Picking the perfect portable console

An illustration of several handheld game consoles, in Vergecast colors. — Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

We’re in the middle — or maybe just at the beginning — of a revolution in portable gaming. From the Switch to the Steam Deck to the Playdate to the Pocket, you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to consoles that fit in your backpack. But what if you really only play one game, and that game doesn’t work on most of those consoles? You’re in for a lot of Wi-Fi testing, a lot of questions about remote play and cloud streaming, and some complicated buying decisions.

On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge’s Sean Hollister and Alex Cranz join to help us solve a very specific gaming problem. We start by talking about the Steam Deck, debate the merits of the Switch, the ROG Ally X, and a bunch of other options… and then somehow end up back on the Steam Deck. Did we really solve anything? Who knows! But we have a lot to talk about.

After that, Victoria Song joins the show to test some microphones. A new crop of headsets and smart glasses promise to be great for everything from phone calls to metaverse gaming, but how do they actually sound? We endure several seriously chaotic pairing situations to try out the Razer Anzu, the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, the Meta Quest 3, and the Apple Vision Pro. The end result certainly surprised us.

Finally, we answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline about the North Focals, and whether a startup might have nailed the future of smart glasses five years ago. Next time you go to the eye doctor, should you get smart glasses instead? We have thoughts.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with consoles:

And on smart glasses:

And on the North Focals: