Snapdragon 865 with a max CPU speed of 2.84Ghz), with additional instructions for VR/XR
- GPU: Qualcomm Adreno 650 GPU, frequency up to 587MHz
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Storage: 128GB internal storage
- Display: 5.5-inch, 3,840 x 2,160 resolution, 144Hz LCD display, Brightness 400 nit, 5-point touchscreen
- Charging/Connectivity: USB-C Connection, Bluetooth, High-speed Wi-Fi 6E network capabilities
- Audio: Dual speakers, array microphones
- Tracking: 6DoF (six degrees of freedom) tracking via four back cameras
- Size: 225mm (length) × 89mm (width) × 14.2mm (thickness)
- Weight: 367g
- Battery: 4,000mAh
The Portal's primary appeal lies in its ability to play a wide variety of games. While the Portal runs on Android, and therefore plays primarily only Android-specific titles natively, the prevalence of cloud gaming has made the Portal a powerhouse handheld console, with an ever-growing library. This means you can stream your favorite MMORPGs directly on the device, making it a handy companion for gamers on the go. While this preview is predominantly about the handheld device itself, one of the most intriguing features of the Pimax Portal is its ability to transform into a VR device. Nestled around the outer rim of the Portal are several cameras, which are utilized for the inside-out tracking required to run a mobile VR device. Of course, there are plenty of AR games that make use of your device’s camera too, making the Portal versatile for numerous types of games.
One of the standout features of the Pimax Portal is the intuitive magnetic controllers. These controllers can be detached and used from a distance or snapped to the main body of the device, which essentially provides a Nintendo Switch-like appeal to the console. The controllers connect with metal pins to ensure minimal latency loss, and during my playtime, I found very little perceptible input lag when playing native games. This feature, coupled with the ability to customize your key mapping, provides a lot of opportunities to tune the console exactly how you want it.
Where the Portal Shines
Pimax’s Portal is a powerful device. While playing some games, such as Diablo Immortal and Genshin Impact I was able to push the performance levels to 60 frames per second, and graphic fidelity was maintained with minimal, if any, stuttering. Of course, this all gets kind of thrown to the wayside when you start dealing with Cloud Games, where most of your visual quality revolves around your connection speed and the amount of compression utilized for the game you’re playing. The portal utilizes Wi-FI 6E, and several speed tests confirmed that it can stream 1080p or higher with minimal compression where options are available – like with GeForce Now. I was extraordinarily impressed with the cloud visuals of some of my go-to cloud games like Cyberpunk 2077.
I spent the majority of my time on the Portal playing ARPG games like Lost Ark and Diablo Immortal. Both games handled extremely well for long-term game sessions. I also attempted to play a few other games, such as Honkai Star Rail and one of my favorite card games, Legends of Runeterra. Both Honkai and Runeterra are not games that are built for controller play, and quickly snapping the magnetic controllers off to play as a handheld tablet was comfortable. The controllers have a nice weight to them and work well even when detached which actually would play a much bigger part when utilized in VR mode.
The Portal not only allows you to download and play the full extent of what is available on the Google Play Store and cloud-gaming offerings from services provided by Microsoft and Nvidia, but it’s also possible to load alternative applications like emulators and APKs that aren’t provided in Google’s store. You can turn on the developer options for the Portal through the settings, and hook up your device to your PC and transfer APKs and other applications directly to your device. Once installed, the gaming world is your oyster, and although we don’t condone the emulation of games on proprietary platforms, it's still an exciting prospect to have a system that allows such a wide range of gaming opportunities.
The overlay system for the Portal is also quite useful once you get used to it. As with most handhelds these days, a touch screen is a modern necessity, allowing gamers to quickly pull up a keyboard to type in information, as well as utilize on-screen gestures to accomplish tasks. The touchscreen was tactile and responsive, and despite a smaller-than-expected on-screen keyboard, I never had trouble sending messages or putting in password information. Swapping back and forth between tapping and utilizing the controls made games like Albion Online easier to play, than either the controller or touchscreen alone. Having both a controller and touchscreen at the ready really is a balance that I feel more games should take advantage of.
The quality of life features provided by Pimax were also very welcome. By swiping right on the screen, a menu pops up with several tidbits of information. Here you can easily change the brightness, volume, on-screen key remapping, and airplane mode, and you can swap between game mode and multiplayer mode. Multiplayer mode, like the Nintendo Switch, will allow two players to each take one of the magnetic remotes and play together on the shared screen. The menu will also give you an idea of the FPS in a game as well as the heat level of the device. Swiping up at any moment would also drop you back to the main menu, while holding the bottom screen for a moment would bring up all recently opened apps which made swapping between games or other applications very easy.
Room for Growth
There are a lot of things that Portal does very well, but I did run into several issues during my play sessions. Most notably would be the feeling of the controls on games that require very fine analog precision. During my test of games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Fallout 76 I found it increasingly difficult to aim properly, no matter how I attempted to adjust my control sensitivity. Where the Portal excels at ARPGs like Lost Ark, it falters with FPS games, at least without a hefty dose of aim-assist. Another issue I had was with the triggers for the Portal. The L2 and R2 triggers also didn’t lend themselves to fast-action feedback. There was just too much play in the triggers to get a successful, satisfying “click”. The strange thing was that, in many cases, the “click” of fully depressing the trigger wasn’t necessary to activate the button, but it was still awkward to press either of the L2 or R2 triggers to the hilt due to so much finger motion required before any tactile feedback.
Another small problem I encountered had to do with simply learning the system – which included the sound and light show that the Portal would often put on for me, especially when charging, or updating applications. While the Portal charges, the thumbstick lights flash or change colors, indicating the level of charge for each controller (I assume). There were also times when I’d hear sounds signifying there was an update that was completed or that the system had reached full charge. Both of these issues surprised me, or annoyed me, until I learned how to turn them off. Finding out what all of the buttons do, and figuring out how to change the volume required a lot of trial and error and some assistance from Pimax. The Portal is a capable handheld, but intuitive, at this stage, it is not. My feeling has always been, an intuitive piece of hardware allows anyone to just pick it up, and fiddle with it for a few moments to get your bearings. This may be one of the first consoles I've used where I had to read through the manual multiple times, including handy tips and tricks documents to really understand the system. Another example of this was when I accidentally tapped on VR mode after the system started up.
For the purpose of this preview, we have relegated our impressions to the handheld portion only, meaning I wasn’t provided a headset, and the documentation states that removing the Portal from the headset swaps the Portal from VR mode back to handheld mode. Needless to say, once I was accidentally in VR mode, I was a little flummoxed and had to use my keen eyesight to find the proper controls via VR view to return the Portal to handheld mode. There are options that I found later to automatically return to 2D mode on restart, but it took a lot of fiddling in the settings to find this when I feel like it should be default. Equally so, the hardware controls to modulate the audio required that you hold the gamepad button down while pressing one of two other buttons above the left thumbstick. If that sounds confusing, you would be right, especially where the Portal is concerned, simply because there are ample buttons available to dedicate a volume control, which would make more sense as a default, allowing gamers to remap those buttons later, for a specific game if preferred.
Despite these issues, the latter of which I feel will get ironed out before the hardware fully launches, and the former being remedied by the possibility of third-party controller support, the Pimax Portal is a revolutionary device that combines the convenience of handheld gaming with the immersive experience of VR. With many more VR RPGs and MMORPGs in the works and the persistence of Cloud Gaming’s biggest players as they continue to expand their services, the Portal is a strong competitor for handheld gamers that are looking for a lot of functionality at a lower price point than other handhelds on the market. If you want a versatile handheld, with powerful hardware that won’t sacrifice visual fidelity, then you should check out the Pimax Portal.
The product described in this article was provided by the manufacturer for evaluation purposes.